The Rachel Cruze Show - 3 Ways to Fight Money Fears

Episode Date: November 23, 2020

In this episode of The Rachel Cruze Show, you’ll learn: How to have grace when you or others mess up with money Practical ways to deal with your top money fears with Dr. John Delony My thoughts on paying for graduate school Resources: Minno Tuft and Needle Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You have two options when mistakes happen. You have grace and you also have like truth. Okay. And there's just a balance in it all. What you have to realize is that those mistakes, they are our teacher. Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of the Rachel Crewe Show podcast. So glad that you are here. In today's episode, I'm going to be interviewing Dr. John Deloney on fears. Oh, you guys, it's so good. Fear is such a big part of our lives sometimes on a day-to-day basis. So we're going to unpack fear. and some of your money fears. And I'm also going to answer a question I get a lot about when you should start saving for graduate school. But first, we're going to talk about money mistakes. Yes, I have made some before. Of course I have because no one is perfect when it comes to money. But when money mistakes happen to yourself or people in your life, what does that mean to show grace when those mistakes occur? So a recent purchase Winston I saved up for was to get a new car because now that we have three kids, my SUV, the middle seats, went and hold three of the big car seats we needed.

And then if you have one car seat, like, you had to fold it down. Anyways, it was just kind of a mess. I was like, we needed their bucket seats. But what I really wanted was a minivan. I did. I was like, I just need something simple and easy, like just for this time in life. And I decided it's my five-year car.

When Charles goes into kindergarten, then I'll get the great cool SUV mom car. That's fine. That's fine. With three little kids, I'm like, I just need a minivan because I can't tell you, it's like the best. So we went shopping for it, found it. And I was like, yes, spoiler alert, Honda Odyssey. Oh my gosh, you take out that middle seat in the middle row and you can slide the seats back and forth. Like, there's no folding them down. Back and forth. There's a vacuum in it. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep. DVD player, of course, like everything. Okay, I like,

like it really was like a dream car for me. It really was. And it was a third at the price of a big old nice luxury SUV. So I felt great about it. So I was like, yeah, I'm fine. This is awesome. And Winston and I, we're on Babys Up 7. And so this is not to like brag, but it's just to say, hey, if you work hard and do your money well for 10 years, you get to buy a brand new minivan like we did. And it was so exciting. So I take it home and it's a Monday night. It's a Monday night. And I go home and I'm like, oh, this is just awesome. You know, you pull it in. It's like, it's so fun. It is so fun. Well, the next day, I get little Amelia into the minivan to go to preschool. And I'm just very excited to be in my new minivan. So I'm pulling out of the garage and I hear a crunch.

I mean, it kind of makes me want to throw up right now just thinking about it. I mean, it's like the thing where your heart just stops and you're like, oh my God, oh my God. and I may or may not have said a few choice words praying that a million's in here. But I was like, oh, my God, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. So I get out of the new minivan, and I'm like, oh, my God, oh, my God. And all of a sudden I see across the garage just, like, parts are scattered. And I look up. And apparently, like, that little fin on top of cars and places, you know, yeah, it's not for decoration, people. there's like stuff in that thing.

Like GPS and radio, like technology is in the fin. Who knew? And so apparently the garage door was not up all the way. Apparently. I mean, I don't really know. I don't know what happened. All I know is that that fin got sliced right off and there were like wires and stuff hanging off this roof. I mean, it was terrible.

I mean, I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no. no, no, no, no. Out of all the dang times I've pulled out of a garage in my entire life. Why now? Like, why today? Why not in a year? Why not yesterday? Why not yesterday? Why not yesterday? Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. So I texted Winston and I was like, um, I think I broke the van. And he said back, is everyone okay? And I was like, mm-hmm. Everyone except for the little fin on top, it's gone. It's destroyed. Like, it's terrible. And he was like, it's okay, babe. We'll get it fixed. No big deal. Like, was so chill and so calm. And the worst part about this, I don't know if you're like me. I'm like, this would have never happened to Winston Cruz. Never. Like, Mr. Methodical,

looks where he's going all the time. I'm like a bet out of hell when I drive sometimes. I'm just like, I mean, I was like, of course, of course this happens to me. Oh my gosh. And so, honestly, like Winston's response, I was like, thank you. Thank you, because I'm already beating myself up. Like, if he was all mad at me and all of that, I was like, oh. So I take it to go get repaired. And then, like, literally the guy at, like, the auto repair shop, like, I took it to Honda and they're like, yeah, we can't do anything about this. You like, got to, like, a collision place.

