The Ramsey Show - App - Anyone Can Set Themselves Up for Financial Freedom (Hour 2)

Episode Date: January 19, 2024

🎵 Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, this is The Ramsey Show. It's where we help you win in your life, specifically winning with your money, in your work, and in your relationships. I'm Ken Coleman. George Campbell, my good friend, is here with me this hour. 888-825-5225. 888-825-5225. George will lead and guide on the money questions. I'm here to chime in on any of those questions, plus the work-related questions. Not happy in your work? Want to make some more money? Bigger shovel. How do I make more income in 2024? I'm here for that as well and also very excited this is the last

weekday of George's launch week, Breaking Free from Broke the ultimate guide to more money and less stress look at that, that's a fabulous looking book right there, the orange cover regardless of my face on it the team did a great job

you got a great face George it's been a fun week. The feedback has been amazing. The reviews are pouring in. And there was a guy on the live stream we did yesterday, the Q&A for the book launch, 51 years old, and he had tears. And he was going, this book gave me hope that it's not too late for me. Wow. He's in customer service in Kentucky.

He's got some debt to pay off. And I'm glad I could give him that hope. And I told him, his name's Calvin. I said, call the show today. So Calvin, if you're out there, call us up because I said, Ken's going to be able to help you with this work stuff and help you make more income. I hope so. To clean up this mess.

I love it. Well, really good and very excited for you, George. It's going to help a lot of people, a new generation of people that never heard of Total Money Makeover are going to really be helped with breaking free from broke. You can get it at ramseysolutions.com or anywhere books are sold. All right, let's go to my old stomping grounds when I worked for the governor of Virginia. Wow. Richmond, Virginia area is where Austin joins us. Austin, how can we help? Hey, thank you so much for taking my call. You bet. What's up?

I've actually, me and my wife, we're in a bit of a debt, but I keep seeing all this stuff about S&P 500 and how if you're in your 30s, if you start in your 30s,

you can put like $100 a month and whatnot. And I want to know if that would be a good idea to start doing that knowing that we're still in debt. How much debt do you have? $222,000.

Whoa! That's a bit to you? Wow! What's that made out of? $190,000 of it's out. Oh. $31,800 is a private loan and credit card. Okay.

And plus my wife's car. And then the $191,000 is for our house, and then I have $11,000 left on my car. Okay, so we got two car loans and credit cards and personal loans? Just one personal loan and one credit card, yes, sir. Okay, and what does just the consumer debt add up to if you take out the mortgage? Right at $43,000.

Great. So that's the number I want you to tattoo in your mind right now. How much money do you guys make per year? She makes around $50,000. I am actually on disability, but I make around $19,000. And then I actually am able to do this delivery order thing, so I can make an extra $1,100 a month. So I make around $19,000, not including the $12,000 that's not guaranteed every month. Okay, so maybe we'll call that $30,000. Around $60,000, $69,000. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So $30,000 for you, $50,000 for her. We're going to call that $80,000, and we've got $43,000. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So $30,000 for you, $50,000 for her. We're going to call that $80,000, and we got $43,000 to pay off. So now this becomes a little math equation going, how quickly can we pay off $43,000 and make an $80,000? Of course, after taxes. Mm-hmm. Now, focus on the consumer debt instead of the mortgage and go, how much margin do we have outside of our normal bills

that we could create to throw at this debt? Because I'm looking at this going, could you, after taxes, does this become $55,000, $60,000 you guys are working with? Yes, sir. Okay. Yeah, right around. So we're talking $5,000 a month.

What's your mortgage payment? $1,450. Okay. So once you subtract your normal bills, your basics, we're talking food, utility, shelter, transportation, insurance. Do you have an extra pile of money at the end of each month or are you guys in the red? We're almost in the red, yes. Very, very close to it. Because of all the debt payments?

