The Ramsey Show - App - April in PA Paid Off $380k in 22 Months! (Hour 2)

Episode Date: October 18, 2018

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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Dave Ramsey Show. Where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home market has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. I am Dave Ramsey, your host. Thank you for joining us, America. We're glad you're here. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Rachel is with us in Columbus, Ohio.

Hi, Rachel. How are you? Doing good, Dave. Good. How can I help? My husband and I are really confused as to where to go. We have a good amount of debt to work from, and also he's the one working. I'm the one trying to start a business, and that's not going anywhere.

But with his work schedule, I can't seem to get a job that fits in with his schedule. Why does your job have to fit in with his schedule? We only have one car, and we have a two-year-old daughter and no babysitter, and we can't afford daycare. Okay. Okay. And have you had a career previous? Yes and no.

I worked on ranches in California as well as my parents' ranch, but they were with neighbors, and so that's all my experience is working on ranches. Yeah, which is not a big market for that in Columbus, Ohio. Oh, hell no. I'm a country girl in the city. Okay, hell no. I'm a country girl in the city. Okay. All right.

All right. So starting a business is not a bad idea. That way you can control your time and you can work while the baby's asleep and so forth. What kind of business were you trying to start? Calligraphy, and I also do photorealistic artwork. Okay. And you're going to post that like on Etsy or something or what? Well, I'm on the knot.

And what we are going to do, and that's what we're struggling to figure out what we should do, is we're going to head to the business boutique in Nashville in a couple of weeks. And after that, a week later, I'm going to a wedding expo in Columbus, but I'm struggling to figure out should I do that when, you know, that we're struggling to pay debt. You know, is it worth it to go to the wedding expo at least? Because I do want to go to business boutique. Well, I mean, the way we decide if we're going to do a conference is do we make more than it costs us if we're going to if you're like the wedding wedding boot the wedding uh conference if you're

going to do that if we're going to go to a radio conference are we going to make more than it costs us to have a booth there if we we're going to go to whatever book expo or something to sell one of our books, are we going to sell more than it costs us as a result of our having been there? And so, you know, if you're going to get back information and or clients from the wedding expo that makes you more than it costs you to go, then that's just running a business. You do that all the time. But if you don't have a plan to make the money back, if you don't have a way to make money as a result of going to that, then that is something you may want to rethink.

But I think you're on the right track. I think this is the right way to go for you in your situation to try to get some income coming in. But what I'd love to see you do is make some money before you spend so much money. And so getting some clients. But if that expo is the place that gets you going, if that kicks it off and you say, well, it cost me $500 and I can make $5,000

because of the leads I get there, well, yeah, get all over that, you know. And you just want to have thought that through of how am I going to monetize, how am I going to turn this expense, this exposure at the conference into money. That's what you're looking for. So look forward to seeing you November 1st here in Nashville. MD is with us in Arlington, Texas. Hi, MD. How are you?

Hey, Dave. I'm good. Thank you for everything you do, and thank you for picking up my call. Thank you. How can I help? So, Dave, I'm in. Thank you for everything you do, and thank you for picking up my call. Thank you. How can I help? So, Dave, I'm in a bit of a situation here. Let me just give you a small background. I'm an international student, and I go to UT Arlington in Arlington, Texas. I'm going to graduate with a Master's of Computer Science in the month of December. That is in a month and a half now. And I'm aiming for a full-time job

that I should get somewhere about February, March, or April max, April of 2019. Now, my current income, because I'm an international student, I can just work on campus. So my current income is about $13,000 a year. And I'm going to lose that job in December because once I graduate, I can't work on campus.

