The Ramsey Show - App - Budgeting on an Irregular Income (Hour 3)

Episode Date: February 16, 2022

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I'm Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, best-selling author, and host of the Dr. John Deloney podcast, which is ever so popular on the Ramsey networks, is my co-host today as we talk about your relationships, your mental health, your boundaries, your family, your work, your career, and your money.

We talk about all these things on Ramsey every day. We're glad you're here. The Ramsey Show. 888-825-5225 is the number. And Mitchell is with us in South Lake Tahoe, California. Hey, Mitchell, what's up? Hello, Dave. How's it going?

Better than I deserve. How can we help? So I've been following your show for about a year now and um i have a tip-based job and i make minimum wage but with the tips it's hard to kind of follow all of the all the rules and stuff um i'm trying to figure out what i should do like my next step you know what i mean cool so you're not making minimum wage you're making good money serving right yeah it's actually uh i'm a limo driver i'm a chauffeur okay what do you make what's your total you're making in a week tips and tips and pay i would say total probably eight hundred dollars a week and on average good for you good for you yeah okay

here's the way you need to do a budget and all the rules do work you just got to use them a a week on average. Good for you. Here's the way you need to do a budget and all the rules do work. You just got to use them a little differently. What I want you to do is I want you to make a list and you could start doing it with a yellow pad. You can use the EveryDollar app and modify it and use it this way as well. But let's just do it on a yellow pad

right now in your mind so you can follow the principle. Just get a yellow pad out in your head mind so you can follow the principle. Okay? Just get a yellow pad out in your head. You see it in your head right now? I do, yeah. Okay. Now make a list down that page of every single thing you need to do with money or want to do with money this month.

And just start putting dollar amounts beside all of it, all the way down that page in your mind. You don't have to do them all right now, but that's what you're going to do. Then once you get that list made, I want you to look at that list and say, if I only make enough money to buy one thing because this month sucks, what is the most important thing on this page? I'll help you with that. It's food. Put a number one beside food and put a dollar amount beside it.

Okay? I literally cut rent, so I think that's wrong. Yeah. Well, rent's going to be a little bit down the ways, but you'll get there in a minute. Okay? Number two is utilities. Okay. Number three is rent.

Okay. Because you've got to keep the lights on and then pay the rent. If you pay the rent and don't have any lights, you get cold. Right. So we're going to – but you've got enough easy to do these three things anyway. So you put dollar amounts beside. You go food, utilities, shelter. You have a car payment?

No. Actually, three months after I started watching, I got debt-free. So I was pretty happy about that. Wonderful. Way to go. Way to go. Okay. So now you just keep going down the list and say, okay, what's the next most important thing?

And put a number beside it. What's the next most important thing? And put a number beside it. What's the next most important thing? And you put a number beside it. What's the next most important thing and put a number beside it? What's the next most important thing and you put a number beside it? So you've got 1 through 36 or whatever it is down the page in order of importance, in order of priority.

Are you following me? I do, yeah. And they all have a dollar amount beside them. So when you get some money from a paycheck or a tip, you look at the list and wherever you are on the list you start there and work your way down. And so the first thing we're going to do is we're going to set some money aside in an envelope for food.

We write food on the envelope, and we set that in the kitchen drawer, and we don't buy anything from that envelope except food. And we don't buy any food except from that envelope. Right. And that keeps you right on budget. Then the next thing you're going to do is you're going to pay your electric bill the next money you get you're going to go ahead and pay your rent the next money you get you're going to do the next thing and the next money you get you're going to do the next thing and every so often you're going to draw lines through the ones above that you've

done and you can rewrite the list a matter of fact you could do it once a week and rewrite the list because it might change a little bit from week to week it does yeah every week yeah not only your income no because we don't know how far down week yeah not only your income no because we don't know how far down the list you're going to go because we don't know exactly what your tips are going to be you could have a 1200 week or you could have a 600 week we don't know right exactly yeah yeah so we don't know how far down the list you're going to get this week but you do have a list and every dollar that you're going to make is already spent because the list needs to be longer than you're going to make right that makes sense but let's say let's say you're in the third week of this and the rent's

already paid and the lights are already paid and the food's already in the cabinets when you rewrite the list you don't have to put those on next week next week's going to be a week where you get to do some stuff down in there like paying off debt or putting some money in savings or increasing your generosity or something like that and so but you've got a prioritized list. And, John, this is how Sharon and I lived with that literal yellow pad. There was no Internet. There was no apps. We had a yellow pad like that.

