The Ramsey Show - App - Borrowing Money for This Would Be Stupid (Hour 1)

Episode Date: June 24, 2024

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, resident PhD of counseling, is here to help you. If you have crazy people in your family and you have a question, he's here to help. He's my co-host today. Number one best-selling author, multiple times over, and host of the Dr. John Deloney Show on the Ramsey Networks. The phone number is 888-825-5225.
Starting point is 00:00:52 Brendan is in Detroit. Hi, Brendan. How are you? Good. How are you doing? Better than I deserve. What's up? So I go to Michigan State University, and I had a question about leasing. Last year, about October, my current apartment kind of got us in a chokehold and said that we had to sign a lease for next year within about six hours or else we won't get the apartment and we can't live there. Now their lease is about almost about $250 cheaper and we can't get any cheaper
Starting point is 00:01:28 rate at all because we already signed. Okay. And how can we help? So I was wondering on like what, what would be a good plan to go? I don't know if that's like something that you could get a lawyer involved or if it's something that I should just try to get out of, like get a sub-leaser or what I should do because it's a lot of money. Why do you want to get out of the lease? Because it's about $1,015 a month, and the new lease that they're offering is $799 a month and that would be like
Starting point is 00:02:10 a lot different. But they're not you signed up for $1,000 originally and you knew that when you signed up. So the only thing that's pissing you off is they now rent the same apartment cheaper. Yeah, it sounds about right.
Starting point is 00:02:25 Okay. I don't know why you would get a lawyer. It sounds like you just... There's no lawyer can help you, dude. They didn't do anything wrong. Well, I was wondering more on the part of where they told me that I had to sign it within six hours or that I won't be able to live there at all. Well, that's not illegal.
Starting point is 00:02:48 Maybe that's how it's not. You can put a deadline on a negotiation and say, I'm going to offer you this for six hours, and after that I can't promise you you can stay here. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just, you know, if you felt like that that was undue pressure or unreasonable just don't sign it at the time that would have been a possibility um you know and you know if you feel like you're being mistreated go somewhere else in other words but um i think the only way if the only way they rip you off is if they said y'all sign it for a thousand bucks and they charge you for thirteen
Starting point is 00:03:23 hundred dollars yeah they tried to charge you more than you signed up for now what i would do is this rather than uh uh going in with the attitude that they did something wrong i would just go into the manager's office in person and say hey man i'm a broke college student this is a lot of money to me would you guys show us some mercy and reduce our existing lease to what you're currently selling for man that would be a huge help because it's a big the difference is a big deal and gosh when we signed it last year we had no idea of course we could get it for this or we would have waited but um man can you help us out here but don't go in there acting like they did something wrong because brendan honestly i don't think they did anything wrong so we actually did do that because it's me and uh three of my other roommates and we did go in there and we talked to somebody they told us
Starting point is 00:04:16 in person they said yeah we can actually get it down to that rate and then they gave us a call back the general manager gave us a call back about a half hour later and was like whoa whoa actually like we can't do that you guys already signed this other one for this rate and it was just like a regular employee we talked to at the beginning so i don't know if his word has any weight to it no he just misspoke he just misspoke. He just misspoke. No. No. Okay. And so, and there's three of you splitting this $250 overcharge? No, no, no. It's $1,015 per person. Oh, okay.