And I need to find a job in my field to work according to the immigration rules, which I'll follow. I'm in a current debt of $8,000. The reason why, because I had to pay off my tuition fees and I didn't have money to do that. So I just bought some credit cards and I paid it off just to stay afloat with the tuition fee situation. Now, it's come to a point where I'm going to graduate in December. I make about $850 a month, about $900 a month. And I either have two options. Number one, keep on paying the minimum payments, which I'm doing. Or number two, default on my payments until April, May. Once I get a full-time job, I've watched all of your videos, and I'm going to make sure I pay

off all the debt off to the credit cards. I don't believe in keeping money. Okay. So I wanted to ask you, what's the maximum thing that can happen once I stop paying my minimum payment starting today? Nothing. They won't do anything. They won't do anything for a year. I'm still not sure that's our best route. You can pay the minimum payments today. Your fear is the gap between your university job and your new big job, right? Yes. Okay. So why can you not land a bunch of temp work in the IT field

and work like 80 hours a week for temp services? You're in the field. You're within the law on immigration, and there's tons of people who need help programming, tons of people who need help with architecture, tons of people that need help in the IT field. You can contract yourself out. I mean, I assume with a four-year degree in information systems,

you can program, right? Yes, I'm very good at programming and algorithms, yeah. Okay. Is there anything that keeps you from programming now? You're not allowed to do that while you're on campus, right? No, I do that even right now. I have applied for jobs, and I got jobs from two big blue-chip companies. I'm just waiting for the third and the fourth round,

and they said the starting date would be somewhere about April. No, what I'm saying is little temp jobs doing programming. You said you're doing that now. Yeah, I mean, I can do that after December. Okay. Yeah, I would line up about ten of those and just work all the time doing simple programming between the time you leave university between the time you leave university and the time you start the new big job that is that you've worked so hard to get because you

just got to fill in the middle here if you can't make your payments for some reason during that period of time that's when you'd be forced into not paying the payment today not paying the payment because you're worried that you won't get something lined up for then, that's premature. That's worrying about something that hasn't happened yet. So if I'm in your shoes, I'm going to go get me a bunch of contract work lined up and just program your butt off, man. I mean, work 24-7. There's tons of people who need help with what you're doing in the Arlington, Texas area, man. I mean, you're in Dallas Market, for God's sakes.

It's a tech corridor. You can do all kinds of stuff for 60 days until you land into the new paycheck. Good question. I hope that helps you. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Are high health care costs getting you down? Are you confused trying to navigate your options? Do you wish you could find an affordable, biblical solution to your health care costs? Based on New Testament principles, Christian Health Care Ministries, or CHM,

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Now, I'm telling you, site-wide savings are happening right now, plus take an additional 5% off at blinds.com slash Ramsey. That's how you get the deal. Blinds.com slash Ramsey. Linda in Tennessee says, Unfortunately, I allowed myself to fall into the credit card game. I have two cards with the same balance. Card one charges 27.9% interest.

Card two charges 9.9%. Which one do I attack and pay off first? Well, if they're the same balances, you'd pay off the high interest rate first. But I think there's a bigger problem, Linda. The Bible says, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. What's going on inside of you

causes you to choose the words that you use. You need to stop talking like you're talking. I allowed myself to fall into the credit card game. No, you didn't. You walked straight up, signed up for the card. There was no falling. You're not a victim.

You walked straight up and signed up for stupid and you did it on purpose own it i've done a lot dumber than you've done kiddo but i walked straight up and signed up for stupid and as long as i blamed the government or i blamed the mean old bank or i blamed the irs or blame the economy, I was not getting any better. And I did. I sat around and whined like it was a form of prayer. But you got to own it. You didn't fall into credit card debt.

You ever hear anybody say, I was forced to buy a car? Well, bull crap, you were were not no one has ever forced you to do anything they didn't have a gun at the car dealerships buy a car i'm gonna shoot you there was no collusion there was no extortion you weren't forced to buy a car you want a freaking car and you rationalize the crud out of it. Stop lying to yourself. It's one of the steps you have to take to get your life straightened out. So you didn't allow yourself to fall. You walked straight up and signed up for stupid.