And because I was in the real estate business when I first started doing these principles, and I would have a month where I would make $20,000 and I'd have a month where I made zero. Yeah. And so we were taking some of that money and setting it up for the next month if we had a big month and we're but we're going through food if we make just a little bit of money we eat first thing we do you know kids got to eat yeah got babies it's a formula and diapers and you know we got to go to the grocery store what's the next thing we're going to do we keep the lights on and the heat on yeah the go to the grocery store. What's the next thing we're going to do? We'll keep the lights on and the heat on. Yeah.

The air conditioner on. And what's the next thing we're going to do? We're going to keep the house, you know. And you can usually get your basic life done, and then you start to relax a little bit emotionally because your survival is now guaranteed. You're sustainable. But that priority, those yellow pads um sharon was telling one of our friends at dinner the other night that she said and we kept another yellow pad of goals

that we want to knock off big things we want to do we want to do this we want to do this we want to do this and we had that prioritized and uh so as we got a little extra money you know like we're driving a piece of crap car we had to get her a better car and so that's a goal that's over on another yellow pad and we would just jump back and forth between the yellow pads but it was all about listing and prioritization and then it gives you something to work for that's right and intentionality he can if he's got something he's trying to hit he can take an extra shift that's right he can take that ride that he doesn't want to take after midnight which is gross a lot of times you know your limo you know and so uh or he could take up you know a sunday morning early to the airport that he didn't want to get up at four but he can go take that if he's trying to hit a goal because he can get that extra tip

and if you don't have anything to live for if you don't have anything to work towards you just sleep because it's not listed out you just go why do i work you know and you spin your wheels out but you'll increase your income doing this but you also have a few weeks to look at oh i may not hit my food i need to come up with something and it doesn't surprise you week of or day of right you can see it coming yeah because there is a plan that's right and the point is you're still spending every dollar on paper on purpose before the month begins don't wait till you get the check people to try to figure out what you're going to do with the check always have it already spent already assigned before it comes to you to something

before it comes to you always do that the rest of your life and i even do that with high net worth people high income earners like i was with an nfl guy the day he's getting a multi-million dollar bonus coming and um had a good year and uh he's like who do this and i said i don't know but let's go ahead and do it before you get it yeah you know put a percentage on it okay i'm gonna i'm gonna live on 10 of it and have a great life you know and i'm gonna give an extra 10 and i'm gonna invest and whatever it is you got you need to give those dollars an assignment before you get them because what happens is you will spend that check that's coming like 10x in your head. You spend it 10 times.

You act like it's 10 times more money than it is. 5 to 10 times more money. It's not as much money as your little brain thinks it is until you put it on paper. This is the Ramsey Show. Folks, having an ID theft protection plan has just become a necessity in today's digital world. For you and your children, the risk of being a victim is higher than ever. With all of these devices and time spent online, not to mention the scams and hacks occurring every day, it really is just a matter of time before you become a victim. There are a lot of options out there and even more gimmicks, but the only plan I've ever used

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There's anxiety and loneliness. There's all kinds of crazy in our families. We've had lies told about us, well-meaning people, not well-meaning people. There's all kinds of trauma that happens in our lives. The good news is the guy sitting to my right, Dr. John Deloney, my co-host today, has a brand-new book out called Own Your Past, Change Your Future. It's available for pre-order today. It'll help you deal with all kinds of trauma, get connected to a community,

make friends as an adult, and the steps that you can take to change your thoughts and actions. And you get free bonus items when you go ahead and buy it for $20 now, including a month of one-on-one therapy with the folks at BetterHelp. And you get the audio book, and you get the e-book, and all kinds of other stuff. It's several hundred dollars' worth of stuff, total package. And so you really, it's an unbelievable deal to buy this book for $20 in pre-order. John, the thing that is, I can't wait to get this book out in a while.