Starting point is 00:04:54 Okay. Oh, so it was a $750 reduction you were asking for. Yeah, sounds about right overall, total for the whole apartment yeah there's three people right four people four oh so it's a thousand dollars a month that you were asking them to cut it okay yeah i can imagine i didn't do that yeah but just just imagine now they're so if uh the marketplace let's just pretend that they weren't crooks and they weren't trying to screw you, that they just simply thought, hey, we have a really hot property here, and we're going to get people signed up,
Starting point is 00:05:35 and if you want to do it, we're going to put it on the market. If you don't want to sign, you've got six hours to do that. And then they discover that they can't rent these apartments and they have to drop the prices on them in order to get them rented instead of thinking maybe this was the plan all along. That's a possibility, actually. I've worked in college housing for a long time, and the number of students who would say,
Starting point is 00:06:00 yeah, we're signing up, we're signing up, we're signing up, and then you start to see the attrition rates throughout the summer like what he's talking about happens all the time in college housing like plans change students don't come back and suddenly you're you're you're faced with a bunch of empty beds that you weren't expecting and you got to figure it out rate wise because you can't have an empty bed i i've just experienced this buying a car and then you look on on an ad three months later the car is cheaper i can't go back to the dealer and get mad at him it just is what it is what it is i think what you had to say dave is the only thing you can control here is your attitude man and if you want to walk around looking how everybody's ripping you off and instead of going oh man those those guys who waited are gonna get a great deal
Starting point is 00:06:38 maybe next time i might consider waiting which by the way then it's gonna sell out the concert you're gonna wait for tickets to last day and the concert's going to sell out so it's just kind of the way life works sometimes yeah yeah but i know brendan an attorney can't help you because nothing was ill nothing was done wrong here um i i hate that you guys are paying more than market but um but nothing was done wrong open phones at 888-825-5225. You jump in. We'll talk about your life and your money. That is what we do here, and we help folks get control of everything going on out there. So you can participate with us here.
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Starting point is 00:09:39 If you are on baby step four or further, which means you're investing, you're out of debt, you have your emergency fund in place, you've lived like no one else. If you want to go on the Live Like No One Else cruise, we'd love to have you. Let's do it. We're going to cruise, baby. We're going March 22nd of next year. And we're going to Turks and Caicos, St. Thomas, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, all the Ramsey personalities, plus Stephen Curtis Chapman, Dina Carter of Strawberry Wine, famous country music singer.
Starting point is 00:10:12 A bunch of us are going to be hanging out with you the entire week. The entire ship is devoted to Ramsey, and it's the Live Like No One Else cruise. Now, this is not the cheapo cruise. This is Holland America. It's nice. I don't is not the cheapo cruise. This is Holland America. It's nice. I don't go on the cheapo cruises, and so you won't find me there otherwise. So I'm coming. John's going to be there.
Starting point is 00:10:34 My wife and all the Ramsey personalities will be with us. Of course, a bunch of Ramsey, and we'll be doing special things on the ship all week long and going to very cool places. It's a way for you to celebrate the milestone of actually starting to win with your wealth building process. So you can put down only a $600 deposit and hold your room. We are approaching a sellout. And so if you're going to go in March of 25, you need to get on the list right now.
Starting point is 00:11:07 So go to ramseysolutions.com slash cruise for the live like no one else cruise. Darren is with us in Dallas. Hi, Darren. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi, David. Hi, John. Thank you guys so much for taking my call. Sure.
Starting point is 00:11:23 What's up? So right now I'm currently in baby step three. I've just submitted the last payment for my last debt. So as of last week, I'm debt free. I make about $65,000 a year. It's just me, so single. But right now I'm kind of going through a bit of a career change. I'm 25 years old,
Starting point is 00:11:50 and so the background information is I work at an airport, and I've been going through, talking to pilots and things like that, and speaking with our person that are recruiting. they have a program
Starting point is 00:12:05 to where a career path program to where i can become a pilot with the airlines here and pilots make pretty substantial income and i'd like that for myself as well as being able to fly plane my question for you is how do i balance you know saving up for emergency funding for a future down payment on a house and retirement as well as funding flight school and and all other expenses that come along with it how do i prioritize that what's the best way to go about that any any information at all would be helpful okay what do you make well currently i make 65 000 a year okay and what are you gonna you said that i'm sorry and while you're doing of this, they're not paying for any of it? They will.