Say it like it is, and it'll help you in the healing process. I know, because I had to go through the same thing, kiddo. Mina's with us in New Jersey. Hey, Mina you hey dave how are you better than i deserve how can i help uh first of all thanks for taking my call um my question is um it's um of two parts actually the first one um i i make about 40 to 45000 a year. I support a family of four, and I work for the Postal Service. I have a student loan debt of about $15,000. And I have two friends. One of them is asking me to go for a business, like a subway business.

So I was thinking about taking a loan for that. And my other friend is offering me to go buy a house with him to share like a two-family house. So I take one apartment and he takes the other. And it's going to be, of course, with a mortgage loan too. So I wanted to know what should I do. Okay. Well, we tell folks not to borrow money around here if you've listened to this show very much. The shortest path to wealth and peace in your finances is to avoid debt. And on top of that, I would tell you to avoid partnerships.

It's the only ship that won't sail. So what that means is that if you still want to remain friends with both these guys i would suggest you say no because at the end of these stories there's a nightmare going in partners with somebody in debt to go into the restaurant business that you don't know squat about is a good way to end up bankrupt and lose your friendship forever going in partners with somebody to buy a house, and then he doesn't pay his half or can't pay his half, or you don't pay your half or can't pay your half, is a precursor to the ending of a friendship and a foreclosure.

So, no, I wouldn't do either one of those. And that's my reasoning. I think you'll have a lot better life if you avoid both of those paths. And you can develop a career path that does not involve you going into debt to start a business. As a matter of fact, most businesses start without debt. They just start small. We started this one without debt on a car table in my living room. We didn't have a big fancy studio.

We went down to the local radio station, drove over there, and they let us use their stuff because we worked for free there. Wow. You just figure out a way to get going. And you what we call bootstrap it. And it works. But you don't have to go get an SBA loan and go deeply in debt to buy a subway franchise in order to be in business. That's a mythology. Thomas is with us in Philadelphia. Hey, Thomas,. Thomas is with us in Philadelphia. Hey, Thomas, how are you? Hi, Dave.

Thank you very much for taking my call. Sure, what's up? I just graduated with a degree in actuarial science back in May. Wow. And I'm working at McDonald's making $9 an hour. Why? I've been applying and applying, and I just can't find a job, and I don't know what to do.

Hmm. Well, I would assume that the primary job for that would be at insurance companies, correct? Yes. Through the end of my last year of school, I got very turned off to actuarial science. So I've been applying to finance jobs, and I can't get anything because everyone wants to have experience, and I don't have the experience.

And I graduated early, so I did summer classes, and you can't do internships for summer classes. What kind of financial job are you trying to get into? Financial analyst, financial, like I've been even doing accounting, like accounts payable and receivables. Yeah, entry-level stuff. All you do is get your foot in the door. Okay. Well, here's one thing I will tell you, and Ken Coleman will tell you this as well.

Go to thekencolemanshow.com and download his free PDF on how to put together a resume. But resumes and applications without relationship are useless. I'll give you an example. We have 800 people here, just under 800 people work on our team. We hired 150 to 200 last year. We had 15,000 applications for those 200 hires. You get lost in that. And it's not that I don't want to answer and talk to every one of those 15,000 people.

It's just logistically not reasonable. And so what ends up happening is you get lost in the stack of that stuff unless you know someone that works there. And you don't have to be best friends with them. You just, because I got to tell you, we don't ever hire somebody because somebody calls me and says, hire them ever. But we would give them an interview and pull their resume out of the stack. You got to get out of the pile, you know. And so some of these places you're trying to get on with, you need to figure out if

your sister that's married kid plays soccer with a guy that works over there or something like that where you can find someone that will put in a little bit of a word for you to at least get the door open. And that will get you in the door. Again, you're not going to get hired because of that kind of a reference. As a matter of fact, there are very few references where you just call up somebody and they get you hired. That almost never happens.