I can't either, man. Where people start – because I think I know what's going to happen with it. But it's just – but I am a little bit worried maybe I got forced in the trees. You know what I mean? I'm too close to it because I read it before anybody else hardly. And there's like six or eight of us in the reading group as you're putting it together and uh but what's happened here is the not so complicated approach uh to relationships mental health and wellness you took a very complicated subject of what happens in our bodies our brains in our emotions and our psychology when we are when we all have trauma, when we have trauma, a big T, little T trauma,

and broke it down, came at it through a different door than I've ever seen before. I just think the power of story is everything, and you use stories to talk about how we're dealing with this. Yeah. Most of us don't know that the loops, that we just live on a loop, man. We just live on a loop and live on a loop. These things that we were born into the things we were told. And yeah, you know, it was a it was a I just was talking to some folks from my old higher ed days last week. And I was talking to them about how convicting it was. I spent the last 20 years talking with brilliant people, wonderful people. We talked about theories and ideas and maps let's look at the data and then i came here and it's every day talking to that single mom and that dad who just wants

to be better and this family that can't seem to get over the hump and i realized this is i'm not indicting anybody else other than myself i've been speaking past people for 20 years i've been trafficking in ideas and theories and I had not been about how can I help this person right here hurting right now. Put the cookies on the shelf before you can reach them. And what purpose is any of the highfalutin thinking that we're doing if we're not doing that? So yeah, this

book was the number of people who reach out and say, hey man, would you do private coaching? Would you be my therapist? I can't do that. This is as close as I could get to sitting across the table from somebody saying, I love you. I'm going to sit with you and let's do this together. Cause I've been through it too, man. Right. I've been buried by this stuff too. And I've been married. We'll celebrate 20 years this year, yesterday on the flight home in the middle of the night, I thought, I don't know you. Right. So I'm living this too. And, um, man, I,

I haven't been more proud of something. I think probably my entire professional career than this thing. I'm excited for it. The notes that I'm getting back, here's the cool stuff. It's the notes from the people working on the email campaign that say, hey, I had to read this, my boss made me, and oh man. It's the folks who don't normally write me notes. I'm excited for it. Yeah, it is a subject that is very rarely put within reach of us mortals. There you go.

And you put it in reach of people like me where I can see it. I now understand it, and I know exactly what to do with it. And it's not that it's oversimplified or dumbed down. It just takes a lot of brain power to take a complicated thing and make it simple. Can I tell you the truth? I wrote it for me because I can distance myself from the complexity of things and then be sitting there on my phone when my six-year-old wants to talk to me. I can know all this stuff.

So this book is not overly simple at all it's hard but it's for me right it's for all of us and it's it's not for i don't know i'm excited about it man uh own your past yeah i'm excited about it change your future so the stories that we're telling ourselves that are holding us back the stories that we're telling ourselves that are weighing us down we can write new stories that's exactly right and that's what it comes down to it's it's the it's the new third way man there's that crew telling you that this happened to you and you're gonna be a victim the rest of your life you can't move and we saw somebody earlier today i refuse to be a victim any longer right and then you got the other side that's you know feelings don't feelings aren't real just grind it and keep

going this is a new third way man you got to own that stuff then you got to say what comes next yeah yeah and i'm gonna say that it's real and then i'm gonna put it in the rearview mirror and then i'm gonna get to going about living my life what comes next yeah i really went through bankruptcy but it's not and it changed the trajectory of my life but it didn't define the entirety of my life. That's right. And I would even say, you've never said this out loud, I would say there's a part, if you and I were to spend 10 hours together, that there were some guys who put on some seminars that took advantage of a 25-year-old kid who really wanted to do right in the world. And wanted to, you know, like, hey, just do these things, right? There was even some, you are good about

taking ownership, I own all that, but there were some folks, I think, that would take advantage of these things, right? There's even some, you are good about taking ownership. I own all that. But there are some folks, I think, that would take advantage of young kids, right? Things happen to you. And then you said, okay, here's my participation in this, and now what am I going to do starting tomorrow? What am I going to do when I wake up and do this? And so whether people did stuff to you, you participated in it,