And I was like, oh, my gosh. And even the guy, he, like, got in. He was like, oh, man, it's only got 24 miles. And I was like, I know, I know, I know, I know. Golly. Oh, it was the worst, y'all. It was like, it was the worst. It was terrible. It was terrible. But you know what? I learned in that situation. Number one, look in your review mirror. Okay, why didn't the van beep? Can we talk about that? Like, all fancy minivan. Hello? Beep. Beep at me. Like, if something's coming at me, beep. Anyways, I'm not going to blame the van. It was my fault. I take full responsibility, but I kind of blame the van. A little bit. But in the moment, in the moment, Winston, God love him, showed so much grace. Because you know what? Mistakes happen, people, mistakes happen. And it did cost to get this brand new fan replaced.

Like, the whole top of the roof had to be replaced. Like, it was so bad. It was so bad. But again, stuff is going to happen. It's life. It is life. And so what you have to realize is that those mistakes, they are our teacher. Okay? So if you go backwards in the baby steps, it's probably going to happen. Okay? So you're going to have to dip into your emergency fund. You know what? That's okay. That's what it's there for. money mistakes are going to happen. Mistakes are going to happen. So when that does, and if you have to go backwards in the baby steps, just pause and rebuild your emergency funds. Because you have two options when mistakes happen. You have grace and you also have, like, truth, okay?

And there's just a balance in it all. So when you think about the scale of how you handle money mistakes, that grace scale on one extreme of giving too much grace is enabling. but if you go full truth all the time, it's legalistic. And you don't want to be on either side of that scale when money mistakes happen. Because neither one is healthy. They're not. Because again, the enabling is just like, oh, the same mistake keeps happening over and over and over and over.

And you're like, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay. Listen, after a while you have to learn from that mistake or it's going to cost you. And so people that just let those mistakes go by over and over and over, it is enabling. So it's either you're enabling yourself because you're enabling yourself because you're, you're letting yourself make the same mistake, or you enable others. So watch out for that. And then on the other side is too much truth. So legalistic people, it's hard because I feel like they love the rules so much that sometimes it trumps relationships because they focus so much on the truth side. And so you don't need to be legalistic. You need to find a balance in both.

Because again, you want to show grace. You also want to have truth, but the extremes are really, really hard. I remember talking to this girl, and she was married in her 30s and her and her spouse both work. They had two young kids. And her mom recently confided in her that her and her dad were facing significant financial stress. And her parents were in their late 50s. And it just became this burden, this burden on this girl. Her mom was a teacher and they were close to retirement. Her dad had been laid off 18 months ago trying to find work, but he couldn't find anything. And she was like, okay, they have all. all this debt, they're running out of savings.

I mean, some of their key bills, like their mortgage isn't going to be able to be paid, be paid, like, what do I do? And so in those situations, you really have to say, okay, here, there's an option with, like, yeah, if one money mistake is made, lots of grace, lots of grace. But again, the same money mistake, where do you put that boundary? Where do you draw that line? And if it's with other people in your life, you do have to have that boundary. And number one, you have to remember it is not your responsibility.

other people's money mistakes and their life being affected. Like, it cannot be your responsibility. And number two, if you choose to help them be wise. Because if you enable bad behavior over and over again, you're not helping them. You're not teaching them anything by just masking the band-aid of money and just throwing more money at them.

And so if you see it's a pattern in their life, I would say, set them down if they're asking you for help and say, hey, if you have the money as well, if you're in babysaps one through three, you're kind of like head down, you're working on your own household. But if you're on babysaps four through seven and you want to help, the best way to help is to say, you know what, number one, if there's a pattern, it needs to break.

