The Ramsey Show - App - Budgeting to Get off Welfare and Change My Family Tree! (Hour 1)

Episode Date: February 14, 2019

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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions Broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, it's the Dave 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. I am Dave Ramsey, your host. Thank you for joining us, America. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Athena is with us in Joplin, Missouri.

Hi, Athena. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Thank you for taking my call. Sure. What's up? My question is, I currently got a job that got me off welfare. I'm the first in my family. I'm really happy about that. I currently make $34K, and I have $1,000 left over each month after doing my budget. Wow. Thank you.

And I was just wondering, I've never had to buy food or insurance or school lunch or anything before, and I currently have $60,000 in student loans, and that's the only debt that I have. And I do read, like you said, two books a month. Wow. And I just want to know what you think I should do. I've never had to buy food. Like, is there a way to budget that if you've never done it before and insurance and things? Yeah.

So have you got any of our books i read a financial uh piece uh revisited and i'm currently reading a zig ziglar secrets to closing the sale for my job oh i love it very good cool well i'll send you i'll send you a few of ours i'll send have you got kids i do i have four kids great okay i'm gonna send you the smart money smart kids how to teach your kids how to handle money so that this uh family tree's permanently changed because you're a rock star you're doing the work to get out you're doing good i'm proud of you the second thing i'm going to say that's my why thank you the second thing i'm going to send you is the total money makeover now as far as food goes uh all of budget items are trial and error a little bit.

Some of them are very, very, very predictable. If you have a payment on something, that payment stays the same every month. That's predictable. If you have a rent payment, the rent stays the same. It doesn't change every month. But stuff like car gasoline will vary depending on, obviously, how much you drive the car, right? Or stuff like food will vary. You usually don't spend the exact same amount on clothing every month.

So that varies. So some of those things we use what we call the envelope system, and it's real simple. We say, I'm going to spend X on food. How often do you get paid? I get paid twice a month, every other Friday. Okay. Then if you say, you've got four kids living at home?

Yes, sir, and I don't get child support. I live in a very low-rent area, and I don't have any kind of payments, and I'm just in trouble. So I keep it really low. So you're buying food already, right? No, not yet. This will be my first time buying food, and I've never not been on welfare. Like I said, I'm the first in my family. I don't even know how to budget for it.

I know, but it's a really dumb call, but I knew you could help me. No, it's wonderful. I'm glad you're calling. But you're saying this month is the first time you've ever bought food? Yeah, it will be with this next paycheck. It will be with this next paycheck. I will have to buy food. Gotcha.

Okay. And you were using food stamps before? Yes, sir. And how much did you get in food stamps in dollars? I was getting $7.65, then they lowered it. And then with this next check, they went ahead and took it away, and it did get lowered to like $4.30. But you used to spend $7.65? No, I never spent all of it.

I tried to shop cheap, you know, not buy like a lot of meat or anything expensive just in case. Okay. So with four kids, what if we said $700,000? I'm just making up a number, but I'm trying to base it on some kind of reality, okay? Because that sounds, I mean, it's not $200,000 and it's not $1,200,000, right? Right. Okay, so let's start month one and say $350 out of each check in cash, cash it at the bank, goes into an envelope,

and you write food on the envelope. It's got $350 in it. And that's your food money for two weeks till you get the next check and you go to the grocery store with a list written out in detail of what you're going to buy a grocery list uh and if you get up to the cash register and it's more than you have in your envelope you have to put something back okay you can't overspend that envelope because that's all you've got for food it's cash in the envelope if the envelope's empty you can't pay the bill right right so you know you'll learn the first month you do this it'll be a little stressful because there's a lot of unknowns

and sometimes people walk around the grocery store with a calculator to make sure they don't get embarrassed when they get up to the cash register. That kind of stuff. You see what I'm doing? But that's how Sharon and I did it. This is how my wife and I did it when we went broke, Athena. It's exactly what we did. Now, back in those days, we had three kids, but it was 1980s, and we did it on 500 bucks.