That, well, the credit card is the main thing because, you know, the interest rate is outreaching. So that's the main thing we're working on. But we can't work on it too much. So basically, like every ounce of income I make outside whenever I'm doing deliveries or things like that, I throw all that straight towards the credit card because the interest rate is just so high and so little actually goes to the principal, you know,

and the rest goes to the interest. So talking about all this, do you see why investing right now is not a good idea? Yes. You don't have any money. That's why I was so curious. Do you know how you could get more money to invest? How? If you freed up all those debt payments, what would that add up to in your life,

these consumer debts? That $43,000, free up all those payments. Is that like an extra thousand bucks a month in your life? Oh, yeah. You could do some investing with an extra thousand bucks and no payments, right? Yes, sir. So we're going to get you back to investing. I know you said you're in your 30s. I'm 33 and my wife's 30. Okay. I'm 34. And let me tell you, you can pop onto our investing calculator and go,

all right, we're going to be debt-free in two years. And then six to 12 months later, we're going to have a fully funded emergency fund. So you will be what? 36 years old by then? Yes. Big whoop. And you're going to be investing 15% of your household income, which for you guys by 80 grand. So let's say 12 grand a year, right? Okay. And let's say you're starting with zero. I'm using this calculator right now to show you from age, this is pretty mind blowing. Yeah, I want you to share this because I'm looking at an eye popping number here on your screen. Well, okay. You ready for this? From age 36 to age 60, if you start with zero, and that's age 60, most people will work beyond that. 1200 bucks a month, because remember, you're going to invest 15% of your income, which is about

15 grand, at 10% rate of return, like you said, the S&P 500, on average, 10% to 12% since its inception, you would have $1.5 million at age 60. Holy, okay. And that's if you start three years from now, Austin. But can I tell you what most people do? Most people keep fiddling with debt. They're investing 2%, 3%, putting money in acorns and some spare change, hoping they're going to have money one day. Instead, our plan says, hey, one thing at a time, focus on the debt, focus on the emergency fund. Then we can get to investing with a vengeance. So that's what I want for you.

And I think you'll get there in no time, but continue getting that income up. That's a huge part of it. So can I do a little exercise? Let's do it. With you. And I'm trying to think of the person who's maybe listening and going, I'm not young. I'm not 33, 34. Let's put in age 50. Okay. Let's make up. Let's say 50 to 67. Is that fair? Age 50 to age 67. Okay. And let's take a reasonable salary, the 15%. What do you think is the right number? I think 70 grand is the average in America for households. 70 grand.

Okay. So we're talking 15% is 10.5. 10.5. 10.5. Which is, Ken, if you're doing the math at home, going to be $875 a month. So $875 a month, let's say you started with zero. At age 50. At age 50, you start with zero and you invest $875 a month at 10%,

you would have almost half a million dollars. That's extraordinary. At 11%, over half a million. At 12%, you would have almost $600,000. Thanks for doing that because I want people to understand it's not too late. You can really make up some ground. And that's on a very reasonable number there. So really fun stuff.

Yeah, most people in their 50s are at the top of their salary. Yeah, absolutely fantastic. It is doable. Great call, Austin. You guys are going to be okay. Just follow the plan. All right, don't move. Actually, I'm Ken Coleman.

I'm George. You're George Campbell. I don't know what's happening. I'd love don't move. I'm George. Actually, I'm Ken Coleman. I'm George. You're George Campbell. I don't know what's happening. I'd love to be Campbell. I know one thing. This is the Ramsey Show, and we'll be right back. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show. I'm Ken Coleman.

George Campbell joins me. 888-825-5225 is the number. Thrilled that you're with us. Grace is joining us now in Jacksonville, Florida. Grace, how can we help? Hi, thank you for taking my call. You bet. So I'm calling for two reasons today.

The first are my best friends, Alyssa and Brian, completed baby step number two today. So I wanted to give them a shout out. What's their names again? Alyssa and Brian. Alyssa and Brian, way to go. Brian completed baby step number two today. So I wanted to give them a shout out. What's their names again? Alyssa and Brian. Alyssa and Brian. Way to go. You guys are rock stars.

Hello. Absolutely. But my husband and I actually have a question as well. We've been working the baby steps and we have two paid off vehicles, a car and a truck. We have a baby on the way, so the truck won't be conducive to our family. We are wondering if we should sell the truck and throw the money at our student loan. Could you just live with one car? Is that the plan?

For a bit until we save up to pay in cash for our next vehicle. I think we could do that, yeah. Okay. What's left on the student loans? Well, so far we've paid off $100K in total between our cars and the loans, and we have $40K left. Awesome. So this will be knocked out pretty quick. What's your household income? Household income is 150k. Love it. And what's the truck worth? The truck is probably worth 16k right now at the low end. Okay. So if you sell it for 16, it'll knock your student loans down to 24? Yeah, that's correct. Okay. So it'll just helps you speed this up, but it's not going to be a, you're not knocking it out completely. Do you have any other savings? We have our emergency fund and that's about it. We're full blown doing the baby step.

