The Ramsey Show - App - Build Wealth by Doing What Rich People Actually Do (Hour 2)

Episode Date: June 20, 2024

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 ken coleman ramsey personality number one best-selling author of the book paycheck to purpose where he helps people do work that they love he does that on the ken coleman show too on the ramsey networks every day he's my co-host today open phones at 888-825-5225. Thank you for joining us, America. We're so glad you are here. Laura is with us to start off this hour in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Hi, Laura. How are you? Hi, Ken and Dave. I'm so excited. Thanks for taking my call. Well, we're honored to have you. How can we help? Well, my husband and i did our debt-free screen last june we're in baby

step seven now um and we have two working teens at home that they work because they know if they want spending money they need to work hard and earn it um so currently we're having them save half spend half i don't know why that's just what we're doing. They don't have a budget. We haven't helped them with that yet. So I'm calling to ask, what are the best strategies to guide our teens in your principles? Very cool. And how old are they? My son is 14, 14 and a half. He just got his first job as a busboy. And although he started a dog poop scoop business last year, so he's a hustler. And my daughter is 19.

She's home from college and working this summer. Okay. All right. Well, all a budget is is we tell our money what to do before it leaves. Yeah. Okay. So it could be as simple as a yellow pad, and you put the number you're going to earn this month

at the top of the yellow pad, and you put down five or six, seven things you're going to spend the money on until there's nothing left. And that would include savings. So what would you say the 14-year-old would earn in a month? Give me a guess a couple about 300 okay let's just put 300 at the top okay and um if you want him to save 150 you just take savings 150 right and then you say what else would he spend the money on games i don't know what's a 14 year old spend money on these oh my word they buy by cologne

they buy food at the mall like you know okay well i mean so uh personal items food okay uh entertainment yeah movie tickets so uh if you want to go to a concert or a movie ticket or something like that and so just put three or four categories down through there and say okay what are you going to spend your money on? I really don't mind what he spends his money on as long as he does it on purpose. Yeah. Before it leaves because what happens is that something will jump up in front of his 14 year old face or not her 19 year face, and they'll go do that, and they haven't got money for something later, like car gas. Right. That's how adults that don't do a budget live, panic to panic.

Yeah. Yeah. Is the 50-50 save-spend split appropriate? It's okay. You can do whatever you want to do. I don't care. I would add a category. would say give yeah give save spend if you can teach kids to work and earn money and then teach them to give teach them to save and teach them to spend wisely and intentionally

you have done a great job as a parent i love that that's really helpful. Yeah, that's what we do with Financial Peace Junior. That's what our high school curriculum, that's homeschool curriculum for teaching kids in depth about all the parts of money. But budgeting and working is certainly part of it. And even the book.

Let me send you the book. It was Rachel's number one bestseller, her first number one bestseller, Smart Money, Smart Kids. I did the book with her, and it was me as the dad and daughter, both voices in the book of how to teach kids to be smart money, to be smart money, smart kids. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'll send you a copy of that, and you guys read through it.

It goes a lot more in depth than what we're doing, but the core principles are those four things work give spend intentionally and wisely and um safe and if you can learn if you can build those muscles and youngsters age appropriately from 3 to 23 they can leave your house and they won't have to come back yeah except for a visit yeah right yeah they don't they don't end up boomeranging because they don't know how to live yeah laura i would just i want to encourage you uh that it's it's one of the best things you can do is teach uh model so you guys you speak to whatever part of the budget and your process and how you and your husband do it. But I would encourage you to just back away once you kind of do that teach and model.

And I just think one of the best lessons is failure. And I think we as parents, and I'm speaking from experience where I've stepped in and rescued, I would not step in and rescue because we're not talking about a whole bunch of money. But one of the best ways for a kid to learn budgeting is to screw it up and to be in a situation where I didn't plan that. I mean, we were going through that with one of our kids right now, and he just blew through some money. And he came to me and I went, man, that stinks.