Like, we can't keep fueling this bad mistake. And number two, I would give the gift with some strings attached. I would say, hey, listen, we'll give you this money if you guys attend Financial Peace University or we'll give you this money to pay two months of rent, but we need you guys to pay the rest of the bills and the third month rent. Like having a game plan in place where this money is being used, sure, to have. help them if you have the money and you want to love them, but yet, again, you're not fueling that bad behavior constantly. And so that's kind of the balance you have to find on that grace

scale of too much grace and just giving away or just saying money mistakes aren't a big deal over and over again can be enabling bad behavior. But on the other side, if you're so legalistic and following the rules, so black and white, you miss a lot of life and also you hurt relationships at a time as well. So making sure there is that balance. And it's something to talk about because money and relationships, it's such a big deal.

And I talk about it in my book, Know Yourself, Know Your Money. Because there's a whole section on Grace, how you handle yourself and others when money mistakes happen, when things come up. And so knowing yourself on that scale is really crucial to not only yourself

in relationships, but in order to win with money in the long haul. So you can pre-order my new book, know yourself, know your money at rachelcruise. is a dot com to make sure to check it out and really dig under the surface, become aware more of who you are so that you can win with money faster. Being a parent is hard today, especially when screens are everywhere.

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Well, hey, guys, I am so excited because I have Dr. John Dilloni here with me. Hey, John. Good to see you. Thanks for coming on. So one of the big parts of my new book is talking all about, fear. So I started researching it because I realized this is a huge motivator for people in life in general. And on your show, the Dr. John Deloney show, you talk about fear a lot. So I've had a couple of experts on the show talking about fear because it's so fascinating to me because there's,

like what I feel like the average person like me just thinks about fear. But then there's the psychological aspect. There's so much to unpack around fear. So let's just talk about it. Fear in general, good, bad, and different. How do you feel about it, John? I feel that fear is really important. It lets us know. that we care about something, it lets us know that we might be in danger of something. Fear is a critical, critical feeling. Without it, we wouldn't get stuff done. We wouldn't know to run if there's a bear at our front door, right?

It's so important for us. Yes, okay, so Dr. Chip Dodd was talking about it, and he, I loved it because he was explaining, it's a gift. Like, it literally is your body's response that you need help, that you are in need of something. And it just says, hey. Okay, now where it starts to get unhealthy, though, is when we get into anxiety, kind of on that end of the spectrum, right? So talk about the difference between fear and anxiety.

So anxiety is an alarm system. It just lets us know not safe, right? So I would consider fear something that is right in front of me. That bear is right there, I got to go, right? Anxiety is, that door shut, there might be a bear. And then I go look out in the window and I can't see it. The bear might be hiding, right? And so I'm always a fear of the future, right? I'm always looking to the future and feeling this alarm system going off. And anxiety sets off when we realize that we're disconnected, when we're alone. We're lonely. Interesting. Yeah. And so it may need two of us to look in for this bear, a third or a fourth. And so when you find yourself alone, those alarms spin off. Okay, so these money fears that are right about in the book, I think for a lot of people

could seep into anxiety to that side of it for sure. So the first fear, I talk about six, we'll talk about three here on this episode for time's sake. Okay, but one fear that I see a lot of people have is that time is running out, that we're not able to do what we want to do with money because of our age. Like I was just on the Dave Ramsey show earlier today. and a lady called it at 60. And she was like, I don't think I'm ever going to retire. Like, I'm just now getting out of debt.

I got to build up babysept number three and, like, all of this. And I could feel that fear in her that time is getting away. So do you see that a lot? Just not with money specifically, but just in your line of work with anyone that, like, you're getting to this place. We're like, oh, wow, time's just running out. Yeah. Time is usually centered on a picture I had for my life at whatever age, right?

