The Ramsey Show - App - DAVE RANT: The White House Can't Fix Your Financial Problems! (Hour 1)

Episode Date: November 29, 2021

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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, 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. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Ken Coleman, Ramsey Personality, number one best-selling author, is my co-host today as we answer your questions about your life, your money, and with Ken being here, particularly your career. That's right, you're thinking about a new job,

you're thinking about participating in the Great Resignation, as they're calling it out there. You're thinking about shifting and moving to something with purpose. Ken's new best-seller, Paycheck to Purpose, answers that. And he's here to answer your questions. He does that several hours a day on radio as well, but joins us here for the three hours of the Ramsey Show today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Mike starts us off this hour in Charlotte.

Hey, Mike, how are you? Good. I'm going to be on my last baby step to debt, which is an auto loan that has 0% interest. Good for you. Thank you. I'm wondering why I should not just go ahead and start saving for baby step three and just pay that loan out per its terms for the next 10 months. Considering mathematically it makes no difference.

Well, mathematically it does make a difference because we're not talking just about interest rate. We're talking about cash flow. And also we're talking about you completely changing your view and your habits on debt because the shortest distance between where you are and wealth is to do away with and stay away from debt. And the way you framed the question makes it sound like you think this is still smart.

Like you'd do it again. No, no, I would not. Okay, if you wouldn't do it again, then let's get rid of it. Okay, fair enough. It's a mindset shift as much as it is a math equation. Personal finance is 80% behavior. It's only 20% head knowledge. And so your cash flow is being eaten up by a freaking car payment.

And so what you're doing is you're permanently drawing a line in the sand and saying, that's it, I don't borrow money anymore, particularly for stupid cars. And when you break that cycle in your head that's when you begin to move forward on things uh it's not just what is the interest rate uh if interest you know if people were doing math all the time they wouldn't be using credit cards if they're doing math they wouldn't have gotten a student loan well i think it is a math issue and i think you've just seen it the wrong way. The reality is, whatever that car payment is, let's say it's $350, $400. I think the average car payment's in that range. $400.

$500. It's now $500. My goodness, it's gone up. Several years ago, I did a video for our company. It was like $450. Yeah. So you take that number out of that monthly budget, right? You're not paying all of a sudden. It is the math problem in the right way. not paying all of a sudden it is the math problem in the right way now all of a sudden we've got some freedom to put that money or as rachel says freedom to spend it gets that emergency fund juiced and full uh so much faster and you never know what could happen to where oh well i've got five more months and get rid of it now part of the math equation is cash flow cash cash cash yeah and and your most powerful wealth building tool is your income so eliminate the pain don't give your income to someone else even if it's a zero

percent yeah don't do it good good question though fair question all right leo is with us in houston texas hey leo what's up hey mr ranji thanks for taking my call i appreciate it and i also appreciate everything you do i think y'all are great. Thank you, sir. How can we help? All right. Long story short, I'm a nurse in the healthcare field. I've saved a little bit of money here. So I have about, you know, 75,000 saved in my accounts. The thing is, I've got about $60,000 left in student loans. And, you know, I'm like you. You know, I think about paying it off real quick. I want to put a lump down just to, you know, take care of this loan as much as I can.

But I know it sounds kind of like a straightforward question, but with the new administration uh coming in do i have to wait until they make an announcement of like whether or not they're going to relieve some of the student loans because they started to do it with some of the people in public service so i was just kind of kind of wondering what your thoughts on that because i'm just sort of sitting here and you know kind of trying to play the calculation game. But, you know, just wondering what y'all's advice on that is. Cool.

Well, I'm glad you picked nursing. It's a great field to go into. Very well done. And $60,000 in debt. What's your income? It's about $80,000. Good for you. How old are you?

I'm a little bit older. I'm 40. So I got a late start. But, you know, that's okay. Well, here's the thing. Let's go back on a couple of elements of your question. Number one, the Biden administration has not done any student loan forgiveness at all that was not already on the books. They've not initiated a single thing.

They've been in office for 10 months, months almost 12 months okay and um and so they've not done anything yet now they've all talked a lot but welcome to washington dc um now and here's the second thing now you can do whatever you want to do i mean you do whatever you want to do but what you're asking is you're asking ken and i so i'm 61 years old and i've yet to receive a blessing from washington dc either party okay neither neither president reagan bush clinton carter these are all while I was an adult. Okay? Obama. Who am I leaving out? W. Trump. Second Bush.