That's a decent job anyway. I mean, if they're hiring just bodies, you can get on with something like that. But at a good job, they're really going to want to interview you and learn about you. And that would be true here. And so we don't guarantee anybody a hire, but we will at least talk to them. And it might be a very short conversation. No, you don't qualify. It doesn't fit. It's not what we're looking for. But at least we'll talk to them and get their resume out of the pile if somebody knows them. So go download that

and listen to the Ken Coleman Show. He'll help you with all this stuff. It's very, very difficult out there, but I think you can land something. Did you know, statistically, when it comes to life insurance and protecting your family, that women are more likely to be uninsured or underinsured than men? This doesn't make any sense. Women make up half the workforce, contribute mightily to family incomes, and in many cases are the breadwinners and take care of their families 24 hours a day. This is one of the most overlooked areas when it comes to financial planning.

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In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions, April is with us. Hi, April. How are you? I'm doing well, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. Where do you live? Just outside of State College, Pennsylvania. Oh, cool. Welcome to Nashville. Thank you. And here to do a debt-free scream.

Yes. How much have you paid off? $380,000. Whoa! My goodness. How long did this take? 22 months. Okay. And your range of income is?

It was about $415,000 a year. Okay. My goodness gracious. What in the world do you do? I'm an emergency room physician. Okay. So you're an MD? Yes.

Okay. And you're working your brains out. Yes. And $380,000 had to be med school debt about 260 of it was in student loans and about 120 was on a mortgage you paid off your house and everything yeah wow how old are you 31 how long you been out of med school uh about three years okay so you come out of med school and uh kind of a year or so goes by, but then right after that, you decide to attack this stuff with a vengeance.

Tell me the story. My goodness. Yeah, well, I finished, it was actually residency three years ago, and when I came out, I started going to a church that was doing Financial Peace University, and some of my friends were taking it

and talking about it and saying great things, and so I decided to download your audio book, Total Money Makeover, and started listening to it. And I think the turning point for me was when I got to the point about the debt snowball and listing your debt. Because up until that point, I had been just doing everything to try to avoid thinking about it.

It was stressful. I didn't even want to deal with it. And I logged on, and I saw that in the past three years, I had been paying about $13,000 a year and about $15,000 a year was accruing in interest every year. So I really wasn't even making a dent in the student loans. And so I knew something needed to change and I needed to get serious, especially being in my late 20s at the time and single. I didn't want to have this burden looming over my head for the next decade or two.

And certainly if I got married or had a family in the future, I didn't want to bring that burden into that. Well, you paid off a ridiculous amount of debt with a ridiculously wonderful income. So you, wow. Okay, so you finished residency and really about a year went by before you started this, right? Yeah, roughly a year. Okay. Did you come straight out and go into ER? Yeah.

Yeah, my first job was in emergency medicine. So you were making bucks already, but then when you sat down and did the math on this, you went, oh, I can do this. Yeah. I just realized that something absolutely needed to change because I couldn't live like that anymore. Wow. Look at you. I I mean you just dove in now do you take a lot of extra time at er to in order to get the income at this or is that what an er physician makes so I actually went to my boss and asked if I could work on light shift in the er and I did that for the entire 22 months 22 months because it paid significantly more to work nights.

Yeah. It's dadgum near double, isn't it? It's about 20% more an hour. Only 20% more. Okay. All right. But wow. So you really sacrificed to get this done. Did people think you were losing your mind?

I mean, your family's like, well, you're a doctor. You ought to be enjoying your life. I mean. Yeah. The one thing I heard a lot of was in regards to buying a new car because I was still driving my used car from medical school at that point despite being out for a couple years. Yeah, you did it right. And so my friends and family would tell me, you know, you're crazy. You can afford a new car.

You can afford a car payment. And I would tell them, no, I really just want to save and I'll buy my next car with cash and it'll probably be a used car. And they thought I was nuts. Yeah. Well, you can drive anything you want to drive now. I mean, you make $415 415 000 you don't have any payments look at you this is an amazing story very well done thank you very well done well you did exactly what i try to get docs to do most docs come out and go i whew, I finally worked all this time. I've gone to school my whole freaking life.

