Follow a Proven Plan, Quit Making It Up As You Go

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Speaker 2 Normal is broke, and common sense is weird. So, we're here to help you transform your life from the Ramsey Network here in the Fair Ones Credit Union studio.
This is the Ramsey Show.

Speaker 2 All right, let's get it on and pop and talking about your life and your money. The numbers easy, triple eight, eight, two, five, five two five gets you on the line here with Dr.
John Deloney.

Speaker 2 My name is Jade Warshaw. Let's get into it.
William is in Atlanta, Georgia. What's up, William? William?

Speaker 4 Hey, how are y'all?

Speaker 2 Doing good. How can we help today?

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 I've got, I am 22 years old,

Speaker 4 and I am engaged recently.

Speaker 4 She has two children of her own that I've inherited.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 we have one on the way.

Speaker 4 So I,

Speaker 4 with her, we've kind of planned. We're getting married.
We are one, as Dave likes to say.

Speaker 4 We're kind of thinking of the ballpark of what our debt would be together. And it's around $15,000 to $16,000.
Okay.

Speaker 4 And we're really trying to figure out what the best way to pay that off is with the income that we currently make.

Speaker 2 Right now or after you get married?

Speaker 4 After we get married. We'll be getting married at the end of this year.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 5 First thing I want you to do is not ballpark anything.

Speaker 4 Okay.

Speaker 5 Get an exact dollar amount.

Speaker 4 It's $15,668.

Speaker 5 Okay, so you got that.

Speaker 4 Way to go.

Speaker 5 All right. And you're 22 and you're about to have three kids.

Speaker 5 Yeah. All I got to say is, dang, Gina.

Speaker 2 It's a lot of kids. Yeah, what kind of money are you guys making?

Speaker 4 So right now, I'm making right at $52,000. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4 What about her? And she is making, I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 Yeah, what will your soon-to-be wife be earning?

Speaker 4 $42,000. Okay, good.

Speaker 2 Okay. And is she going to continue to work after this baby or what's the plan?

Speaker 4 Yeah, so she's actually got a really unique opportunity. My mom does Medicare insurance policies and everything.

Speaker 4 She was a cop before this. I was a cop before I started doing what I'm doing now.

Speaker 4 So she has gotten a really nice opportunity to work for my mom. My mom only makes her come in three days a week for five hours at a time, and she pays her $1,100 every two weeks.

Speaker 2 All right, sweet. So the main question then is how do we, is it how do we combine our money to pay off this debt or just, we know how to combine the money, Jade, how do we pay off this debt?

Speaker 4 Yeah, essentially, how do we pay it off?

Speaker 4 What I'm really struggling with is, you know, as you said, 22 with three kids.

Speaker 4 And I was just kind of thrown into the the other two. And obviously that's not their fault and I love them to death.
But I've never really had to budget around kids.

Speaker 4 I've always just kind of budgeted around myself. Absolutely.

Speaker 4 So just kind of jumping into things, it's kind of weird for me to be able to just jump into it and be like, okay, well, I have to spend this much on groceries now and we have to pay this much in rent and everything.

Speaker 4 And then even with some of the money we have left over at the end of the month, we're still kind of paycheck to paycheck as it is now.

Speaker 2 Are you already sharing money, or is this just hypotheticals?

Speaker 4 Like, are you hypothetically?

Speaker 2 I'm sorry, when you said that, we're kind of you said, well, we're doing this, but we're already kind of running out of money. Is that hypothetical, or have you guys already combined money?

Speaker 2 Because what I was going to suggest is you guys do a mock budget of what it'll be like once you're married and you have her income there, you have his or yours.

Speaker 4 We've already combined everything at this point.

Speaker 5 Okay, so y'all make a hundred grand and you're already paycheck to paycheck?

Speaker 4 Yeah, okay.

Speaker 5 Is it daycare?

Speaker 4 Yes, okay. Daycare is a very big expense.

Speaker 2 How much is daycare? Because your wife's making $1,100 a week, $4,400.

Speaker 4 How much is daycare? Every two weeks.

Speaker 2 Oh, every two weeks. So she's making $2,200.
How much is daycare?

Speaker 4 Daycare is

Speaker 4 not far off. It's about $1,200.

Speaker 2 Okay. Okay.
So there's still something to be said for her paycheck or yours.

Speaker 5 Yeah. When it comes to food, whatever you think the number is going to be, multiply by probably like 3,000%.

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 4 that's been the biggest one for me is groceries. I never knew that they could cost so much.

Speaker 5 Bro, you don't,

Speaker 5 how old are these two kids you're inheriting?

Speaker 4 Four and two.

Speaker 5 Just wait till they're 12 and 14. And how much is rent?

Speaker 2 What are you guys paying for? Are you renting or what is it?

Speaker 4 Yeah, so we're renting. We live in a two-bed, one-bath house outside of Atlanta.

Speaker 4 I pay $10.50 a month.

Speaker 2 $10.50.

Speaker 4 $1,050 a month. Okay.

Speaker 4 And then bill-wise, we try to keep our power bill low, but power bill rates here in Georgia have been skyrocketing. Okay.

Speaker 4 So like last month, our bill was $200, and then we got it this month, and it was almost $400.

Speaker 2 What about cars?

Speaker 4 What about your cars?

Speaker 4 So, my car is paid off. I don't like new cars.
I have a 99 Tahoe that I drive around, and she has a 2021 Traverse that she is upside down in. What's she owe?

Speaker 2 And I've

Speaker 4 $25,000.

Speaker 2 Ooh, and what's it worth?

Speaker 4 Probably around $15,000.

Speaker 2 My, my, my. What's the payment on it?

Speaker 4 $535,000. My gosh.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 4 And her interest rate is 6.7%.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. You know, talking about paying off this debt, that's going to that's if you guys can get out of that, that's going to free a lot of margin for you.
Um yeah. Now that 15,000, is that

Speaker 2 private sale or is that what a dealer would give you?

Speaker 4 That yeah, that's private sale.

Speaker 4 We've we've gone to a dealer and just seen like, you know, trade-in wise, could you get in something older and just kind of the rest of it roll over or how we could work it out?

Speaker 4 But they would offer way less than we could

Speaker 4 in private sell it. They sell a lot more in private.

Speaker 2 So what I would be looking at here is,

Speaker 2 so you owe 25. I mean,

Speaker 2 if you wanted to get out of it, you could try to possibly get a loan for the difference, but you'd still have to get something cash, which you'd probably spend about $8,000 on.

Speaker 2 So you'd be at $18,000 instead of $25,000. Whether or not that's worth it, eh,

Speaker 2 probably not. I think you guys can just

Speaker 2 bear this out by doing the two things we always teach, which is there's really only two ways to do this, John.

Speaker 2 I mean, he's either going to work more and she's going to work more, or you're going to cut things out of your budget, or you're going to do a combination of both. That's the way this works.

Speaker 2 So, listening to you run this out, I mean, I'm estimating you're taking home about $5,800 a month. Does that sound about right?

Speaker 4 Yeah, round about. And the good thing about my job is I work a union job as well, and I just started.
So in four years, I'll be making about $93,000.

Speaker 2 Which I love that. But today you've got a debt problem of $16,000.
Now, let me be clear.

Speaker 2 I truly don't think you guys need to be combining money until after you're married. That's where I am on this, but you're already there now.

Speaker 2 I doubt you're going to go backwards since you're getting married at the end of the year.

Speaker 2 Yeah. But the key here is we've got to find margin.
$1050,000 on rent is not bad. The $1,200 on the daycare is not bad.
$400 on utilities.

Speaker 2 I think there's margin there that you can find by trimming back some of the in the the expenses you guys have because your big areas daycare um unless your insurance is through the roof but the big three areas seem to be okay i think it's a lifestyle thing y'all go to restaurants a lot

Speaker 5 no you don't eat out at all y'all cook at home

Speaker 2 yeah she cooks at home every night or you have maybe you have some dogs or like some cats or something that you're spending a lot of money on pets that's a big one um you gotta just take the sucker down to

Speaker 5 bone, man, on your expenses.

Speaker 2 That's what I would do.

Speaker 5 That's the answer. And if you have to get a second job

Speaker 5 on top of it, yeah, you got to work extra, but y'all got to grind it out. This just is hard, man.

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Speaker 2 All right, Alan is in St. Louis, Missouri.
What's going on, Alan?

Speaker 4 Hey, thank you for taking my call.

Speaker 4 I'm in a good predicament.

Speaker 4 My wife and I have recently went debt-free, paid off our house about a year ago. Way to go.

Speaker 4 The situation is we

Speaker 4 I passed our church, I'm bivocational, and been doing that for 26 years now. We made a choice when we got married and started having kids for my wife to stay at home.

Speaker 4 So I've been working a full-time job plus extra jobs all these years

Speaker 4 just to make ends meet.

Speaker 4 So we are in a position right now where we're both 58 years old.

Speaker 4 A year ago when we paid off our house, we just started investing for retirement.

Speaker 4 My question is, I feel like I've been gazelle intense for the last 26 years,

Speaker 4 but I feel like I still need to keep up that intensity to have enough in retirement. And

Speaker 2 how did you be gazelle intense, but just started saving last year for retirement?

Speaker 4 Because I was the only income working two and three jobs just to make sure that our bills were paid and we had six kids and keeping food on the table.

Speaker 2 But you guys also, you paid off that, you paid off the house, so you paid off the house before you started investing.

Speaker 4 Yes. Got it.

Speaker 4 And we, we, our house got torn down by a tornado, taken down by a tornado in 2019. Shoot.
And that

Speaker 4 actually helped us.

Speaker 4 Insurance allowed us to buy another house, and we ended up owing less on that house than we owed on the one that we were living in. So that helped us to pay off that house quicker.

Speaker 4 You know, so

Speaker 4 but we're in a position right now where we've got

Speaker 4 Right now I've got about twenty thousand dollars in Roth IRAs and mutual funds, and we've got about $40,000 in savings.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 what's your household income now as it stands?

Speaker 4 Well, yeah, right now my wife has started working since all of her kids are out. So now we're making $120,000 a year.
Okay.

Speaker 4 We've been putting

Speaker 4 between $1,500 and $1,800

Speaker 4 a month into our retirement. Okay.

Speaker 4 And we

Speaker 4 have like $500 that we set out each month for the next vehicle that we may end up having to buy.

Speaker 4 We've got $200 a month that we set aside for car expenses.

Speaker 4 And then, you know, the rest is insurance and things like that.

Speaker 4 You know, I don't know if we're saving out too much money for the next vehicle or, you know, I could throw more into the retirement. I just don't know

Speaker 4 what the best options would be.

Speaker 2 I think at this point, your best option is to put as much into retirement as you can simply because, I mean, you said it yourself.

Speaker 2 You've only got 20,000 plus the 40,000 you have just in regular savings. And so, of course, you know, replacing vehicles is important, but I am worried about you having something there because

Speaker 2 as a pastor, you're not, you don't have social security taken out of your check, right?

Speaker 4 Well, I've had social security taken out because I've been working a regular job for the last 30 years okay okay and i'm still working that regular job okay and do you know i mean i'm just trying to get all your numbers do you know what that will be if you wait and do late distribution on that

Speaker 4 uh i do not know what my um social security will be my pension is going to be right around eighteen hundred dollars a month Okay, well, that's helpful.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, that would be my biggest thing. You do have the pension, which is nice.
You do have a little bit of social security. Hopefully your wife will have that too.

Speaker 2 But yeah, my goal would be like, how much can I build up this $20,000? You said you were putting $1,800 a month in right now?

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 2 Okay. So, I mean, if I run that math as it is,

Speaker 2 if you start now or last year, like you said, and you do this till you're 72, I mean, that's $735,000 you'll have there. And I feel pretty good about that, considering you'll have a paid for house.

Speaker 2 But obviously, if we can bump that up, you know, that's going to, every bit that you can bump that up is gonna give you a little bit more peace, right?

Speaker 4 Right, right. Yeah, I guess I'm just at a point where I feel like, you know, I've been working two or three jobs plus pastoring for the last 30 years.

Speaker 4 I'm like, okay, I'd like to spend some time with my wife. Yeah, sure.

Speaker 4 But at the same time, this was, I hate that.

Speaker 5 All these were choices.

Speaker 4 I hate that.

Speaker 5 Yes. Everything was a choice, man.
I totally get it, dude. I totally get it.
And it's, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's a, it's a tough pill to swallow. 58, is that what you said? Yeah.
Yes.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that's a tough pill to swallow. But it's like, we chose six kids, we chose to pastor a church, we chose to pay the house and not put any money in retirement.
We made all those choices.

Speaker 5 And then here we are. And really, at 58,

Speaker 5 like I'm looking at a guy who has given his whole life to serving people.

Speaker 5 And y'all have a math problem.

Speaker 5 It's just a math problem. Like, are we going to have enough money when we are 82 years old

Speaker 5 to be able to get groceries and pay the ever-escalating energy bills, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera?

Speaker 4 Right.

Speaker 2 So, I mean, that's what I would do. I think the 1800 you're doing is great.
And that, like I said, it's going to get you to 730, you know, between 7 and 750.

Speaker 2 If you can get to 2,000, that's even better. But John is exactly right.
But John, I want to take a moment and talk about what he just said because

Speaker 2 I hear that a lot on this show. I've experienced it myself, which is.