Starting point is 00:12:50 So part of the program is I have to have a degree, and my job is paying for the degree. So I won't have to pay for the degree portion of it, but I will have to pay for the flight school. And that, talking with the flight school all certifications all total should be probably around 50 000 okay and you're going to get 50 000 let's just pretend that that's all we did where are you going to get the 50 000 just out of the 65 income uh well just seeing like how much I should save up or put that off
Starting point is 00:13:28 or what's the best way to save up. I don't want to take out any loans and get back into debt. No, I don't want you to either. I'm just saying if you save $25,000 a year, it takes two years to save up the money, right? Yes, sir. Yeah, yeah. Okay. And that's pretty strenuous
Starting point is 00:13:46 on 65 i mean that's living on nothing yes sir yeah so how much debt have you paid off uh i've paid off about 13 000 how long did that take um that honestly getting super serious about it took like less than a maybe a year year and, less than that, just about a year and a quarter. Well, at the $13,000 a year rate, saving up $50,000 takes you five years, right? Yes, sir. So you've got to do better than that, don't you? Yeah, I get you. Yeah, that's your basic math there so um and for sure don't
Starting point is 00:14:28 go in debt to go be a pilot because the pilots you're talking to that are making a lot of money or pilots have been pilots a long time the brand new pilots out of flight school make about what you make yes sir yeah and and i have those figures of what I've talked to and what they've... Yeah, they make about $65,000 flying for American Eagle. Yes, sir. And little commuter planes is what they're doing. And that's what they put in there is the brand new kids. New kids on the block, baby, and that's what you'll be.
Starting point is 00:14:58 So it's going to be a while. You're not going to be making $200,000 coming out of the chute. You know that, right? Right, right. Of course. Okay. All right. So you're going to spend $50,000 to make about what you make now yes sir at your entry level so that that's
Starting point is 00:15:12 what you're up against and that's what you're going to have to think through here that's why for sure you don't borrow money on this because it would be super stupid to borrow money and do this uh in your situation so yeah um you got to get your emergency fund in place and then you start working your way through your education ideas i'm just still stuck on an industry that is struggling to get new pilots in the pipeline having a degree requirement but not helping out with flight school the actual training that we need to support. It's just everything's so backwards sometimes. It's hard for me to wrap my head around an emerging problem across so many fields, and everybody's going to how we solved problems 25 years ago to try to solve these new problems.
Starting point is 00:15:57 And it's just such – it's frustrating. It's frustrating. Well, when it gets – when their shortage of pilots gets bad enough, they'll change it. Yeah. I just wish there were problems in the world that we could solve seeing them coming instead of waiting until we're hit and then change them. That's called vision. Don't be pushy. So wild to me.
Starting point is 00:16:25 Damien is with us in Sacramento. Hi, Damien. How are you? Hello. Doing good. So my question is, I got about $30,000 in debt, and my 401k has $46,000 in there. No. And I think I need to-
Starting point is 00:16:41 No, no, no. Don't try to- No, don't do it. Just don't. That's what i was thinking yeah because it's going to cost too much it's going to cost me more in taxes i won't even be able to pay it all off i thought exactly exactly you got a 10 penalty plus you got your tax rate so it's like borrowing money at 30 or 40 interest to pay off your debt that doesn't make sense at
Starting point is 00:17:00 all see that was an easy that was an easy one yep it was easy yep and so what you've got to do is get your income up your out go down and that's not easy and it's working a lot of hours and that's not easy and sacrificing and that's not easy and then you'll clear the debt and that is then you'll look back and go that was easier than i thought it was gonna be matt's in grand rapids hey matt welcome to the ramsey show hello dave hey what's up hey um i'm i'm 61 years old i'm going to retire in about four years my wife and i have no debt other than our home we have about 2.2 million dollars in in a 401k we owe 300 000 on our home does it make sense we we would like the peace of mind of being totally out of debt i'd write a check and pay it off today you would yeah you don't have any money that's not in the 401k? Not enough to pay off the mortgage.
Starting point is 00:18:06 Okay. What do you have in non-retirement investments? Just have our emergency fund in a savings account. So you don't have any investments that aren't in your 401k? No, sir. Wow. Okay. That's weird for $2 million dollars but that's cool i'll take it good job by the way excellent job 2.2 million in your 401k you rocked it man you killed it well we did what's the house worth so uh when it's paid off 650 okay you're approaching a $3 million net worth at 60 something years old. Way to go. Proud of you. Yes, I would pay off my house today. Pay the taxes on
Starting point is 00:18:50 the 401k. There's no penalty because you're over 59 and a half. So it's a different answer than the guy before for that reason. That's the difference. Yeah. And he's got plenty of money to do that as well. This is The Ramsey Show. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. All right, so I was born and raised in Texas, and I love the myth of the lone cowboy. You know, the guy who doesn't need anyone or anything. It's a fun story, and it's a lie. In our self-obsessed society, we're obsessed about our own diets, our own workout routines, our own jobs, our own social media feeds, everything. It's easy to forget that no one can do life alone.