Sucks to be you. And I'm not kidding you. And I literally walked out of the room. And it was really hard for me. But I'm just telling you that we forget as parents sometimes that failure is the greatest teacher because you've given context so that's my little encouragement is don't try to rescue remember their brains aren't developed like yours and so they're gonna think things about money and do things with money that seems just absolutely

wild and wacky and by the way it is they're they're wild and yucky they're teenagers so yeah that's when we also one other thing i'll add to this and you can if you want to take it even further it depends on how much you want to mess with this but we had our kids at 14 and 15 years old open their first checking account and they ran the money through the checking account now they they did i and i made them learn to write a check which it turns out was an archaic exercise that no one actually does anymore but um and uh because they they never wrote a check in their life i don't think i think they had debit cards then on those accounts and that's how they used all the money was through

the debit card which is fine i don't care but i wanted to learn to keep up with and and reconcile balance a checking account right and manage a checking account and uh because people run those things into an overdraft you know like just off i guess if i can keep pulling the card out they'll just keep paying it you know it's like yeah ding ding ding ding ding ding you know and it runs up a bunch of fees so uh you know and there's a fabulous story in the book when rachel bounced the check and i came home and there's nsf fees she's 15 years old laying on the kitchen counter oh boy i made her go her mother took her driver down to the bank and sit with the bank branch manager and apologize for lying because she told that bank she had money in her account and she didn't and um the kid never bounced a check again i'll tell you that she's still in therapy but she never

bounced a check laura's enjoying rachel's trauma way too much i love it but i mean that's the kind of stuff we did and we weren't it's just you know you have to learn to do these things if if i can let you pay one s one or two nsf fees and the guy actually waived the fees because he thought it was so funny that she came into the office and apologize so but the uh but the uh you can learn this lesson, you know, and never bounce a check the rest of your life. That was valuable. It's well worth it. You know, valuable.

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Tabitha is in Denver. Hi, Tabitha. Welcome to The Ramsey Show. Hi there. How's it going? Better than we deserve. What's up? So I'm seeking some advice. My husband and I don't agree on whether or not to pay off our car loans. I'd like to pay them off, but he does not agree with that. He likes being in debt on a car? He tells me, and I quote,

paying off our car loans is like giving away free money based off of our low interest rates. So he actually believes that people build wealth by borrowing on their cars. I don't understand it to be completely honest. It's something that we argue about pretty frequently actually. Okay. Um, okay. So how, how can we help, do you think? Well, so I'm looking for ways that I can explain to him, like, why it would be worth it to pay the debt off. Okay. Can I ask a quick question, Dave, really quick? What's the interest rate on these two loans? So in total, we have $27,000.

So $20,000 on one, and it's 3.49% interest. $7,000 on the other, and it's 2.94% interest. Okay. interest 7 000 on the other and it's 2.94 percent interest okay well let's address the theory that he's operating on first okay and and and then let me just tell you i don't think we can convince this guy i don't think he has any desire to be convinced i think he's already made his mind up but we will i will answer your question anyway okay because in other words i don't think this is going to work but i'll tell you so what he's what he's his premise is is that if you can borrow money at what'd you say the interest rate was 2.7 percent right is that right one of them 2.94 the other one is 3.49. Okay. So let's just call it 3%. If you can borrow money at 3% and you could invest it in a good mutual fund

and it made 10% or 12%, you're making the spread. Okay? However, he's not doing that. He didn't invest the difference. There's no $27,000 investment out there as a result of having borrowed on these cars. So his premise is 100% theoretical. In other words, it's bull crap. Okay?

Now, the problem with his premise, it sounds like if you invest money at 10 and you borrow at three aren't you making a seven spread maybe but if you made a seven spread you have to pay taxes on it and you've increased your risk load your stress load and you've strained your relationships in your household and by the time you've done all of that you really didn't make any money so it's a bloody joke okay because seven percent on on ten thousand dollars is 700 bucks seven percent on thirty thousand dollars is twenty one hundred dollars okay no one ever got rich on twenty one hundred dollars a year ever mathematically so again his premise is absolute bullcrap because the numbers break down when you tear into it another reason we know that is is that we have done we have worked with millionaires for decades and a couple of years, we did the largest study of millionaires

ever done in North America. We studied 10,167 of them. I wrote about it in the book Baby Steps Millionaires, and I'll send you a copy of it as my gift, okay, that might give us a chance at helping this guy. But I don't think this guy wants to be helped, so I usually can't help people that don't want to be helped. But anyway, as we studied 10,167 millionaires,

we found that 89% of them were not millionaires because of inherited money. In other words, they invested money, they handled money wisely, they lived on less than they made, they got their house paid off, they stayed out of debt, and they built wealth. And that's how 89%, 9 out of 10 of America's 24 million millionaires right now, that's how they became millionaires. Okay? As we studied, Tabitha, 10,000 people who are rich, not broke people with a car payment and an opinion, but people who actually are rich, the number of them that we found that became wealthy due to borrowing on their car at 3% and investing the amount instead at 10%, the number of people that did that to become millionaires out of 10,000 of them was precisely zero. None of them used your husband's plan to become wealthy.

