The Ramsey Show - App - Avoiding Family Money Drama (Hour 2)

Episode Date: November 10, 2023

Девочка-пай 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, your work, and your relationships. 888-825-5225 is the phone number to jump in. It's toll-free America, 888-825-5225 is the phone number to jump in. It's toll-free, America. 888-825-5225. I'm Ken Coleman. George Campbell joins me.

George is our money expert, and I'm your work expert today. So those two things go together a lot. So if you've got any work questions, if you're wondering about why you've been passed over, want to get promoted, you're feeling stuck, not sure which way to go in your career, you want to add some money to your baby steps due to extra work. I'm here to answer any work-related questions as well. So come one, come all. We'd love to talk to you. Nicole starts us off this

hour in Dallas, Texas. Nicole, how can we help? Hi, guys. Thank you guys so much for taking my call today. Um, so this is kind of what's going on. Um, my dad unfortunately relapsed on meth. Um, and he was supposed to take over my grandfather's business. And with the relapse, my grandfather came to my husband and I and said, would you guys be willing to do this when I pass? He's in his 80s. And the business is probably worth three to five million. And I just want to know what I can do to protect this business and from the crazy family and grow the wealth and be successful. Okay. So do you want to take over? Sounds like you do. Yeah. So I'm actually a nurse and my husband was active duty military. He just retired. What is the business?

It's a motorcycle business. Motorcycle. You guys sell, repair? So we sell the parts for Harley Davidson Motorcycles. Yeah. We don't do any repair work. We just sell the parts. That's a big business. Very successful. Nice. Yeah. It don't do any repair work. We just sell the parts. That's a big business. Very successful. Nice. Yeah, it's a very successful business.

All right. And so when you say protect it from the family, you mean protect it from your dad getting it? Well, my dad and also my aunt and uncle, unfortunately, all three of them are addicts. One lives under a bridge by his choice. The other one lives with various people, couch surfing. I mean, they're all in their 50s and 60s, and this is just what they've made of their lives, unfortunately. All right. So am I right that if your grandfather puts it in the will and all of his documents and it's laid out that you and your husband are going to be inheriting the business, you will be sole inheriting the business. You will be sole owners of the business upon his death.

Does that not take care of that issue? Well, yes and no. My issue is my dad tries to claim that the business is his because he took out a sole proprietorship in Dallas County for the name, and so he's trying to say it's his. What does your grandfather say about that claim? Not really anything. He says not to worry about it, but I do worry about it. Well, I'm calling you guys. No, no, no. And I appreciate that. But I mean, it's, you know, I can claim to have dunked a basketball in the 10th grade, but I can claim lots of crazy things. I never did dunk, George. No one thought you did. That's what I thought. Never could quite get there. I just couldn't. I tried. But anyway, so, uh an easy fix. This is we go to granddad and we say,

granddad, I know you told me not to worry about it. I want to know that I know that I know that this is locked up. So when you say don't worry about it, why? Do you have some type of documentation that supersedes my dad's erroneous sole proprietorship claim. Like I would go ahead and get with granddad and say, so that when you're gone, I'm celebrating you and your legacy and taking it to the next level. I don't want to fight with my dad. I don't want to fight with my uncle, my aunt. And so let's get this locked up to where my dad has no standing at all.

Let's get a lawyer involved and have your grandfather show you the paperwork that would override or whatever. You need to see with your eyeballs and talk to a legitimate lawyer and know that this is all settled and that your dad's claim is bogus. That's all that you have to do. 100%. And this is between your grandfather and your father. Yeah. You don't need to get in the middle of this. Your grandfather needs to communicate all of this and you need to say, I'm not taking over this business until we have all of this

in writing, that this is free and clear, that we are the sole owners, that they will have no stake in this before you step foot. That's right. But this is a lawyer problem.

You know, we can only take it so far. We are not professionals in that regard. And great advice, George. This is granddad does this. Granddad's got to talk to his grown son who's a meth addict and he's got to fix this mess. Because my guess,

he's not in the will to inherit anything, let alone the business. Would I be correct? Yes. Okay. Does that answer your question, Nicole? Yes, that does. And I will get with him and see what he says. It doesn't make it any less messy. Wait a second. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,, and I will get with him and see what he says. It doesn't make it any less messy. Wait a second. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I heard a little something there. A little sass.