Trump, Bush, and Bush. I've yet to get a check from any of these people. You know where I built all of the wealth that we've built? I took control of my own life, and I decided I was going to control my house, not wait on the White House. Yes, sir. And so it's just a philosophy of life. I think those people suck, all of them. And I'm not waiting on any of them.

I think they're all a tick on the butt of America. Yeah. And they're parasites. And I don't think I'm going to wait on any of them for me to have a high-quality life. Yeah. While you're waiting on that, wait for pigs to fly. I mean, it's the same exact scenario think about how much further along you're going to be in your life if you cut that check today today yeah i mean i've got 15 left over i have like three friends

that are uh politicians uh at a four if you count some local people, but at a national level. And and and they're friends of mine. And I appreciate who they are. But I ain't waiting on any of them to fix my life, Leo, because you're going to have a long wait. If you wait on someone in the White House to fix your life, your life is going to suck. So, no, don't wait on Biden to fix your life. Don't wait on Trump to get reelected to fix your life, your life is going to suck. So, no, don't wait on Biden to fix your life. Don't wait on Trump to get reelected to fix your life. Don't wait on whoever you want to throw in the pie here of disgust.

But don't do it. Yeah, and let me take this on practically in 30 seconds, folks. Let me just give you the other side of the story. That's a campaign promise. You might hear it from the other side of the aisle. So, Dave and I aren't picking on Biden. Don't get your hands on that. I'm picking on all of them. I'm an equal opportunity offender. But listen to this. That's a campaign promise. You might hear it from the other side of the aisle. So Dave and I aren't picking on Biden. Don't get your hands on a lot. I'm an equal opportunity offender.

But listen to this. It's a campaign promise. It is not good government business for them to pay these off. They make too much money off of this. There's state dollars invested in this. This is one of the most slimy, intricate situation and they're not going to ever do it.

There's too many political reasons not to do it. Don't buy the lie, ever. They're never going to do it. I'm just going to lay it out there. I mean, they've done a lot of stuff I never thought they would do, but I'm not sitting around waiting on them to fix my life. I know that. Pay it off, dude. Fast as you can.

Oh, by the way, you borrowed it, too. This is The ramsey show imagine a world where people never have to worry about money ever again at ramsey solutions our mission is to teach people how to get out of debt, build lasting wealth, and be outrageously generous. And that means we have to take on the toxic money culture that says you need debt to get ahead. Well, we're okay with that. We've seen millions of lives changed, and we will continue to create digital products and services to help people transform their lives. If you want to join me and the over 1,000 other team members on this crusade, we're currently on the hunt for web developers, UX designers,

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we've been in a Christmas frame of mind for many weeks now, and we're having a great time handing out cash as part of our Christmas Cash Giveaway. Because if you didn't know, giving is the most fun you'll ever have with money. Every year we celebrate Christmas with our Ramsey Show listeners with an awesome tradition, our Ramsey Christmas Cash Giveaway. This year we're giving away $500 every week,

already have several times, and a grand prize of $5,000 up until Christmas. You can enter to win every day to increase your chances of winning. No purchase is necessary. RamseySolutions.com slash giveaway. And we know you plan on doing a lot of giving. Everything's on sale at our website. It's our biggest Cyber Monday sale ever right now.

You can get up to 79% off. A lot of our books are on at $10 each. And today we've got special deals from all of our Ramsey personalities. It's the perfect day to get Christy Wright's 2022 Goal Planner, Rachel Cruz's Money Assessment, and Ken Coleman's Career Assessment because these are the lowest prices we've ever put them on the site. Friday we broke the internet during black friday so you tried to get on then and uh so uh we've jacked up everything right now and

it carried some of our black friday prices over into cyber monday so you can still get the deals so check them all out if you missed out on friday we were down for a few hours and um over here working our tail off trying to find that line of corrupted code. But we got her and got her back up. And no problems now. We're all here to help you. Check out RamseySolutions.com. Hit the store for all the deals.