But with four kids by yourself, I'm thinking $700 is probably not a bad starting point. Now, if every month you're running out of food, then you need to raise that amount the next month, right? Or if you've always got $100 left over, well, then you need to set your amount at $600, not $700 in the future months. But that's a pattern over several months. And as you get better at this, you'll dial in the proper number that fits into your overall budget. And do the same thing with clothes. How much are we going to spend on clothes on these four kids? Because they come in with the growth spurt, and all of a sudden you've got to buy a whole dadgum truckload of clothes, right?

Yes, sir. Yeah, and so you've got a certain amount for clothing in the clothing envelope and if there's not any in there we got to make do with what we got and so you don't want to spend it all on one shirt because you know you got to make this money work hard just like everything else so if you'll use that for clothing, for entertainment, which is probably going to be pretty limited right now, and for food, that'll keep you on budget with your overall budget. And know that it takes 90 days, three different budgeting cycles, three months before you get any good at budgeting. You're not going to be good at it.

I wasn't good at it when i started because you don't know there's all these variables that you don't know and you learn about how your budget it has to be real life right it has to be focused in on what's really going on and so it can't be based on theory and what happens is real life will teach you what the budget needs to be and you'll stay in adjustment then and um but i think you're going to do great. I'm so proud of you. Very, very well done. Would you like to go through Financial Peace University,

the whole course on how to handle money? I'll give it to you. Oh, yes, I would love to. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you so much. I'm so proud of you. You're changing your family tree.

You're changing your destiny, and you're doing that by making choices. And I love helping somebody like you. You call me back any time you need some help, and I'll help you any way I can. You hold on, and Kelly will pick up, and we'll get you a financial piece of adversity. I also talked to her about the Total Money Makeover and Smart Money Smart Kids. So I just give her a whole bunch of stuff. Load her up. Awesome. Very cool. Hey, life bunch of stuff. Load her up. Awesome.

Very cool. Hey, life doesn't get much better, people. Man. You control the controllables in your life, the variables in your life, and you can win. That's how it works. This is the Dave Ramsey Show What will your family do if you die? Did I get your attention? Good.

If you're a father, mother, husband, or wife, it's your responsibility to have life insurance. No matter where you are in the baby steps, you have to deal with this right now. How will your family pay for the mortgage, put food on the table, or pay for education? How will they deal with retirement and stay the course for getting out of debt and accomplishing something with their lives? This is what life insurance is all about. I knew when I started this show it was something my listeners had to have, so I went out and found a company I could trust to offer the plans I believe in. That's why I've been talking about Zander Insurance for over 20 years. If you haven't dealt with this, please go to zander.com or call 800-356-4282 and let them help.

This is a priority. It's not expensive. It's not complicated. And you need to do it today. That's Zander.com or call 800-356-4282. It's Valentine's Day, baby. Yeah. it's valentine's day baby yeah well we got some corn balls at work here and uh there's also some corn balls among you out there seriously corny people one of our writers wrote these Ramsey pickup lines for Valentine's Day. You're so hot, you could melt my debt snowball. I should be enthusiastic when I read these,

but I'm just kind of like, this is so, yeah. When I saw you, my jaw dropped like the value of a new car. You're finer than the print on my payday loan statement. That's not bad. All right, I'll loosen up here. If I had a dollar, for every time I thought of you, I'd be on baby step seven. Good thing I just got term life insurance because I saw you and my heart stopped. It's Valentine's Day.

I'm not mortgage interest, baby, but don't write me off. Oh, Ramsey pickup lines by our content team. I'm making out my will and I want to list you as a beneficiary. I'll need your phone number. Okay. Well, then we also ask some of you out there to submit your own Valentine's Day pickup lines. This from the YouTube crazies, the YouTubers out there, people watching us on YouTube. They are a wee bit enthused. Hey, are you a mutual fund because you make my heart compound?

That's not bad. For a good budget-friendly time, call 888-825-5225, which is the call-in number here on the show if you didn't know. Debt is dumb, cash is king, and baby, I need you to be my queen. Whoa, look at you. Yeah, with your lyric here. Yeah. Girl, I'd treat you like the stock market.