Speaker 5 I'm just tired.

Speaker 2 Well, yes, but it's going back to the thing about being gazelle intense.

Speaker 2 If you say to yourself, hey, I hear what the folks at Ramsey are saying and I want to start working that plan. I want to do this baby steps thing.
I just have to remind you guys,

Speaker 2 it's a system, it's a plan. And a plan is a plan because you do things in a step-by-step order to achieve the desired result.

Speaker 2 If you don't do it in that order, it's no longer a plan.

Speaker 2 It's just some things I heard that I might try some of them.

Speaker 5 So run it back, the difference between a guy who put $100,000 grand in 20 years ago

Speaker 5 into retirement that's just grown and grown and grown and grown and would be 58 and have $100,000 left on his mortgage. Right, exactly.

Speaker 5 Now we can get gazelle intense or have a very simple focused goal to get this sucker paid off while we're still nickel and diamond our way at that 15%, right?

Speaker 2 Now, I mean, are there,

Speaker 2 let me say this, it's not like Alan was out there, you know, running the streets. No, that's not the thing.

Speaker 5 That's the thing. Yeah, yeah, totally.

Speaker 2 There are worse things you can do with your money versus. You got a paid off house.

Speaker 5 So that's a huge liability off your plate.

Speaker 4 Right.

Speaker 2 The fact that he chose to pay off his house versus invest, like I said, there's a lot of, there's crazier things he could have done.

Speaker 2 But if you say, I'm working the Ramsey plan, then it doesn't work for you like that. If you, if you work our plan.

Speaker 2 And I just want to call that out because that's what keeps people very frustrated is when you look at this and go, this one works for me, that one doesn't. This one works for me, that one doesn't.

Speaker 5 And you say the whole plan doesn't work.

Speaker 2 Yes. And you will.
And I'm just saying, if you don't do the plan the way the plan's written, John, you're going to end up chasing your tail.

Speaker 2 Then you're going to be looking at us saying, but I was gazelle intense. And I'm like, no, you weren't.
That wasn't our plan. That was your plan.

Speaker 5 I think people forget about the, and again, we get this a lot. Like people want to pull apart like the nuance here of, yeah, but you can put this money in this account and this over here and whatever.

Speaker 5 A huge part of that plan is. And you write about this in your new book.
It's psychological, it's emotional.

Speaker 5 And there's something about, like when I've talked to Dave privately about being gazelle intense, I want to spend this many years and just pay off my house he said you're gonna be a shell of yourself in those many years do it the way we set it up so that when you turn 58 you're not looking around going I've got nothing left to give and I'm exhausted and I just want to hug my wife like and I which dude I'm like that I totally get that but it's like it's it's largely psychological and emotional

Speaker 5 and the money's the money always works right it's less live on less than you make but There's a huge, this is a perfect example of a guy who has dedicated his life taking care of people and paying off his house.

Speaker 5 He hasn't been out, gambling his money. It's amazing.
And I'm 58. I'm just burned out.

Speaker 2 I'm tired. I mean, Sam and I did that.
I've been guilty of it. That's why I'm calling it out.
I'm not telling you something that I haven't done myself, Alan, and anybody else listening.

Speaker 2 I mean, I was the one who, it's clear, the baby steps clearly say pay minimum payments on everything and take the extra money and put it on the smallest debt. That's what it says.

Speaker 2 But I had a big idea and said, we don't need to do that. We just need to put all the money, like forget about the credit card minimum payments, just put everything on the smallest debt.

Speaker 2 Then, yeah, you're going to get frustrated because now you got bill collectors calling your phone.

Speaker 2 Now, you got, I had the big idea at one point that we need, didn't need the thousand dollars saved, right? Right.

Speaker 2 And then you're, you're stressed out because something comes up, and it's just you got to walk the plan the way the plan states. Millions of people have done this.

Speaker 2 And so, there's a reason that it's called a proven plan, not just a plan, because if you do it, the proof's in the pudding, it actually works for you. That's all I'm going to say.

Speaker 2 Not to get on to Alan. We love Alan, but if you're listening and you're kind of hanging out around the water cooler on this, just do it the right way.
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Speaker 2 Let's go to Thomas, who's in New York City, New York.

Speaker 5 New York.

Speaker 2 What's up?

Speaker 4 Hi. Yes.
I'm trying to figure out whether or not to

Speaker 4 bless my sister with some money to help fix her car or see my siblings and my mom for Thanksgiving. They promised to come up for Thanksgiving, but this wrinkle has

Speaker 4 put an issue in it.

Speaker 2 Interesting. So what's going on with your sister? What's causing her to have problems with fixing her car and getting to see the family on Thanksgiving?

Speaker 4 I mean, she just doesn't have a ton of money and

Speaker 4 not really good with money.

Speaker 5 I was going to say, like, the fact that you're calling tells me this is not a one-time event.

Speaker 4 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely not.

Speaker 5 And if you cover the cost of this car, is it just going to be one thing after that?

Speaker 4 I mean,

Speaker 4 I want to say

Speaker 4 this is it, but I mean, I'm going to take care of my my family and my people.

Speaker 2 What's the nature of what's causing her to fall on hard times over and over again?

Speaker 4 I think lack of discipline.

Speaker 4 She's kind of a a slighty

Speaker 4 person.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So over the years, I mean, what's this looked like for you? I mean, give us some hard numbers. How much have you spent to bail her out?

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 4 not a not a ton.

Speaker 4 but I think more than anything, I just really want to

Speaker 4 see them.

Speaker 5 But you already answered your own question, brother. You said, I'm always going to take care of my family.

Speaker 5 You've already made that choice, dude. So if that's the choice you want to make, then make peace with your choice and make peace with the consequences of that choice, which is,

Speaker 5 are you married right now? Yeah, yeah. Okay, then you and your wife are going to have to figure out what that looks like financially.

Speaker 5 And you have to decide if I'm going to give money every time she calls, I'm not going to get mad when she calls.

Speaker 2 What's your wife think about it, though?

Speaker 4 She's good with it. I mean, I'm not mad.
I just want to see them and

Speaker 4 up here for Thanksgiving.

Speaker 5 I mean, you've already made that choice, brother. So make peace with it.

Speaker 2 Do you have the money to help? What's your financial situation?

Speaker 4 I'm just wondering practically. Yeah,

Speaker 4 we're good. We're getting ready to buy a house.

Speaker 4 Yeah, we're doing well. Work the baby steps.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 What's the question beneath this question? I'm struggling with your question.

Speaker 4 I don't want to, I want to see them more than I want to give her money to fix her car.

Speaker 2 So it's more about what you want, not what she needs.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Huh.

Speaker 5 Does she want to see you?

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 But they aren't going to come up

Speaker 4 if I don't give the money to them.

Speaker 5 Because they can't or because they don't want to.

Speaker 4 Because they can't. Yeah, because they can't.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 Okay.

Speaker 2 And they didn't ask.

Speaker 4 No, she didn't ask me to help her fix her car. She just asked me, hey, we can't pay for the rental car to get up there.
So

Speaker 4 how old are you guys?

Speaker 4 I'm 40, and my wife is 36.

Speaker 2 Here's,

Speaker 2 I agree with what John said. I'm I'm trying to put myself in your shoes.
And I'm just thinking, okay, if my sister was like, hey, are you coming to Memphis?

Speaker 2 And I was like, no, you know, the car's in the shop. If she was like, oh, I'll pay for the car to get fixed.
That might make me feel a little weird. I might be like, oh, no, we're good.

Speaker 2 Like, you know, Sam and I, we're good. And if she kept insisting,

Speaker 2 I don't know that I would have, would like that.

Speaker 2 But just because now it feels like, okay, well, I've got to give her this money back. I'm on the hook.

Speaker 2 You know, it does change relationships when you borrow and give give money to your family, especially if it's not, if there's kind of this underlying of she's kind of flighty.

Speaker 2 She just doesn't really, you know, handle her business. Ah, that's my only thought.
I, like I said, what John said is true.

Speaker 2 If you have already made up in your mind, if my family's struggling, I step in, then that's your bag.

Speaker 5 And the way I, if this was my house, the way I would frame it is, hey, guys, I my wife and I happen to be in a season of blessing right now, and we would love to get y'all a rental car to come up here.

Speaker 5 And they can say no.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 Yeah. That doesn't bother.
I mean, none of it bothers me. I'm just trying to play it from both

Speaker 4 ways. Totally.

Speaker 5 Totally, totally, totally. And you know your sister better than Jade and I will.
And if you know that really what she's telling you is, I don't want to come,

Speaker 5 then you're you're going to have to sit in that for a little bit and not just throw money at a problem, right?

Speaker 4 Yeah, they definitely want to come. I just, I feel like the responsible one and want to

Speaker 4 take care of them.

Speaker 2 Is she married? Is she married? Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah, she's married.

Speaker 2 Okay, so tell us about him because you told us about her. She's a little flighty.
What about him? Because it takes two to tango.

Speaker 4 Why don't

Speaker 4 you?

Speaker 4 Yeah, they

Speaker 4 think it's just a lack of discipline. I don't want to

Speaker 4 home, so I don't want to talk on them, but that's what it seems like to me.

Speaker 4 They've had some hard times.

Speaker 2 Are you concerned that you're enabling them?

Speaker 4 Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 100%. How many times have you bailed them out in the past?

Speaker 4 A couple.

Speaker 4 Nothing crazy. Okay.

Speaker 4 Just a couple hundred dollars here or there.

Speaker 2 That's my, I'm going to be honest with you, Thomas. That's the only thing that bothers me about it.

Speaker 2 I 100% understood what you said earlier because I've been in that situation where we're like, hey, it benefits them. And I realize that, but I'm really doing this because it's what I want.

Speaker 2 I want the whole family to be together. I understand that very well.
I'm in a season of that right now.

Speaker 2 However, the enabling part did bother me a little bit because this is a cycle.

Speaker 2 And at that point, it's one thing if it's like no harm, no foul, but if you're enabling somebody, you are doing them harm. And so that's the only part that I, I mean, John can speak more to that.

Speaker 2 That's your bag. But

Speaker 2 yeah.

Speaker 4 And I've given them like the Total Money Makeover book. I've tried to help them with budget management.

Speaker 5 Yeah, but they just haven't asked you for that.

Speaker 4 Yeah, they haven't.

Speaker 5 Yeah, and that's just tough, man. When

Speaker 5 our loved ones and our friends and family, when we literally have a tool in our toolkit that can help them and they're not asking for that tool.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 That's tough.

Speaker 5 Right. And that's always just hard.

Speaker 5 And I will tell you this. You would have a very extraordinary wife.

Speaker 5 And I'm not saying wife, you'd have a very extraordinary spouse if they're okay with you indiscriminately bailing out your siblings' bad financial decisions over a long period of time.

Speaker 5 So I think it's worth you sitting down with your wife and saying, hey, I don't want this to get out of control and be a forever thing. What is our number? Do we have a line? A boundary.

Speaker 5 What are you seeing in me? And maybe give her permission to say,

Speaker 5 you are so desperately trying to get this family together to fulfill a fantasy in your head. And we maybe need to exhale and let this thing go.
And that's gonna be hard, right?

Speaker 5 Yeah, but dude, if you got the money and your family is just literally a rental car away from coming to see you, they just fell on hard times. That's an easy decision.

Speaker 5 But I think the fact that you're calling says there's different layers to this thing, man, and that just makes it challenging.

Speaker 2 I agree with that. Hey,

Speaker 2 yeah. What do you think you're going to do based on just based off a snapshot of what you heard John and I do? What do you think you'll do?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think I'll.

Speaker 5 He's going to do it.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 4 I'm going to give him the money to fix the car, and I'm gonna say we'll see you at another time. There you go.

Speaker 2 I like that. Do it.
Have a good holiday. Bring it up later when you're not in the heat of the moment.
So, Jade, I want to say this.

Speaker 5 If it is, we're recording this show at the very beginning of November.

Speaker 5 If you haven't already and you're listening to this, if you're married, sit with your spouse and y'all talk through exactly what you want the holidays to look like. Not what they have to be.

Speaker 5 What do y'all want them to look like? And then communicate that to your family. And do it the next day or two.
Yes. Right? Let everybody in your family know.
Let all the temper tantrums happen.

Speaker 5 Let all the plans happen. Let all the exhale happen.

Speaker 5 But make those plans while you are still in control of them before you get dragged behind somebody else's vision of Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Speaker 2 I agree.

Speaker 2 I would take a step further too and just think back on last year's holiday and kind of audit that and say, here's what went well and here's what didn't, and use that as the temperature tantrum.

Speaker 5 And this year will not be the year it finally all works out. It'll be just like last year.

Speaker 5 Hey, quick reality check.

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Speaker 2 All right, Anthony is in Providence, Rhode Island. Hey, Anthony, how can we help out today?

Speaker 4 Hi, how are you doing? Thanks for taking the call. Yeah, you bet.
What's up? What's up?

Speaker 4 So, I'm currently torn right now.

Speaker 4 My wife and I, I'll start off with this. My wife and I, we both take home around, and I'm saying like net,

Speaker 4 we take around $80,000 a year,

Speaker 4 maybe with bonuses closer to $85,000. Okay.