Tis the season. By the way, you know, they called me in to help out with that, and I was able to find it, that one little piece of code, Dave. I just wanted to make sure you knew that, because I forgot to send you an email. I have no response to this level of lying. I honestly couldn't believe I got that far out of the sentence before you

cut the off. You finding a line of corrupted code would be like me finding a line of corrupted code. I don't even know what corrupted code means. We wouldn't know it was corrupted if we found it. So thankful for smart people. We know what a corrupted politician is, but we don't know what a corrupted code is. No clue.

But we do have about 400 and something people in this building that are phenomenal at all things digital. And that includes the SWAT tactical team that went in there and found the internet hiccuped, and there you go. Who knew? Yeah. Things we didn't have to worry about when I started this business a few years back. Isn't that the truth? I read the email, and I go, wow, it's amazing what we get to do because of really smart people. Yeah.

And how dependent we are. Yeah. Oh, isn't that the truth? All right. Weston's with us in Nashville. Hey, Weston. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. How do show how do you sir thank you for taking my call sure what's up hey so i'm also a nurse i'm on baby step four and what my question is is should i i have money set aside to go to seminary right now because i'm wanting to change careers but should i use that

money to to go to seminary or should i use use that money to make a down payment on a home? Wow. From nursing to seminary. Yes, sir. That's an interesting call. I like it. Yes, sir. How old are you?

26 years old, sir. Okay. When will you enter seminary if you don't buy a house and have the money? If I don't buy a house, then I could do it January. And it would take you how long? To complete seminary? Mm-hmm. Three years. I would get my master's in divinity, sir.

Okay. All right. What's the goal? What's the end result? The end goal is I would love to be a pastor, and that's why I've read your book, Proximity Principle. What I want to do is I want to faithfully serve the people, serve God's people. And what I've been doing is obviously reading my Bible, reading the books, and serving as best as I can. What I'm concerned about is that I won't be fully educated to serve as best as I can. I'm not chasing a degree. I'm not chasing a piece of paper. I'm just chasing the maximum amount of education. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. You're aware there's a lot of highly effective pastors that do not have

an MDiv. Yes, sir. Okay. My dad started two churches, pastored for 47 years, and did not get his MDiv. Now, he did go to Bible college, and he did a lot of studying, and the guy read commentaries, still reads commentaries. So I think that what you've got to understand is there is opportunity for you to get more biblical knowledge, to learn and continue to learn, whether you have an MDiv or not. Now, I'm not trying to talk you out of doing an MDiv, but I do think you've got to understand that there are multiple pathways and different levels of education, none of which... It's not table stakes in that world. Yeah, that's right.

I mean, the knowledge that you get from MDiv is not table stakes to be a pastor. And so I want you to understand that. And so then that makes me back up and say, I want you to go. I'm more worried about seminary and more worried about you going into the ministry than I am you buying a house. So let's just take the house off the table and let's move towards your new career as fast as we can. and but I might add some steps to your career transition to see if you really want to spend the money and the time on an MDiv you don't have to spend three years to get an MDiv to be qualified so let's let's play this out are you wanting to be a senior pastor as it stands today at 26 is that the goal eventually but I don't I don't think right now I have the spiritual knowledge to do that.

No, no, no, and you don't, and it's okay. But let's back this up now. If right now, and this can change, we know it's ministry, but it could be senior pastor. Maybe you find as you get into it that you'd rather be an executive pastor. That's just as much ministry as a person who's preaching on Sundays. I think you've got to actually look to get in a volunteer ministry position. You're a nurse right now. You're in great shape financially. I want to see you try to work towards a part-time, so right now volunteer, and then try to move to a part-time ministry position.

Churches need folks like you who they can't pay full-time, but they need somebody to step in. And I would truly work the proximity principle, which for the audience says, in order to do what you want to do, ministry, pastoral work, got to be around people that are doing it in places where it's happening. Get in and sample and taste and see all the different types of ministry positions. At 26, you can learn a lot just from doing that, Dave. And then you volunteer a little bit, maybe a part-time role. And you start taking a few classes at a Bible college that would count towards an MDiv.

But don't wait to start your ministry until you finish an MDiv. Yeah, get into it and see what, you know, maybe it's youth. Maybe it's singles. Maybe it's, you know, pastoral care where you spend your whole week visiting people. Counseling is a form of ministry. And then, of course, the senior pastor or the executive pastor. Really need to get in and see it, taste it, experience a little bit of it, and then at 26, 27, 28, get a better idea which path you want to walk.