I don't care how we got to here. You've got to own that crap and then go. But, yeah, it's not a it's not a completely thing where i tell you you know we we had some bankers that completely broke the law there you go that's right you got and and and and we're doing some things that absolutely i mean we're we're straight up straight up immoral and illegal and and forced you know because they thought we were going broke and they were scared about their portfolio and they were going after us and they you know created a self-fulfilling prophecy uh so that yeah there's a part they played in that

the tax law changed under reagan reagan there's a part he played in me going broke you know uh there's a part that um and i'm a ronald, you know, but, you know, the law screwed up the banking system. Right. And made the SNLs go broke. Yeah. And we had a bunch of stuff with SNLs. And so, you know, there's, yeah, and yeah, there was get rich quick seminars that I bought into the crap. And, but I can't really affect all of that.

You can affect none of it. The only thing I can affect is what I did. And I go, okay, so I'm not going to put myself where I'm vulnerable to those kinds of people ever again. That's right. Never again. You know, it's really going to be hard for American Express to call my house and try to, you know, yell at my wife about a bill that's unpaid because we will never do business with american express again i'm not going to be susceptible to them under any circumstances and so if american express

calls my house it's a wrong number right you know or a robo call for a warranty on the car you know i mean oh my god and you talked about in an earlier segment your path out wasn't pretty it was you and your wife and a couple of yellow pads, right? Oh, no. It's not like money just fell from the sky. There was no mana. No. It was two people on a yellow pad.

The grind out of this thing is hard, but it's absolutely doable. But you just take the, you rewrite the story and go, okay, there's a couple never-agains here. Yep. There's a couple never-agains. I'm not going to be put in that position again to where if I'm the victim of something else, it'll be something else. It won't be that again. There you go. Because I'm not going to set myself in.

I'm not going to walk down that alley and get mugged again. That's right. I'll walk down that alley. I'm not going down that alley again. That's right. The borrower is slave to the lender. I don't borrow money. That's right.

I'm not going down that alley again. Some of that stuff is about trauma, which I talk about in the book. Some of it's about grief, which I talk about. Some of it is as simple as we talked about earlier. I'm 40 years old. I don't have a classroom where I just have Insta friends anymore. How do you even do that anymore? Yeah.

Talk about making friends, and it almost feels reductive, but that's where we are, right? Here's how you go make friends again. So it covers a lot of bases there. Own your past. Change your future. On presale now at RamseySolutions.com. We'll be right back. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Jeff and Christy are in Pennsylvania.

It says on my screen, you guys are debt-free. Congratulations. Thank you, Dave. Thank you. Well done. How much have you paid off? $245,880. All right. How long did this take? Three years and three months. All right. Good for you guys. And your range of income during that time? So we started out around $124,000 and we ended up at $180,000. Very good. Very good. Way to go. What do you guys do for a living? I am an RN and Jeff? I am a carpenter. Good, good. What kind of debt was the $246,000? So the biggest portion of it was the mortgage,

and then I had quite a bit of student loans. That was a huge part of it. A little bit was a car we financed, and a very, very small portion was a credit card. Wow. So you're kind of normal. Yeah. How long have you guys been married?

Seven years. Jeff, you got to have that number right on top of your head, brother. So how much was the student loan again? I think I originally was around $80,000, but we were already plugging away in it. So when we really got serious about paying down debt, I think I had it down to about $40,000. Okay, I'm confused. I missed something. $ something 246 000 yeah you paid off your mortgage yes we paid off our mortgage whoa okay there we go all right and so how much of this was mortgage oh the majority okay okay so way to go guys you're You're weird people. I love it.

Very good. What's the house worth? We're probably worth about... Low 300s, I'd say like around 320 right now. Yeah, low 300s. The market's very good, so it's worth a good amount right now. So 300,000, and you guys are how old? I am 51. And I am 44.