Speaker 4 Right now, we are both currently $20,000 in debt between our car loans and

Speaker 4 credit card debt. Okay.

Speaker 4 The main concern I have now, I just started following the baby steps. I just got introduced to Baby Ramsey by my friend.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 everything's great. The math is mapping.

Speaker 4 The only concern I have right now is that I've been working, or between her and I, we've been working very, very, very hard.

Speaker 4 Long, long hours

Speaker 4 trying to figure out babysitting.

Speaker 4 So it's been pretty tough trying to manage time

Speaker 4 because I know you can't get time back. That's the one thing I've always been told.
That's true.

Speaker 2 So the 85,000 net, that's with side hustles.

Speaker 4 The 85,000, that's with both of our primary incomes.

Speaker 2 Right, but you were saying like we're navigating, you made it seem like you were doing a lot of extra.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 4 at our, so we both have a job,

Speaker 4 a full-time job.

Speaker 4 I'm working about 60 hours a week.

Speaker 4 Got it. And then she's working about maybe 30, 35 hours a week.
Okay. How old are your kids?

Speaker 4 So I have one kid. He's one years old.
He just turned one.

Speaker 4 And trying to find a babysitter is the main issue for us.

Speaker 4 Got it.

Speaker 6 We're able to make it work.

Speaker 4 Her grandma's always there for us and stuff. Okay.

Speaker 5 It's a blessing, dude. So how much margin do you have every month? Like, you've done the budget.
And by the way, welcome to the cult, brother. Hope you took a bath in the Kool-Aid, man.
All right.

Speaker 5 So you're here in our crazy little gang.

Speaker 5 Like, how much margin do you have? You all done a budget. What do you got left at the end of every month that you're throwing at this $20,000 debt?

Speaker 4 So, for me alone, just because we're not factoring both of our incomes together,

Speaker 4 you're married.

Speaker 5 Y'all made a human together. You can share a checking account.

Speaker 4 So,

Speaker 4 the main issue has been trying to get her on board with the Dave Ramsey thing.

Speaker 5 Okay, so halt everything. Halt everything, homie.
Halt it all.

Speaker 5 You can't do this by yourself, man.

Speaker 5 Right. You can't.
Like, you've got a bigger issue than debt right now, and then it's a spouse that doesn't share the same values as you.

Speaker 5 Right. You got to get there.

Speaker 2 And what does she want to do? Yeah.

Speaker 2 What's her,

Speaker 2 tell us her side.

Speaker 4 Yeah. So she definitely believes in

Speaker 4 working very hard and trying to stack the money. But the issue is that she's not.

Speaker 4 In her mind, she wants to save the money, but she's not actually putting it on pen and paper. And then she's not having any

Speaker 4 margin at the end of every month.

Speaker 5 But she shouldn't have margin, y'all should have margin.

Speaker 2 So, is the problem that she doesn't feel good about combining money?

Speaker 2 Like, plan aside, like getting out of debt aside, just you guys going through, let's pretend that there was no debt to pay off, just you guys being in a world where both your paychecks go into the same account, and as you spend, you let it, you know, there's transparency, and what's yours is mine, what's mine is yours.

Speaker 4 She would be willing to do it.

Speaker 4 I think I just have to kind of engrave the importance of it more often to her or just have that one good conversation about how serious I am about it and see if she, I'd like to see how she feels too.

Speaker 4 So go ahead, John.

Speaker 5 I was going to say, it's not about engraving, dude. It's the opposite.

Speaker 5 I want you to sit down with your wife tonight and say, we've got a one-year-old. We created a human together.
And

Speaker 5 I don't feel like I am

Speaker 5 like that we're united in this marriage. And I want to be all in with you.

Speaker 5 And the way I want to start being all in with you is I want to put all of our money in one account, and we're going to have to talk about it, and we're going to share stuff because I don't feel safe with our money situation right now.

Speaker 5 Right. Okay.
And you, so instead of trying to engrave it in her, like, I got to force this plan, I want you to do the opposite.

Speaker 5 I want you to take a knee in front of your wife and open your hands and say, I'm scared to death with how we handle money.

Speaker 5 And if it happened in your house in a negative way, I want you to say, I lived through this.

Speaker 5 Right. And I don't want our one-year-old growing up like this.
And y'all make almost 90 grand, you're 85 grand and you owe 20,000 bucks, y'all can have this done in like six to eight months.

Speaker 5 Right, right.

Speaker 5 And then I don't care about like, I'm going to, you're going to miss miss a couple of, miss six months of a one-year-old's life so that you can have the rest of the life that y'all want to build.

Speaker 5 Okay. You get what I'm saying?

Speaker 5 Absolutely.

Speaker 5 But if you go at a spouse who's kind of on the fence or doesn't really care with a bunch of spreadsheets and a middle-aged man who like yells, get out of debt, they're just going to blow you off.

Speaker 5 If you go to them and say, I'm scared to death that I'm going to repeat the same mistakes my family made and I don't want to do this, will you be all in with me?

Speaker 5 And if you are, I've got a plan that millions of people have used and it will work every time.

Speaker 2 And can I add something to that? I would also, if I were in your position, I would seek to understand what's giving her

Speaker 4 pause.

Speaker 5 Like, why is she feeling that trepidation trepidation against you yeah do you do you always have a scheme is this like scheme number 50 like you were selling essential oils last week and avon the week before that and like hot yoga the week before or is she just like pretty much immature kind of does what she wants to do

Speaker 4 i want to say it's a little bit of immaturity um okay she's just not not as responsible with money

Speaker 5 do you do you venmo her for babysitters

Speaker 4 um so thankfully her grandmother is not charging us.

Speaker 5 I was being sarcastic, but like, do y'all Venno each other for like, dude, you got Wendy's last week, so I got Arby's this week. Do y'all really? Yes.
Okay, that ends today. That ends today.
Okay.

Speaker 4 Okay.

Speaker 5 That's how roommates in college handle stuff.

Speaker 2 Right. But there's something be the truth is, some of it might be immaturity, but there's something behind that.

Speaker 2 There's something behind that. Totally.
There's something of she wants to protect herself or

Speaker 5 it's a way.

Speaker 4 Yeah, yeah embarrassment.

Speaker 2 It's a way for her to reward herself There's something there that it'll be hard for you to get to the bottom of Changing that without understanding her perspective wrong or right.

Speaker 2 It's still her perspective the more you can understand it the more you guys can can get on the same page. So I

Speaker 2 Okay, I think that the plan of you know work in the baby steps is secondary to understanding why there's not a trust to combine finances. So that's thing number one.

Speaker 2 And then as you unravel that, you can start to do these things.

Speaker 5 Dave talks about, and Rachel talked about, there's a nerd and a free spirit in every relationship.

Speaker 5 And so tell her you'll take the role of the nerd. And what that means is you'll create the draft of the budget when y'all sit down on Sunday nights just to run through it.

Speaker 5 And she gets to change one thing at least.

Speaker 5 And y'all go, but you'll create the framework, you'll create the draft, but y'all are going to sit down and y'all are going to go over this thing.

Speaker 5 But all the money is going to go into one account. We're never Venmoing each other again because it's our money.
This isn't yours and this isn't mine.

Speaker 5 And when y'all have, when you get a big bonus, it's going to be y'all's. And when she gets a big bonus, it's going to be y'all's.

Speaker 5 And when y'all have babysitting, when y'all have food costs go up like crazy because of inflation, it's going to be y'all's problems that y'all handle together.

Speaker 5 You know what I'm saying? Right.

Speaker 4 Absolutely.

Speaker 5 Yeah,

Speaker 5 this conversation could transform your marriage.

Speaker 4 Or

Speaker 5 it'll reveal your marriage, right?

Speaker 4 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4 I've been trying to figure out a way to manage it without, I guess, poking the bear per se.

Speaker 2 How long have you been married?

Speaker 4 So we actually got together two years ago. But how long have you been married?

Speaker 4 So I want to say about a year now. Okay.
Okay.

Speaker 2 I want you to know how long you've been married.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that's a number you need to know, homie. You need to dial that one in.

Speaker 2 I'm sorry, Anthony. That was funny to me.

Speaker 5 If you ever have to refer to your wife as a bear, and I know you're playing, but like when you said, I don't want to poke the bear, that like tension is the doorway. Conflict is connection.

Speaker 5 Like, you got to go through that. If you keep working around it, if it's unsafe, you got to go somewhere else.

Speaker 5 But if it's just immaturity, I want to do what I want to do. You've got to go right through that.
Otherwise, you're going to just recreate the same trauma that's been in your family for generations.

Speaker 5 Ooh, good question. Next right call, man.
Yeah.

Speaker 7 You know, when I became a dad, something flipped. Suddenly, it wasn't just about me and my wife anymore.
It was what happens to my family if I'm not here tomorrow?

Speaker 7 And things like that just hit different when you become a parent. But I'll be honest, making a will feels heavy and complicated, and it's not exactly what I want to be doing with my time off.

Speaker 7 But here's the deal. Being a parent means doing the hard stuff, especially stuff that protects your family.
And that's why I used Mama Bear legal forms.

Speaker 7 No hassle, no lawyers, just a simple online tool that helped me create a legit will in about 20 minutes. So it was pretty much painless.

Speaker 7 Plus, I added a notch to my dad belt right there between installing car seats and bedtime stories.

Speaker 7 Listen, being a dad never stops, and making a will is how you make sure your family's covered even when you're not there.

Speaker 7 So, get your will done today at mamabearlegalforms.com and use the promo code Ramsey to save 20% off when you check out. Again, that's mamabearlegalforms.com, promo code Ramsey.

Speaker 2 All right, welcome back. We're here in the Fair Winds Credit Union studio taking calls about your life and your money.
I love this show. I love that you guys call in.

Speaker 2 I love that you trust us with your situations. It means a lot.
That's what Allison's doing from Omaha, Nebraska. Allison, you're on the line.
How can we help today?

Speaker 6 Heck yes, I am. Miss J Dr.
Deloney, thank you guys so much. This is like weird and really exciting at the same time.

Speaker 4 So it's our honor. It's our honor.

Speaker 5 What's up?

Speaker 6 Yeah, so my fiancé and I are at a crossroads on how to handle finances. And there is a difference in economic status and a family business involved.

Speaker 6 But because that's not complicated enough, we decided to try for a child and instantly succeeded,

Speaker 6 which is great.

Speaker 6 But once that happened, his tone has now changed regarding combining finances and even getting married legally at all.

Speaker 4 Uh-oh,

Speaker 4 and

Speaker 6 a little marching band of red flags.

Speaker 2 Yeah, man.

Speaker 2 Okay, so how long have you been together?

Speaker 5 Oh, man.

Speaker 5 I'm not laughing at you. I'm just like, no, I've got to be able to.
Past the picture, and I'll pour another one.

Speaker 5 Jeez. So is this guy just doing a 180 on you?

Speaker 6 Yes. I would like to dance around it and pretend that it's anything, but it is dressed up in a really nice package.
But when it gets down to it, it's a little hoodwinky.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 6 And sorry, Jake, we've been together four years. Four years.

Speaker 5 So what's your, like,

Speaker 5 what's your question? How can we help? There's like 50 questions here I got, but what's your question?

Speaker 6 Is there a way around structuring things that

Speaker 6 we can make him and his family business and all that feel secure while also providing security for me as a stay-at-home mom.

Speaker 2 Oh, so, okay, I see. So tell us the economic

Speaker 2 unbalance there. Tell us what his family business is, what it's worth, what you think he's worth, and then tell us about you.

Speaker 6 Yeah,

Speaker 6 to the best of my understanding,

Speaker 6 he was in finance before. He's coming in with about $4 million, and then the family business is about $15 to $20 million.
However, they do leverage a lot of debt.

Speaker 6 So at least to me, a lot of debt. It's like $1 to five million bucks a year they can take and go through.

Speaker 6 For myself, I have no debt.

Speaker 6 I've got a little under $600,000, own a home in Nashville, had a great business that I shut down in order to come and be a part of this, making like $110,000 working only 10 hours a week.

Speaker 2 So you work in his business, his family's business?

Speaker 6 I help out probably more than I should and don't get paid. So, but I had my own business prior that I shut down in order to move and be a part of this.

Speaker 2 So did you say, let me make sure I understood, did you say that you help out and don't get paid at all or you get paid for something, but then you go above and beyond that and don't get paid for the above and beyond?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 6 I don't have an official role in this business and

Speaker 6 I've been given a credit card, which he thinks I should be happy with that, that a credit card should be security enough.

Speaker 4 Got it.

Speaker 2 Okay, so there's problems here.

Speaker 5 There's problems everywhere.

Speaker 4 Let me ask you this question.

Speaker 5 The most perplexing thing to me

Speaker 5 is

Speaker 5 why aren't you running for the hills?

Speaker 6 Because I have the most beautiful baby and I

Speaker 5 know, but

Speaker 6 there's a piece of me, and I'm so sorry to cut you off.

Speaker 4 There's a piece of me that

Speaker 6 I just want to make sure that I've unturned every rock.

Speaker 4 You have.

Speaker 4 Oh, you have.

Speaker 5 Oh, wow. Behavior is a language.
This man has said, I do not want you a part of my life

Speaker 5 unless

Speaker 5 it is as an unpaid employee who does whatever I want, whenever I want it, however I want. Period.