We might have ups and downs, but I'm invested in you for life. Whoa. That's pretty. You guys are better than our guys. All right. Call me your mutual fund because I'm with you showing interest. Okay. Yeah, I warned you.

I warned you. But yeah, fine. Why not? Why not? Open phones at 888-825-5225. Chris is with us in Tampa, Florida. Hi, Chris. How are you?

Never been better, Dave. How are you doing? Better than I deserve. What's up in your world? Well, I kind of wanted to get your opinion on where to go next to change my family tree. Okay. What are you considering? Well, I'm 33, and I have nothing invested in a retirement savings.

Okay. Are you out of debt? I owe about $18,000 on my truck and about $1,400 on a consumer line with no interest. Gotcha. And what do you make a year, household income? So I'm hoping we'll together make about $100,000. Wow. Great. Very good. Okay. Well, what we have learned over 30 years of doing this is the people that build wealth first get control of their most powerful wealth building tool, which is your income. And the way you get control of that is you don't give it to someone else in the form of debt payments. So there's a high correlation between people that get out of debt and those that build wealth. And so a foundational exercise is to first be debt-free and then have an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses. So we teach what we call the baby steps.

Baby step one is you save $1,000. Do you have any money in savings, not retirement? Yes, about $28,000. Oh, good. Okay. Baby step two, after you've got $1,000 and you stop saving and stop investing money, baby step two is you become debt-free, everything but your house. And do you have a home mortgage?

Yes, we owe about $187,000. Okay, cool. Cool. You're doing good. And then once you're debt-free, everything but the house, then baby step three is you go back to that $1,000 account and raise it up to a fully funded emergency fund of three to six months of expenses. Now, when you're debt-free, you don't have any payments but a house,

and you've got $20,000, $30,000 laying around in your case, then you're ready to start investing and that's baby step four you start putting 15 percent of your income into retirement so about 15 000 a year starts going into retirement and that's fairly easy to do uh if you don't have any payments but a house payment that's why we're laying that foundation that way okay but that big honking truck payment looking at you right now is killing you. Yeah, about $340 a month. Yeah, stealing some of your ability to build wealth is what it amounts to. Right.

And then do you have children? Yeah, two kids. Okay. Then baby step five is after we get 15% going into retirement, then we'd start looking at the kids' college plan and start saving some money and some good mutual funds for kids' college. And then anything I can find above that in my budget, any money, the extra money that comes in, or just, you know, I'm just not overspending.

I've got some extra money. I'll start throwing it at the house. And the typical person working this plan, if they stay on track and they keep their eye on the ball, is debt-free, house and everything, between 7 and 10 years. And the typical millionaire pays off their home in 10.2 years. Because here's the deal, man. When you've got no payments at all, no truck payment, no house payment, no zero interest loan stupid payment, you know, none of those payments at all, it's very easy making $ grand to become wealthy yeah and i was worried that all this money that's sitting in savings is not doing

anything for us it's been in there about a year yeah you know obviously in a money market we haven't made squat on it exactly so here using my heard too many you know horror stories on on people you know basically getting ripped off and i, I didn't know where to turn. Yeah. So, well, let's, when you get ready to invest and you're going to be there fairly soon, then you would sit down with someone in the financial world. You can click smartvestor at DaveRamsey.com and that'll connect you up with the people in your area that we endorse.

You can pick among them which one you want to work with. But what you're always looking for that will keep you from getting ripped off is a financial person, whether they're insurance, investments, real estate, whatever they are, that has the heart of a teacher because it's your job to learn enough to get comfortable to do the investing. People that get ripped off blindly trust someone. And I would never ask you to blindly trust someone. That's why you need someone that's willing to teach you and you're a beginner and so you're going to start with very simple things and that's okay there's nothing wrong