None of them so what what that statistically tells us is your husband is wrong like you thought okay he loses the argument now that still doesn't answer your question how do we convince him and i've told you three times already i don't know if we can but i'm trying to tell you you're not crazy you're accurate you're you know he's kind of looking you, you're not crazy. You're accurate. You're, you know, he's kind of looking down like you're like some kind of juvenile that can't do math. And he has high math figured out when it's quite the opposite. Your women's intuition was way wiser than his screwed up half butt attempt at mathematics. Yeah. And I would go so far as to say, this is a cop out. This is a quick little line that he's kind of manufactured from social media

or some social message out there or some car dealer who's sold him these cars. And this is his quick Heisman Trophy stance to you. Like, I don't want to talk about it because I don't think he actually wants to. It means you put your stiff arm out. She might know what it means. Yeah. The point is this. I know what it means.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Here's my point. Well, I had to think about it. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. That's okay. might know what it means yeah the point is i know what it means thank you thank you thank you uh here's what i had to think about it oh okay i'm sorry that's okay uh so here's my point i think it's a cop out because he doesn't want to do the hard work that you're asking him to do to budget to sacrifice to pay these things off that's my take and i think i'd push in a little bit further as his wife and say i don't feel safe financially carrying this debt.

I think you've got to have a real conversation. I think it's a marriage conversation because he's not allowing for a financial conversation. Yeah, and there's a lack of respect towards you that's just not okay. It's getting me riled up and giving you this answer. And because I kind of hear him sneering a little bit in this like oh you just little lady i think so i had the same feel like that little line he had like in his holster and he just kind of pulls it out flings it at her go away yeah it does feel dismissive i got this yeah it does yeah and and the hilarious thing is is he's a hundred percent totally wrong it's a hundred percent wrong

and tabitha wins ding ding ding ding ding ding now it's a hundred percent wrong and tabitha wins ding ding ding ding ding ding now how to get him to do it tabitha i don't know and probably not all the snark that ken and i are employing it probably won't work right so you're gonna have to be more loving and that but i think if he needs to hear that how important this is to you and he needs to hear that he has to respect you yeah now my wife and I can have a good argument about most anything, but I'm going to respect her opinion. And at the end of the argument, we may do one, we may do the other. There's no set rule that one of us has to, quote, win or not.

But we're going to do it in a respectful way, meaning that I'm not going to be dismissive, and she's not going to be dismissive like you just you just you're just a man you don't understand and um i mean she tries that sometimes she tried that when we're like putting furniture in the new house like i'm an idiot because i don't know anything about decorating because i can't even match my clothes and so there's the problem is she's not an actual quote no i mean but that's basically the that's basically the tone, right?

That's great. Because it's also accurate. I have to think about my clothes a lot just to make sure something doesn't flash. That's so funny. Yeah, and like you don't know anything. You're just a knuckle dragger. You don't know anything about decorating, right? And I don't. Right.

But I do know what I like, and it's my freaking house, so I get a say. There's that. You don't get to dismiss me. I agree. And she doesn say. There's that. You don't get to dismiss me. I agree. And I don't get to dismiss her. Her opinion, too. She lives in that house, too. It's her money, too.

So we have to work through this. This is called marriage, and sometimes it's a challenge. Tabitha, roll it back on YouTube and let him get mad at us. That's why we do this. That'd be okay. I'm pretty good at pissing off reluctant spouses. It's like a gift because they're wrong. 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. And I don't care if you're an introvert, an extrovert, or whatever you want to call yourself, we all have to have a community and a support system to do life with. It's time to shift the focus from doing it all by ourselves to knowing that we can only be well and whole when we ask for help. Therapy can be a great source of help and support for any area of

your life. And if you're thinking about starting therapy, try BetterHelp. BetterHelp is 100% online therapy, so it can fit with your schedule. To get started, just fill out a short online survey to get matched with a licensed therapist. And if it's not the right fit, you can switch therapists at any time for no extra cost. This month, start to build your support system with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash ramsayradio to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Ramsey Radio. Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage. Cameron and Chelsea are with us. Hey guys, how are you?