Speaker 5 Right?

Speaker 6 I'm so mad and so happy happy I called.

Speaker 5 Right?

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Behaviors of language. You are desperately trying to hold on to a picture that is right and is good.

Speaker 5 And you have sacrificed a whole bunch to get here. And as you have sacrificed, he has continued to pull back because he'll take everything you got,

Speaker 5 including your dignity and your respect and your work and your job and your time. He'll take all of it because you keep putting it on the table.

Speaker 2 did he even offer a prenup

Speaker 6 um in the

Speaker 6 discussion leading into this it was always i don't believe in prenups i would never get married with a prenup and it was all that kind of discussion um he just changed it to and i'll never get married either

Speaker 2 i think that's the thing i i if you had told me something like he offered a prenup and i didn't want to sign it that would have been weird if the but i'll be honest the fact that he didn't even say it let me know from the beginning.

Speaker 2 He was planning all along not for this to go through.

Speaker 2 That's kind of the way I see it.

Speaker 2 Because a guy like this, he would be planning to protect his assets upon marriage, right? I mean, you're right. There's a big difference.
There's a family business.

Speaker 2 It would be totally fine for him to offer that and say, hey, with my family business, here's what I have to do. And you'd be like, sure, fine.

Speaker 6 But the fact that he didn't even say it or mention it like that makes me know, oh, he wasn't even intending to get to get married at any point yeah things got even more squirrely when there was like this push because i do have this credit card which by the way i spend less than i ever have before when i was supporting myself um the credit card's for you to use for yourself not for the business it's for you to just live on is that what it's for It's what I pay for our child.

Speaker 5 Yeah, Jade, and she should be happy.

Speaker 4 Oh, boy. Exactly.
But

Speaker 6 when he was pushing for a budget, I said, perfect.

Speaker 6 I can live within a budget. I mean, I made my first million before I was 20 and lost all and don't want to do that again.

Speaker 6 But I was like, how much do we make?

Speaker 6 And have never even been able to get an answer of what that number actually is.

Speaker 5 Can I ask you a question beneath the question?

Speaker 5 Oh, I guess. You're real smart.

Speaker 5 And you're real accomplished.

Speaker 5 How much of you're trying to force this fantasy into reality, even against the wishes of the person that you created a human with?

Speaker 5 How much of this is,

Speaker 5 I don't have another word off the top of my head right now, but is embarrassment, sunk cost fallacy.

Speaker 5 I'm too smart and too accomplished. I've done too much to have fallen for this.
And so I've got to make this work. Otherwise, it's going to be tough to look myself in the mirror.

Speaker 6 Probably more than I want to acknowledge.

Speaker 4 Okay.

Speaker 5 I want to let you off the hook for that, man. We've all made mistakes with money.
We've all made mistakes in love. We've all like gone all in on something and had it burn us.

Speaker 5 That's just, that's a human experience. What I don't want you to do is, like, you're an amazing woman and you've got a little kid now.

Speaker 5 And I don't want you to end up in ash over trying to make something happen.

Speaker 5 Your partner is being very clear. I do not want to be in a relationship with you

Speaker 5 unless it's 100% on my terms, which means it's not a relationship.

Speaker 4 Is that fair?

Speaker 5 That's fair. I'm heartbroken for you.

Speaker 6 I appreciate the directness more than you know.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I'm heartbroken for you. We'll be thinking about you in the next right move you got to make, but these are hard conversations moving forward.
And by the way,

Speaker 5 you're about to find out how much he makes when you file for custody.

Speaker 5 All those documents are about to be laid out on the table. So there we go.

Speaker 2 So sorry.

Speaker 3 The holidays can come with a lot of pressure to spend. Family, friends, secret Santa at the office, all the things.
But y'all, this season should be about peace, not payments.

Speaker 3 That's a big reason why I love Fairwinds Credit Union. They share the Ramsey values of helping you reach your money goals without debt.

Speaker 3 And with the Fairwinds Smart Bundle, Ramsey fans get a no-fee checking account, a high-yield savings to grow your emergency fund, and the exclusive Ramsey Be Weird debit card.

Speaker 3 It says debt is normal, be weird right there on the front. So every time you use it, it's a reminder that you're doing your money differently.

Speaker 3 So this Christmas, skip the credit cards and celebrate progress, not payments. Spend with peace of mind, knowing that you're sticking to your budget and staying debt-free.

Speaker 3 And check out the Fairwinds Smart Bundle today at fairwinds.org/slash Ramsey. And open up the smart bundle and grab your exclusive Ramsey B.
Weird debit card. That's fairwinds.org/slash Ramsey.

Speaker 3 Fairwinds is federally insured by the NCUA.

Speaker 2 All right, all right. So, I just want to tell you guys right now:

Speaker 2 thank you, thank you, thank you so much for listening to the show, for liking the show, for subscribing to it. You guys even go so far as to share it with your friends, which is even better.

Speaker 2 If you're doing that, please keep doing it. It helps us out so, so much, and we're grateful.
It's a small gesture that makes a huge, huge impact.

Speaker 2 So, again, if you've ever liked the show, you know, hit the little heart.

Speaker 2 If you've ever subscribed by smashing the button, or if you've ever shared it by sending the link, sending the paper airplane, dropping it in a DM, we truly, truly, truly appreciate it.

Speaker 2 Thank you so much. Keep doing it.
All right, let's go to Mac, who's in Chicago, Illinois. Chaitone, what's up, Mac?

Speaker 4 Hey, how are you guys doing? I'm a big fan of the show. Thanks for having me on.
Yeah, you bet.

Speaker 2 What's up?

Speaker 4 My question is around investing. I'm not sure what to do with my cash and my extra money at the end of the month.
I am investing fully in my Roth 401k. I'm doing 15% there and kind of maxing it out.

Speaker 4 Good.

Speaker 4 But I have a lot of extra cash left over just sitting in my savings account, and I feel like I should be investing. I don't know how to start.
I don't know what to buy.

Speaker 4 And there's definitely a little bit of fear behind it too,

Speaker 4 because I don't want to make the wrong choices and I don't want to lose it. So I'm calling for some financial guidance.

Speaker 2 Cool. I like this question.

Speaker 5 You're awesome, man. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Appreciate the call. Way to go.

Speaker 2 So you're already maxing out a Roth 401k. Now are you just maxing it out or is it 15% of your income?

Speaker 4 Well, it actually comes out to 14.5% of my income is maxing out the legal limit. So it's kind of yes to both.

Speaker 2 Okay, good.

Speaker 2 And you're at the right stage of investing, right? There's no debt. You have three to six months saved?

Speaker 4 That's correct. I've got about 25K emergency fund.
I don't have any debt.

Speaker 4 It's so funny. I called the show about four years ago when I did have debt, and

Speaker 4 now I'm totally debt-free. Awesome.

Speaker 2 Ah, I love it. So good.
Okay, so you got $25,000 emergency fund. How much did you say? You said there's extra sitting in your checking that's just above and beyond.
You need to invest it.

Speaker 2 How much is that?

Speaker 4 Yes, it's currently $110,000. Wow.
And though it feels good, I know that probably shouldn't be sitting in cash. And so that was really the genesis for my call.

Speaker 4 And then on top of that, I'm able to save.

Speaker 4 $2,500 a month and I don't want to continue doing that.

Speaker 4 That's correct.

Speaker 2 So what's your, before I tell you about the investing, I want to get a snapshot of your life. Tell me about your living situation.
Are you renting? Do you own a house?

Speaker 4 Yes, I'm currently renting. And though I would like to follow the baby's steps and buy a house, I'm not in a position to do so right now.

Speaker 4 I am financially in a position to do so, but the way my life currently is, I don't know where I want to live long term. I don't know where my next job is going to be within the company I'm in.

Speaker 4 I'm open to relocating to advance my career. So I really don't, I'm not in a position to buy a house right now.

Speaker 2 What's the timeframe on all that? Is it in the next two to three years?

Speaker 4 Probably, yeah. Okay.

Speaker 2 Well, I will say, so I'm going to pair your living situation with your investing question.

Speaker 2 I will say you've got the $110,000. I think that's a great start for a down payment.
But you know, like I know, wherever you end up

Speaker 2 in the United States, real estate-wise, it's going to cost you a pretty penny of a down payment to even get into the world. I'm looking over here at our,

Speaker 2 you know, on our Ramsey Trusted site where you can see the housing market trends. And I'm just seeing that the national median median price for a home is $424,000, right?

Speaker 2 So even with something like that, if you want to get that to 25% of your take-home, you're likely putting down around 60%, right?

Speaker 2 Like you're putting down a lot if you, even if you, you know, make $100,000 a year. So that's a lot of money.

Speaker 2 So part of me says, what I would do if I were in your shoes is I would keep investing the 15%.

Speaker 2 But as far as this $2,500 in margin goes and as far as $110,000, I might keep it in a high-yield savings account and just keep plugging away until I know that when the time comes and I'm going to buy a house that's likely $400,000, that I can easily plop down a big enough down payment that that thing is not too big of a piece of my world.

Speaker 2 Does that make sense?

Speaker 4 It does make sense. And that's what I'm currently doing.
Like all the cash I have is in a high-yield savings account.

Speaker 4 However, I think

Speaker 4 that's the whole time for the 100. Or you have something above that.

Speaker 4 Okay. That's the 110.

Speaker 4 About your previous question on timeline, I thought you meant like when do you think I would relocate? And that would be in two to three years.

Speaker 4 In terms of when I think I'm going to buy a house, I really don't know.

Speaker 4 That's something I just haven't decided yet.

Speaker 2 Well, I still like the idea of when the time comes, you having like $250,000 or $200,000.

Speaker 2 I don't know, but it sounds like the type of work you do might cause you to be in an area that has higher real estate prices. Am I wrong?

Speaker 4 That's correct. Okay.

Speaker 2 So for that reason, that's why I'm saying I like that plan because you're getting the best of both worlds. What's your income, by the way, right now?

Speaker 4 About $170,000 to $180,000 a year.

Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly. So you have a really great income.
That would be my plan. Now, let's say you stack that up to $250,000.
You're like, Jade, I really feel good with this.

Speaker 2 I'm going to keep that in a high yield. I'm still not ready to buy.
Then, yeah, I would look over and I'd probably, in your case, it'd be easy for you to max out a Roth IRA every year.

Speaker 2 You know, you throw $7,000 in there and let that grow. Now, as far as what to invest in, because I think I heard you ask that question.

Speaker 4 Correct.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Four types of mutual funds.
And by the way, hopefully your 401k is spread out like this too. But four different types of mutual funds is what I would suggest.

Speaker 2 We're looking for growth funds.

Speaker 2 We're looking for growth in income. We're looking for aggressive growth.
And we're looking for international. You might hear that stated as,

Speaker 2 you know, mega cap, large cap, small cap, and

Speaker 2 mixed markets or emerging markets. So that's kind of how we do it.

Speaker 2 It's just a way to make sure that you're very diverse. Everything's spread around.
Some of them are higher risk profile than others, and it all balances each other out.

Speaker 5 And that's the way my money is invested and that's the way john's money is invested so that's how i do it but you also said asked a question at the beginning and your question was i want to make sure i don't lose this money

Speaker 5 yeah part of investment is a risk

Speaker 5 of course yeah so you can put all of that in there and the q4 nvidia number comes in lower and

Speaker 5 since the stock market's been propped up by 10 stocks the last year or maybe even longer like it could be volatile right and so you that might go down.

Speaker 5 And the day it goes down, I'm still going to make my same contribution because I'm playing a long game with it, right?

Speaker 4 That's correct. And I'm definitely going to continue to do my 401k.

Speaker 4 That's something I don't think about. It's definitely a long-term thing.
Every check, you know.

Speaker 4 But in terms of

Speaker 4 my current cash is where I'm concerned. Yeah,

Speaker 5 I guess I want to double-click on what

Speaker 5 Jade was saying. Part of investing.

Speaker 5 Let me ask you this, what are you going to do with a big pile of money?

Speaker 4 I don't know. I guess that's why I was calling.

Speaker 5 I'm just saying like in 10 years or in 15 years, you're going to buy a place to live.

Speaker 4 That's correct, yeah. Right.

Speaker 5 And so I just want to double click on what Jade said. I think it's so right.

Speaker 5 If you have a quarter million dollars in a high-yield savings account, number one, some bros somewhere are going to come after you. Who cares? Because here's what you'll have that they don't.

Speaker 5 $250,000 to do whatever you want, whenever you want.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 5 And if you want to go put 25% down on a million dollar house, you can just write a check. You know who else can be in this country? Not very many people.

Speaker 5 And if you want to

Speaker 5 put 50% down on a $500,000 house, great. Like, you'll be able to just chip away at it and chip away at it.
I love the idea of you having cash for like

Speaker 5 real estate as part of your investment portfolio over time. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 4 Yes, I understand. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 5 What I don't want you to do,

Speaker 5 you're going to get itchy

Speaker 5 is to get into like speculative stuff and crypto. And, oh, maybe if I, like, that's where I think you're going to get yourself in trouble.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and that's definitely something I don't plan on participating in. Okay.
I think

Speaker 4 it's like I even have an initial fear of investing in the stock market with funds, and I know I probably should be on top of my 401k. Just remember,

Speaker 2 it's the same that's in your 401k. So, if you're looking, if you log in and check out your 401k and you feel good about it, you feel good about the growth, you feel good about what you've seen,

Speaker 2 it's the same stocks. And if you're still unsure, you can check out a Smart Vestor Pro to help you learn a little bit more.