I deserve a new house, a new car. I deserve a trip. And they spend money like water. You've seen them do it. Oh, yeah, definitely. And it's crazy. And instead, all you did was you just kept living like a broke college student. Yeah, and I think that was really the key to getting out of debt was just to keep living like a resident while I was in those first few years out because that was really the easiest time to do it.

And so I think that was probably the most important step that I took. Yeah, because now, I mean, you make $300, $400, $500, whatever you make, you're going to be unbelievably wealthy. So you said you're how old, 30? 31. 31. Wow. With this fabulous income. Congratulations. Thank you. I'm so proud of you.

So who was your biggest cheerleader? I know you had to have detractors. That was easy, yeah. But who was the biggest cheerleader? I would say my parents. My mom had followed you for years, and also people in my church family as well, because they talked a lot about you and were encouraging me to look into you because they knew I had a lot of student loans. Yeah, yeah.

So, I mean, you went from being completely crushed by student loan debt to completely owning it. Yeah, I felt like I was suffocating under the debt. I remember being so scared when I was sitting there and actually looking at the balances and I didn't know if it was even going to be possible to get out, but I didn't really have another plan, and so I figured I'm just going to go with Dave Ramsey and stick with it and just commit to it and see what happens.

And 22 months later, I made my final payment. Yeah. You paid off almost $200,000 a year for two years. I mean, that's the rate you were on, which is pretty incredible. But you're making $415,000 minus taxes, which takes a big chunk of it. So you weren't living, you weren't splurging on anything. No. You weren't starving to death, but you weren't splurging.

And just completely leaned in. So as you're going along, you're hitting this thing. I mean, you're hitting it almost $20,000 a month. Yeah. $15,000 to $20,000 a month on a given month. At what point when you started doing that did you go, wait a minute, this is actually going to work? How far in were you before the switch kind of flipped for you? Well, I paid off all the smallest loans first.

I had a total of 20 different student loans. And so I was able to attack the smallest ones first. And then once I saw how easy it was to do that, then I started to have some more hope that I would be able to pay off the largest ones I think my largest individual loan was right around fifty thousand dollars and prior to that I had just looked at it and I was like there's no way like there's I'm not going to be able to do this so you were chunking some of these like one or two a month yeah knocking them off the little baby ones when you first started yeah and that yeah that had to give you a lot of emotional boost. Definitely.

Because that snowball really kicked in for you then. It did what it was supposed to do. It let you know that this is going to work. Wow. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. All right. So what is the big takeaway? When someone says, oh, I'm a doc.

It's hundreds of thousands. I can't get out of debt. You say, yes, you can. Here's what you do. You do this. I think the most important thing is just to stop running from it, stop trying to hide from it like I was trying to do. I just felt crushed and I was so afraid that I would never get out of debt. And once I faced it

and once I took personal responsibility for it and realized that I'm the one who signed the papers for the loans, I needed to get myself out. Then I just made a plan and stuck with it and made the commitment to change. Are your parents good with money? They are. Their income is much less than what mine is. Most people's. Yeah, I definitely learned how to live on a budget debt from my parents. Also, they had been in quite a bit of credit card debt in the past, and they always told me, you know, don't be stupid with credit cards.

You know, make smart purchases. And so I think I learned a lot of those principles from them. Yeah, there was a sense of character that came from them that caused you to be able to do this. That's what I was thinking. Yeah. Very good. Very good. Well, I'm proud of you.

I know they are. Well done. Very well done. What a great, great story. Well, we've proud of you. I know they are. Well done. Very well done. What a great, great story. Well, we've got a copy of Chris Hogan's book for you, Retire Inspired. That's the next chapter in your story. And we want you to go on and be a millionaire. You'll be that in about 20 minutes and outrageously generous as we go along.