And we're throwing around inside baseball terms. MDiv stands for Masters in Divinity, for those of you that are wondering what the flip we're talking about. That's right. You get a master's degree in seminary is what it amounts to. And it certainly qualifies you to do a lot of things in the church world, without a doubt. The knowledge base does, not the piece of paper. And he's approaching that from the right angle.

But to answer your overall question, I would put your career shift ahead of purchasing a home right now. You've got plenty of time to buy a home later. And it's a weird market to buy in anyway right this second. Like there's 9,000 buyers for every house that's for sale and that kind of stuff. And so, you know, it's not a bad time to sit on the sidelines anyway, and let's just take some steps. But I might take a different step than saying, I've got to go get an MDiv before I'm qualified knowledge-based-wise to do ministry.

Not true. Not true. That's not an accurate situation. One of my dear friends, when Stacy and I lived in Richmond, Virginia, when we first got married, went to a church, and the pastor there was probably 32 and was in his first senior pastor job, had worked his way into it, and he got his MDiv while being a pastor. Yeah, I've got several guys. So that's a very normal path as well. And the church will pay for it.

Yes, most of the time. And it's not unusual at all. I've been in several situations where the associate pastor was working, you know, continuing. I mean, it's continual personal growth in your field of endeavor. And so you've got to do something to continue your personal growth. And, you know, ignorance is not good in any field. So, yeah, that's not an unusual growth path for someone sitting in an associate pastor role or a young adults pastor role or whatever to be working on that and many times the church if it's a church of size will pay for it this is the ramsey show Thank you. Ken Coleman, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage.

Jonathan and Sarah are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? Good, good. Doing great. Good to have you guys. Where do you live? Phoenix. All right. And you're all the way to Nashville to do a debt-free scream. How much have you paid off? $32,000. $32,681. Yep. All right. Very good. And how long did that take? 13 months. Okay. Very good. And your range of

income during that time? About $80,000 to $120,000. I'm a realtor, so it kind of bounces up and down a lot. Okay, cool. And what do you do, Sarah? I am a signing agent, and I also am the project manager for our new business. Okay, very cool. Like sign language agent? Signing agent.

I work for a title company. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Yeah. Sorry. That would be cooler. Well, we've actually had, when we've done live events we have people do sign language and there's usually a local agent that'll book them for us and that's what i thought you were talking about so i just learned something okay but instead you work for a title company and he works for real estate company now i'm catching on okay all right very good what kind of debt was the 33 000

a little bit of everything. We had a couple credit cards, student loans, medical debt. Card payment. IRS debt. Yep. A lot of IRS debt. Y'all are kind of normal. Yeah.

Just a little bit of everything. Yeah. I mean, just walking along, no money. Making money, but no money. Absolutely. Pretty much. How long have you been married? Oh, 12 years. no money. Absolutely. How long have you been married? Oh, 12 years. 12 years?

Yeah. So what happened a year and a half ago that was the wake-up call that gets you on your Ramsey journey? Tell us how you hooked up with us. Oh, well, we've actually been listening to you for our whole marriage. We just got serious about two years ago. We had to sell our first house because we couldn't pay our debts. We thought that would fix the problem but it didn't

we still started accumulating more and more debt and it still wasn't working so we actually got out of debt about seven seven months ago um officially and that's about two years ago we got really serious uh we had our second child and now we have three and we're like yeah this this isn't working yeah wow okay so then you just then you decided you weren't going to just listen to the radio. You're going to actually freaking do this stuff now. Yeah, right. Absolutely. All right.

Well, the wake-up call was there. Babies will wake you up. Yeah. Yeah. In more ways than one. They do. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they'll get it going.

Yeah, it's fascinating that for nearly your whole marriage, 12 years, you were familiar with Ramsey Solutions and what Dave teaches and everything. And then, so you agreed with it. It just wasn't urgent enough't urgent enough and then all of a sudden whoa we got to do it so I'm just curious when you make that decision what actual changes did you make was it right away was it a week later how abrupt and intense was it yeah it was I would say it was pretty right away we got the the Ramsey Plus app, which now is called EveryDollar. At the time, it was Ramsey Plus. And that, I think, was a big catalyst, like watching what our money was doing every month.