Yeah. And so I thought by 45, I would be fill in the blank. And usually where it gets really damaging is they either don't have a picture or they have a fantasy that's about feelings. I thought I was going to feel this way when I was 45. I thought I was going to feel this when I was 60. And if you talk to 60s with millions of dollars or with no money, they often have very similar fears. They often are uncertain about things as well. Their marriages are still challenging.

Their kids are still doing things that are wonky. And so a lot of it's just a fantasy, right? But the reality is there are 60-year-olds that finally do their budget. for the first time and they go, oh, no, right? I may never be able to retire. And then it's what you do with that fear that makes all the difference. Yeah, for sure.

No, I think that's a good point because I think what's hard sometimes, especially in America's culture, is you do have this dream out there, but it's just, it's not realistic. Right. And to say, yeah, that may have been a dream, but some dreams,

it really financially, or time or location, or season of life, like whatever it is, really isn't going to happen. and not that you can't have any other dreams or a part of that dream. Maybe you take a piece of it or a different spin on it. But there's a level of reality we have to live in. That's right.

And I always want to challenge people where they got that dream and what they think that dream was going to give them. That's good. Right? Because the reality is if my dream is to just go to the beach, you can get food poisoning at the beach too. And it's hot there and it's gritty. And we don't think about those things.

We just got to get to the beach and get to the beach or get this other house or get this relationship. and the reality is when you get there, you show up to, right? And so if you're anxious and worried and stressed, you're going to take that with a million dollars, you're going to take that with a dream retirement, you're going to take that to wherever you end up. And so the key is to work on yourself, right,

to recognize your fears and then deal with them with, in reality, right? Wherever you end up, like in that same three-bedroom, two-bath house, or with your third lake house, right? You're going to go with you there. You literally hit the nail on the head. Like, it is. you are still the same person, yeah, that is moving, unless you're changing and you're evolving and you're all of it. But I think the point is don't think that thing is going to fix it,

that that dream's going to fix you. The worst part about getting a new job is that you go with you. Yes. Or getting a new spouse or a new home is that you go with you, right? Yes. And then for the self-awareness piece, if you have that friend in life, like the new job, and the same problem happens at four different jobs and they're telling you and you're like, Probably you. There's one correlation of it. Yeah, for sure. Okay, so the fear of not realizing your dreams, number one, dreaming is great.

And I talk about it, my new book too. Like, you need to dream. Have where, you know, money and boundaries, everything's down. And you're just like, what could life look like? Like, that's fun, right? Let your mind go there. But as you start realistically implementing those dreams, making sure they are realistic. And knowing that, yeah, there may be a time where, yeah, the season of life,

you're not going to be able to do that dream. But find something, find a different dream. Or say, no, time isn't out. feel like it is, but if we map it out X, Y, and Z and do these steps, we actually could get there, but maybe it's in 10 years instead of two. And then, I think, to your point, that you are still the same person. So ask yourself, dig into those dreams. Why is that destination where I've set my whole life's goals, right? Yes. Oh, so good. Okay. Another fear is that I'm not capable of managing my money well. So I hear this a lot. Rachel, I'm really bad at math, or I'm not smart enough,

or I didn't get that degree, or all of you that are in the financial space, of course, you're winning with money because this is what you do every day. But the truth of what we teach here, Ramsey Solutions, is that, like, the basic money principles, personal finance, like, it's really not that complicated. It's hard to do, but understanding it, it's pretty simple. But do you find that negative talk in with a lot of people? So I went back to grad school as an old person, right? And so I had to do internships again. What age were you? I was in my late 30s. Okay, good, good. And I had to do internships again. And one of my internships was counseling. I had to start meeting with real clients. And, and I had to start meeting with real clients.

And I found really quickly that they would talk about their marriages, their intimate lives, they would talk about their kids, they would not talk about their money. And fascinating, I had a second child. I had to update my will. And as a part of updating my will, we went through, you know, creating a trust and where's your money going to go? And we need all your accounts. I didn't want to give them that information. Because we have this idea around, what are you worth?