Good. We're doing great, Dave. Welcome, welcome. Where do y'all live? State College, Pennsylvania. It's near Harrisburg. Love it. Welcome to Nashville. And how much debt have you paid off? We paid off $151,307.40. I like it. How long did this take? 42 months. All right, good for you. And your range of income during that time? Our range of income was $71,000 to $171,000. Wow. What do y'all do for a living? I am an audiologist. And I'm a software developer and also serve part-time in the Army National Guard. Well, thank you for your service.

You're welcome. How do you go in three and a half years up $100,000 in income? I graduated and got a job. Oh, there it is. So job oh there it is so the hundred and fifty one thousand might be student loan debt it is all of it almost all of it okay what else we have twelve thousand dollars in a car loan okay and then the rest of student loans okay so you got out of audiology school and uh immediately kicked the income in way to go and you guys were looking at that going uh-oh but we also have 151,000

to go with this gift of debt what was the plan how did this work how did you end up doing Ramsey so we go back a little bit further kind of our story kind of started right after we got married how long you been married since 2018 okay right after got married, her parents actually gave us your Financial Peace University DVD box set. Oh, yeah. But we never opened it. Of course not. It actually sat in our living room for about two years. We never touched it.

It makes a good little coffee table when you first get married. And then through an online audiology group, shout out to Molly, somebody who messaged Chelsea offering to sponsor us to take Financial Peace University online. And we took FPU, and then after the first class, we sat down, did our monthly budget, wrote down all of our debt,

and got really nauseous and realized that we had a problem. And then... Scares crap out of you, doesn't it? It does. Yeah, we realized we were spending about $500 a month on restaurants and other things that we really didn't need at all. So it was kind of game on from there.

We started and we were doing pretty good for about a year. And then in 2021, we coordinated an FPU class for a few of our friends. And we realized that we really weren't being gazelle intense. We didn't tighten down the budget the way we should have. And from then on, it was kind of game on. We realized we were doing it wrong, needed to make a change. And we started listening to your podcast every day to kind of get that motivation going and we started meeting weekly to talk about the budget and started working door dash we delivered food at night after we got off our full-time jobs and yeah that was kind of it it took a lot of work but worked your tail ends off yeah and then you get out of school and get a

bigger shovel how long you been out of school two years two years okay so two years of this uh three and a half year plan so basically almost half the time you've had the big shovel and prior to that you were just scrapping yeah yeah way to go guys way to go you got to kind of feel like accomplished you do it does it's a ginormous weight off your chest yeah you guys are heroes well done i'm just curious what was the greatest challenge for you two in this process i think the working extras i mean we had our full-time jobs but i think that you know the getting off at five o'clock and like pushing through yeah deciding hey we're gonna go out until nine ten o'clock and deliver food when yeah deciding hey we're gonna go out until nine ten o'clock and deliver food when you know she had a doctorate degree and i'm working as a software

developer kind of delivering food just kind of feels not like something you want to do at night yeah well is there is there a sense of pride there in a negative way it's like come on what am i doing and that really starts to play games with your head doesn't it it does yeah it does yeah that's very cool i talked to a pastor one time who was leading financial peace and he decided he was going to get an extra job and his extra job was valeting cars and uh he said it was really rough when the guy that is in my congregation came up and i had to park his car he said that was a real pride knock it was hard yeah way to go y'all way to go was it worth it it was absolutely how you feel now it's surreal yeah really yeah free yes yeah yeah well a month before um we paid off

a month before we paid off everything a month after we paid off everything we actually had our daughter katie oh wow so we paid off everything then a month later she arrived wow wow through all of that too and i'll just say like the feeling of sitting in the hospital waiting for your baby to be born and knowing that you don't know anybody owe anybody anything is a great feeling you didn't have to think about the money. You can just be there. She will never live in a house that has debt. Isn't that cool?

Yeah, it is. That's pretty cool, y'all. You guys are heroes. You changed your family tree. You did it for her. That's awesomeness right there. That's noble. Very well done.

Very well done. All right, when people ask and they say, I've got $150,000 in student loan debt. I'll never get out of debt. Don't they say that? Yeah. They say it all the time. Yeah.