And you have a paid-for house. Woo-hoo! Yeah, it's awesome yeah and you two have had a really boring last few years as a carpenter and a nurse huh yeah we never stopped working through the pandemic can't even imagine you two flying by each other in the night good grief i'm so grateful for both of you man there was a lot of that at times. Yeah, pretty much essential workers, yeah, for sure. So what caused you three years and three months ago to start this plan? I think we just decided, well, part of it was I was looking into, like, you know, let's get control of our debt, let's get control of our finances.

I started to think about retirement, and I started to panic a little bit about that um and we ended up registering for your financial peace university class um went through the whole program and that really sort of kick-started our our process to getting all of this paid off cool at your church or online we started with the church and then had to switch to online okay Okay. All right. Wow. So game on. Three years and three months house and everything is done. Mic drop. Looks best. Wow. Wow. Absolutely fabulous. Way to go, guys. How's it feel to not have a payment in the world? You know, it takes a while for it to soak in. You know, after you're done, you're like, okay, well, nothing's felt like it changed. You know, you're still the same person.

You go to the same job. You do the same thing. It's just there is an element of stress that's just not there. And I get to keep all my money. Yeah. It's not going to some stupid bank. And we were so close to getting paid off. And right towards the end, our furnace and our water heater broke of course it

did it wasn't anything we could fix we had to literally replace them but thanks to the emergency fund we were able to pull out the 9500 it took to fix that and still get out of debt wow way to go way to go you guys what do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is? It's really about discipline and changing your habits, and then, of course, setting the goal. And supporting each other was huge. I mean, there were times we were stressed, and it took every last penny to get through the month,

but we just supported each other because we had the same vision. That's a big deal. It is. And were you guys handling money together before you started this? Sort of, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the least convincing answer.

Yeah. Maybe not. We definitely work at everything as a team now. Now it's got some clothes on it. Yeah, that's good. Way to go, you guys. Way to go. Well done. Did you have cheerleaders outside the two of you?

Yeah, we have some friends that are very supportive. That was helpful. And they actually recently paid their mortgage off, too. Hey. Anybody tell you you were crazy? Yeah, I would say. A few, but, you know, we really kind of kept it under our hat because people just get funny about it, you know, when family can be funny and friends can be funny when it comes down to money. Not like funny ha-ha.

Yeah, no. Like funny go home. Like crazy funny. You're crazy. Yeah, I like it. Well done, y'all. Well done. We've got a copy of the Baby Steps Millionaire's number one bestseller for you guys,

because that's the next chapter in your story for sure. What's your investment accounts amount to right now? That's an area we need to work on. I know my 401 is just under $100. Yeah, and I think I'm around like $130 thirty one fifty somewhere around there we got a way to go with that okay well you're worth a half million dollars already yeah yeah with the house yeah that's what i mean house part of it that's an asset well done and uh you know so you know you're going to be baby steps millionaires in no time so we'll send you a copy of the book you

finish this journey now and play all the way through the well done very very well done and a copy of total money makeover too for you to give away to somebody who's just getting started and it'll show them exactly what to do step by step how to work these baby steps how to work that that snowball all the stuff you guys have done and you can hand it to a friend and encourage them that'll be great okay good stuff well done jeff and christy bethlehem Pennsylvania, $246,000 paid off in three years and three months, making $124,000 to $180,000. House and everything, they're weird people. Count it down.

Let's hear a debt-free scream. We're debt-free! Yeah! Yeah! They didn't even need to count. That's how it's done. That is how it's done right there. Open phones at 888-825-5225.

Mike is in Anchorage, Alaska. Mike, what's up? Hey, Dave, how's it going? Better than I deserve. How can I help? So I just wanted to bounce something off you real quick and see what my family should do next. So I'm currently in the military and our annual income is $130,000 is our take-home. We plan on renting for the next nine years. And my question is, I'm going to be maxing my 401k this year. We also are maxing of IRA Roth IRA for my wife. Should we, and I just found out we

can max our 2021 Roth IRAs up until the tax deadline. Up until you file, file or tax deadline, whichever is first, yeah. Correct. So we have $40,000 in our bank account. Should we double max two IRAs and then continue to do that moving forward? Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Is it ever possible to overinvest in retirement? You're probably not going to get there.