No. No, not sass. I heard doubt. Are you doubtful that granddad's going to take the necessary steps to confront this? Yes, only because he has given my father probably no BS to you guys, probably five businesses, very nice businesses. My grandfather's always been an entrepreneur, and my dad's run him into the ground. And there's just something about my dad. I don't know if he's the golden child or what.

So, yeah, there is a little doubt there. I mean, I'm going to talk to him. All right, what if we do this? What if we do this? What if we then take out the grandfather confrontation piece and the grandfather who came to you and said, I want you to take this business, then the grandfather just makes, he shows you and proves to you or goes and gets necessary paperwork done to where the sole proprietorship that your dad has is irrelevant. And so maybe we remove the confrontation piece because he won't do that part. But do you think he'll do the other?

Yes, he will do that. Well, then do that. What we were getting at is like, this is grandfather needs to take care of this. It's not fair for him to put that on you to deal with that. To tell dad he has no part in this. Right. And by the way, I don't think anybody needs to tell your dad anything so i'm fine with granddad going and showing you okay yep trust me this is it's in the will i'm sitting with my lawyer here today you and your hub's husband

get the business you know you don't have to tell your dad anything keep him out of it just be ready when he comes running for his piece of the pie and you have to get legal involved and it's going to be messy which is well it shouldn't be messy if you get all this done with your grandfather there's nothing there's no mess it's like well the mess is just dealing with you know that squeaky wheel of an addicted addicted dad well they can go have a party under the bridge for all i care you got got to get this thing right, you know, and you get it right by having granddad lay it all out. This is my wish. This is exactly who's getting the business. And then there's no argument. Do you know what I'm saying? Right. The key is clear communication upfront in writing and get legal involved.

Yeah. But I'm sorry you have to deal with this. This is not a fun way to take over a family business. No, no. But if I'm your grandfather, I want with this. This is not a fun way to take over a family business. No. No. But if I'm your grandfather, I want to make sure I leave a legacy, and legacy means the next person ain't going to screw it all up. And there's no track record that shows me your dad's going to be able to handle this. And you and your hubs are going to do great. We're excited for you, Nicole. Just take care of this.

Don't leave it up to chance. In paper, in writing, no worries, no messes. Wow, interesting stuff. Man. All right, don't move, because on the other side of this break, we have more of America's Questions. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show.

I'm Ken Coleman. George Campbell joins me this hour. The phone number is 888-825-5225. 888-825-5225. Before we get to the calls, it's time for our Neighborly Question of the Day, brought to you by, of course, Neighborly, your hub for home services. If you need work done on your home or yard, but you don't know where to start or who to trust, Neighborly is the answer. Find all the help you need at Neighborly.com slash Ramsey. That's Neighborly.com slash Ramsey. Today's question comes from Alan in Georgia. Should I leave my family's business? Although I get a lot of great experience there,

I've noticed it struggles to pay the techs and owners what they deserve and cover expenses. There is also lots of debt that hasn't been addressed. I have helped support it with my own income and hiring feels impossible due to these challenges. I could find a job making a similar salary, but feel guilty as if I'm running from the problem. On the other hand, I don't feel I have the capability to fix the problem either. Thank you for your time. There's your answer, Alan. Because you don't have the capability to fix the problem, it is no longer your problem, and thus no guilt. You got to move on, because this is quickly going to turn into a lot of bitterness, a lot of resentment, and all of a sudden Thanksgiving and Christmas is ruined, all because you just went, I feel like I have to stay in the

midst of this mess. As opposed to you leave, you go do your own thing. You leave behind the mess that you can't fix in your mental capacity, emotional capacity towards the family that you're working with that won't fix the problem. All that goes away and you enjoy Thanksgiving and Christmas. I think it's that simple. Yeah, the only way you should be involved in a family business if it's a healthy family and a healthy business. There it is. Otherwise, you have no moral legal obligation

to just stick this out for the rest of your life because it's mom and dad's business. I'm sorry, but if they're not running it properly, you got to go, hey, thanks for the opportunity. I learned a lot here. I love you guys. I'll always support you, but I can't be a part of this financially or career-wise. I agree. Yeah.