Sure hope the president will forgive it because I can't ever pay it off. I'm stuck. And you weren't waiting on Biden or Trump to take care of your life. Thank God. And instead, you said, we're going to do this. So what's the secret to paying off 151,042 months i think definitely the budget and communication i think that was the two biggest things that we took away from this is um our communication with one another too is completely

different than it was three and a half years ago. Now, have you guys watched debt-free screams on YouTube? All the time. Okay. So you hear people say that exact answer all the time. Yeah. They say communication and budget. And yet, when you did it, it didn't feel like, when you actually did communicate and you actually did a budget,

it didn't feel like it did when you heard somebody else doing it. When they said, oh, yeah, of course it's a budget it's communication but then when you actually do it it's like wow that really is it yeah yeah yeah when you can put the numbers on paper and actually see the progress you kind of realize that how would you do it without this yeah amazing very well done, you guys. Very, very well done. All right. And Miss Katie was, oh, how old is Miss Katie? She is 11 weeks old. Oh, my goodness. That's a good enough reason right there to do all that work. Yeah.

And you never have to work extra. She'll never know it. Yeah. Wow. She'll never know those long hours. I like it. Well done. Well done.

Beautiful. Changed your whole family tree. You guys are heroes. Excellent job. Cameron and Chelsea and Katie. Right on cue. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania State College. $151,000 paid off in 42 months, making $71,171.

Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream three two one we're debt free can you imagine the audiologist covered her baby's ears i saw that that was a pro move that's a that's a that's a pro move right there yeah pro hack love that well done well done we've actually got little headphones for them to in case their parents really want to scream because it scares some of the kids sometimes but uh that's so cool they're that what a neat couple man what rock stars that just did it man they just did it i mean that's hard they did this on no money for the first half of their journey. And then when

she starts making some money and they add the overtime to it and the extra jobs to it, boom, we get out of there and we're done, baby. We're done. Yeah. The thing I'm always inspired by when we hear these stories, and this is the latest example, is these are men and women who decide that they're willing to do what it takes now to be able to live the way they want to live in the future. And at the end of the day, whether you're changing your life and your physical life, your emotional life, your relationship life, you got to make that decision that there's some hard work that you've got to go through in order to live the life you want to live. And they're standing on the other side of this with a brand new baby. I mean, literally brand new. That's

really cool stuff. Very neat neat this is the ramsey show ken coleman ramsey personality number one best-selling author of the book paycheck to purpose is my co-host today our question of the day today comes from Travis in New Mexico. We are a family of six. My wife and I are both turning 45 this year. Income-wise, we make about $400,000 a year before taxes and 5% to 15% bonuses before tax. We're living paycheck to paycheck and cannot seem to get out of this. We're about $1.1 million in debt, including our mortgage. We spend more than $20,000 every month on expenses, leaving close to nothing to put towards extra debt payments other than vacations costing $15,000 to $20,000 a year. It is almost

impossible to cut into other budget items. We need help on a game plan. Yeah, you need a game plan, but the statement, it's almost impossible to cut into other... To live on $400,000 a year in New Mexico. Yeah, it sounds like we've got some emotional issues with some poor decisions we've made, because if you're living paycheck to paycheck on that spend every month, you're just out of control. Yeah, there's something really... I mean mean everybody out there that's making a hundred thousand dollars a year and saving money is laughing at you right now that's just ridiculous okay so um yes the vacations need to go away and yes you probably have some stupid cars you can't afford and you may even bought a house you can't afford i don't know

but i don't know what decisions you've made that eats up four hundred thousand dollars a year and you don't seem to think you have any room in that budget um and don't tell me it's because we have a family of six man and bull crap lots of families of six live on 50 and 60 000 all over america so um sorry i don't have enough information here to give an intelligent answer that's right but um i i don't we spend more than 20 on expenses leaving close to nothing i think it's almost impossible to cut into other budget items. So my only guess here from 30 years of doing what I do is that one of you, either you, Travis, or your wife, is an absolute child. One of you is a princess one of you gets everything they want and the other one is afraid of them afraid to tell them you're freak you're out of control we're stopping this

you're a nut we're not doing this anymore and you're afraid of them to say that yeah so i don't know which one of you it is. I kind of think it's you, Travis, the way this is worded. But you could just be scared of your princess wife. I don't know. But somebody here has put the emotional barrier up that this is reasonable, and no one in America listening to this right now thinks this is reasonable. Even people in Washington, D.C., who can't balance a budget, if they had to look at you making $400,000 a year and say there's nowhere to cut

and don't think that's reasonable. Even a congressman would look at your budget and say that's not a reasonable statement. That's a bold statement. Wow. I don't know if it's true, and you're always right. I mean, it sounds like a congressional budget where essentially you know what i'm seeing here and all joking aside i think you actually put your finger right on the nerve of this deal just because you say we want the country club membership and we put it in the budget doesn't mean it should be

in the budget doesn't mean you need to be in the country club. That's right. When you've got this kind of job. But it's where our family, oh, shut up. We eat there every Sunday after church, yeah, and you're broke, and you make 400K. Shut up. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know what it is. We have some excess in the budget. Our children are all, have you seen the thing? I saw it the other day.