Okay. Because one thing I'm going to mention is while you're having a kid, we call this stork mode and we tell people, hey, pause the debt snowball. You need to save up and just stack up cash until mom and baby are home healthy so that you have money to cover any unexpected medical expenses. Okay. So I might, you know, hold off and save up as much cash as you can. When's the baby due? The 4th of July. Woo!

Wow. Very exciting. Ken loves that. He loves independence. I do. I'm trying not to break out into the Star Spangled Banner right now. I'm going to hold exciting. Ken loves that. He loves Independence Day. I do. I'm trying not to break out into the Star Spangled Banner right now. I'm going to hold that. Where's Lee Greenwood when you need him?

Yeah. Don't get me started. There we go. So I think you guys are on to something here selling the truck if you don't need it. And I would stack up as much cash as you can. And then at that point, we can sell the truck. We can clean up the student loans. And making $150, do you guys just have the student loan payment right now?

Yeah, that's it. That's our only debt. Okay. Awesome. We do have a mortgage. Sure. Well, I think I would set a goal for how quickly you're going to clean up the student loan. I mean, it would be amazing if you could clean up the student loan and have the emergency savings by the time baby's here, depending on what your income is doing. Well, we're tracking having the student loans cleared right about when the baby's here or shortly after. We pay about $40,000 or $4,000

a month. Okay. That's how much you're able to throw at it? Yes. That's fantastic. Well, if you can sell the truck, clean up the student loans, and have an emergency fund in place by the time baby's here, then I would go with that plan. That's the goal. That's a fun, aggressive goal. Yeah, you guys are on track. That's exciting. Love it.

And love the shout-out for their friends. That's really cool. That's a good friend right there. That's a great tribe to be a part of, people that are getting out of debt and taking control of their money. Let's go now to Salt Lake City, Utah. Grayson is on the line. Grayson, how can we help? Hey, so I've listened to your guys' show just a little bit here and there,

some videos on Facebook and that kind of thing. And I feel like, you know, it's a lot of times about these big bets and those kinds of scenarios. And me and my wife, you know, we're young, we're just trying to get started. We're both in school, and we're trying to figure out the best ways to get into a routine budget and get started on investing and that kind of thing, setting long-term goals. Cool. So where are you guys at financially right now? What's the household income? Yeah, so it varies on a month-to-month basis just because we both work part-time, and hours vary a lot.

So, as I look back over the last couple of months, it's probably somewhere between $2,500 to like $4,500, give or take. Okay. And that's your net income or gross? Yeah. Net. Okay. Cool. And what are you guys doing for work? I ref high school basketball, and my wife works as a CNA for a senior care center. How much do you make refing high school basketball? It's $62 a game, actually. Okay, and are you a full-time student, did I hear? Yeah.

Okay, all right. When will you both graduate? Next spring, if everything goes on track. Okay. And then your incomes will go up after that? Yeah. Cool. And how much debt do you guys have? The only thing that we have is my car and my parents. They bought it outright for it in cash, and I've just been paying them ever since, and there's about $9,000 left on that.

And you just owe that to your family with no real terms and conditions? Right, yeah. Okay. How much do you have in savings? $8,500. Oh, wow. Well, this debt's almost gone. Once you got $10,000, I'd pay that off and have the thousand left for your starter emergency fund. Okay.

And that'll clean up your debt, right? So you both would have no debt at that point? Yeah. Okay. And then we can begin to build a fully funded emergency fund of three to six months of expenses. So looking at your budget, I would go through all of the expenses, add those up for one month. On a given month, it costs us $3,000 to cover all of our basic bills. Let's have six months. That's 18 grand we need to focus on saving up. Okay. That's probably going to take you guys another 12 months. Sounds about right, yeah. Okay. So about a year from now, you're ready to invest because you have no payments in the world and you have a bunch of money ready to protect you. That's going to feel good, isn't it?

Yeah. And you said you guys are young. How old are you two? I'm 21. My wife is 19. She turns 20 in a couple weeks. Oh, my goodness. Think about that.

22 and 20 years old, no payments, fully funded emergency fund. You're graduating. Your income's going to go up. Now we can begin investing 15% of our income at that point and really start to build some wealth. That'd be nice. Yeah. And you talked about starting your marriage on the right foot. Goodness gracious, man, having no debt payments and an emergency fund is going to help you avoid about 90% of your marital fights.