That's a hard conversation. I'm not trying to minimize that. There's going to be feelings involved because this is mom and dad's baby, and this has been in the family for generations, and you're betraying the family. But guess what? You can't control how they react. And I'd rather choose guilt over resentment, as some famous psychologist once said. Or lots of people have said, and then maybe it got attributed to somebody. But we digress. We digress. Thanks for the question. As we get back to the phones, we'll take any of your work-related calls. I'll help you out in that area. If you're feeling stuck, you're feeling confused, a little bit bored, you want to move on, you're trying to figure out how to do that in the middle of the baby steps, we could talk about that as a part of the money questions as well. And we're going to get to Tim now in Des Moines, Iowa. Tim, how can we help?

I've got a question today about the debt snowball. My wife and I are on baby step two, and for the last eight months, we've been in stork mode. And so as we've got our debts listed out, we kind of just keep staring down that last debt, which is just the largest number. And we wonder, because we've got a large lump sum, if it would make sense for us to pay down that largest debt with the lump sums that we have smaller debts to work with and are not kind of staring down a giant at the end of the snowball. Well, what's the giant? What's the biggest debt? What's the smallest debt? So the smallest one is $3,000. The largest one is going to be $14,000.

We've got a total of about $52,000 in all student loans. It's broken down into nine different accounts within those student loans. And so it's about $2,000 to $6,000 of the rest. And then there's that $14,000 one at the end. And currently we have $19,000 in savings. Okay. $19,000 in savings, $52,000 in debt, and that's all student loans? Yes. So you're saying, hey, I could throw the $19,000 at the $14,000, knock out the biggest one, free up the payment,

and continue on the snowball from there, or should I just follow it as it's laid out, smallest to largest? Yes. How many debts would you knock out with, let's say you have your $1,000 emergency fund, we throw $18,000 at the other debts, how many student loans would you knock out from the smallest? It would be about four. And what

would the payments amount to from those four, the minimum payments? About just over $100 a month. Between the four? Yes. I thought it was going to be more. Okay. Yeah, so we were defaulted into the income-driven payment, and so total, our minimum payments for all of the student loans only ends up being about $300 a month. Oh, gosh. Well, the good news is you have way more to throw at that. The bad news is that sucks, and if people follow that plan, they would never get out of debt, and it would balloon in growth. So what's your household

income? How much are you guys able to throw a month toward debt on top of minimum payments? We make about a hundred thousand a year between my wife and I and five jobs. And then we are doing just about $2,000 a month right now. Awesome. So at that rate, if you took 18 from the 52, that would knock you down to 34. And you said you could do 2000 a month? Yeah. Man, you're going to knock this out real quick. 17 months, according to my records. And I think you're going to even beat that because it's going to become addictive. You're going to free up more payments. But no, I would just follow the debt snowball. This is not going to free up a $700 student loan payment that you can then use towards the other debts. So I'm going to follow the debt snowball,

knock out four of these. What are the total? You said you have nine total. So you're about to knock off half of the student loans. That's motivating. When you get to that last one, it's just going to be chipping away. You'll freed up some payments and in six months you'll have that last one knocked out. But I would just stay the course with this one because it's not going to be chipping away. You'll have freed up some payments, and in six months, you'll have that last one knocked out. But I would just stay the course with this one because it's not going to make a financial difference. And I think mentally, seeing more debts get knocked out is better than seeing a big one get knocked out. Okay. Less to mentally manage.

Yeah, thanks for the call, Tim. All right, let's go to Birmingham, Alabama next. Casey's there. Casey, how can we help? Hey, my husband and I are in baby step four five and six and we have just kind of over the years found ourselves with a lot of extra cash in a high yield savings account trying to figure out best way to utilize that and I stumbled upon the idea of doing a mortgage recast and like the idea of maybe lowering my monthly payments so that maybe I can

start taking some more time off of work and being home with the kids a little bit more while they're in the teenage years and wondered if that was a good idea. Well, the reasoning behind it is a very, you know, I like the motive, but mortgage recasting doesn't actually do anything. It's not going to change your interest rate. It will lower your monthly payment, but it also causes you to be less motivated to continue paying down the principal. And so it'll just take longer to pay down at that point. Yeah, right. But it does give me the option to, you know, if I do have certain times when I'm taking more time off, I've done a big chunk of money towards that to where it's, you know,