with that i mean the first time you drove a car you were nervous uh but now you drive a car and don't think about it you know you were a beginner now you're a pro and you've got years of experience and and so but you know when you first start out you need someone to teach you how to do that and you know how to you know make that right turn a certain way a left turn a certain way and you know ten and two on the wheel and you know you get the techniques and you start to learn and you know the more knowledge you have the more competent you are and the less afraid you are and that's how you'll do your investing. It's okay to take your time and wait into it. Back to the baby steps that I was talking about earlier, what they tell us to do if

we were advising you and you were going to do our plan is I would write a check today and pay off the car and the other loan and raise my right hand and say, I'm never borrowing money for anything ever again because that steals my ability to build wealth. That would leave you with about $8,000 laying around, give or take, and that would mean that your first goal after this would be to raise that $8,000 account back up into the 20s because that's three to six months of expenses in your world. Then once you've done that, or even while you're doing that, you could sit down with a SmartVestor Pro and begin to learn, but you wouldn't start investing until you have your emergency fund built

and you're debt-free. And so that's what I would do if I woke up in your shoes, is exactly that process. And I appreciate you being a new listener and hanging out with us. That's how we do it. It's a step at a time. It's a very clear path. Millions and millions and millions of people have done

exactly what I just told you to do. And it works because no one gets out of debt and then is pissed off about it. I've never had hate mail said, Dave, you got me out of debt and I hate you. I've never had that happen. You know, I get hate mail for a lot of other things, but that one's never happened. If you're just so stupid and you're arrogant and I get hate mail for a lot of other things, but that one's never happened. Dave, you're just so stupid, and you're arrogant, and I get all kinds of hate mail, but I never get, oh, 30 years of doing this, I never got a single letter or email or tweet that says, you got me out of debt, and I hate you for it. No one hates being out of debt. And if they do, it's fairly easy to get back in.

You can fix it. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. There's nothing smart about smartphones if your wireless plan is blowing your budget each month. Pure Talk USA offers smarter wireless with unlimited plans starting as low as $20 per month. You never pay data overage fees and we never turn off your data. No contracts, no hidden fees, and if you're thinking our low cost means less coverage, think again. Our voice and data service covers 99% of Americans, and our 4G LTE network provides the fastest internet speeds like more expensive carriers. We operate on the largest GSM network in the U.S. to ensure you receive reliable coverage virtually anytime, anywhere.

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Hey, Dave. How are you? Welcome. Where do you guys live? Lynchburg, Virginia. Fun. Well, good to have you. Welcome.

Oh, so you're the Liberty gang that everybody's here, and you're akin to Matt, right? Yeah, my brother. Your brother works here? Yeah. Okay, very cool. Good stuff. And Matt likes to be in the background. He doesn't like me to put the spotlight on him like I'm doing right now.

Watch him turn red. There you go. Okay. He's a great guy. We're glad to have him on our team. Welcome. How much debt have you paid off? Right at $54,500.

Way to go. And how long did this take? 17 months. All right. And your range of income? We started at $80,000 and we did $105,000 last year. Cool. What do you guys do for a living? I'm an auditor at a community bank. And now at retail. Okay. Very cool. Very cool. So $54,000. What in the world? What did you owe $54,000 on? Mainly my student loans. Okay. It was about $35,000.

Then we had a car loan and two credit cards. Okay. How long have you guys been married? 12 years, going on 13. Okay. What happened 17 months ago put you in gear? Matthew, he came here and they were debt free. And he's like a mini Dave and he's relentless and he

tells you all the things you don't want to hear but you need it and so you have to listen to it or I was thinking we're going to jump on board or we're going to hear this for the rest of our lives. Yeah, and I started listening to your YouTube videos at work on my lunch break and it really just got me fired up and we'd come home and talk about it. And I'll obviously talk to Matt all the time. And once she gets on board with something, she goes 220%. So that's what we did. So Matt knew that he had to help you convert Morgan or this wasn't going to happen.

It was more getting me going. Oh, really yeah once i got going you know she'll she'll do anything you know i say hey morgan let's do this okay let's go okay all right i'll do anything for him as long as it makes them stress-free i want to make his life as easy as possible very good very cool well that's sweet on valentine's day that's good i love it way to go you guys so matt harassed you into looking at this. The YouTube videos start coming up. Morgan says, I'm on board. So then what did you do?