And every week or month, we'd sit down and look at it together. She started getting really awesome, crazy selling stuff, Craigslisting things, Facebook marketing things away to pay off extra little chunks of debt. So she was probably the most inspired. And then I kind of jumped on board. Sarah, did you ever sell anything that was his that he didn't want you to sell? No, he doesn't really have a lot of things that would be super valuable, make a lot of money. I'm not sure what that says, but that's funny.

Well, maybe the computer and the TV, but I use that too. So we can't get rid of that of course he doesn't have anything super valuable she wanted to sell right there it is exactly that's right there we're going now we got it yeah and it was hard too because like the nature of his business is he gets these commission checks and sometimes they'd be really big commission checks and we we think about all the things we wanted to spend our money on we're like oh we could with ten thousand dollars we could do all our flooring we could you about all the things we wanted to spend our money on. We were like, oh, with $10,000, we could do all our flooring. We could paint the walls.

We could do all this stuff that we wanted to do. And then we would sit there and be like, okay, but if Dave Ramsey was here sitting with us and he heard our situation, what would he say? And it was always, we've got to pay off all the debt. So it was awesome because sometimes I'd be tempted to be like, okay, let's use this commission check to buy something and he'd be like no we can't other times he'd be like well let's use this commission check to to do this and i'd be like

no we can't what would dave ramsey do so which is code for not really that i'm going to come to your house or something but it's it's really code for uh what is best for our future. Right. Yeah. Absolutely. Versus the short-term feeling. Absolutely. Adults devise a plan and follow it. Children do what feels good. So it's, you know, I used to kind of go, that's weird. People go, what does Dave say?

Because it doesn't matter what I say, really. What matters is what you do. But really what that's code for, if you decode it, it's like, what is the smart thing for me 10 years from today? That's the question you're asking yourself in a sense. And you oh we got to get out of this debt because when we get rid of this debt then we've got money and we're open we can go other places yeah what's one of the most extreme things you did we heard about selling stuff is there something that was just you look back on you go man this was this was tough to do some people made fun of you yeah i want to hear i want to hear a good story you got it i I think selling our first home to pay off all our debt because we couldn't make our payments was probably the craziest thing.

Oh, yeah. We did. Yeah, because I had just had a baby, and I wanted to stay home with our baby. And I was like, there's no way that I can do this with all the money that we owe in debt every month. And I love the EveryDollar app, too, because when we finally decided to get serious, we paid for that service because we didn't want to pay for it before. We're like, well, we can't pay for this. We need to use this money to make a debt payment. Yeah, that $10.

$10 a month. Yeah. Every little bit helps, though, you know? Like, that's how I felt. So we didn't do that the first time we tried to do dave ramsey i think i convinced you at one point i was i don't know what we were watching and i was like it's 115 bucks for the year but let's let's do it let's watch all the videos again let's you know we got all the accounts connected so you went through

financial peace university yes in ramsey plus yeah yeah we did it the second time and this time it stuck for us. But I love how the software works where it kind of allocates all the debt together rather than all your car expenses. Like you have your auto debt, you have your gas, things like that. With the Ramsey solutions, every dollar, I love that it puts all the debt together because then you're like, oh, my goodness, this is all the debt. And we were paying $1, this is all the debt. Yeah. And we were paying $1,200 a month in debt. Yeah, we were like, we could be paying for a whole other house with this debt.

It was the same as our mortgage payment. So we were like, this is not okay. Wow, that's good. And visualizing that is what changed. That's good insight. I'll let the EveryDollar team know. They'll be proud to hear that. They designed that on purpose.

I happen to know that. But way to go, guys. Very, very well done. Okay. When people ask, what do you tell them the key to getting out of debt is? Not spending more than you make. That's a good one. I'll take that.

I think budgeting, too. And we really liked sitting down together every month, once a month, to kind of go over things. Because it kind of put us on the same page page and it got us excited for the next month. It got us excited for the next debt payment. A regular meeting together and deciding like, hey, what do we spend our money on? Yeah, absolutely. I think when you do that, you can see that light at the end of the tunnel and it keeps you going.