I am paying it down quicker. We're usually paying about $3,000 extra a month already on it, and I would keep doing that. It would just allow me to do that without that money sitting in the high-yield savings account. But if your income doesn't change and your expenses don't really change because you're still throwing the $3,000 a month, then we haven't really solved any problem. Could you just stay home while continuing on as you have been? No, definitely not. My income is a little bit higher than the family. Right. But I think what we're getting at here, Casey, is you're really trying, the problem you're trying to solve is you'd like to spend more time with the kids. So you're not accomplishing anything with a mortgage recast. In your mind, you're going, well, it gives

me more time with the kids. And I think we can figure out more time with the kids without doing the recast. So what has to be true? So let's just assume that we were going forward with the recast, okay? Which we're not. We don't think you should do that. It doesn't really accomplish anything for you financially. So really, we want to figure out with our time and with the families what we're trying to solve for. So how much time would you want to spend with the kids? Extra time where you're not in the traditional workplace? Just being home in the afternoons when they get home from school. But give me, I mean, let's talk real hours here. What are we talking about? Probably an extra nine hours a week off. All right. Nine hours a week. So what I would be doing

is I'd be thinking, how do we find nine hours a week. So what I would be doing is I'd be thinking, how do we find nine hours a week? How do you make the same money you're making or pretty darn close and so we don't affect our income and all of our financial goals? Because you guys are killing it, by the way. So how can I do that and find nine hours with the kids? Is it a job change? Is it a shift change because you're so valuable? I think that's what you're trying to solve for. Don't you think, George? How do we find that nine hours or seven hours or six hours? That's a very different problem.

I just don't think refinancing and doing the recast actually solves anything here. It might mean you have too much house. It gets you the nine hours, but it hurts you another way. Let's get to the root of the problem before just moving around the debt a little bit. Yeah, I think that's the way to go. And I love your heart for that. I think it's a good idea. And I think you can do it. I think you got to get creative and you have to look specifically in that area. Thanks for the call, Casey. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm Ken Coleman. George Campbell joins me this hour. By the way, it's camel with a K.

I want to make sure you get that right. Thank you for that, Ken. It's not the animal, but it is pronounced as such. That's right. I like that. And very easy to remember. We've got a great studio audience. Camel and Coleman.

Camel and Coleman. We sound like the worst law firm ever. We're like the law firm, you know, like in Rainmaker. You know, we're just trying to win the first case. That's all it takes. By the way, do you know that movie, The Rainmaker? It's been a while. I was probably a toddler, but you know. I mentioned it on the show yesterday with Rachel Cruz. Never heard of it. Your references are, you know. She acted like I was her grandpa. They're a bit dated. We can all admit that.

Does that mean that I'm dated? No, you're classic. That's how I look at you. Timeless. Look at how he spins, folks. Nobody. George should run for Congress. That was just absolutely effortless there. Didn't sprain an ankle at all. Well done, my friend, as always. Shall we help, Melissa? I hope so. All right. Melissa, how can we help? Hello. Hello, guys. Thank you. I'm so grateful to get your advice today. All right. Well, let's see if it's any good. We don't know yet. So I am new to the Ramsey show. I've been binge watching for about two months. And what I'm realizing, well, first of all, we're on baby step number two. And what I'm realizing

as I listen to you guys is that I haven't, we haven't been putting nearly enough into our 401k. And so I'm trying to concentrate on baby number two, but I'm nervous for the advice of stopping my investing because I feel like I'm 46 years old, and I feel like I'm already behind, and so it makes me nervous that I'm going to be in trouble at retirement. Well, your nerves are justified, but there's a reason why we do it, George. Absolutely. Well, tell us about your nest egg. What's in there now between the household? So I have $134,000 in my 401k. I also have an IRA from a previous job, and that's got $104,000 in it, but I'm not adding to that one. So it's just sitting there, hopefully growing. Okay.

And then my husband has about $80,000 in his 401k. Okay. So that's not nothing. I mean, you could be working another... It's not nothing, but it's not enough at retirement, I don't think. Well, it's not right now, but compound growth is going to work its magic over the next 15 to 20 years of your careers. And by the way, if you're listening to this show, we're going to up your investing, and there's going to be catch-up contributions and you're going to start to

make leaps and bounds on the investing side. That's what I'm nervous about. But first, we got to eat our vegetables and that's getting out of debt. Yes. So how much debt do you have? Counting the mortgage, $226,000. Take out the mortgage. Let's focus on baby step two. What's the consumer debt? So if you have a calculator, $226,000 minus $180,000. Okay. So you have $46,000 in consumer debt. What does that make up of? What's in there? We have two cars and then two credit cards. One of the credit cards is very small. I'll be paying that off by January.