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Starting point is 00:20:39 How are you? Doing great. Thank you for having us. Absolutely. Where do you guys live? So we live in Glassboro, New Jersey, which is about 30 minutes south of Philadelphia. Gotcha. Cool.
Starting point is 00:20:49 Welcome to Nashville. Good to have you. And here to do a debt-free scream, how much did you pay off? We paid off $133,536.81. Love it. How long did that take? About 14 months. Wow.
Starting point is 00:21:05 And your range of income during that time we started off at about 160,000 and through side hustles and overtime got it up to about 197,000 cool what kind of debt was the 134 all student loans all student loans worth every penny if not i would not have met my beautiful wife ah there you go there you go cool the stories we tell ourselves right it took 134 000 in debt to find her way to go guys so what what changed 14 months ago what was this the uh makes you do the ramsey stuff wide open because you guys went for it man yeah well it started uh probably you know six or seven years prior to that, I started listening to the radio, I came across your show. And, you know, all of the values and ideas I had about money, you guys had as well. But I just didn't have the plan to put all those values and ideas into place. And so I started learning more about the baby steps. And you know,
Starting point is 00:22:01 why I should be saving money, why I should be be out of debt and started making some changes in my life you know paid off my started to pay off my car intentionally saving for you know specific reasons and then you know Taylor came along and we started dating and you know we were we decided you know we started talking more about finances through the pandemic we took FPU online we started to do our own started to uh do our own journeys and paid off our own cars and then you know not too long after that well first off you know i knew she was the one for me from the very beginning i mean we you know we were in love pretty quickly uh but you know it uh then then she kind of said you know this ring or this hand you
Starting point is 00:22:41 know really should have something on it you know know, it's getting a little bare. There should be something sparkly, you know? And so I told her, I said, I'm not going to go into debt to pay for the ring. And I bet that was a romantic dinner. And I'm not going to have a car payment, you know? And so she knew I was a little crazy and serious about this from the very beginning. And so, you know, we got engaged and we started talking more seriously about finances and got married and then so, you know, we got engaged and we started talking more seriously about finances and got married and then decided, you know, this is what we need to do right from the beginning. And so we used all of the money we had from our wedding and put that and that got us jump-started. And then we started to work for those 14 months, putting, you know, five, six
Starting point is 00:23:21 thousand a month at the debt until it was done yeah wow way to go you guys thank you way to go you gotta feel great yeah feels real good awesome what do you do for a living what are your degrees in so i'm a nurse and i'm a middle school social studies teacher oh that's so cool what was the best the most productive uh money was side hustle so i had the opportunity to take call so i would do call like every two weeks uh that brought us in an extra like thousand probably and then and then i i did a whole bunch of side hustles in the summertime being off as a teacher and uh you know i i did uber at the jersey shore i'd start taught summer school and i made the banners that you see
Starting point is 00:24:02 flying over the beach on the back of planes. Oh, that's fun. Yeah, yeah. That was a job from high school and from college. And all of those side hustles couldn't come close to her overtime pay, but, you know, did what I could. Yeah, okay. Yep. Good job. Yeah, OT when you're nursing is great.
Starting point is 00:24:17 Yeah. That's a big step, giant step. So, Taylor, you were in love with this guy. Yeah. And then he looks at you over dinner and says, yeah, I'm not borrowing money for that ring. He didn't say it like that. I know, but that's exactly how he said it.
Starting point is 00:24:30 And I'm not going to have a car payment. So for everybody out there saying, I love him and I love this plan. The idea of being out of debt's cool, but my ring's going to look like this and my husband's going to drive this. You're 14 months. Y'all been married for how long?