The first thing was, and you hear everybody say it when you listen to the debt-free screens, but getting on a budget. Because without the budget, we wouldn't have been able to do this. We were averaging 50% of our income was going to debt every month. And then the other thing was we went to work. We each got second and third jobs. Oh, really? Yeah, we worked from 7 a.m. to 9 or 10 p.m. every day.

Wow. Our girls, which will be here in a minute, they went with us to work sometimes in the evenings and in the summer and everything. Wow. Just worked like crazy. So what were your best part-time jobs the ones that paid the best well they didn't really pay that much to be honest but um i'll let morgan um they pay more in blessings really but um we got a part-time job at our girls school um working cleaning at night john wax and um strip floors all summer long the girls came with us every single night unless they were at vacation Bible school or with Mimi and Papa.

So, you know, it's just been a really group effort to get here to where we are. So 17 months of game on. Yeah. And now you're free. Yeah. How's it feel? It's great.

It really is. Yeah, it's wonderful. It's fun to actually put the money into your savings account and not have to pay interest. You get interest, you come back your way. Yeah, and instead of, the snowball's rolling in the right direction now. Right. For sure.

Very, very well done. Very cool. So who were your biggest cheerleaders outside the two of you? Definitely us, because without teamwork and being able to do it together, you can't do it. You can't do it. You can't do it. But our family, Matthew, obviously, he was a big cheerleader. Parents, friends at church. We had teachers and staff at school, our little girl school, Timberlake Christian School, and our small group, they really pushed us.

And now we get to be their cheerleaders, and it's super exciting because we get to give back. And when we see someone working hard to pay off their debt, we want to do the same thing that they did for us and reward them with little things. It's just crazy to see God is always on time. And, you know, you think you're going to go without, but we didn't go without. Didn't miss a meal, huh? No.

We actually gained weight. Now we're working on working on losing that yes so we also uh i led uh fpu one one time at our class so um we had uh people we met during the class that obviously became cheerleaders and obviously trying to encourage them as well so that was another part of it and you brought the kiddos along and their names and ages are what uh taryn which is her birthday tomorrow she'll be nine and graceland is six okay very cool and they helped participate in the part-time jobs through the summer they worked unpaid unpaid unpaid unpaid slave labor there we go i love it well good job you guys we're very

proud of you i know your family is. I know Matt is. Thank you. Very good stuff. We've got a copy of Chris Hogan's book for you, Everyday Millionaires, because you're well on your way to being one. That's the next chapter in your story to now use this to be outrageously generous and to go to the next level of winning with your wealth. Good job, you guys. We're proud of you. Thank you. Thank you.

Good stuff. Jonathan and Morgan, Taryn and Gracelyn, Lynchburg, Virginia. Taryn and Grac job, you guys. We're proud of you. Thank you. Good stuff. Jonathan and Morgan, Taryn and Gracelyn, Lynchburg, Virginia. Taryn and Gracelyn, you ready? You ready to scream? Are you ready?

They'll be ready. $54,500 paid off in 17 months, making $80,000 to $105,000. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. 3, 2, 1. We're debt-free! Good job,

you guys. Good job. Well done. Man, that's powerful stuff. Our question of the day comes from Blinds.com. They have a 100 satisfaction guarantee means even if you mismeasure or you pick the wrong color they will remake your blinds for free you get free samples free shipping and with the new promos they run every month you'll save even

more use the promo code ramsey to get the best possible deal. Today's question comes from Mirtha in Georgia. She says, I'm on baby step two. How do you budget for home improvements? How can I get ready to fix a big ticket item like replacing an AC or a water heater that can't be covered by a $1,000 emergency fund? By the way, rice and beans are not that bad once you get used to it. Okay. Well, you don't do home