Okay. And what's the household income? My husband and I together, we make about $210,000 a year. Oh, heck yeah. After taxes and insurance and all that stuff. After taxes. We bring home about $10,000 a month. No, no, no, no.

$210,000 a year is the salary. We bring home about $10,000 a month after taxes and insurance and 401k investments and all that stuff. Okay. And how much are you currently investing? What percentage? I invest 6% at my job, and then my employer matches 4%. And then my husband is only investing 4% at his job.

Okay. So here's the encouragement. If you follow this plan, we're going to get you out of this muck and mire and cycle of investing measly percentages, like four and 6%. And we're going to like triple that. You see what that does? If both of you get up to 15% of that amazing income, that's going to be thousands of dollars more a year you're investing that are going to be working for you with compound growth. Okay. So you're not going to fall behind. 15% of each of our incomes, it's not just 15% of that. Think about it this way, 15% of your income plus 15% of his income becomes 15% of your household income. So it's the same amount. You know,

$100,000, 15% is 15 grand. So if each of you make 50, you invest 15%, it's still going to add up to that 15 grand. I'm curious what kind of debt you have on the car. How much, do you have any equity in those cars at all? Yeah, quite a bit, I think. I have one car that we owe about $15,000, and its Kelly Blue Book is selling about $24,000 for private party sale. The other car, we probably owe exactly what it's worth, about $13,000. All right, here's a crazy idea. I don't know if George agrees with me on this. Don't get rid of my car. Don't get rid of my car. You don't have to. You don't have to. I mean,

you guys make enough income to where you can pay this off, but you approach this with the idea, you're brand new to us, right? You've been binge watching videos and you're nervous about pausing the retirement savings, right? Yes. You're nervous about it. Yes. So if you want to speed it up, you sell the cars. You don't have to. You guys make enough money where you can pay those cars off. But if you wanted to speed up the timeline, I don't think it's too aggressive to say, I sell the cars, or at least sell one of them, the one that I've got a lot of equity in. And you said you got about $15,000 of equity in it, I think you said, something like that?

About $10,000 in the one car. Oh, $10,000 in the one. But I think you said, something like that? About $10,000 in the one car, yeah. Oh, $10,000 in the one. But, I mean, there's a lot of decent cars out there for $10,000. And you get a nice car, a nice $10,000 car, boom, that car payment is gone. That money goes towards paying everything else off. That is the snowball, as you understand it, yes? You understand how we move those payments? I'm saying you could speed this timeline up, thus speeding up the amount of time that you're pausing.

Am I wrong, George, in saying that? No, I don't think that's too aggressive. I would still pause investing on top of that. But here's the thing. Oh, I would. Because she was so against selling the car, it tells me, all right, well, then you're backed into the corner of having to pause investing if you want to get out of debt. That's right. Here's the good news, Melissa.

You pause investing, making $210,000, all being thrown at the debt, every single piece of margin you have. You're gone in six months. You got rid of this debt, and now we upped our investing. And can I share some numbers? I've been crunching them over here while Ken was babbling on. Oh. You ready for this? That's why I babble.

Okay, so you have 318,000 in your nest egg. 318, right? You're 46. You have 318 total. If you invested nothing else, $0 for the rest of your life, and you had an average annual return of 10%, which is the average we've seen with the S&P 500, you guys would have $1.5 million at 62.

That's good, right? $1.5 million ain't bad. I mean, it's wonderful. I just don't know if it's enough to sustain us if we live 20 years after retirement. We're not going to do $0 in investing. What's going to happen is six months from now, we take 15% of 210. Well, now we're cooking with gas.

That's $26.25 a month you're throwing to investments. Now at 62, you have $2.8 million. Is that better? Okay, that sounds much better. You just added $1.3 million by following the Ramsey plan. And all I'm asking you to do is for six months, just trust us and bring investing down to zero. Six months. Okay.

Do you trust me? I feel like Aladdin right now. I mean, George, she's a- No, I totally trust you. And that's if, by the way- I wouldn't trust you after two months. That's if your income never goes up and you guys just totally hang up the hat at 62.

Yeah. Okay. And so the chances are when you get to 62, you're going to have up the hat at 62. Yeah. Okay. And so the chances are when you get to 62, you're going to have even more money than that. Or we could still be playing this game. You could be calling the show. Ken's going to be ancient by then. And by the way, still babbling.