That's the goal. We've wondered, too, though, with both of our work situations, we would really like to get a second car. We've been holding it off, obviously, as much as possible because we don't want to go into debt, but we also like having a savings account that we can just have in case we need something. What would you guys recommend in that

scenario of, you know, if we need a second car, how do we go about getting one? You need more money. You buy the car you can afford in cash. And if you don't like that car, you need to keep saving and you need to keep living off one car. But those are your only two options. Do not go into debt. So one of the things that'll help you here is, because we say things like that and you go, okay, I get it. But what you need to start looking at is what would 7,000 buy me? I'm randomly picking a number. What would 10,000 buy me? What would 12,000 buy me in Salt Lake City? Start shopping. Okay. You can go look at used cars, go under 15,000, under 10,,000, under $5,000, whatever,

and just begin to go, okay, ah, all right. So now we have a target because it's really hard to chase something that's not clear. And so if we go, okay, I saw a couple of cars and I think, I think, babe, if we come up with $10,000, we're going to be able to get you a great car or whatever, okay? Now we have a very clear goal. So now all of a sudden you go, what must I do to get 10 grand extra in cash? Well, I'm going to be reffing more basketball games or I'm doing something different. You know, I'm selling anything that I've got or whatever. So now we go, okay, we work backwards. It's just reverse engineering. Good $10,000 car, eight to 10 is going to get us a pretty solid car for us. So that's what we got to come up with. And so now you have a very clear attainable goal. That's how you accomplish stuff like that. Got it?

Yeah, that makes sense. All right. You're a sharp young man. Congratulations on being in a situation like this where the young married couple, their whole future in front of them, George, in good shape. Yeah. 21 years old. That's amazing. He's getting this stuff now. If he actually does the stuff we just taught him, he's going to be a multimillionaire with a wonderful marriage. It makes me think back to the last segment when you got out the old investment calculator. They are not far from being able to invest and just really reap the benefits.

I thought for a second you were about to go coach some basketball, Ken. You're like, hey, this is a good side gig. Love to see Coach Coleman out there. Yeah. I mean, look, $62 a game isn't bad, but he needs more money than that. This is the Ramsey Show. We'll be right back. Welcome back, America.

You're joining the conversation here on the Ramsey Show. I'm Ken Coleman. George Campbell is with me. And we're here for you. 888-825-5225. 888-825-5225. 888-825-5225. The Ramsey Show question of the day is brought to you by Neighborly, your hub for home services. Neighborly offers a helpful reminder

maintenance checklist. That's not written, right? You can download for free at Neighborly.com. And for the more challenging stuff in and around your home, and that's basically everything for me. Everything, George, is an extra challenge. Everything's a challenge for us, Ken. Neighborly has local pros to help. Find out more at neighborly.com slash Ramsey. Today's question comes from Jason in Virginia. My wife and I have taken the FPU class. We have no debt and we own a home worth $270,000. I feel like the focus of your programs are directed toward people who live in upper middle class. We live in the country. We homestead. We grow a lot of our own food and I work full-time and side jobs. My wife cares for her elderly mother full-time. We hire assistant

care to give my wife one day a week to get out of the house. But when I look over the list that I'm supposed to be living up to, I feel as if I have failed. I've never worked a job that has a retirement plan. I've never had a large income. I feel God has blessed us, but my present retirement plan is work till you die. Wow. That's a strategy. Well, let me say this before you break the money part down. I believe we were made to work. And I think that there's certainly, in the older season of your life, you certainly want to downshift, yes? But not doing anything, working to a point to keep your mind active is certainly helpful. So I understand. We were talking about this the other day, Stacy and I,

with our retirement planner, and he's like, Ken, you're going to work until you're 70. And I go, 70? I want to be putzing around, driving around, still putting a suit on, trying to get myself together in the morning to go do something, speak, communicate, something well into my 70s. So to that end, I don't want to poo-poo this idea, but there's something missing here. There's a cynicism to it. Yeah, something's off here on this. Or I'm going

to have to work until I die, which is different. So he says he's taken FPU. They have no debt. They have a home worth 270. He says he's never worked a job that has a retirement plan. Let me make it clear to everyone out there, just because your job doesn't have a retirement plan doesn't mean you shouldn't be investing or that you can't invest. There are lots of ways to do this if you're self-employed. There's SEP IRAs and solo 401ks. Anyone with earned income can contribute to a Roth IRA or a backdoor Roth IRA if your income is too high. And so there's no excuse to just not be investing. There's even taxable brokerage accounts outside of retirement that you can just shovel money away