Starting point is 00:24:45 About two years? It'll be two years in October. Okay. Y'all been married for how long? About two years? It'll be two years in October. Okay. So you've been married a little over a year and a half. And what would you tell that person on the other side of this? That ring size matters and that, you know,
Starting point is 00:24:57 especially the first right out of the gate and that cars, all that stuff. I think don't look outward, look inward. Focus on yourself. You don't know what everyone else's finances look like if you don't look if you look outward it's easy to be wrapped up in the oh i'm not going on vacation there i'm not doing that but like what does their account look like what their credit look like you know you don't want to look out look in that's very good very good all right you did it you pay off 135 134 000 worth of debt all student loans in 14 months in your first 18 months of marriage very
Starting point is 00:25:36 impressive and uh now when somebody says how did you do that what do you tell them the keys to getting out of debt is well dave you you ask this question every debt-free scream, and I've probably seen hundreds of them at this point. And so I was going to come in with something so profound, something that's going to leave the audience in awe that no one else has said. And it's the same thing everybody else said. Have a plan and stick to the plan. And work to make sure that plan comes to reality.
Starting point is 00:26:04 There were times in the summer where you know three or four nights a week I was away from Taylor you know as a newly married couple doing my side hustles because I stayed at my parents house and so it was about an hour away and that was tough you know so we had to stick to the plan and to work to make sure it happened yeah and just staying on the same page things come up that you don't expect don't budget for and just learning how to pivot like okay this happened how do we get back on track to keep everything in line doing it together yeah communication absolutely so important way to go you guys very proud of you guys thank you who was cheering you on oh all of our family and
Starting point is 00:26:44 friends it was funny um all of our friends knew that we were doing this so we would do byod we'd bring our own dinner and we'd all get together instead of going out to a restaurant yeah and our family really helped out as well you know instead of gifts that we might want at christmas and on birthdays we'd get practical things clothes and shoes so we wouldn't have to spend that extra money so we could put more and more to the debt. So we had a lot of people cheering us on. Very cool.
Starting point is 00:27:09 Dude, you guys crushed it, man. I wish you could see us two old guys down the road, 20 years, 40 years of being married. Y'all knocked this thing out so quick, and y'all got to overcome a challenge together, and you don't owe anybody anything this early in your marriage, which means y'all just get to live wide open now yeah and it's so wild it's mainly from jim he was like the main he was my nerd and i was definitely his free spirit so i gave him a run sometimes but you know thanks we did it thanks both yeah way to go y'all way to go excellent work good stuff all right it's Excellent work. Good stuff. All right. It's Jim and Taylor, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area.
Starting point is 00:27:46 $134,000 paid off in 14 months, making $160,000 to $197,000. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free! Yeah! Yeah! Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo! dead free yeah i love it man that is fun very well done very well done you guys excellent job and i'll tell you that's a like you said when you can start out your marriage
Starting point is 00:28:23 overcoming an obstacle this big as your first order of business in marriage, it sets you up. It gives you like relational confidence to take on everything else that comes. Yeah, because it's not confidence. It's not Instagram confidence, just jawing. No, we did a thing. We did it together, and now we know, oh, we can do hard stuff for a year, two years. We can do that. Yeah, and we can did it together. And now we know, oh, we can do hard stuff for a year, two years. We can do that. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:28:45 And we can do it together. Yeah. And we can suffer together for a greater good. And we can get through this. And we can win. Gosh, if every married couple could get the blessing of learning two years in, that sentence, we can get through this. Whatever this is, we can get through this. We can figure out a way to get through this.
Starting point is 00:29:06 Whatever life throws at you, my goodness, what a different world we live in. And they're already there. And nobody is going to tell that marriage what to do. Nobody's going to tell them what to do. No car company. Nobody's going to tell them what to do. They get to decide what comes next for them. I just think it's amazing.
Starting point is 00:29:21 It's freedom. It's freedom. Freedom! No married couple has that anymore, Dave. And they do. Right out of the gate. Pretty cool. That's almost romantic, considering he said no ring until I don't borrow money to buy them.