Well done. Very, very well done. Woo-hoo! Touchdown. Touchdown. April from State College, Pennsylvania. $380,000 paid off in 22 months, making $415,000 ER doc cleaning up med school debt. Way to go.

Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. I'm debt-free! Yeah! Yeah! Wow! Wow! Wow!

Wow! Yeah, you don't get those numbers very often. That's pretty incredible. You don't get those numbers on either side of the equation. Most of you. I mean, what if you were making $41,000 a year and you had $38,000 in debt? That'd be the same ratio. Yeah, two years, baby. You can do it. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Thank you. Eric is in Abilene, Texas.

Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show, Eric. Oh, well, good afternoon, Dave. Afternoon. How can I help? Well, I've got a simple question. I hope I'm working the seven simple steps. We've got about 4,000 saved. Number one, fortune. Number two, debt.

Snowballs. But I'm getting ready to retire from the military, and I really feel like I want to have more money saved versus paying my bills off. I'm trying to decide what's the right idea as I go hunting for a new job. Okay. When will you retire?

May. Okay. And how long have you been in the military? It'll be 22 and a half years. Well, thank you for your service. Thank you. So what's your plan? What are you going to do?

I'm not positive. I've got a business degree, and I thought about doing some work in human resources, just staying out in West Texas, really, supporting the wife and kids. Okay. Well, I think the big thing here is that you need to line up your career. You got until May. If you get down to March and you don't have anything lined up, that's because you haven't worked very hard at it, number one.

But number two, you've got a business degree and 22 years in the military. You ought to be able to line something up. I don't know if you can line it up in that particular town or what it is you're wanting to do, but you need a plan. You'll obviously have a great military retirement coming out, right? It'd be okay to cover the household in the election, Phil. Okay. All right. And does your wife work outside the home?

Yeah, she's a school teacher. Okay. So between her income and your military retirement, the household's not going to fold up. No, not at all. It'd be about, between the two of those, about $75,000 a year. Yeah, and that's if you don't work. Yes, sir. So why do you need to save money? I'm just concerned with we're used to spending more money now.

We're trying to get our budget and everything under control, and I just want to make sure that... So what I would do instead is I would just get my budget under $75,000 between now and then, and I would get my career lined up between now and then. You've got plenty of time. Roger that. Yeah. I just, I don't want, I mean, you can't save up enough to not deal with those two issues.

Agreed? Yes. Because you'll burn through whatever it is. If you never go back to work and you always spend more than the 75 no matter how much you save if you saved 100 grand you burn through it eventually you know so we have to we have to go ahead and address those issues so let's just address them now but again thank you for your service we appreciate it and so yeah i get my career lined up and i get my budget lined up under 75 000 and that takes the pressure off of getting the career lined up exactly.

And so if it takes you a year even, you're okay. It's not your good long-term plan. But, no, I think I'd go ahead and work on getting my debts paid off now and build your emergency fund, whatever you've got to do. But let's keep working your debt snowball, keep working your baby steps, get the career lined up. That's what I would do. Ryan is in Atlanta.

Hey, Ryan, how are you? I'm doing good. How are you doing, Dave? Better than I deserve. What's up? So I had a question on investing. So I guess a short overview. I'm 30.

My wife's 33. We've got a combined income right now of about $175,000. Our only debt is mortgage, a car payment, and then a little bit of student loan that we've got to cash to pay it off, which we're about to go ahead and rip the Band-Aid off and just pay it. Even after that, we've got at least six months of, you know, emergency expenses set back, emergency fund. I've got a 401K and a pension. She has a 401K and profit sharing. And my main question is with our extra income every month,

is if we should be throwing it at something that's strictly tied to retirement, which it seems like we have a lot of, or if it would be better to put that into something more accessible like some kind of a managed fund that could be accessed prior to your retirement, if need be. Yeah, we call those bridge funds. At some point, I would go there, but I think you've got some cleaning up to do. Y'all have been pretty sloppy. You make a lot of money to be as broke as you are.