to grow with compound interest. So I don't like this idea that, well, I don't have a retirement plan, so I don't invest. So we need to start. I don't know how old you guys are. It doesn't say here. But if she has an elderly mother, it tells me they can't be that old. And so I would get on the ball here and start investing and start having a plan to where you get to work, but you don't have to work. It's a very different mentality. Yeah. Great advice. Thank you, Jason. Get your chin up a little bit. I just want to address something very quickly. Our baby steps are not in any way designed for upper middle class. I do want to address that. I would say they work

for all classes. And let's not forget, by the way, that there are more six-figure earners in America right now living paycheck to paycheck than any other time in American history. So that's upper class, upper middle class, middle class, and down. So this is just- Now, we see the stories. We see people who-, now when they start the baby steps, they tell us, yeah, we were making 40,000, 60,000, 80,000, and we did side jobs and we got our income up and we got the promotion. We switched careers. All of that's going to help you get to that six-figure household level. But the average household in America is 70 grand. And you can do this plan making 70 grand. That's exactly right. It's just discipline and it's just understanding the baby steps that they work together. And once you get momentum, we've seen this, what's the latest data on people that take FPU, how much they are able to pay off and save over that nine-week period?

Oh, I believe it's like an $8,000 turnaround between the debt paid and dollars saved. And see, here's my point. Once you really get this system and you begin to experience momentum, right? Momentum may look like getting that first $1,000 for some people. For others, it's knocking out two or three of the debts in baby step two. But it's kind of like, you ever had a Pringles, George? Oh, my gosh, yes. Have you ever just had one Pringle? No. Once you pop, you just can't stop.

That's the tagline. That's the tagline. And so same thing. Once you get going in the baby steps, the momentum just builds and builds and builds and it's doable. That's so true. Well, other plans out there, Ken, it's like the financial plan is like

cottage cheese. I'm like, I wouldn't even take a spoon of that. It's not interesting to me. It's not. Who wants cottage cheese? Don't even know what's in there. I don't want it. Too much cottage. That's it. Let's go to AJ, who's in Buffalo, New York. AJ, how can we help? Good. How are you guys doing today?

Good. Are you in the Buffalo area? Well, not at the moment. Currently, my wife and I travel for work, so we're kind of up and down the East Coast right now. Well, you know what I was thinking? I'm a big football fan. I was looking at the playoff game last week, all that snow, and just insane what you folks deal with up there. You guys are incredible.

Yeah. We get like eight inches here, and it's like apocalyptic. You guys, it's a Tuesday. No problem. Yeah, it's a Tuesday. So how can we help, AJ? So right now my wife, she's got work. I just picked her up and we were kind of going back and forth on the two paths we're looking at right now. We're looking

to settle down, start a family. You know, we don't want to wait too much longer. You know, we just turned 31, uh, both of us. And right now we have either the path of settling down, getting my wife a new job because she is a traveler, and or buying a house, settling down, whatnot, and or we have been given the option to purchase a fitness center. And we're trying to figure out which financially is going to make most sense for us at this point. Tell me about the fitness center. Before we get to a job for her, what's the fitness center situation? So I previously come from a fitness background and whatnot, and it's always been my goal to potentially down the road at some point own a gym. It's kind of something we've always toyed with with the option if it's something,

you know, maybe like a passive income source or something, you know, down the road for us. And we kind of got given the option to potentially buy a gym and we would need to take a loan out on it. So we're trying to figure out if that is the correct move for us. It'd be an owner-operator gym for us. So my wife would take over that position as a manager there. Is that gym profitable right now? Yes. How profitable? So overall net, as far as cash flow, probably talking like $250 a year. Okay. And how familiar are you with the ins and outs and operations of running a gym? Not super familiar. Yeah. I got warning signs because of two things. Number one,

how much would you have to take out? What would be the loan amount? About $500,000. Yeah, that's crazy to me. You have no experience at all. It's not spitting out a lot of profit. $250,000 is a pretty low margin. And you said passive income. No chance.

Running a gym is about as passive as running a marathon. It's just not a passive income model. And so there's just a couple of signs. And again, I'm not AJ in any way trying to be unkind or I love the entrepreneurial vision. I don't want you to take, of course, we don't tell anybody to take out loans. So the answer on that is no. But it's just not a good business to get into, given the fact that you have no experience in it. And you're thinking it's a passive income model.