Starting point is 00:29:37 Oh, no. You can look at them. They're gross. They're super in love. Yeah. It's just romance everywhere over here. This is The ramsey show thanks for joining us america dr john deloney ramsey personality is my co-host today our
Starting point is 00:29:59 question of the day comes from tyler in ohio ty writes, I just turned 24. I live with my mom, and I recently got out of prison. I have zero debt, but I have no direction in my life. I know being a felon is not holding me back from accomplishing my goals, and I'm not using that as an excuse.
Starting point is 00:30:18 I have no investments, no stocks, no nothing. I don't know where to start, and I have zero guidance. I have a high school diploma, so I'm not a dropout. I just want to know what you would tell somebody in my position who is basically starting over. It's a good question, man. I'm going to assume that the felony that he has served his time, this is done and he is able to, the felony, particular felony that he has served his time this is done and he is able to the felony particular felony that he has um on his record now he's able to go get a job um and so what i would start doing right now i think
Starting point is 00:30:52 what he needs to do more than anything is go work work work and work and that might mean um that he's got to start a lawn business that might mean he's got to start a business of his own but i would just get to work and get to work and get to work. And I think you can sit down and spin and spin and spin, thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking, and you're going to look up and be 25 and be 26 and 27. If he was my friend, that's what I'd tell him. I'd say, you need to go get a job right now, start working. And then we'll start working on the mentoring and finding people in your life, but you're going to find those people as you are out being productive out in the world yes i completely agree i'm trying to think um you know it's not it's not a question that we you know his situation is a bit
Starting point is 00:31:35 unique in that he's uh got a felony uh but basically we all start over every morning and so what do you do when you're starting over? You know, I mean, what do you do at the beginning of the year for your New Year's resolution? And so, Tyler, one of the things I've done throughout my entire life is I've studied people who became successful. And also studied people who were the opposite, who didn't become successful. And that starts pointing you towards several things. Okay. Um, one thing it points you towards is you become who you hang around with.
Starting point is 00:32:16 And so start choosing a friend group of, uh, ambitious, um, go getter,getter people who are going somewhere with their life type people, and that's who you run with. You don't run with a guy who gets off on Friday and smokes weed all weekend and tries to figure out how to not get back to work on Monday and end up anything but like him. So you become who you hang around with. That's one thing. So choose your friends really careful.
Starting point is 00:32:48 As a matter of fact, one piece of research says that over a course of a decade, you will earn within 15% of the average of your 10 closest friends income. So what your friends, you know, if you, if you hang around people making a hundred thousand, you're probably have a high tendency to make a hundred thousand. Hang around people making a half million. You're going to have a high tendency to run around. If you run around people making a minimum wage, you're going to end up making a minimum wage. I mean, it's just, so number one, be careful. Number two, read nonfiction books constantly about subjects that you want to get better at,
Starting point is 00:33:28 whether it's success, whether it's marriage, maybe later on marriage and parenting. Read books in the area of the profession that you choose to move towards. Number three, if you aim at nothing, Zig Ziglar used to say, you'll hit it every time. So you need to have goals. You need to say, okay, I'm 24. By the time I'm 30, I want to be doing X, Y, Z.
Starting point is 00:33:53 And then what are the steps and the things you need to do to hit that goal? My friend Henry Cloud calls that your desired future. What is your desired future six years from today? And then what are the things you have to do to become that what classes have to be taken what do we do all those kinds of things and a great place to plug into people with integrity um uh people that um are forward thinking uh people that are family oriented is in a good church now is everybody in a church good people no that's why they need to be in church but um but they're they're not but but and sometimes
Starting point is 00:34:33 there's some bad people there like there's anywhere else but it's a great place to get young men and old men in your life that are of quality and disciple and mentor and and develop the spiritual side of your life as well your values that you base your life on and if you do those things you're going to go a long way really really fast and the starting point of that is exactly what john said it's get a job but then get another job and then get another job and then keep moving in the direction that that you know what have you got to do? You got to go be an apprentice to do this. Have you got to take a certification class to do this, you know,
Starting point is 00:35:13 and then start moving in that direction. But, um, something right now, if you think about being that person when you're 30, when you say that person and you know what that person is, I don't. Your pulse rate changes. You get a little bit excited and a smile breaks out on your face. Now go do that one. That's the one you need to go do.