How long have you been making that kind of money? The last couple of years. Okay. It's time to clean up the rest of this mess, then. Yeah, let's write some checks today and pay off student loan in the car. You got to pay off both of them? We do, yeah. Good.

Let's do that today. And then you need to have your emergency fund of three to six months of expenses, not income, three to six months of expenses. And that's what we call taking you through baby step three, which lays the foundation for a solid financial plan. You're debt-free, and you have your rainy day fund, except your home. Okay? Then we move on to what we call Baby Steps 4, 5, and 6.

Do you have children? No, not right now. Okay. Then Baby Step 4 is 15% of your income going into retirement. That's not much with what you guys make, but it's a good start, and it's not going to keep you from retiring and doing the bridge stuff later, which I'm going to come back to and actually do what you want to do, but I'm going to do it in the right order.

Once you're doing that, then baby step five is kids' college. That does not apply here. Baby step six is pay off your house early. I'm going to reach over and knock the house out doing that, then baby step five is kids college. That does not apply here. Baby step six is pay off your house early. I'm going to reach over and knock the house out beyond that, which has the same effect to your net worth that the bridge loan does because having your home paid off frees you up and enables you to need a lot less income to retire before you can access the retirement funds. Now, then once the house is paid off, which really, dude, how much do you own your home?

I think we owe $280. Okay. If you do what I'm talking about here, probably in about five years, maybe seven, before you're 40, your house is going to be paid off. And by then, you're probably making $2, $2. quarter if you're on a normal career track, maybe even more. Okay? So your income is increasing. You're 100% debt-free before you're 40.

Now we can do a lot of stuff. You have a single payment in the world mathematically with $175, two and.25, whatever it is coming in. Now you max out retirement and you build other wealth, which will have the effect you're looking for of what we call a bridge financing or bridge savings or bridge investing, bridge between age 52 and if you wanted to have enough to do some stuff with before then. But the whole idea being that we're going to build wealth as a result of having no payments to go with your fabulous income. Your most powerful wealth building tool is your income.

We've just finished a study here that Chris Hogan's doing a book on of the largest study of millionaires ever done. And what we find is, is they pay off their home in an average of 10.2 years most of them do not make as much as you make the vast majority of millionaires don't make as much as you make and then they steadily invest in their 401ks and once that's maxed out they do other investing in just good mutual funds or buy some real estate that you pay cash for that's income producing or something like that, where you've got some other monies that you've got access to that is not all tied up in retirement. And so you're thinking, right, I just put it to the back of the line.

It's to the front of the line on when you're going to get to it. And you'll get there faster if you'll do it the way I'm talking about than the way you're talking about. You need to clean up this mess. You make too much money to be sitting around with a stupid car payment. It's ridiculous. Hey, man, thanks for the call. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Quintella is following me on YouTube.com slash Dave Ramsey.

By the way, you can watch this show live on YouTube, and you can see all the debt-free screams on there, and you can see all the rants on there, some really good stories about people having turned their lives around, all kinds of very cool stuff. Our YouTube channel is packed full of stuff. You can just sit there and watch, watch, watch, watch, watch. And if you want to learn every time we post a new video,

if you don't know, when you subscribe to a YouTube channel, you get an email every time we post a new video. So go to the Dave Ramsey Show YouTube channel. Quintella says, I've got $50,000 worth of debt, about $40,000 of that student loans, five in credit card debt, the other five in medical bills. I really don't know where to begin. Well, Quintella, we tell folks to list their debts, smallest to largest, not counting your home. Pay minimum payments on everything but the little one and attack the little one.

When it's gone, take the payments you used to pay there and any other money you can squeeze out of your life and your budget, and you throw it at the next one. Every time you pay off one, you've got more money to attack the next one. And list them smallest to largest and pay them off in that order. Hey, thanks for the call. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, it's Kelly, Dave's phone screener. We finished 2017 with a bang as the fourth most downloaded podcast of the year.

Thanks to all of you for listening and helping us spread the word.