What's that number, right? And so why am I saying that? That fear drives this idea of I don't want to even know. I don't want, that's for other people. That's for smart people. And so hear me say this, Rachel. We are in a sliver of history when we have any answer to any question ever asked on our telephone. Being ignorant about a subject is a choice.

Not knowing about seven baby steps is a decision. It's not a lack of resources. It's not a lack of no. There's so many financial coaches and counselors and pastors and friends. If you want to know, you can find out. And so saying, I just don't know, that's a choice. And I hate to say that because it drives me crazy. Yeah.

Not my own fears about money make me nuts. But it's a choice. Yeah. To live in that ignorance. But that ignorance is peaceful for a lot of people, right? Like it was kind of that for a little bit because it's like, I don't even want to look. I don't want to look at the bank account. I'm going to just live over here.

And do people, do you find that people detach? so much, like that they can detach to that extreme, where emotionally they're almost numb to their money. One of my favorite books, the title says it all. The Body Keeps the Score. Oh my gosh, my mother-in-law loves that book. Yeah, it's a wonderful book. Helen Cruz.

By Bessel van der Kolk, read that book. She told me about this book. But the title says it all. In your frontal lobe, you can make all sorts of detachment decisions. I'm just going to put those bills in the drawer. I'm just going to not look at that retirement account. But the fear part of your brain that sits in the back that's running all the time is constantly keeping a tally of what you do and don't know. The fears and the distance you're getting away from real information, am I going to have enough?

I don't know. Am I going to be able to eat when I'm old? Can I live there? Can I live there? That stuff just adds up. And it affects your body. It affects the pain in your body. It affects your ability to have connected relationships.

It affects everything. Everything. Right? We think we're hiding and detached. We're not. Okay. So someone with this fear to say, I'm just not smart enough, and either they really believe that or you've convinced them otherwise.

No, no, no, you can actually become smart enough. You can read the information's out there. But now they have to make that emotional step to actually look. What would you, how does someone do that? Because to me, I'm like, just look. Just log in. Just log into the account and look. So this is me being vulnerable here.

And I want to preface this with, I've worked with SWAT teams. I've worked with crisis calls in the middle of the night, seeing the most gruesome. some horrible things you can ever see. But when it came to looking at my money, I had to get somebody that I trust to literally sit with me and look through this. And I'll never forget the moment.

I painfully, vulnerably asked, am I on a good track or we can have enough? And he looked at me and said, if you keep going, you can be all right. And I went, whew, right? So this is a crisis guy. I think I'm all tough. I've got all the degrees.

I had to have somebody sit with me. I had to have a coach. just so happens that my old college roommate is an investing guy. That's what he does. And so he sat with me and walked through the lines and the numbers. But the reality is the fear is real. So you either have to just open the account and look or you've got to get somebody and walk alongside you. To do it.

That's right. The last fear we're going to talk about today is that my past money mistakes are going to dictate my future. I can't win with money because of the mistakes I've made in my past. And again, I'm usually more on like the number side of this. This book and all this research has made me dig into, like, like more of the emotional side, which I love. Yes. I love all the work that you do.

But, you know, it's so hard because I look at someone, and I really do believe, because I've heard countless stories of people getting out of debt and actually getting control of their money that have insane amounts of debt, that have not a lot of income, but they do it, right? They do it. But still, there is a truth that, yeah,

your past mistakes will affect how fast you get out of debt. That's right. It's a bigger hole, a smaller hole. So there is some math involved that can seem overwhelming. So if you have made extremely, you know, tough, wrong, hard, whatever you want to put in there, money mistakes in the past, yeah, your hole might be deeper. But that still doesn't mean you can't get out. Right.

There's always, always hope. And I can say that because sitting in my seat for 10 years, I've seen it. Like, I've seen these insane stories where like, how did they do it? These single moms or this, you know, this couple that makes $50,000. They had $200,000 in debt and they did it, you know, in like three and a half years. You're like, how did you do that? You know, it's just crazy. So do you find though people's past?

keeps them from moving forward? Yes, I think it's when people's mistakes turn into part of their identity. Not I made some mistakes, but I am a mistake, right? Not that I screwed up with money, but I am screw up. And that's harder to overcome than the math problem, right? Finding money, working three jobs, grinding it out.