I'll give it back to George here, but I would rather your wife go get a really good paying job and let's forget about gym ownership or owning any company right now that we have no experience in at all. George, is that too unkind? No, I think any time we're presented with the option or the opportunity to go half a million dollars into debt, I go, red flag, red flag. Yeah, yikes. I would pause and go, how do we do this the right way? How do we cash flow this? This might be a plan that you do 10 years from now when you can save up that kind of money. But we just had a call this week, AJ. They took out 200 grand

in SBA loans. The business failed. They're working regular jobs and they're screwed now. They're freaking out. And half a million is over double that. So you got to think about the what ifs and not just get starry eyed about what could be. Yeah. save up cash. If you want to get into business, save up the cash to start it the right way. Start slow. Save up a lot of cash to buy something that's already profitable. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show.

I'm Ken Coleman. George Campbell joins me. The phone number is 888-825-5225. If you want to join us for taking your money questions, your questions about your work, your income, that big shovel that we've called it for decades. Let's go to Michael now, who joins us in Sacramento, California. Michael, how can we help? Hey, guys. How's it going? Good. How are you, sir? Doing good. Better than I deserve, as David would say. There you go. Hey, so quick question on specifically baby step number six in terms of paying off the house.

We have a pretty low interest rate at about 3.375. So that being said, does it make more sense to put all the monthly payments, like extra monthly payments towards the house on the installments? Or I was curious about maybe throwing it all in a high yield savings or like an index fund or something and then just getting up the lump sum and kind of paying it off in one go. Great question, Michael. And I love that you're actively trying to pay this house down. And we get this question a lot right now because people do have these lower interest mortgages, you know, sub 5%, and their savings accounts are making 5%. So they're saying, like, why would I even pay off the mortgage? But your question is, should I sock away the money in the high yield savings and at the end of the year, throw that at the mortgage? Correct. So mathematically, I'd have to be looking at the

amortization schedule and get super nerdy, but you can do that with your own numbers. I don't think it's going to make any mathematical sense to do that. Like the spread just isn't worth it for the $100 because your interest on your mortgage payment is going to be calculated monthly. So the sooner we knock that principle down, the less interest we're going to pay every month. And you'll notice the interest is sort of front loaded with that mortgage payment. So when you first start paying down the mortgage, you're not making any progress because most of that is going toward interest. So the sooner we can start flipping the scales here and getting most of the money going toward principal, the less interest you're going to pay, the faster the mortgage is going to get paid off. So I'll tell you what I did. We just put extra money on top of the principal payment every

single month. So once a month, if it was on the first and the mortgage was two grand, let's try to put an extra grand that month on top of the principal. And so that I think is the best and simplest method with the least amount of brain calories. Okay. That makes sense. So, so even if we were to be able to get an index fund or something and even pull it up from like five to 10, 5% to say like 10% or whatever, uh, you would still just suggest paying it off monthly and not, not going through. What's your time horizon for this? Uh, well, so I, I have a, my salary is about 115, uh, that I get paid monthly. And then I have a side business, um, that I also, I get about three to 5,000 on that. Um, so right now we're kind of in the

space where we can live pretty comfortably on the salary, um, and not touch the side stuff as much. Uh, so it, like I said, it varies some months it's two, some months it could be three or five or seven or whatever. Um, so the thought was to just put any of that extra towards, you know, whichever way we decide to go, put that towards the mortgage. Um, and so we owe about three 30 or so. So I was kind of doing some of the math on it and, um, you know, if we average out of like three grand a month extra that we're paying, I think it's going to end up being about like a five or eight year, maybe a time span. So it's going to be a minute, you know, because we're not going to get it paid off right away anyway. So that's where I wasn't sure if, you know, long term, could that interest start kind of building up and working in our favor versus, you know, anyway, it's the 3.3.

Well, paying down the mortgage now is going to be a forced savings plan, which I love. And putting the money in an investment account, you're adding a whole lot of risk to the equation because we don't know what that account's going to look like in a few years. And so I would rather just pay this down now, cut down the amount of interest you're paying every month, and it is going to be so encouraging and freeing to see that interest go down, to see the principal go down, see more going toward this mortgage actually getting paid off. So I would just do it every single month instead of waiting in a lump sum. And the other thing that happens is you have this money sitting in an index fund,

in an investment account, and all of a sudden you go, well, we could really redo the kitchen with this money. Should we really pay it down the house? That's what happens psychologically speaking, Michael. That's just human nature. So I like the forced savings plan of just saying every single month, whatever extra we can muster up, we're throwing at the mortgage. And it's going to be more motivating too, because you're not going to see that mortgage balance go down by doing it the other way. Definitely. Yeah, that makes sense. So that's what I would encourage. And it's what I've done personally. And it's how my wife and I have paid off our mortgage. And I have no regrets of the what-ifs of what if I invested that money or put it in the savings account to make the spread.