Speaker 2 And we'll make sure you get that information from Christian when he picks up.

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Speaker 2 All righty, Hannah in West Virginia, Virginia. Virginia's for for lovers.
That's the saying. What's going on?

Speaker 6 Hi, guys. Thank you so much for taking my call.
I'm a big fan. I appreciate it.

Speaker 4 We're happy to have you.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 6 thank you. So my question is, how do I eliminate or consolidate my debt as a single mom? My monthly expenses are higher than my take-home pay.

Speaker 4 Ooh.

Speaker 2 Well, you know,

Speaker 2 I can tell you all of the

Speaker 2 tools all day, but that's a math problem right there, Hannah.

Speaker 6 Yes, I I know. I moved up to West Virginia from Mississippi in the hopes that I would be making a little bit more money in the career path that I'm in.

Speaker 6 And I don't know that I did the math the correct way before I moved up here. Uh-oh.

Speaker 4 What's your career?

Speaker 6 I am in property management for student housing.

Speaker 2 What's your income?

Speaker 6 I make $77,500 a year before taxes and insurance and everything.

Speaker 2 Before taxes. So after, I mean, what do you, $4,600?

Speaker 6 I bring home about $2,300 every two weeks.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 2 okay. And then what does it cost to make your life?

Speaker 2 Is it your rent that's too high? What's going on?

Speaker 4 It is rent, it is daycare,

Speaker 6 car note.

Speaker 6 I had zero credit card debt moving up here, but since I have moved here, I have accrued about $6,000 in credit card debt.

Speaker 2 And that's just closing the gap on your budget, right?

Speaker 2 I don't think you're going out living La Vita Loca.

Speaker 2 I am not.

Speaker 2 Tell me what you pay for daycare every month.

Speaker 6 It is $1,400 a month.

Speaker 2 Ooh, mama. Tell me what you pay in rent every month.

Speaker 6 $1,590.

Speaker 2 Okay, that's not that bad. That could be worse.
Is that a two-bedroom or a one?

Speaker 2 It's two bedrooms. Okay.

Speaker 2 How young is the child? I mean, they're daycare age, but how young?

Speaker 6 My son is 18 months old.

Speaker 2 I think you've got to get a one-bedroom.

Speaker 5 Oh, man.

Speaker 5 Is there a chance you can move? I've spent my career working with these

Speaker 5 adjacent campus villages at universities. Is there a chance you could get into a campus apartment for a while?

Speaker 6 Where I work is not directly affiliated with the school.

Speaker 5 I know, but with

Speaker 5 the adjacent campus community, would they give you a place?

Speaker 6 I've never heard of that. I would ask.
To be honest with you.

Speaker 5 I had never heard of it either until I asked. And then because I was in charge, I created it for myself.
But my wife and I and our infant, I mean, our two-year-old toddler moved into a

Speaker 5 campus living environment for a year.

Speaker 4 Okay. And it changed our whole lives.

Speaker 6 Definitely.

Speaker 5 And it wasn't the best thing in the the world, and it was not how I drew it up, but it ended up, dude. My two-year-old son had like 175 college students

Speaker 5 just fawning over him all the time. It was a dream come true for him.

Speaker 6 Yes,

Speaker 6 that's awesome. I will definitely look into that.
Thank you. You know what?

Speaker 5 Because it's going to quote unquote help you with the student experience and help you with marketing, blah, blah, blah. You know all the right words you got to say.

Speaker 6 Agreed. Yes, that is correct.
Which

Speaker 6 the university technically considers any off-campus housing to be in you know like direct competition I know um with the university and we're actually not even allowed to market on campus but anyway well if you could live in do you live on your property

Speaker 5 I do not know that that's what I'm talking about is there a possibility you could move on to the property

Speaker 6 oh yes I would have to reach out to my supervisor and all the things just to see if we had like a diff like a concession of course

Speaker 4 reach out today

Speaker 6 yes we'll do yeah reach out today we'll do i love that idea i know that there's it's a great idea yes i know that they there's like a list like a company-wide list for however much they can allot per property and all of my current staff lives on site so i fire somebody i'm just kidding but maybe

Speaker 5 i did two weeks ago oh there you go

Speaker 5 you got to find a place to live but but there's a bigger issue here and that is, do you need to reconsider going back to Mississippi?

Speaker 6 I relocated up here because I was not going to make even this much money

Speaker 6 doing what I do in Mississippi.

Speaker 5 Is it time to find a new career path?

Speaker 4 I've been doing this for four years.

Speaker 5 I know, but you can't afford to live.

Speaker 4 That's right.

Speaker 2 If you were in another situation and you told me that you made $78,000 a year,

Speaker 2 I'd be like, okay, great. That's a fine, that's a, there's a, that's a fine income.
You didn't call me telling me that you're making 40 or even 52.

Speaker 2 I think the price, the problem is twofold. Number one, you're in a season of higher expense whenever you're in a daycare season.

Speaker 2 I mean, John, you know, I know, daycare is expensive and it's not forever, but it is some, the most expensive four to five years of your life.

Speaker 2 So that's thing number one. Thing number two is this car.
Tell me about your car payment.

Speaker 6 My car note is $600 a month.

Speaker 2 That's the big, yeah.

Speaker 2 How different would your life be if you had that $600

Speaker 2 back?

Speaker 2 It would be much better. Yeah, you wouldn't be putting it on a credit card every month, right?

Speaker 6 Yes. I wouldn't have to put daycare on a credit card every month.

Speaker 2 Right. So

Speaker 2 tell me this situation. What do you owe on your car?

Speaker 6 currently? I owe $24,000.

Speaker 4 Uh-huh.

Speaker 2 And what is it worth?

Speaker 6 Last time I looked, I believe it was worth about $13,000.

Speaker 4 Oh, boy.

Speaker 2 And you're positive. That's private sale?

Speaker 6 That

Speaker 6 it's been a minute since I've looked, so don't quote me on that. It could be completely different, but around about $13,000.

Speaker 2 Do a little homework on that tonight. It sounds like you might have rolled some negative equity in there at some point, but just do a little homework.
What other debt?

Speaker 2 Is there anything else besides the car and the credit card?

Speaker 6 No, I don't have any other debt other than the car car loan and my credit card debt.

Speaker 2 So I go back to what I said before. Do you know anybody where you are or are you just brand new, no friends, no community yet?

Speaker 6 No community yet. I'm working on it.
I'm trying to get involved with a church in the area.

Speaker 6 I packed myself and my son up and we just

Speaker 6 this was my better opportunity.

Speaker 5 Where is this child's father?

Speaker 6 Not, has never been involved. I told him I was, you know, pregnant.
He told me to get an abortion and I haven't heard from him since. Okay.

Speaker 5 But he still has a financial responsibility for this kid.

Speaker 6 He does, yes. And I am working on that.
But

Speaker 5 that would help you significantly as well.

Speaker 4 Yes, it would.

Speaker 5 So if you were to look up in 90 days and you're getting at least some money from Deadbeat

Speaker 5 and you're living on campus at a free or reduced rate, or not on on campus but on your property

Speaker 5 and you go trade this car in and

Speaker 5 you go to a local credit union and take out a five thousand dollar loan because you found some way to sell it and you're going to take you're going to owe five thousand bucks to a credit union and you got a cheap just crummy car your whole life is different then right

Speaker 5 yes yeah

Speaker 2 yes

Speaker 2 Those are, I mean, those are your, your three homeworks. Number one is check out the campus thing.

Speaker 2 If the campus thing doesn't work, then you at least have to go down to a one bedroom to save some money. You're going to save, you know, 300 bucks by going down to a one bedroom.

Speaker 2 Thing number two, like John said, yeah, we need to look into this car, do some due diligence on that. Yeah, see if you can get a loan for the difference.
And you're buying like a $3,000 beater,

Speaker 2 which is, you know, that's what you're getting the loan for to cover the difference, plus a little bit to get a car.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's, that's what this is looking like. And then number three is, like John said, tracking down deadbeat dad and getting what you can get from him because you need the money.

Speaker 2 Listen, I hear you. I know just bringing up the man's existence is

Speaker 2 hurting you on the inside because you're probably like, I don't want anything to do with him.

Speaker 2 And I don't want to need his money, but you could use it.

Speaker 4 Right?

Speaker 6 That is exactly how I am feeling. Yes.
And I always said that no amount of money, you know, was worth, you know, putting my kid in the hands of someone that I don't trust.

Speaker 5 Well, you're not going to put him in his hands, but

Speaker 5 on behalf of the dads who the greatest thing in our life is the privilege of taking care of our kids,

Speaker 5 this guy's got a responsibility. And there's

Speaker 5 hopefully the courts will step up and do the right thing and he needs to participate.

Speaker 2 The only other thing you can do is try to figure out something you can do at night once the baby is home that you can do from home that's online.

Speaker 2 Maybe you edit papers or you do, you know, copy editing or something that you can do on your own time to make money.

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Speaker 4 All right.

Speaker 2 Mark is in Detroit, Michigan. Mark, what's up?

Speaker 4 Hey, how are you doing, guys?

Speaker 2 Doing great. How can we help?

Speaker 4 So I kind of have a weird question for you. So quick history.
I was married 17 years. I've been divorced about a year and a half.

Speaker 4 And my ex-wife and I, we followed the Dave Ramsey financial model.

Speaker 4 Okay.

Speaker 4 We did it right. Like, I feel like our story is unique in a divorce in that we didn't walk away like ruined financially.
Good.

Speaker 4 But well, yeah, but I feel very, I guess, disillusioned with it, I guess, a little bit in that I feel like we put our entire thought and everything into making sure we did everything right financially.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 And we didn't fix anything else.

Speaker 4 And I feel like now we're sitting here 17 years later, a couple of kids in high school, lives destroyed, and I don't know what to do. It's like I have a stack of money.
I have retirement. So does she.

Speaker 4 Our kids are fine. They're going to go to college no matter what happens.

Speaker 4 Do you feel like

Speaker 2 you used this in place of dealing with your real issues? Is that what you're saying? You kind of both just focused on this instead of the other side.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think it was like all I cared about was the money side of it. And I was so focused on making sure that the balance sheet was right

Speaker 4 that

Speaker 4 I lost everything else. And I'm in a spot now where I really don't know what I want to do.
I mean,

Speaker 4 it's like work doesn't really feel like it has a lot of meaning anymore, even though I do it. And I go every day.

Speaker 5 How soon was your divorce over, brother?

Speaker 4 A year and a half ago. Okay.

Speaker 5 Exhale, man. You still haven't even started the grieving process yet.

Speaker 5 Like you're still mad. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Well,

Speaker 4 I feel like I failed.

Speaker 4 Like, I feel like neither one of us did anything. Like, I feel like it wasn't like some, some, neither one of us, like, did some terrible thing or anything else.

Speaker 4 It was just, we just got to a point where it was like after 17 years, we just didn't even

Speaker 4 didn't even know who was who. And you know what I mean? We just, we just both walked away.
And I don't know how to recover from that. I don't know what to do next.

Speaker 4 Like, I have a condo now. My kids are like, well, why don't we get a house? Why don't we build a house? I can build any house we want, but I don't want.
I already had that. I don't want it again.

Speaker 4 You know what I mean? I'm just really struggling with what now.

Speaker 5 I'm going to tell you, I'm just going to be honest with you. You're not going to like my answer, dude.

Speaker 5 Because you've built a really powerful, like, wall

Speaker 5 between you and

Speaker 5 feeling something.

Speaker 5 And it's probably been there for a while.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 you're going to keep spinning your wheels until you open the door and let yourself feel this. And that feeling is probably going to be overwhelming because it's been there since you were a kid.

Speaker 5 Because somebody said, if you go get good grades and make a bunch of money, then

Speaker 5 you're going to feel worth being loved.

Speaker 5 And then you got married to somebody who you loved and cared about about and y'all created an amazing family, but you were still trying to prove yourself to the guy in the mirror for all these years, man.

Speaker 5 And until you acknowledge I'm worth being loved, and I'm worth more than the spreadsheet and the balance sheet,

Speaker 5 until you grieve that, man,

Speaker 5 you're going to continue to chase it.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I just, I just don't know. Like,

Speaker 4 all I care about is my kids. And, like, I hate I only get to be a dad half the time.
I mean, there's nothing I wouldn't do or give them or give their mom or anything.

Speaker 4 Like, there's, there's nothing, you know what I mean? I just want them to be good.

Speaker 4 And I hate that, you know, hey, I get my week, and then all of a sudden there's a week where I get to, I, I sit in my, I sit in my living room, and I can't go say goodnight to my kids.

Speaker 4 It's called grief.

Speaker 5 I don't know. I wouldn't, I wouldn't wish to, I wouldn't wish what you're experiencing on my worst enemy.

Speaker 5 Well, why, like,

Speaker 5 circle me back. Do you, do you and your ex, are y'all on good terms?

Speaker 5 Yeah, we, we co-parent.

Speaker 4 Great. To be honest, we get along better after the divorce than we did for the five years leading up to it.