That's just a matter of doing it over and over. Overcoming who am I, that's a whole other story, right? So when somebody looks in the past and says, I've done some dumb things with money. It's literally a resurrection moment. It's a moment when you say, I'm done with that, right? And I'm going to surround myself with people and a plan. I'm going to move forward.

I had to tell myself on a regular basis, you're not who you were. You're going this way now, right? And I'm going to make a new decision every day. Right. That's so good. And I think that identity piece, and you kind of said that even in the other fear we're talking about,

is so true, though, right? It's like that number is like your score in life, which it shouldn't be, right? Your net worth should not. your self-worth, but it does so much in our culture today. Do you find men versus women are different with that? Yeah, I think men are trained from when we're really little that our worth is based on achievement. Yeah. And the greatest achievement we can achieve in our society is money, right? Is that net worth? It's going back and letting people know the answer to the question,

where are you worth is never a number. It's always who have you loved and who has loved you. that's what your true worth is. That's fascinating between men and women because, yeah, I hear that a lot. I do. I feel like even some guys, they're so vocationally driven, even in conversation, right? It's like kind of their go-to and all of that. So it's just, it's fascinating. And busyness and work is a socially acceptable addiction.

We're allowed to be super busy and to keep being busy and busy and busy and to skip dinners and to skip a couple time after the kids are in bed, to skip weekend events and family trips, because we're just working, right? We're busy. It's a numbing behavior. It's an addiction, right? And so all that comes back to fear.

Man, that could be a whole other video because when someone was, we're at the beach a few weeks ago, he was reading this parenting book and labeled out six things to do. Like, literally, like, if you want successful, healthy kids, here's six things you do. One of them's going to dinner. Everything else, though, involved time.

It's all time. It's all time-based. And that's saying that, like, oh, well, it's not the quantity of time. It's the quality you spend. He, like, was like, no. Like, you have to have the quantity in order to get the quality. And that that is such a big part of parenting. Well, think about...

Which I digress. But, like, that's fascinating. The most precious resource I have on planet Earth is my time. Yeah. Yeah. Because once it's gone, it's gone. Yes. And anything I'm expending time into is time not expended on.

those relationships, right? Yeah, exactly. Not to put more on your plate parents, but just a little parenting tidbit, but that TIME, it's big in relationships, all of it, and even spending time overcoming those fears and putting things in place so that you don't have these money fears because they can be overwhelming. And when they get to that point of anxiety, then it really does start to be unhealthy. And so putting it in its rightful place. That's right. But again, it can be that alarm that, hey, something's off. You may need help. You may need to do something different. John, thanks so much for diving into these three fears. And the other three we talk about in the Know Yourself,

Know Your Money curriculum that's in Ramsey Plus. So good. Oh, we just shot one like a few weeks ago. So fun, y'all. Also make sure to look into Ramsey Plus and that Know Yourself, Know Your Money curriculum will be in there. And where can everyone find you, John? You can find me on the internet's at John Deloney YouTube and then the super

creatively titled Dr. John Deloney show that we launched recently. And it's been a blast. We're having fun. The Rachel Crewe's show, the Christy Wright show. We're super creative here. We have lots of, lots of good thinkers. Well, and the podcast is going great, too. It's lost, yeah, all semblance of reality.

It's so awesome. It's getting some great reviews, so it's a lot of fun. Love it, love it. Okay, make sure to check all that out, you guys, and thanks again, John. Thank you. All right, one of my favorite packages to ever show up on my door is my tuft and needle mattress. I've got a couple now, and seriously, I love this mattress. You guys know exactly how it is.