And still babbling, but still very fashionable. And we'll be having the same conversation. You've gone, I'm worried about pausing investing. We've invested 4%. We still have the debt. I don't want to make the sacrifice. Melissa, George just laid out the long game for you. You're playing the long game. Investing for retirement is the long game, right? Okay. Yes. Yes. So you have to

approach it that way. And so this is a short-term pause. So after I finish Baby Step, then I go 15% on... I know. It's Baby Step 2. You're still in baby step two. But once you finish the baby step two, you're going to put three to six months emergency fund in the bank. And that's your emergency fund. Now we pick back up with the 15%. And that may feel eons away. We're really talking about 12 months total. How do we sell one of them cars?

Maybe both of them. That's all I'm saying. Ken really hates your cars, Melissa. I don't hate your cars. I just know that... Listen... I'm also cash flowing my son's college. Dan really hates your cars, Melissa. I don't hate your cars. I just know that, listen. I'm also cash flowing my son's college, so money is super tight. So it's just kind of.

I get it. Totally. But guess what saves you money? Selling the cars. What's crazy is later on down the line, you can buy more cars. You can. Real quick, Melissa, what is your combined car payments between both cars? $780.

Oh, give me the tums. James, where's my tums? $700 a month. You said times are tight. Sell the cars. Ken's always jonesing for those tums. Well, when I hear $700 car payment, what else am I supposed to have? Maalox?

That could do the trick. Milk of Magnesia? Gosh. What else am I supposed to have? Maalox? That could do the trick. Milk of magnesia? Gosh. What is the product? Pepto? I don't know. We'll figure it out during the commercial break and let you know when we come back. This is The Ramsey Show.

Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm Ken Coleman, joined by George Campbell. The phone number for you to jump in is 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. George and I were talking during the break, and when you sit in for a legend, an icon, Dave Ramsey, as the Ramsey personalities do on a regular basis, and we take your calls on money, and we've all taught the classes. I'm not a money-focused personality, obviously. I'm in the workspace. But we have George, we've got Rachel, and we've got Jade, all in the money space. And there's just so much to be learned, so much to talk about from a money

standpoint. And George's new book is coming out in January, release date of? January 16th. January 16th. And the book is, I'm holding it in my hand right here if you're watching, Breaking Free from Broke. And I don't want our audience and I don't want anybody else to go, oh, well, this is just going to be watered down, total money makeover, because it's not. It's watered up, baby. It's not watered up. It's spiked up. There we go.

I dare say there's some Tabasco in this. There's some George Camel snark in this. How is this book different and why should people order this book, pre-order this book now? Well, if you've been following my story and my path and the stuff I've done here, we did Borrowed Future podcast, Fine Print. And so this is investigative. It's eye-opening. I really want to rile up an entire generation to go, yeah, we were sold this primrose path and we fell for it and I'm sick of it. And I want to build wealth in spite of what the heck is happening in this world. And so the first two thirds of the book, Ken, I show you how the system,

this financial industrial complex is designed to keep you broke, all the lies and myths that we were sold. And then I show you how it's not all your fault, but it's your responsibility to break free from those lies and to take in the truth, bust those myths, deprogram and unplug from the matrix. And that's how I went from broke to millionaire.

And it's got so much research, so much humor. And I think everyone's going to love it. So it's on pre-sale now. What do they get when they pre-order now, and what is the cost? What do they get in the pre-order? It's $20 for the hard copy, and then we are going to also send you $100 worth of bonus items. The e-book, we're doing an enhanced audio book, access to an exclusive online event and Q&A. You get three months of every dollar premium along with that,

and access to my smart conference talk called Show Me the Money. So we're packing it all in there. And a fun little poster on 21 interesting facts about camels you didn't know. That might be a bonus item we need to include, Ken. Yeah, that's good. We'll workshop that one. Yeah, I should point out, folks, I am joking. I've said things on the show before that I was convinced were completely sarcastic

and people believed it. Well, sometimes it's in your favor. There is no camel poster interesting facts about camels in the pre-order. You can Google that for yourself. But I'm sure somebody's done that. Somebody got to that one before we did. RamseySolutions.com to pre-order Breaking Free from

Broke. It's a really good book and George has got a baby girl now and he needs to feed her. That college fund Ken. We're starting to fund that 529 here we go jacob in greenville south carolina is up next jacob how can we help uh hey good afternoon guys uh just want to start by saying i big fan of the rainmaker so thank you somebody who appreciates a good movie and a good book, by the way, by John Grissom. How can we help? Absolutely. So I'm an attorney. I'm currently self-employed. I'm able to work from home, which is a blessing. Because I'm an attorney, I had to, I guess I didn't have to, but I decided to take out student loans in order to pay for that.