Yeah, absolutely. Otherwise, it's just an oncoming train. Yeah, especially when you pay off your first kind of chunk of debt it's like wow we could do this like we could keep this going it's going to happen and then it doesn't yeah yeah powerful well done you guys well we have a copy of baby steps millionaires for you the new book is coming out in january you're going to get an early release copy because you're on your way to being that very soon that's your next step and we also got a copy of total money makeover for you to give away right here at Christmastime and pay it forward and give somebody else their wake-up call.

Say, this is the stuff we did right here. So we're proud of you here at Ramsey. Way to go. Excellent, excellent, excellent job. All right, it's Jonathan and Sarah, Phoenix, Arizona. $33,000 paid off in 13 months, making $80,000 to $120,000. Count it down. Let's hear a debt free scream 3 2

1 WE'RE DEBT FREE A lot of insight there you have to we talked about that in the first segment. We're talking to the young man paying off his car. You have to change some things in your life permanently that are behaviors. And sometimes you're almost doing them symbolically, but other times you're doing them tactically and practically.

But the rhythm of doing the budget together and looking out in the future and going, okay, what would we do if we were thinking about our future selves? Translation, what would Dave Ramsey do? But, I mean, what would we do if we're thinking about the future and being wise? This is what we would do. Very well done. Very good stuff. Jonathan and Sarah are heroes from Phoenix, Arizona.

They took control of their lives. I'm proud of them. Well done. Well done. This is The Ramsey Show. Thank you for joining us, America. Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, best-selling author, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Pedro is with us, and he is in Hartford, Connecticut. Hi, Pedro. Welcome to The Ramsey Show.

Hey, how are you, Dave? Are you able to hear me? Absolutely. What's up? Oh, my God. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I've been watching you for the past few years, and I'm just thrilled to be speaking to you. Thank you.

You're going to need to speak directly into your phone. It's a little bit muffled. How can we help? Yeah, so I'm going through, well, me and my family, we are going through a crisis at the moment. And it's in regards to my little brother. And what is going on is that he's not respecting some of the boundaries that we got in place at home, which is causing difficulties around the house and I wanted to know how can we um move forward as a family as we try to deal with that situation how old is he he's 17 years old he's a senior in high school and

what my mother tried to do um when you try to speak to him. And like, hey, David, this is what's going on around the house. You keep coming in late. You still, you know, smoking marijuana. You still doing all these things that we don't want you to do. But David still, his name is David. But he still shows us to do those actions because he thinks our... So your dad's not in the picture? No, he's not, your dad's not in the picture. No,

he's not. He's got, well, we have different dads. His dad lived in Dallas, Texas. Okay. And how old are you?

I'm 22 years old. And how many other siblings does, does David have? He has, well, he has a lot of them in Puerto Rico, but living with him right now, he only has me and his little brother.

His little brother is like 13 years old. And what year is he, junior or senior in high school? I believe he's a senior this year. When does he turn 18? March 4th. Okay. March 4th March 4th and what is

really what is happening is that my mom is like hey at some point we cannot keep living like this it's hurtful you know we seeing the things that he's doing that's that's causing harm to himself but it's also hurting me and my mom because we love him.

But we just don't know what else to do, Dave. We tried everything. We call BCF. I've been in the picture. The police have been in the picture. Why were the police in the picture? The police are in the picture because something happened last year. I don't know the exact details, but I think he was involved with some legal issues.

I don't know the exact details, but I don't know if he stole something, I think. The police were involved, and that caused DCF to be involved in the picture. Listen, Ken nor I are family therapists. Dr. John Deloney would be ideal to be sitting here, but he's not. So I'll just play Papa Dave, Grandpa Dad, Grandpa Dave, okay? And that's my only expertise in this, which is, in other words, very limited. And I've never faced something like this personally, so I can't imagine the heartbreak and the the pain that you and your mom are going

through that this um uh that this young man's misbehavior is bringing to you uh the only hope i've ever had um influencing someone it has not been by force although i've been tempted to once they want this by someone i mean an adult and And this young man's old enough and physically large enough that he's acting out as an adult. And so the only thing you can do is talk him into it, in other words. And the only way I've been able to do that is put someone that has credibility, someone that he believes in, in his face. And, you know, it might be that there's a couple of guys at the local church that you guys are members of would sit down with him and you, and the four of you go out for coffee,

and they just look at him and go, look, knucklehead, you're stuck on stupid, and you're getting ready to have a really long life if you keep living like this. Because come March, you're not going to be our problem anymore. We're putting you on the street. But after that, you're going to have a long life because knuckleheads always have a long life. And it's always painful. And you're being to have a long life because knuckleheads always have a long life. And it's always painful. And you're being a freaking knucklehead. And so when are you going to straighten up and be a man instead of a little boy?