It's the funniest thing on travel baseball. Oh, I think I know what you're talking about. I guess it was a reel. Somebody sent it to me. Congratulations, your son just made the travel baseball team. That means that you will have no weekends for the rest of your life. It will cost you $26,000 up front and an additional $124,000 a year in travel and expenses. And when he graduates, he will never play ball again.

Yeah. It's so true congratulations you've made travel baseball we can't cut that out though yeah i mean it's like that's right so yeah this is um it's kind of falls in that like this there's an emotional barrier to cutting it not a reality barrier that's what i'm smelling absolutely because it's nothing else there's no other explanation for this ridiculous statement. So, and Travis, it's stupid, man. You're going to have to do something different.

You keep doing what you've been doing, you're going to keep getting what you've been getting. That's the definition of insanity. Continue to do the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. You have to change. And change is hard. But it's not as hard as being broke and making 400K. I hope I'm shaming you into doing this. It's kind of a spiritual gift of mine.

All right, Ralph is with us in Phoenix, Arizona. Hey, Ralph, what's up? Hey, how are you? It's great to listen to you. Thanks, man. How can we help? Well, I have been struggling to keep my head above water for quite a long time, fighting with $75 thousand dollars in credit card

irs debt um i'm which is which you have seventy five thousand the two what how much irs uh 44k okay and so 30 and 30 and credit cards yes okay all right the credit cards are in a debt management plan. I'm paying $700 a month on that. Okay. And the IRS, I'm still negotiating with them. I expect I'm going to have to pay them about $500 a month. You're negotiating them on the payment amount? okay and how did you end up owing the kgb i mean the irs 44k uh i took some money out of my 401k and didn't pay taxes on it oh there's that okay where'd that money go where'd that money go uh it went into a house i built and then sold and i lost the money i got scammed and a couple things yeah i've had a real run of bad luck and bad decisions and i'm just determined that i'm not going to spend the rest of my life like this

yeah what's your household income uh well i'm on social security and i'm working part-time so i'm probably making somewhere around 50k how old are you 67 okay and so you're going to put the irs on a payment you got the credit cards on a payment how how can we best help you today well i'm so tired of living like this and i've had this thought that maybe i should sell my house take the equity and pay off all my debts and just downsize and start over uh What do you owe on your home? $250,000. What's it worth? Four and a quarter.

Okay. So you would be free, and you'd have $150,000 minus $75,000, so you'd have $75,000 in your pocket. Right. And you're going to buy what? I don't know. My credit score is 673, so I don't. And you're going to buy what? I don't know. My credit score is 673, so I don't know what I'm going to get for a mortgage.

You're not. Yeah, exactly. What I've been fantasizing about is buying a nice fifth wheel rig and living in that somewhere. No, we don't want to die in a trailer. No, that's not a retirement plan, dude. No, I don't like it either. Yeah, you're just trying to, what you're after is freedom, but that's not going to get you what you want.

No. How's your health? Knock on wood, good. Are you married? No, divorced a long time ago okay all right yeah um you know if you sold the house today you would be free and then you rent something as inexpensively as possible for two

years and let your credit score heal because it'll heal over time when you don't have any payments and you get rid of the irs right now it's not healing as long as the irs is sitting there your credit score is going to stay down period well okay so you're going to be renting for two years you're going to be 69 and you're going to be buying something at that point during that time however you will not have any of these payments, and if you can keep your health up and continue to bring in the income, you can stack some cash on top of that 75 or 80 we got left over, right? So your purchase would not occur for two years, though. Yeah, I just don't know what I could rent. I'm at house payments 1900 and what am i

going to rent for close to that you know you need to rent for less than that even and you're probably going to move away from where you are right now in order to do that you got any buddies that are single that need to rent and cut their costs maybe time to go back to the roommate situation my friend i've given that a lot of thought about getting a roommate. I have a friend of mine, Stanley, that he's just been cat-sitting for me. I think I'd do it the other way around. I think I'd be the roommate. Sell this house and clear the debt.

That was Ken's idea. That's a thought. It's not a bad thought. And you got a tough one there. This is The Ramsey Show.