But, yeah, you could have so much there that, I mean, let's say you were 30 years old and you had $2 million in retirement. You probably need to have some outside retirement starting so that you can access some money before 59 and a half, but very few people actually hit that position. You might hit it. If you look up and you got millions and millions in retirement and you've still got a ways before you can be 59 and a half, then yeah, you may want to slow down and reach over and do what we call bridge investing to get ready for that, make up for that difference there.

But yeah, you're right on track. I would keep doing what you're doing. The other thing you need to think about doing since you're running the military route, by the way, thank you for your service, is you may want to think about having some side investing right now. And if that slows down your retirement a little bit, that's okay to get ready to buy a house. Let's have a house fund where you're putting money in mutual funds to where 10 years from today you write a check for that house when you do buy after you come out of the military. This is The Ramsey Show. Thank you. Our scripture of the day, Psalm 62, 8, Trust in Him at all times.

Pour out your heart to Him, for He is our refuge. Charles Swindoll said, We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations. I love that quote. That is a great quote. Fun, fun, fun, fun. Charles is a quote machine, to say the least. And so we're going to do a theme hour here in a few weeks dr john deloney and i and it will be on

mental health on boundaries on relationships on wellness on anything that falls in that category where you can ask him dr john deloney questions specifically during that hour and if you want to participate in that uh what do we send them to ramsay solutions.com slash ask and just put mental health in the subject line there it is okay anything that's going on marriage anything we just take those calls on my show and we'd love to do some of that here if you'll ever listen to dr john deloney show these are going to be calls similar to that or um a little less serious but uh yeah so it's RamseySolutions.com slash ask if you want to participate in that. If you have a question for Dr. D and me, I'll be happy to put that into that mental health theme.

That sounds like a children's book, Dave, Dr. D and me. I'll co-write it with you. I'm thinking somewhere there's some children already traumatized by just the idea. We would not sell a lot of copies. But check it out, Ramamsaysolutions.com. Our question of the day comes from blinds.com. They have a 100% satisfaction guarantee. That means even if you mismeasure, you pick the wrong color,

they'll remake your window blinds for free. Free samples, free shipping with the new promos they run all the time. You're going to save even more. Always use Ramsey as your promo code. It's magic. it'll save you money all right today's question comes from davante in chicago davante asks i'm a recent college grad with 50 grand in mostly student loan debt i'm 25 and work two jobs one is a delivery driver at 16 bucks an hour and another with a local news program at 14 an hour i'm looking to grow

professionally as a videographer. My skills are in media, TV, productions, and marketing. I've heard many success stories where people have grown their videography businesses and are making over six figures a year. What's your best advice on how to clear debt and grow my savings so I can support myself as an entrepreneur?

This is like an underhand pitch to you, Dave. What would you tell this guy well um i mean we're going to work you on the personal side through the baby steps that's right where you work your way through the debt using the debt snowball and those kinds of things i don't think we're going to be able to stop you as an entrepreneur i think he's already rocking he's hustling grinding he's got his eye on the prize he knows where he's going um what i what i would tell you is this um as a young entrepreneur what i didn't realize was i didn't know what i didn't know and the best way to solve that is in business what we call is best practices and that means find someone maybe in another city um that is who you want to be they're doing videography they're making

two hundred thousand dollars a year and they're in the you know the types of things they're videoing are the kind of things you want to video they're doing the types of business you want to be in and uh make it the kind of money you want to make and i'll call them and just go hey i'm a young guy and i'm just getting started i want to be you when I grow up. Could I come over and spend the day with you and just shadow you and ask you questions while I'm looking over your shoulder all day long? And then ask them, okay, what's the dumbest thing you ever did? What's the smartest thing?

What do you wish you'd done? If you were me, what would you do? And how do you make this money, and how do you do your billing, and where do you get your customers, and how do you do your billing and where do you get your customers and um how do you do your uh pricing structure and uh i don't think actually taking the videos actually using the camera is going to be your issue it's the running of the business it's going to be your issue so you jump in and get uh best practices from somebody like that or two or three like that um and that's going to be better than taking a college course on running a business because those guys and gals are out there actually doing it. It's not theory, and you're going to mimic what they do.