Speaker 5 Okay, then why not go sit in a coffee shop and say, what have we done?

Speaker 5 Why not go sit in a coffee shop and say, hey, look, we chose, especially the last five years, a miserable marriage. What if we chose something different? Because we both can.

Speaker 5 And we chose to walk away. There's no rule in the books that say

Speaker 5 two people who built a pretty amazing life but got so disconnected emotionally and relationally and spiritually that we just thought the next right move was just we bought into the one of the most insidious cultural lies, which is relationships just quote unquote run their course.

Speaker 5 It's bullcrap. It's a lie.
It's not true. At some point, people say, I quit.

Speaker 5 And when you quit, things fine, but you can also start things.

Speaker 5 Why wouldn't you do that?

Speaker 4 I don't know. I think it's a lot of years of hurt, a lot of years of

Speaker 4 things that.

Speaker 5 You cannot edit that story at all. There's a period after the end of that sentence.
Why not today write a new one?

Speaker 2 Can I ask a question, Mark? I mean,

Speaker 2 was there a moment, like, was there infidelity? Was there one of those

Speaker 4 bombs dropped?

Speaker 2 It was just, we just drifted apart.

Speaker 4 It was just after a couple of years of sleeping in different rooms and just basically just

Speaker 4 not even being there, just basically not caring about each other at all in either way, and just getting to a point where it was just like, you know what, neither one of us can live like this.

Speaker 5 Okay, but you have to go back all the way up. You're too smart with the spreadsheet to not get what I'm trying to say here.

Speaker 5 At some point, you chose to stop caring. And that means you can choose to start caring.

Speaker 5 It's a choice. It is not a feeling.
I don't care how much Hollywood says it is.

Speaker 5 I just spent an entire weekend with 1,400 people, 600-plus couples up here in Nashville leading a marriage retreat where we taught people how to rebuild your marriage from the floor up.

Speaker 5 Now, I'm not trying to push you into getting remarried to her. What I want to tell you is the next choice you make is a choice.

Speaker 5 The next thing you don't do is a choice to not do something. And I'm trying to empower you, is what I'm trying to do.

Speaker 5 But you know, and I know that 18 months later, sitting on the couch and just with your face in your hands, wanting to see your kids,

Speaker 5 isn't the next right step.

Speaker 5 Right. Going to see a therapist and saying, I've not liked the guy I see in the mirror since I was second grade.
I want to deal with this is.

Speaker 5 maybe calling your ex and saying, what have I done is

Speaker 5 maybe calling and saying, I miss the kids. Can I come by and see them in the evening? Because we're good co-parents.

Speaker 5 Maybe that, I don't know what the next right one is, but you have to regain your autonomy here amidst this black hole of grief. And at some point, dude, you have to

Speaker 5 feel it

Speaker 5 or your body will shut you down. And it feels like that's what it's doing to you right now.
It's starting to spiral and spiral and spiral.

Speaker 4 Yeah, there doesn't seem to be a lot of light at the end of the tunnel. That's right.

Speaker 5 And there can't be any light when every day you go home and sit on the couch in a dark room.

Speaker 5 And here's what I'm trying to give you. I'm trying to give you your power back.
That, yes, like the feelings you have are real and you're now a partner in this misery,

Speaker 5 which means, I'm trying to give you a good side to this. That means you can be a partner in walking towards a light somewhere.

Speaker 5 Do you get what I'm saying?

Speaker 4 Yes, sir.

Speaker 5 Do you believe you're worth even taking that step? Are you just sitting at home thinking, I failed my kids, I failed my wife, I failed everything, I failed myself?

Speaker 4 Well, there's a lot of that. I'm not going to lie to you.

Speaker 5 Okay, then here's the path.

Speaker 4 Because I'm a guy that your job is to make it work. Okay.
No matter what.

Speaker 5 Then good. Then we're going to make this one work.
You're going to write yourself a letter tonight.

Speaker 5 Two years ago, you're going to write that guy a letter who's sitting at the divorce table, and you're going to write a letter to yourself in five years about who the guy you're going to become because of the choice you started making today.

Speaker 5 Go make it happen, brother.

Speaker 3 Hi, friends. Rachel Cruz here, and today we're doing our singles day sale.
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Speaker 2 Welcome back to the show in the Fairwinds Credit Union Studio. I'm here hosting with Dr.
John Deloney. I'm Jade Warshaw.

Speaker 2 Thanks for listening to the Ramsey Show where you've got Dave who's in Los Angeles, California. Hey Dave, how can we help?

Speaker 4 Thank you so much. I just found you guys this weekend for the first time.
So forgive me if what I'm asking is something you've covered through the years. But

Speaker 5 you guys are going to

Speaker 4 see you on the phone. We're glad you're with us.
I'm excited. Yeah, dude.

Speaker 4 No apologies needed, man.

Speaker 5 Everybody's showing up new and pulling in

Speaker 5 at their own pace. So I'm glad you're here.

Speaker 4 Excellent. Excellent.
I'm a single father, and I went through a major family crisis three years ago.

Speaker 4 The type of family crisis that is, you know, life or death. As a result,

Speaker 4 to deal with the expenses of that, I went into $140,000 of credit card debt.

Speaker 4 And I have no regrets. I would do that again every day

Speaker 4 because at the end of the day, the crisis was resolved and that money was well spent. However,

Speaker 4 the credit card debt is crazy. I mean, some cards are $22,000,

Speaker 4 others are $32,000, And the interest on that ranges between 25% to about 32%.

Speaker 4 So it's killing me, obviously.

Speaker 4 I'm treading water, no disposable income, no backup money whatsoever. If I had another crisis,

Speaker 4 the type of real crisis, I would drown because it's

Speaker 4 just enough to do just

Speaker 4 every bit bare minimum for the cards

Speaker 4 and just enough to put gas in the car and just enough for decent meals, but nothing crazy, no vacations, et cetera. What do you make?

Speaker 2 What do you make every month?

Speaker 4 I make a decent income.

Speaker 4 I'm in California, so you know, it may seem like a lot here, but it's not when you have a mortgage and all of the things.

Speaker 4 And luckily,

Speaker 2 hit me with the number.

Speaker 4 Oh,

Speaker 4 I'll give you a yearly. Oh, no, give me a monthly.
No,

Speaker 4 monthly is about

Speaker 6 4,200.

Speaker 4 No, sorry. That's per paycheck.
So

Speaker 4 we're looking at 80, 84. Okay.
Math was never my strength. That's all right.

Speaker 2 We're we're walking with you. So you've got the 8,400.
And like you said, you are in California, so I got to assume that your real estate is higher.

Speaker 2 You you own a house?

Speaker 4 I do, and I fortunately have a 30-year fixed rate with a really good

Speaker 4 interest, like really good. I've got that right before the pandemic.

Speaker 2 What do you pay every month for that mortgage?

Speaker 4 Like, okay, so one paycheck goes to the mortgage. That's one of the paychecks, and the other paycheck goes for the bills.
So half of your

Speaker 2 mortgage is 50% of the problem. It's 50% of your take-home pay.
Is that what you're saying?

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 4 Okay.

Speaker 2 So almost.

Speaker 5 Your house is not a blessing, brother. You got to change your mindset on it.
It's not, it's killing you.

Speaker 2 The mortgage is a bigger problem than the credit card debt, almost.

Speaker 5 It's killing you.

Speaker 5 I hate to tell you that. We're telling you, we love you, dude.

Speaker 4 There's a little twist. The mortgage normally won't be that high coming in March.

Speaker 4 When I went through the crisis, I couldn't pay my property taxes and

Speaker 4 I couldn't pay my property taxes.

Speaker 2 So you're doubling up right now? Is that what's happening?

Speaker 4 Yeah, my mortgage company basically did an escrow and

Speaker 4 to pay for the back taxes,

Speaker 4 my mortgage went up. But it's going to come down about $1,500

Speaker 4 in March. So I'll have a little breathing,

Speaker 4 I'll have $1,500 of breathing space. Okay.

Speaker 4 We'll put it rent in some of those credit cards, but

Speaker 4 not as much as I need because some of the interest is obviously going to gobble.

Speaker 4 Here's the thing.

Speaker 5 Here's what you're going to have to do. You're going to have to either,

Speaker 5 and this is me just being a direct because I care about you, okay? Either.

Speaker 4 Okay.

Speaker 5 Man, you are a smart guy. You make a good salary and your heart is bigger than the moon, dude.
You're an amazing guy. And you're going to have to figure this out.
Or

Speaker 5 if you get with this crazy crew over here in Nashville, Tennessee, and we've got millions of people who've gone through this and it's worked, you're going to have to say, I'm going to surrender all of the old ideas I had about things like

Speaker 5 a good mortgage rate is always a blessing. Or the interest rate here and that.
But we have a process and I promise you it will work if you'll follow it.

Speaker 4 But you got to go all in, okay?

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 no other little influencer-y person can get away with what we say, which is it works 100% of the time if you'll run the plan, okay? Jade's going to walk you through it, but you just got to be all in.

Speaker 4 How old'y your kids?

Speaker 4 By the way, I have two things that were offered to me, which is the purpose of my call. So I just want to make sure we get to those, but my child is five years old.
Five, okay, good to know.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 So I was just trying to attack the first question that you had, which was seemed like the credit card debt was an issue.

Speaker 2 I wanted to know what your time was like and what your ability is to earn more money. Knowing the age of your kid helps with that.

Speaker 2 You know, if you have a toddler at home, it's a lot different than if you have a 14-year-old at home.

Speaker 2 But get to your, what were the other two parts of your question that you had?

Speaker 4 So the reason for my call is because I got two offers to deal with this and not knowing what you've said previously on this topic, I am because I'm really tempted to go with either of these two. Okay.

Speaker 4 Um, because I don't have any more income because I'm spending, as a single dad, the, the, every minute of my life with my baby. I mean, she's the world and and I'm all alone.

Speaker 2 I'll get into your question because we don't want to hit the clock on you.

Speaker 4 Here my two questions. Got it.
Okay.

Speaker 4 One agency hit me up and said, look, we will help you. We will negotiate all.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, don't do that.

Speaker 5 Don't do that. It's a total scam.
Total scam.

Speaker 5 Promise.

Speaker 4 It's not that consolidation, but they said they would, you know, if I go,

Speaker 4 you know, don't pay them for 60 days. No, no, no.

Speaker 2 Because all that's going to do, here, ask yourself two questions.

Speaker 2 If you don't pay them, what's going to happen? Your credit's going to be destroyed. And during that time, all they're doing is setting you up for negotiations.

Speaker 2 If you really wanted to go that route, couldn't you do that yourself?

Speaker 2 If you wanted to say, you know what, I'm just not going to pay them. I'm going to default everything and then I'm going to settle everything.
Couldn't you do that yourself if you wanted to?

Speaker 2 Yeah, sure.

Speaker 4 You don't need anybody to do that for you.

Speaker 4 Okay, good.

Speaker 4 But don't do that. But you don't have to do that.

Speaker 2 You don't have to do that. I was trying to set you up for a world where you can say, okay, right now I'm making minimums.
There's not much breathing room. What can I do to get more money in the door?

Speaker 2 And that would be my biggest question is what can I do to get more money in the door? You're right. It's going to be very tight for you until March.
or April.

Speaker 2 And there's part of you that if you want to, you know, take that horse to the old town road, that's fine.

Speaker 2 Cause once you do, you're going to be well within, not well within, but you're going to be way closer to being able to keep this house about 600 bucks off.

Speaker 2 I don't think I'm going to make you sell the house over that just yet. But in the meantime, you've got to be doing everything under the sun to get money.

Speaker 2 We can't just do nothing for the next four months. You've really got to make sure that you are exhausting every single effort to get more money in.

Speaker 2 And what I would do, if I were in your shoes, is I'd say, okay, what do I need?

Speaker 2 what what would make me feel like i'm making a dent in this is it two thousand dollars a month to put at the smallest credit card is it at fifteen hundred dollars a month and i would work backwards from there can you take your kid with you to do some door dash and to do some uber eats i think you can i've seen it and to to to do some grocery runs for folks that's what you've got to do because That's the only way you're paying this off.

Speaker 2 And I can tell you right now, there's not going to be anything comfortable about it. There's not going to be anything easy about it.

Speaker 2 There's not going to be anything about this that makes you look forward to it, except knowing that at one point you're finally going to pay it off and it's going to be behind you for good. That's it.

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Speaker 2 All right, all right. Hey, do you ever feel like you're doing everything with your money, but you're just not getting anywhere? You ever feel like you're taking two steps forward, one step back?

Speaker 2 Do you ever feel like Alan, who called in a couple hours back and said, I'm gazelle intense, but still not where you want to be with your money? Man, I know all about that.

Speaker 2 Maybe you've made the changes, maybe you've had a few wins, but something still feels off. It's not because you failed, it's because money is not just about math.

Speaker 2 And, John, I've been saying that over and over

Speaker 2 across the airwaves that money is not just about math. Money is so completely emotional.
I mean, you've probably heard us say it for years here that money touches every area of your life, right?

Speaker 2 It touches your relationships with your spouse, your relationship with your kids, it touches your spirituality, it touches your career, your relationship with yourself, the shame, the embarrassment.

Speaker 2 Everything.

Speaker 2 And so when you listen to a show like this and you have a situation like earlier when the guy called in and he said his wife didn't want to combine the money, remember?