And right now they're at about $150,000. I'm on an income-driven repayment plan currently, which is about $517 a month. I have two kids, two young kids. My wife's able to stay at home with them, which is great. But I guess I'm trying to figure out how to get out from under this because it's just been a burden weighing on me for a long How long have you had these? So I started law school in 2013. I'm sorry, 2010. And I've graduated graduated in 2013 so I've been paying them a decade on since then yeah and I'm guessing the balance hasn't moved much because of these income-driven repayment plans and the interest keeps causing the balance to grow as you pay it down so what was the original

balance I don't even remember it was it was close probably $100. It was about $30 some a year where I went. I went in-state, but it was still expensive. Well, what's your income? So right now, it's $100 on the nose. It's like $83, $33 per month. And then since I'm self-employed, I pay quarterly estimated taxes. On that $100? Correct. So about $2,500 I pay per quarter. That's what my accountant set up for me. Cool. So there's a few steps I want you to take to not just feel overwhelmed and burdened by this. And number one is to make a written budget. And I'm going to

gift you one year of every dollar premium so that you can map out this plan of your 100,000 income, your expenses. And what you're going to do is see if there's margin after you list out all of your expenses, have it mirror your actual reality of your bills, and then we can make a plan. Because right now, I would love for you to be debt-free in two years. How would you like that? That would be unbelievable. Well, let's look at the math. That's $75,000 a year getting thrown at these loans. So now we know, okay, I need to throw $75,000. I only make $100,000, and I got to pay bills first. So what do we need to do to find that gap? Well,

partially we might need to cut expenses. Partially we need to increase our income. Is your wife able to do any kind of work to bring in some income and you work overtime and do some more work as well? Yeah. So I am doing some other side work that makes about $1,800 bi-weekly or so, but it's not, it's temporary work, so it kind of comes and goes. And what does it look like to increase your salary in the law field? How do we

get to you making $150, $200, $250? Yeah, I would have to either try to find a different like network to go through with what i do okay um or or go to my current uh who i'm kind of working for right now and kind of say hey you know i'd like that increase but i'm not at that point yet i want to get at least another year in with them before i kind of go to them about well i want ken to walk to walk you through the steps to take to go from $100,000 salary as an attorney to $200,000 because I think it's very much possible, and I don't want you to feel like,

well, that might be years and years from now. Yeah, what kind of law practice are you in? Excuse me, specialty. So believe it or not, I actually represent consumers who have been sued by creditors. Okay. And are you working for a firm or are you independent? So basically I work, I help out, I represent people who are in debt settlement companies. So if they get sued, I'm part of their program.

Okay, but again, so you're like a contractor? Like a lawyer who's contracted out to multiple companies? Correct. All right. So what's the ladder look like in that type of law? Do you see financial growth? I mean, is that something where you can really grow your income? Yeah, that's where I'm not really sure, but it's something I can really grow it much more than where I am. All right, the answer, let's go ahead and round up and say the answer is no. So you have a law degree, and what other types of law specialties or areas can you focus on right now? What could you quickly move into? It would be tough because I'm barred in a different state than where I live. So I would have to find something that's remote or something that... Is there a position where, let's say it wasn't remote,

where you could double your income? If you work for a big firm? I mean, if I were able to get in-house counsel at a company where it doesn't matter where you're barred, then yeah, that would be something... Jacob, start to do some homework. Jacob, I must tell you, please don't take this the wrong way. I have a problem.

Well, you're just a little too, well. Lackadaisical? Bro. Is that the word? You got a law degree. If you're barred in one state, fix it. Go find a path, a ladder where that law degree is bringing in 350, 450, 550, 650. This is not difficult stuff, my friend.

This is intentional action, and you need to take control because that solves a lot of your problem right there. Thank you for the call. George Campbell, good hour. Thanks to James Childs and the guys in the booth. Thank you, America. This is The Ramsey Show.