improvements during baby step two if your hot water heater goes out or your ac goes out you stop your debt snowball and you pile up cash very very quickly to do your repair and once that's done then you would restart your emergency fund but um water heater would be less than a thousand dollars in most cases anyway and very few heating and air repairs are going to be up to a thousand dollars unless you've got a full replacement going on but um generally speaking they don't suddenly blow up uh generally speaking you know you've got some time you can do some repairs keep them limping until you get out of debt and then you save up the money to do the improvements so a home improvement is not something that's broken uh it's something we're going to repair

when we have the money or replace or upgrade when we have the money you would do that after baby step two an emergency is your hot water heater goes out and it's more than a thousand dollars then you'd stop your debt snowball and put the money with it to cause that to happen that's how you would do it so hey good question we appreciate you joining us and thanks for being our blinds.com question very good stuff ashley's on twitter uh how can i budget if i don't have a set income my hours vary every week well mine do too and my and i've never had an exact set income in my entire life i've either been on straight commission or self-employed or doing whatever

where i had it back and forth and so get on the every dollar budget and enter in what you do know and there's some things you do know i'm going to make at least x and then when a little bit more money comes in than x whatever it is let's say it's three thousand dollars i know i got three thousand dollars coming in this month i'm gonna budget on that and then if i get another 200 above that because because I got some extra hours, then I just go into my EveryDollar app and I change the budget. And I spend that money in my EveryDollar app on something else. And that's all you do. You just make the adjustments as you know what the variable looks like. But there's not many jobs where suddenly in the

morning you had no idea you were going to have some money, and by night they hand you money. Most of the time you work some hours, and a week later you get the check. You can kind of see it coming. I'm out. Kevin is in Boulder, Colorado. Hi, Kevin. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? So me and my wife, we're both 28.

We recently started going through FPU. We're on week two. This week will be week three. So I recently graduated with a master's degree, and I got a job, a decent job, but we were very normal, and I have a lot of student loan debt now. So we're looking at about $225,000 total debt with student loans and some other things. What are the other things? So we have a car and some credit cards. How much do you owe on the car?

So we have two cars. One of them is about $30,000, and one of them was about $7,000. Yeah. And what's your household income? One of them is about $30,000, and one of them was about $7,000. And what's your household income? So I recently just started a new job about four months ago right after I graduated. I have a base salary of about $65,000, and then I get commissions at the sales hub. And I'm projected to get about another $50,000 to $60,000 in commissions, but that's obviously not guaranteed, and I don't know that for sure yet.

Does your wife work outside the home? Not really. She works in the evenings. We have a two- and a four-year-old. What's your degree in? Chemistry. Okay, and what are you selling? It's scientific sales. Okay, good. Okay. And what are you selling? It's scientific sales.

Okay. Good. Okay. Yeah. So it sounds like you're probably going to make $120,000 your first year out, give or take, right? Right. That's what it's projected, exactly. All right.

I'm not sure if I'm a broke guy that I'm going to have a $30,000 car. Right. So my job is actually making the payments on that no they're not right well yeah exactly no they're giving you money and you're making it you're making the payments they would give you the money whether you were making the payment or not right uh i mean they obviously have some stipulations on what the car is to get the money it wasn't a thirty thousand dollar car that was exactly stipulation. But it was exactly, yeah. Right.

And this also tells me you're going to be on the road a lot, right? Yes, I'm driving about 2,000 miles a month. Yeah, which means by definition you are destroying the value of whatever you drive. Right, exactly. And so let's destroy the value of a $15,000 car instead of a $30,000 car. Right. Even if you were completely debt-free and you had $100,000 in your emergency fund, I would tell you the exact same thing.

Don't destroy a $30,000 car. There's no point in it. A $15,000 car is reliable, comfortable, gets the job done. Destroy the value of it. Get a two-year-old something. They probably have a two-year-old it. Get a two-year-old something. They probably have a two-year-old stipulation and a two-year-old something, and you're probably going to have to trade it every two years or so to stay ahead of the curve and get out of the car payment business.

So even that, you know, the whole decision to buy this $30,000 car doesn't fit. A, you're broke, and B, you're destroying an expensive vehicle with the miles you're putting on it. So road warriors should not drive a car that's that expensive. If you want to have a nice car later on, it needs to sit in the driveway and you drive something else into the dirt. Right, sure. And so mathematically, that's unwise. So that's what I would do.