Speaker 2 And we are trying to get to the bottom of that guaranteed is something emotional that happened, whether something she observed as a kid in her parents' household, something that happened with the boyfriends.

Speaker 2 There's always something behind it. So when we say, hey, combine your finances, it's never as easy as just one, two, three, right? When we tell somebody, hey, you're going to have to sell that.

Speaker 2 car and they say well wait a minute that was my gift to myself when i finally finished med school and that was huge accomplishment.

Speaker 2 That's attached to a feeling of achievement for me. It's not always easy, right?

Speaker 4 There's always I don't think we talk about right now.

Speaker 5 Everybody knows, like we were just talking off air, how

Speaker 5 unfathomably expensive things are.

Speaker 5 It's wild, right? And we're getting more calls than ever about people making 70 grand, 80 grand, 100 grand that are just duct taping things together right now.

Speaker 5 Nobody talks about,

Speaker 5 and I'm so glad that you do now, nobody talks about that sitting at the table feeling with your face in your hands, like you have failed your kids, like you have failed your spouse, like you are just going to be just like everybody else in your family.

Speaker 5 That sense of

Speaker 5 like it's easy, like I quote unquote, know what to do next, right? Spend less and go make more, but if it was that simple, everybody would be doing it.

Speaker 5 Everybody would be there is a wheelbarrow full of like emotions in there.

Speaker 5 And nobody talks about that moment when the lights are dim in your kitchen by yourself with your hands in your face going, I don't know how this is going to work.

Speaker 5 And man, that's why I'm glad you put that down, man. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. John's talking about my new book that just came out.
It's called What No One Tells You About Money. So good.

Speaker 2 And it is, it's the real key to getting unstuck from someone who's been there, which is me. I've been there.
I've been in your situation.

Speaker 2 Just what John was talking about, that moment where you look up and you go, my life is not what I thought it was going to be. And I thought I would be X, Y, Z by now.

Speaker 2 I thought I should have this by now. I thought I would have that by now.
And you do. There's a lot of things that hit us.

Speaker 2 You feel frustrated and you feel scared and you feel angry and you have shame and guilt. All of these things, I talk about it all in the book.
And it's not just me pontificating.

Speaker 2 It's me giving you practical steps on how to get out. John, that's what we do here.
We tell you, we tell you the problem, but then we tell you step by step how to get out, get out.

Speaker 2 And it's the same thing with this. If you walk through the frameworks in this book, you are going to go, oh, oh, Jade, now I know what it is.
I just needed you to give me words for it.

Speaker 2 I didn't know what it was. And now I see it.
Now I can see how that's been holding me back. Yes, I will do it.
So please, guys, this is the book. It's on pre-order now.
It's $24.99.

Speaker 2 And if you order it now, you'll get $100 in free bonus items. You'll get the audio book.
You'll get early access to the e-book.

Speaker 2 You'll also get, I do a video where I go through and do a financial checkup with you, like one-on-one.

Speaker 2 We'll walk through your numbers and it's really helpful. And guys, I'm going to do a book club of this book.

Speaker 2 It's going to be be a three-week book club where we're going to really unpack this thing together so if you've just felt like you needed something you need somebody to grab your hand i'm the one grabbing your hand i'm reaching out grab it and i'm helping you come on let's do this together this is your year man pre-order today at ramseysolutions.com slash store or if you're watching on youtube or podcast of course you already know click the link in the description to get your copy guys please don't wait on this i know we sell you a lot of books but this one is completely different.

Speaker 2 I'm telling you, man, you can look at me. You can already tell it's going to be different.
All right. Keaton is in Denver, Colorado.
Keaton, how can we help, man?

Speaker 4 Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my call.

Speaker 2 You bet.

Speaker 4 How can we help?

Speaker 4 So my question is,

Speaker 4 how do I start a business as the sole provider to my family?

Speaker 5 You don't sleep very much for the first couple of years.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 I kind of thought the same. Yeah.

Speaker 4 i just i just want to know i'm kind of a newer listener to the show and um

Speaker 4 i've uh luckily i don't have any debt um and i know that's what you guys talk about a lot which is awesome and i'm lucky enough where somehow without the ramsey plan i got there but i'm here oh you have common sense

Speaker 4 you know how to do elementary school math congratulations man that's awesome dude well i'm here and uh i just want to know like what would the baby steps for me look like the different set of baby steps for starting a business and potentially walking away from my current career?

Speaker 4 Because

Speaker 4 I've worked really hard to get to the position where I'm at, and I'm making over six figures now, which is awesome.

Speaker 2 What, six figures? Six figures can be a lot. It can be $101,000 or it can be $901,000.
So how many? Right. How many figures? Tell me the real figures.

Speaker 4 Okay, the real figures is I'm making just over $100,000 a year.

Speaker 4 I'm in sales. So half of that is commission, half of it is salary.

Speaker 5 What business do you want to go start?

Speaker 4 So that's another part is the business I would want to start.

Speaker 4 I'm a sales rep for a manufacturing company, and I would essentially want to go into direct competition.

Speaker 4 And the issue with that is I feel like I can't start it unless I walk away from my current position.

Speaker 5 I think that's fair. I think that's right.
And

Speaker 5 that's an integrous way to do that.

Speaker 2 So if you were to walk away from the job, what could you do

Speaker 2 in the meantime as a full-time job that makes money while you start building up your book of business doing the business you want to do?

Speaker 4 Well, I could pro I mean, I've done a lot of things in the past. I was a bartender for a while.
I worked. I've done a bunch of different jobs.
So I'm sure I could figure something out.

Speaker 4 But in my industry, without going into competition, I could probably make about $25 to $30 an hour while I'm building this business.

Speaker 2 Okay. Well, that's...

Speaker 5 Just get a math. Here's the deal.
I want you to focus on the math problem.

Speaker 5 Are you married?

Speaker 4 I am. Yeah, and we have two kids.

Speaker 5 Okay, so you and your spouse are going to sit down and just go up and here's how much money we need to survive for 24 months.

Speaker 5 Okay. And then I'm going to commit to making this much.

Speaker 5 Or if she wants to be a part of this dream, too, then, I mean, she's got to be a part of the dream, but like contribute, like, then I'm going to take on, she's going to take on a second job.

Speaker 5 Or she's going to stop doing X, Y, like, here's how much it costs to run this house. Here's what we can cut for 24 months.
Here's my investment in this thing. And here's how we're going to know

Speaker 5 dollar amount, is this being successful or not?

Speaker 2 Now, you have no debt, but do you have any money saved?

Speaker 4 I do.

Speaker 4 And I guess the other wrench to throw is I'm renting right now. We don't own a home, but I'm debt-free besides not owning a home.
That's not a wrench. It's fine.

Speaker 4 So I rent, but I have about 70 grand in savings right now.

Speaker 2 Okay. Yeah,

Speaker 2 I think that's the homework.

Speaker 2 Number one is make a list of what can I do in the meantime to bring in money, whether it's like you said in your field, you can make however many dollars an hour, but you need customers first, right?

Speaker 2 So that's not like you can start that necessarily tomorrow.

Speaker 2 So we need to make a list of what we're going to do in the meantime until your business gets off the ground. And we need to figure out exactly what that number is.

Speaker 2 What does it take to make our household run? Is it $5,000 a month that we need? Is it $6,250 a month that we need?

Speaker 2 And whatever that number is, now we work backwards in order to accomplish it using that list of skills and jobs that we said we were going to get. So that's what I would do.

Speaker 2 And then just on the more practical side, you know, this is, I don't say this in the way that I don't believe in you because I actually, I actually really do.

Speaker 2 I think you'll do this and you'll kill it. But maybe possibly for your wife and just for fairness, set boundaries around this and say, here's like create a plan and say, here's what the plan is.

Speaker 2 Here's how long I think it's going to take to actually get this thing off the ground. Here's how long I'm willing to be in this amount of income bracket.

Speaker 2 Here's where we, and here's also the point that we turn it off if for some reason it's not making money right.

Speaker 2 Go ahead and put those boundaries around it because that's going to A, light a fire for you to go quickly and really make stuff happen.

Speaker 2 And number two, it's going to make your wife go, okay, I can get behind this. There's a starting point, there's a succession point, and there's a turnoff button if it doesn't work out.

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Speaker 5 Welcome back to the Ramsey Show. I'm John Deloney, joined by Jade Warshaw.

Speaker 2 Let's get into that Ramsey Show question of the day, shall we?

Speaker 5 We shall.

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Speaker 5 this question comes from paige in missouri page writes my husband and i are struggling to balance everything right now we are twenty five thousand dollars in debt which will be paid off next year Combined, we earn around $100,000 a year, and between rent, home expenses, and our one-year-old, it feels like we can never get ahead.

Speaker 5 I've thought about getting a second part-time job, but I feel guilty leaving my baby longer than I do now.

Speaker 5 Man, that keeps coming up over and over

Speaker 5 and over, man. Should we put everything on hold, including parenting time, church obligations, and personal commitments, to focus on paying off debt faster?

Speaker 5 Or is there a better way to balance faith, family, and finances without burning out?

Speaker 2 Ooh, you know what? I really, I love this question, John, because it's so real. It's real.

Speaker 2 we just wrote a book about this question yeah it's such a real thing um and it's a question of priorities and i think it's a very difficult question because

Speaker 2 everything wants to be the priority right everything does um and i i've said this before i think with you you know it's very easy to say um

Speaker 2 i want to prioritize getting out of debt um and then we

Speaker 2 We also say, well, I also want to prioritize being a parent. And then she's got some, another laundry list.
Well, what about my faith? What about my family? What about my church?

Speaker 2 da, da. All right.
Let's pretend that you have said the number one thing for me to do is I want to get out of debt. That's the number one thing.
That's top priority.

Speaker 2 It's going to butt up against other things that are saying, but no, I want to be the top priority. So you're feeling that now.
You're feeling saying, well, wait a minute. I have a one-year-old.

Speaker 2 Is it a one-year-old? I have a one-year-old. What about them? If I pay off this debt, I'm not prioritizing them.
But that's simply not true. There's different ways to show priority.
Okay.

Speaker 2 You could say, well, I'm not prioritizing my baby if I'm not spending time with them. But that's not true.

Speaker 2 There's ways to prioritize your family, like providing a roof over their head, like taking care of them, making sure there's food on the table, making sure you can be there for them in the long run, making sure that you don't make your retirement their burden, right?

Speaker 2 Let's stop saying that the only way that we make our family a priority is to be there every waking moment of the day. That's just not true.

Speaker 2 And that's something that we have to like square up with in the mirror if we ever want to get this thing done you're right john this has popped up a couple of times today and i just want to say that it's a harsh reality but it's a true reality and i can say that as a mom um it doesn't feel good to leave your kid

Speaker 2 as a dad i don't like leaving my kids i don't like hanging out with my kids it doesn't feel good but remembering what's true and this is what i talk about in the book the things that we tell you to do i get it um it sounds good in the moment yeah just pick up a side hustle no problem 700 bucks a month bam but then when you actually go home and start thinking about it you develop these fears of, well, what if I, what's your biggest fear?

Speaker 2 Oh my gosh, if I do that, my child is going to forget about me. I'm going to be the worst parent ever.
They're going to end up in therapy. No.

Speaker 2 And I found, John, with fears, there are, they can be rational or irrational. We know that.
And a lot of times when I find that there's an irrational fear, it tends to be on the vague side.

Speaker 2 It's kind of like, oh, if I do this, it's going to ruin everything. Be specific.

Speaker 5 That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 What do you mean by that? Ruin everything? You know, if I do this, it's just, you know, my church obligations, my personal commitment. No, no, no.
What do mean?

Speaker 2 Because if we can dial it down to something true that's actual, actually rational, then we can figure it out. If you said to me, Paige, well, here's the thing.

Speaker 2 If I work extra,

Speaker 2 we have this thing on Wednesday nights at my church, and I'm the one that's responsible for bringing the meal.

Speaker 2 And if I don't bring the meal, then 70 people don't have, you know, food for Bible study, right? If that's, that's a very specific problem.

Speaker 2 Then I will say, well, can't you just call Natalie and ask her to bring the food? That's right. Right.
Now we can solve the problem.

Speaker 2 So you have to ask yourself, do you even really want to solve the problem?

Speaker 2 so if you do let's get specific number one let's figure out and let's accept hey there's more than one way that i can prioritize my family and in this season the way i prioritize is i make sure this debt is paid off and that they have a life financially and then number two whatever it is i'm afraid of can i please drill it down to something that's real and rational so that i can actually solve the problem and see if it's even true that this you know what i'm saying what it is that i'm spinning out in my brain so that's what you need to do here um you're gonna have to let these other things, church,

Speaker 2 family balance, I put that in quotes, personal commitments, let those be number two, number three, number four, number five, number six on personal commitment.

Speaker 2 And in this season, for this short period of time, let yourself prioritize putting your family first by getting your financials right. And that's all I can say about that, John.
I mean.