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So if I'm wrong, just send it back. Go to tn.com to get started. That's tn.com. Well, one of the best parts about the internet is that we get to talk. Yes. So you guys can submit any questions you have, not just about college, but anything in regards to money to any of my social accounts. So it could be Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, it doesn't matter, post questions

because my team and I, we are looking for those because I want to be able to answer some of your questions here on the show. All right. Lauren asks, where in the babysit would you recommend starting to a team? or save for graduate school. Yeah, graduate school is great. I mean, if you can continue on your education, and especially if you are in a field where you need that continued education, then graduate school might be your next step. I will say, it may not have to be your next step. Some people do go to graduate school right after getting a four-year education because it's like, well,

just kind of the next thing you do, I'm going to go get a master's in business, or I'm going to go get a master in X, Y, and Z. And sometimes you don't need that master's degree to go and win in the real world. Like, go take a few years. see what you can do. But if you're in a field that, yeah, you specifically need a master's degree, then you do know, okay, eventually I'm going to have to get this to advance specifically in your career. And that's great. So what I would do there is I would do it in baby step 3B. So usually this is where you save for a down payment of a house. But I would even do this to say, okay, yeah, if you need to save up some money for graduate school, you can. So this means you're completely debt-free.

It would be fully funded emergency fund of three to six months of expenses. And then you can start saving on the side. Now, baby step four is saving 15% of your income and two retirements. So I don't want that to not be used. I don't want you not funding retirement for a long period of time. So if you can save it for grad school pretty quick, kind of get some money under you, knowing that you'll probably be working through grad school and actually cash flowing that, I want you to start funding retirement as soon as possible. So I don't want that graduate degree to go on for like eight years and you don't fund retirement. So you might get to a point where you say, you know what, I'm out of debt.

I have my fully funded emergency funds. I'm going to spend the next six, eight months and save a big pile of money for graduate school and then continue to cash flow it so that way I can start funding retirement. That would be a great plan. Or you could say, you know what, I don't really need graduate school until, you know, probably the next three or four years. I'm going to go ahead and start funding retirement, but on the side as well, be saving for graduate school.

So either one of those choices is great by me, but always cash flowing it. That is what is so, so important. Because I get these stories, you guys, where people end up, like, six figures in student loan debt, or because they went and got their, you know, they went to graduate school, and they didn't really even need to to advance in their career. And they have so much debt. Like, the return on investment didn't make sense. I heard, gosh, from this assistant principal, and she had $3,000 in student loan debt. She's an assistant principal making $63,000 a year. Yeah. Not a great return on investment. So I'm not mad at assistant principals of anything. I'm very grateful. My daughter has

an amazing one at her school, so I'm very thankful for, you know, people in education and all different fields around, but you need to really, really think through and be smart about how you're doing this, because again, student loans are so freaking normal that people don't even think. They just see, okay, that's how much tuition is. I'll just sign away and just worry about that later. And then that later comes, and it's like, what did I just do? So the more you can think through it, the better off you're going to be. And if you guys, again, ask any question you want on any of my social channel platforms,

and we will be looking at those and answering your questions on the segments like this of Ask Rachel. All right, well, that's it. Oh, such a full episode. I know there's just so much there. And if you're listening in your minivan, just give a little honk to an old minivan.

As you know, I love one. But really, money is such a crucial part of our lives, you guys, and the more intentional you can be in every aspect of your life, life, whether it is fear, whether it is grace, whatever it looks like, make sure that you are making those intentional decisions to continue on working with your money so that it doesn't control you, but you control it. Now, if you've not subscribed to this podcast, make sure that you do, hit that subscribe button, and if the spirit leads, you can leave a review. And as always, make sure to take

control of your money and create a life you love. If you guys enjoyed this podcast, we have more from the Ramsey Network, like The Chris Hogan Show. I am so excited to be able to talk to you all week in and week out. We're going to talk about your money, your life, your dreams, and your goals. You know why? Because I'm your coach. Whether we're talking about building wealth, paying off your home early, investing, paying for college, and guess what? How to become an everyday millionaire.

We're going to focus on taking your calls because you matter to me. Together, we can do this. This is the Chris Hogan show. To hear full episodes, just search Chris Hogan wherever you listen to podcast or go to Chris Hogan 360.com.