It's not interesting to me. Well, the point that you're making here is that a paid-off house or investing in your house by paying it down is a much safer play than even an index fund. As good as that return is long-term. Well, and think about it. If you pay off the mortgage faster, now we free up the mortgage payment to now invest in the index fund for the rest of our life.

Both hands, yeah. So people think, well, I would rather invest. We've still been investing 15% of our income the whole time you're paying down the house. That's baby step four and six. Love it. So great question. Let's go to Hunter now in Salt Lake City.

Hunter, how can we help? Hey, guys. Thanks for having me. Sure. What's up? So I have a career question. So just a little bit of background. I finished a degree in healthcare management within the last year. And just recently, last month actually, I accepted a position to manage a primary care clinic in Salt Lake. And honestly, it's just kind of not feeling right. I've been working in healthcare for the past three years or so, but I'm just wondering if it's a bad idea

to look into a career change after only being in this position for about a month. Might be. Let's figure it out. What's giving you pause? What's making you question this direction? You just went to school for this. You got a job in this, it sounds like. And a month in, you're going, whoa, what is going on there? Give me the rough, the roughest part of this that's causing you to question it. Well, honestly, I don't feel like I've ever been that passionate about the work. Like, when I was working, I was working in a separate clinic before. And honestly, I really liked the people. And when I was going to school for it, I liked the people I was going to school with and everything. I just don't feel like I'm necessarily passionate for the work. And this clinic that I've just started at just doesn't

have a very good culture. So, okay. So we don't like the people. It's okay to say. Yeah, that's part of it. Well, then I would certainly not make a pivot out of this career lane just based on that. It's kind of like saying, I've been married a month and we had our first fight. I think I'm going to want a divorce.

You're like, whoa. Wait a second here. That's part of the deal, right? There's going to be some days where you don't love your wife so much, right? But you choose to love her anyway and vice versa. So I think in this situation, it would absolutely be premature, right? But I will tell you there's what I would call a yellow flag waving. The yellow flag is that you were never really passionate about this work.

Anyway, it sounds like you chose this as a safe professional path. Is that about right? Yeah, that's right. Well, I will tell you the odds are that eventually we're going to make a pivot anyway. But let's kind of like stay still for a moment and realize that, okay, I'm an adult. I made my bed. I got to sleep in it. And either I stay in this healthcare side of things, the healthcare management side of things, I move

maybe six months from now, a year from now to a better culture so that I don't look like a flake because I got to keep this resume and I got to keep this professional image intact so that I can keep climbing. You understand that? Yes. Yes. And now I'm going to figure out, okay, what is that pivot? Let me do the hard work now that I should have done in college. I'm going to give you, by the way, two tools. I'm going to give you my Get Clear Career Assessment, and I'm going to give you the book From Paycheck to Purpose. They go together. The assessment is like a compass, and the book From Paycheck to Purpose is like the field guide to climb the mountain. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. So I'm going to give you those two resources because here's what you're trying to figure out. How can I use what I do best? That's your talent. To do work I love. You mentioned passion. That's what that is. To do work you really enjoy.

To then produce a result that you care deeply about. This is where meaningful work comes into play, right? I see that I enjoy the work, but I also am very, very proud and I feel very significant because of the result that I'm creating. That's the answer, to use what you do best, to do what you love, to produce results that matter. Do you get that? Yeah, that sounds great. That, my man, is what I'm all about helping people figure out. I'm going to give you those two tools. Hang on the line.

Austin will get them to you. Now, listen. Here's the key. Stay where you are now, okay, until we can figure out where we want to go next. Right now, you're just dealing with a bad culture, and you're just going to be a big boy. Put your big boy pants on and learn how to deal with it. And if we make a temporary move that leads us to a long-term play,

that's the goal. George Campbell, good hour. Hunter, thank you for the call. James Childs and the crew, thank you guys. This is the Ramsey Show. We'll see you next time.