Starting point is 00:35:34 And for me, when I was his age, I was going to be a real estate mogul. I wanted to be a big-time real estate guy. I wanted to own shopping centers and office buildings. I was going to be a commercial real estate guy. And so I started buying real estate at 22 years old. Now, I went broke and lost everything because I did it wrong because I was stupid. But the end of the story is I ended up owning a whole bunch of real estate. You know, now, today, although it's my second passion, not my primary,
Starting point is 00:36:06 but at least it caused me to move in a direction that ultimately led me to this desk so uh it's cool stuff tyler it's a good question and um shows a lot of maturity it does i think he had some time of reflection uh when he's behind bars and this is stemming from a call i took this morning on my show dave there's going to be things that tyler runs up against or i'll just tell you tyler direct there's things you're going to run up against you're going to be things that Tyler runs up against, or I'll just tell you Tyler direct. There's things you're going to run up against. You're going to really be moving and shaking and you're going to meet some people and they're going to be impressed by your work. Let's say you start doing electrical work and you keep moving and moving and then your buddy's going to come take you out to lunch and say, I want you to come work for my company.
Starting point is 00:36:38 And then you're going to get down the pipeline at the company and then an HR director is going to flag your application because you have to check a box because I'm a felon and it's going to get you dropped out of the process. I don't want you to beat up young Tyler. I don't want you to go back. I want you to dust your sandals off and go on to the next thing and say, all right, we all have a great week and I appreciate the opportunity to move on with you. The more you let these past decisions haunt you into the future, it's not going to help anything in the future. It's just going to drag on you. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:37:07 What's the saying? You are not the worst thing you have done? You're not the worst thing you've ever done. And if that becomes your identity. No. And this will cost you some opportunities. Oh, yeah. Right?
Starting point is 00:37:17 It will. And so let's move on. I filed bankruptcy. That's right. It costs you some opportunities. Every time for the rest of my life that I fill out an application, and I don't fill out loan applications, but there's all kinds of things that come up. Have you ever filed bankruptcy?
Starting point is 00:37:28 You still have to click that box. It doesn't say have you recently. It doesn't say was it a decade ago. It said ever. And so forever. I'm a bankrupt person. No, I'm not. I'm a person that did that one time.
Starting point is 00:37:41 I'm a guy that filed bankruptcy a long time ago. There's nothing bankrupt about me. That's exactly right. And so don't let this become, you're not a felon. Nope. You're a guy that committed a felony. You paid your debt to society and now you're back out there making a contribution. And so it's going to depend on you though, to not let this thing haunt you forever.
Starting point is 00:38:02 Yeah, that's true. That's good. That's good. That's good. Yeah, you reset your identity and you read your way and you hang your way, who you hang with, and you get up and go to church on Sunday and you work your tail off Monday through Saturday and you read and read and read and read and read. Make it a goal to say how many books I've read, not how much Netflix I've binged. And that will change your whole life uh because i i've never met a successful person that said they were successful because they knew every show on netflix nope and i do think um i used to be
Starting point is 00:38:36 really against this dave and i've watched some of my friends who didn't read a lot especially when they're in college and with the um how ubiquitous audiobooks are now um there's not now there's super no excuse because some people it's hard to sit there and read through a book but man you can put those headphones in and let's do a book and walk around your neighborhood hey let me ask you something yeah i have a different experience okay when i read than what i use oh much different much different it activates parts of my brain that the audiobook doesn't activate. And I always read with a highlighter.
Starting point is 00:39:06 And so, yeah, it's kinetic. It's an actual neuroscience thing. It is different. But something is better than nothing. So you need to do some of both. That's right. Don't only do audiobooks. That's right.
Starting point is 00:39:16 But audiobooks are better than no books. Better than Netflix. 100%. Yeah. Sorry, Netflix. They're not our sponsor, can you tell? This is Dave Ramsey Show. The Ramsey Show from the Netflix studios. you

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