And I do that to this day. I do, too. If I find someone that's in a space that we're in that's doing better than we're doing, I always want to go spend a little time with them. I send one of my guys, gals, around here to spend some time with them and go, okay, how are you doing that? What are you doing with this? And how are we doing this? And, you know, some of the other people in talk radio and I have shared ideas back and forth. Shapiro, that gang, Ben Shapiro, Glenn Beck, those organizations in our organization interact all the time and help each other.

And, okay, how do you do this? When you're doing a live event, what are you doing? When you're getting your podcast promoted, how do you do this when you're doing a live event what are you doing when you're getting your podcast promoted how you doing it and you know we're just asking questions all the time uh from people that are you know even if it's a nuanced corner of the business and they're doing better than we're doing maybe we're doing better overall maybe but this little area over here they're they're just going zoom zoom yeah and i want to know how they're doing that and copy it emulate it you know that's uh You know, that's the best way for you to get going. I remember I was in grad school

and an actual therapist came in to met with us just to answer questions and I just cut through the chase. A lot of the questions were kumbaya questions and I just said, hey, in this small town, how do you make six figures being a counselor? And he said to this room, he said, you're not going to like my answer.

I said, all right, go for it. And he said, work really hard and be really, really good at what you do. And I remember thinking, well, that's a deflating answer. And also, that's the best answer I could have ever heard because I'll outwork you and I'll do what it takes to get really good at it. Right. Yeah. Work really hard and be real good at what you do, man. Money takes care of itself yeah they you know when we're training financial coaches and and the old days

the first time we did a room full of people were training them and a guy raises and he goes okay you're coaching broke people how do you get paid and our answer is always up front yeah because you're not going to get paid if you don't get paid up front uh you're either going to donate your services or you're going to get paid up front because you can't you know broke people aren't there they're there because they can't pay bills right they're there and so you've got a you've got to walk with them and it's it's kind of a joke line but it's a best practice yeah you know it's the real thing it's an actual business issue.

And how do you get them to keep an appointment once they set an appointment? And a very interesting process. Lisa's in Washington, D.C. Hi, Lisa. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi. Thank you so much for taking my call. Can you hear me okay?

Absolutely. What's up? Fantastic. First, I want to start by saying that I know that all of what I'm experiencing is ordained. I get that. But I feel completely lost. I am the primary manager of my mother's financial matters. She's 91 years old and lives in her home, which is paid in full.

She owns a commercial property that is also paid in full. The house is willed to me. The commercial property is willed to my sister. Together and separately, we've reached out to investors about selling the building, but it's too small, so they're not interested. So because of where it's situated, they can't build up or around it. So now we're looking at her house. Her expenses, you know, the care expenses have exceeded her income,

which is about $5,000 a month. So she's not suffering too badly. So we do have a care, you know, care giver that comes in Monday to Friday, but now we need more help for her. Have you talked to a commercial real estate agent about selling the commercial building or just talked to investors? We spoke with both. And no commercial real estate agent thinks they can sell that building?

They could sell it, but for what we would get after the capital gains taxes hit, it wouldn't even be worth it. Well, what would it sell for? What could you sell it for? $400. Why is that not worth it? Well, after the capital gains taxes. Capital gains taxes aren't but 15%.

Did I mention that these facilities are $12,000 to $14,000 a month? This is the Washington, D.C. area and it's ridiculous. I'm sorry. You have it rented for $14,000 a month? Oh, no, no, no. The cost to put her in an assisted living facility is about $12,000 to $14,000 a month. So that's what we will be paying. But this is a current source of income for her.

So right now we're using that to pay the woman that comes to care for her. What's it creating in income? $3,000. Yeah, I'm selling it. I'm paying the capital gains tax. She's 92. And by the way, $12,000 to $14,000 a month is keep her at home and keep paying for in-home care. It's cheaper and it's a better quality of life. You can do it a lot cheaper than $15,000 a month.

And you can hire a 24-hour staff cheaper than that. And I would. I'd sell the commercial building. That puts this hour of the Ramsey Show in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with The Prince of Peace.

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