And who's going to call him out on that where he's going to listen? And I don't know who that is. But he needs the knucklehead speech because he's stuck on stupid right now and we've got to unstick him, right? Absolutely, Dave. And, you know, I agree with you. right now and we got to unstick him right absolutely dave and that's yeah and that's you know we i i i agree with you i think that somebody who has who he believes in can probably help because mom i tried mom tried hey pedro let me ask you let me ask you real quick

is mama paying for anything that he's benefiting from right now? Cell phone, car? What's mama paying for that he's using? Phone services at the moment. Take that away. Take that away tonight. Here's the thing. I think Dave's right on the knucklehead discussion, but I also think that this is a kid who's hurting, and because he's hurting, he's hurting you all and he's lost he's flailing who knows what all's going on we're not privy to that but i would tell you that he's already

causing pain for you and your mom and and today's point you're not kicking him out and maybe at this point because he's not 18 yet but i would take away every benefit every benefit that she's paying for i'd take it away with a very clear conversation. This is why I'm doing this. This isn't working. I'm not going to subsidize, fund this anymore. It's gone. And you can start to figure it out on your own, plus the knucklehead speech.

But I think she's got to cut all benefits, all blessings. I've been to Connecticut in March. It's cold outside. Yeah. I think he needs to feel some more pain and desperation. And I don't know i mean look dude if you want to live here this is the standards and if you're not going to be up to those standards by march you're gone now your mom needs to be able to back that up and say that and you got to back her up and between now and march take stuff away from him and try

to put people in his life to influence him and help him. But I don't know how you turn someone like this. Sometimes they have to hit the wall on their own. Yeah. And until they find some pain, they don't get a wake-up call. The 12-steppers talk about that all the time. You have to hit bottom before you, you know, and sometimes you hit bottom hard before you get this stuff. But, you know, he's mighty cocky for a guy with a warm pillow. And so we can get him a cold one.

That's all I know to do. I don't know how to do it otherwise. And that's not being tough or mean or angry. It's tough love because the current thing we're doing is creating a juvenile delinquent, and so we have to not keep doing what we've been doing. We have to try something new, and that is an act of love because it's not going to be easy for you and her to watch someone that you love be on the street. Pedro, I'll ask you a quick question.

The consequences that are coming from his behavior, are they hurting you and your mom more or hurting him more? I would say it's hurting him more. Yeah. I agree. Even though I don't – he's not as open to me. Maybe an afternoon lunch at the homeless shelter would be good for him. That's where you're going to be, boy.

Yeah, and then I know that he doesn't't want um he has some mental health issues they're not bad but he doesn't want that's a whole different equation you just changed right we offer her yeah right we offer her hey like dude like we can help you you're gonna see someone and we'd be there for you but he denies everything and what he's trying to give them? Yeah, if you want to stay here, here's the rules. And you're going to do these things. You're going to be in on time. We're not smoking pot. We're not stealing stuff.

And you're seeing a counselor that we'll pay for. If you're not willing to do these things, then we are not going to participate in your downfall. We love you too much for that. And that's what some people call tough love i think it's just called love actually but um and i don't know how to do that other than that if there's some way you can love this guy well and some other way you can put your arm around him and walk with him the softer or gentler than that i would try to find that because that that's a very

harsh um thing we're discussing here. But ultimately, that's where you're headed because enabling does not help anyone. Just putting up with it, in other words, doesn't make anybody get better. Never has. You've got to do the work to decide. And ouch.

The hard thing. The hard thing. The hard thing, dude. And keep in mind, none of us are licensed therapists to give you advice. We're just a couple of old farts sitting here giving you our best shot at it. This is The Ramsey advice in their life? Let them know about the Ramsey Call of the Day podcast. It's a quick hit of advice about life and money in under 10 minutes. Check out the Ramsey Call of the Day podcast wherever you listen to podcasts.