And then you need to make a list of your debts, smallest to largest, and you and your wife need to sit down and go, Oh, crap, we've made a huge mess, and we're going to have to do some really dramatic things to get out of this really dramatic situation, and that's move down in car, not go on vacation, not see the inside of a restaurant unless we're working there, and we're going to be on beans and rice, rice and beans,

no life until we get this mess we made, cleaned up. Now, if you're making $120,000, the next year you make $150,000, the next year you make $170,000, and you're dumping $60,000 a year towards debt, you're debt-free in three years or so. $60,000, $70,000, $80,000 up through that progression, and you're debt-free in about three years. And that's what you need to do in this situation. Otherwise, you're going to look up 10 years from now, and you'll still be spinning your wheels. No pun intended.

R.J. is with us in Greenville, South Carolina. Hey, R.J., welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave, how are you doing today? Better than I deserve. What's up? Thanks for taking my call. I have a question. I work for a local bank in my town, and there's several banks that are headquartered here.

And I enjoy the job I do. I thoroughly enjoy what I do. I love the team I work with. I love the culture of the company I work for. The problem is we're in baby step two, and so I'm trying to juggle the fact of, do I stay in a job I enjoy, or do I try to go job hunting for a job that's going to be one to one-and-a-half times my salary? So do I... Well, one times your salary, why would you do anything that's one time your salary?

Well, I guess like one-and-a-half times. Yeah, I mean, if you can add 50%. So what do you make? I make about $40 a year. Okay, and you're saying, what if I could get a job that made $60? Correct. Okay. Why is it necessarily a truth that you will hate that place?

They're a little more, their political views are more liberal. The places I've been applying at, the jobs I've been wanting to get, is an actual previous employer of mine, and they're the ones who have the most hiring right now, and so they're going from one bank to another bank. I would not go do it if it's a lousy environment and not an environment that your value system lines up with. I'm not suggesting that.

But I also don't accept the presupposition that to make more money, you have to surrender your values. Just don't take a job with that bank. They suck. Don't work there. I'm good with that, okay? But there's other places that you can work, not just two. True.

I guess I'm trying to get into the underwriting field because I do short sales for a bank here, so I'm kind of trying to get help. There's not just two places that do underwriting. True. So, I mean, all it is is you just took the path of least resistance, but the environment and the culture is crappy, and you don't want to do it. It's least resistance for you because it's a known variable.

You know the people. You worked there before. You know the situation. You can there before. You know the situation. You can probably get your foot in the door. It's easier to do all that. But you land in a horrible situation. No, you don't want to do that. No, I would not agree.

Given the two options to make a little bit more money and be miserable, no, I would not do that. But I always think there's a third option, make more money and not be miserable. Very true. And that's what I want you to look at. Let's go that way. But the one you're talking about, just take that off the table. No, don't go over there.

You don't want to work there. You didn't want to work there when you left there. So that's why you left. And so, you know, but who says you can't find some people that think and act like the one you're at now, but will pay you more? And for that matter, maybe the places there will pay you more if you ask them. I don't know. Say, you know, they're offering like 60 grand over at this other place. I don't really want to go over there.

Would you guys help me out and make me really want to stay here financially? Because I want to stay here for every other reason. And is it inappropriate for me to ask that or whatever and just ask? Because I love the environment that you're in as far as small-town community banks. They're good people usually. And generally speaking, that's who I tell people to bank with and definitely not the big corporate monoliths. Stay away from the Wells Fargo's and the Bank of America's.

Ugh, gross. Ugh, it's just hard for me to even say it. So, you know, don't do it anyway no just c a or b no c none of the above work it work the plan work the problem open phones at 888-825-5225 we appreciate you being with us here on valentine's day our valentine's Day sale is here. You can save up to 70% off in our online store at DaveRamsey.com. Our Marriage and Money Bundle is 59% off. This is the perfect bundle for couples. You can get the Adventure Pack, which is our number one best-selling kids bundle.

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