Speaker 5 Yeah, it's short-term pain for a long-term gain, man. Every time.
It's like, I'm going to, this is going to be awful right now for the next five months getting

Speaker 5 we have two thousand dollars of margin or we have two hundred dollars we're gonna we're gonna scratch and claw we're gonna sell some stuff and we're gonna look at do we have to have

Speaker 5 i i mean i'm talking about getting radical in people's homes like with the the the way we live get radical about it please please do and i love that you said that because you're you're gonna have to

Speaker 2 i feel like i'm saying this all the time you're gonna have to sacrifice there may be a season when you got to move your your thermostat down and you gotta wear jackets and get under blankets and or you sell your furniture and you sleep on an air mattress or you go down to one right and and thank you for saying that john because i want you guys to know i'm never going to tell you something that i've not done myself but you're talking to somebody who sold all the furniture in their house and i sold my house and moved into a dorm okay like you just do what you got and i thank you we

Speaker 5 i drove a three thousand dollar truck thank you it's like you do what you got to do what you got to do

Speaker 2 we were a one-car household for 10 years. The people on this show are not just, we're not just making it up.
We're telling you the things that we would do. And that's what we would do.

Speaker 4 The things we have done.

Speaker 2 Yeah, the things that we've done. Exactly.
This is what it takes. And

Speaker 2 change requires change. That's all I can say.
And it's rarely easy. It's never comfortable.
That's just part of it.

Speaker 2 And I feel like that's the drum that I'm beating today because I want people to understand that when you're in a marathon, you will feel pain. Like, that's just part of it.

Speaker 2 John, again, this is in the book. When you're running a marathon, some days you go out and it's sunny and it's 70 and the birds are chirping and it's great.
Same thing with your money.

Speaker 2 Some days you wake up, you're like, man, today feels a great day to pay some bills. And you're paying the bills, you feel good.

Speaker 2 You're not mad about paying a little bit extra on your spouse's student loan. You feel good about it.
You know, the check came in today. Everything's good.

Speaker 2 But then other days on the marathon, you wake up, it's stormy outside. It's cold.
It's rainy.

Speaker 2 It's the big raindrops that hit you in the eye when you run that you just, they soak your clothes immediately. And it's the same thing with your money.
Some days you wake up and you're like, really?

Speaker 2 This is what I get? I've been working 10 years at a job I hate that I barely make. And this is what I get.
A crappy car where the AC barely works, right?

Speaker 2 And you want to throw up your hands and you want to quit, but you can't.

Speaker 2 You can't quit. You have to keep going.
You have to keep going. It's not easy.
And that's fine.

Speaker 2 It's good that it's not easy because then at the end, what it produces in you, John, is somebody who can, who can go the distance, who can sacrifice to win, somebody who can look at things as what they are and go, you know what, that makes sense, that doesn't.

Speaker 2 I can take some of the emotion out of it, I can control the emotion. It's not just, well, this doesn't feel good.

Speaker 1 It rarely does.

Speaker 5 I was

Speaker 5 last night, I was in Chicago and I was sitting with a great comedian named Matt Taylor.

Speaker 5 We were talking, and he was talking about first starting comedy and having to scratch enough nickels together to either eat or to have a place to sleep. But he talked about where he is now.

Speaker 5 And he says, the strength he has now rests on the I had to figure it out. And so now I know what I'm made of.
And so things don't scare me in the now.

Speaker 5 And it was that sense of, if you don't know what you're made of, I don't think I could go without the house being at 76 degrees. But I promise you you can, right?

Speaker 5 I don't know how we could make it without, if we sold these two recliners. And I promise you, I promise you, you'll be okay.

Speaker 2 Well, people are adaptive and that's the thing you have to remember people i don't know i always like likening it to covet but there was a time of life where we wore masks over our faces right and we got used to it everywhere everywhere and you get used that's just how the human humans are we we will adapt to anything and be like okay this is what it is i'll make it work and yeah that's how it is with your money there for a minute

Speaker 2 my grandmother didn't have chick-fil-a she had chickens in the backyard all right that's how they did it you'll go to sit where the recliner once was and the first time you'll fall back thinking it was there.

Speaker 2 And then after that, you'll learn, oh, it's not there anymore. And you get used to sitting someplace else because that's what you'll do and you'll be fine.
Guys, keep going. Do not give up.

Speaker 2 Do not give up. Do not give up.

Speaker 2 All right, our scripture and quote of the day, he has shown you, oh mortal, what is good and what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

Speaker 2 That's Micah 6, 8. James Clear said, every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.
Love it.

Speaker 5 That's such a great line.

Speaker 2 It is such a great line. It's so true.
It's your choice, every single one of them. All right, Rex in Providence, Rhode Island.
Hi, Rex.

Speaker 4 Hey, how's it going?

Speaker 4 Great. First of all, first of all, me and my friends, big fans.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 I graduated college back in May. I have a little over $75,000 in debt, but I was blessed to promptly get a well-paying job in my major.
And currently, my expenses are

Speaker 4 effectively zero. I was wondering how to best capitalize on the situation and get those debts paid off as quick as possible.

Speaker 2 How are your expenses zero?

Speaker 4 Yeah, so I mean, after college, move back home, and

Speaker 4 pretty blessed that in my job, I'm constantly traveling, and those travel expenses get paid for by my company.

Speaker 4 So I'm effectively, besides having a girlfriend and, you know, doing stuff here and there playing golf, effectively, my, you know, mandatory expenses are zero currently. Got you.

Speaker 2 What are you earning?

Speaker 4 So right you right now

Speaker 2 uh currently around 6200 a month 6200 a month love that for you okay so thank you listen you you you you told me you have nothing else to pay for you called the wrong show brother you're not gonna like what we say I tell you right now right hit them with it John

Speaker 5 okay you got you said you got a grown-up job so now you have to start doing grown-up stuff and that means right you make 6200 bucks a month that means in

Speaker 5 Halloween of next year you're gonna be writing your last check for your student loans.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 the loans do get deferred. So this is a good question.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, wait.

Speaker 5 Well, no.

Speaker 4 Look at what.

Speaker 4 I was going to say. So I've been saving.
I've been saving since starting the job. I've currently have about $25,000 saved.
And I was wondering, do I just go right at it? You know, the best loan.

Speaker 4 Your balance is now $50,000.

Speaker 5 Congratulations.

Speaker 2 You keep $1,000 aside. Gotcha.
Keep $1,000 aside. That's baby step one.
You just need that there just in case, something to fall back on. It's not much clearly but yeah now you're now you're at 51 000

Speaker 2 and then you can cash flow the rest it what

Speaker 2 could you i'm i'm just guessing can you put five thousand dollars a month on this

Speaker 4 uh i'm that's currently what i what i am doing it's amazing brother that's all you got to do then yeah get it done and listen every i was just there's just so much conflicting information i know i know people you're telling people to invest and you know let the money work for you before getting to it but i'm going to tell you like here's the deal.

Speaker 5 Consider investing like building a house. Everybody's going to be telling you, you want your house to look like this.
No, you want a house to look like this.

Speaker 5 You can't build a house in a hole and you're in a hole right now.

Speaker 5 And every single person around you is one word, broke.

Speaker 4 Right.

Speaker 5 Every adult next to you at church, broke. The people you work with, their lives are owned by car companies and mortgage companies and credit card companies.
They're owned.

Speaker 5 And you just have to choose, brother. I'm going to simply do life a different way.
Mm-hmm.

Speaker 5 And this is me desperately, you can hear it in my voice.

Speaker 5 I'm desperately talking to 21-year-old me who got out of college, got my first big boy job, made a whole bunch of money, and I ended that first year out of college in more debt than I started.

Speaker 5 And you're not, you're not me. I'm just telling you, like, dude, you have a chance to change the entire trajectory of your life.
Can I tell you something else crazy?

Speaker 4 Yes, sir.

Speaker 5 When I was your age, the job I have right now did not exist. There was no such thing as a podcast, YouTube, social media.
Why do I tell you that?

Speaker 5 The thing you have right now is not going to last forever.

Speaker 5 And so, if it goes way up, or if it goes sideways, or heaven forbid even goes down, put yourself in a position where you don't owe anybody anything in the world. And you've got your own place.

Speaker 5 You got some money in the bank. So, when whatever happens, happens, you can, it will be a rocket ship for you, not a pushback even further.
You get what I'm saying?

Speaker 5 Right, you're right, absolutely, bro. You got it, you got it right in front of you, man.

Speaker 5 You got like a you got like a path in front of you, you just Jayden are saying you're like, You just got to walk that path, 10 months, just walk the path, 10 months, and you're done,

Speaker 5 and you'll be even crazier. Do it more, do it more,

Speaker 5 put six thousand in a bunk, and do it in eight months. Like, just get it done, man.

Speaker 5 Absolutely, all right, bro. You can be done, dude.
Done, done, done, done, done, done.

Speaker 2 Do you think he's going to do it?

Speaker 5 No, I know he's not. Bro, listen, Rex, if you buy crypto,

Speaker 5 whatever, dude.

Speaker 2 No, I think Rex might do it because he did tell me that he could spend $5,000 on it. I think he might go on ahead and do it.

Speaker 5 All right. I think everyone's going to give him so much smoke.
Like, I thought you were making money. Why are you broke all the time? He's like, I'm trying to get it.

Speaker 2 He doesn't have to tell him. All right.
Ben is in Des Moines, Iowa. Don't tell him, Rex.
Hey, what's up, Ben? How are you?

Speaker 4 Good. How are you guys doing? Good.
How can we help?

Speaker 4 That's good. Hey, I'm in college and I'm a young 20-year-old and just trying to figure out some ways, some practical tips to really be frugal with my money.

Speaker 4 How can I stay motivated with that instead of spending more?

Speaker 2 So how can I stay motivated?

Speaker 4 Yeah, motivation

Speaker 5 is dumb. I rely on motivation for almost nothing because it's fleeting.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 What are you asking for?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, honestly, it's just

Speaker 4 trying to save money in the long run to

Speaker 4 have more in the end.

Speaker 2 Well, it can't just be for nothing. What's the money going to be for?

Speaker 5 Too amorphous of a goal.

Speaker 4 No, I mean, I'd say for college mainly, so I can pay that off.

Speaker 2 Okay. So what are you doing currently? Tell us about your life currently and what what you're trying to get to.
Because if you're trying to

Speaker 2 save up to pay off later student loans, then I would say, well, let's talk about paying cash for college now.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 What are you trying to do? Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, I would say just saving up, trying to pay for college. And then, like, also, I'm really not working anywhere.
So, like, how can I really be frugal with that?

Speaker 4 So, I don't, like, go spend it on other stuff that I maybe don't actually really need.

Speaker 5 Don't spend it on other stuff.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Yeah.
How much money do you have?

Speaker 2 What do you, how much do you make?

Speaker 4 I mean, I have like 200 with me.

Speaker 2 Okay, so you got 200 bucks?

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 okay.

Speaker 2 And how often do you make the 200? Is it once a month, once a week?

Speaker 5 I make it once every two weeks.

Speaker 2 Okay, so you got 400 bucks a month, and it's like, what's the best way? If I were you, I'd throw this in a high-yield savings account. When did school start?

Speaker 4 When did it start in August?

Speaker 5 Okay. He's in class right now.

Speaker 2 And how much is it a semester? Let's work backwards.

Speaker 2 I think it's.

Speaker 4 Yeah, you don't even know.

Speaker 5 right?

Speaker 4 Yeah, no, I don't. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Okay.

Speaker 5 Let's get some real information, some facts in front of us. You're asking us to do something for you, brother.
With all due respect, you're asking us to do something for you that we can't do, which is

Speaker 5 if you've got $200 in your pocket and you know you're going to spend it, then you have to have the discipline to put $200 in the bank

Speaker 5 or to give $200 to your friend. Like, you've got to make choices for what you want to do.

Speaker 4 Oh, yeah, that's perfect. That's what I need, yeah.

Speaker 2 Let's give you some homework.

Speaker 2 Number one, you're going to find out how much your tuition is so that you know, here's something for me to aim at.

Speaker 2 Then once you know the tuition, then it's like, okay, what do I need to do to pull in,

Speaker 2 you know, $1,500 a month so I can start to tackle some of this tuition, right? So that you can reverse engineer it and say, what is that per month? What is it per week? And start working on that.

Speaker 2 That's what I would do. Right now is not the time to focus on investing or focus on anything.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's to save up to be able to pay cash because when next semester comes, you want to be able to pay cash for it. So that would be my biggest goal.

Speaker 2 And if you can work some extra hours, it's okay to work part-time while you're in school. Studies show that you do better.
You're a better manager of your time. So I would do that.

Speaker 2 How many hours are you working so far?

Speaker 2 I'm like six usually.

Speaker 2 I try to get like 15 hours a week under my belt. That'd be my goal.

Speaker 4 Or more. Okay.

Speaker 2 You know, start with that. If your grades aren't suffering, up it a a little bit right or double it

Speaker 2 but if your grades start suffering you need to pull back because that's the whole point no point in paying for something that you're failing at right yep yep so balance that accordingly but that's that's exactly what i would do if i woke up in your shoes and like john said

Speaker 2 Use that why, use that goal as your, I'll use your word, motivation to do this. But it can't just be for the moment.

Speaker 2 You have to think about what life is going to feel like four years from now if you don't do it, right? Do you want to wake up in a pile of $20,000, $25,000 of debt when this is all said and done?

Speaker 2 $40,000? I don't think so. So that's your motivation right there is the future.
All right, guys, thanks for hanging out with us.

Speaker 2 Remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus.