The Ramsey Show - App - Debt Is Not a Path to Wealth or Peace

Episode Date: September 3, 2024

Welcome to the Ramsey Show, where we help you win in your life. We're going to specifically help you win with your money, win in your professional journey, and win with your relationships. The phone number for you to jump in so we can coach you up is 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. I'm Ken Coleman, joined by the incomparable George Camel. He's layered up. He's got his shacket unbuttoned, so he's a little looser today. And so that tells me you're ready to go.

I really thought you were going to say the incompetent George Campbell. Now, why would I do that? You are very competent. It's what Ken wanted to say in his head. Not true. But he said the kind thing instead. That's not true. Everybody knows how much we love each other.

We enjoy being on the air together. We have a good time. We were just having a fun conversation before the show today, which, you know, we can't share. That's true. That was a very fun conversation. You won't be privy to that. You will not be privy to that. Let's go to Richie who starts us off this hour.

Richie's in Raleigh, North Carolina. Richie, how can we help? Hey, hi. Pleased to talk to you guys. I have over half a million dollars debt. Most of it, I would say 90% of it is actually my home. I was in a very lucrative job for almost seven to eight years. But after listening to your podcast, I came to a conclusion that I haven't saved enough,

but I saved enough to put a deposit in a house. And I've been jobless for about eight months now. And I've basically exhausted all of my savings. In fact, this month, I will be taking out the $1,000 that I had kept for my emergency fund towards the mortgage. Apart from that, I have a car that I have to pay around 500, more than $500 every month. And I'm at a point where I've already started borrowing money from my friends and relatives. And so I've kind of, I'm in a big, deep trouble. And I don't know if I should sell my house, which I know in a few years from now will

give me a lot of equity because this is a growing area. It's in the suburbs of Raleigh. Yeah. Richie, let me jump in for just a second and George will walk you through the debt situation. What was the income and what were you doing before you lost the job? So I am on the business side of software engineering. I am a product manager, and my salary fluctuated between $110,000 to $130,000 a year. Okay, so product manager and on the technology side of things, and you've been without work for eight months. What's happening there? Because I think you've got an income issue is the primary issue. So I'm just want to dig here. What, what in your mind is the reason why you've been jobless for eight months?

I believe it's the job market right now. I know a lot of organizations are, you know, laying off people black and blue. I know many people who have graduated and still haven't been able to secure a job, and they've been jobless for more than a year now. So have you had opportunities? Have you had any interviews? That's what I'm looking for. What's your activity level?

I have been applying to at least 50 companies a day on an average. How are you going about that? Basically, in our job scenario, we basically tap people on LinkedIn and other job sites. Richie, I do not want to beat up on you when you're down because this is, we know from psychology that when you lose a job, it has the same emotional impact as losing a loved one. So I want to be sensitive to this, but I can tell you, I've coached so many people who say they apply for things 50 a day. And when I find out it's LinkedIn, you are essentially playing the lottery right now. That is not going to work. And you can tell it hasn't worked. I will tell you that you are going to, and let me just also say this, the job market is very tight in what we call white collar jobs. And you're in a white collar job and the market is tightening. There's no question about that. But you have got to go about it a very different way. And I want to give you to George here. But at the same time, if we don't have any income coming in, you're not going to be able to do what George teaches you. So you've got to do two things. And I'm going to give

you at the end of this call, I'm going to give you my book, The Proximity Principle. And it's an easy read. And I really think you've got to change up your strategies because you have got to be connecting relationship to relationship to relationship just to get an interview. Then you've got to perform well. I think you understand that. I think you also have to open up the rest of the country. Are you open to moving or do you feel like you got to stay in the Raleigh area? No, I'm open to moving for sure. Yeah, I mean, we're in a desperate situation right now, and to that end, I want to get super tactical here.

You need to be working at a Walmart stocking shelves. You need to be driving. You need to be doing whatever it takes, and I'm going to pass it off to George with that as the segue just to cover the basics right now. So you've got to change your strategy and get really intense about finding a gig. But in the meantime, you're working every job you can get. George, I hand it to you here to walk through his numbers. So Richie, you're telling me you don't have any income coming in. You've been draining the emergency fund to live, correct?

Yes. You will for the first time. What is your monthly expenses when you look at your four walls, food, utility, shelter, transportation? What does that add up to? It's over $5,000 because I have my mortgage. It's self-affixed. Mortgage is $3,600.

And it's just you? Are you single? Yes, I'm single. Okay. Here's the deal. It might be where you need to move. You need to rent for a while. One of the reasons is this income situation. The other is you may not need a huge house right now in Raleigh. And so it's going to free you up with more options as you move into this next career phase. The other is you might need to sell this car. How much is the car worth and what do you owe on it? So the car, I got a pre-owned car for around $50,000. I paid an upfront $20,000 there.

So my current monthly payment is $65,000. What's left on the loan? It's about $19,000. And what do you think it's worth if you looked up the Kelly Blue Book private sale value? It could go for $19,000 or $20,000, not more than that. Okay. If I'm in your shoes, I'm getting rid of this car tomorrow. I'm going to borrow a car for a little bit, save up another $1,000 or $2,000,

and just get you a used beater car to get you around for now. Because that car is about to get repoed. You can't make the payment on it you're going to be paying that payment with your more debt to cover it yeah so i think this house does need to go on the market for other reasons i think the car needs to go today and that will at least give you a little bit of breathing room but like ken said you need to go get three or four jobs just to cover the bills, to cover those three, four, five grand until you can get that career. That's right. Right. And you got to stop this LinkedIn. And I love LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn, but LinkedIn is great for information. You've got to make some

real human to human connections right now. Your resume is, you are spitting in the wind every day right now. That is how effective that is. And you've got to get really intentional, Richie. Listen, you have too much skill and too much experience to stay unemployed eight months. I mean, a product manager, that is a very impressive set of skills and also experiences that are very transferable to a lot of industries. But nobody knows you're out there, man. Folks, I'm going to say this. If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times. Submitting resumes online, you are just nameless, faceless. You're not making any progress at all, at all. You got to get back out and meet people. Say, will you

connect me? Will you take my resume into the hiring manager? This is all about people. The opportunity follows the connections to people. 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

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Visit betterhelp.com slash ramseradio to get 10% off your first month. That's betterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Ramsey Radio. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show, where we help you win in your life. I'm Ken Coleman. George Campbell is with me today. It's the firm of Coleman, Campbell, and Campbell. Don't hire those people. No. If that was a law firm, I'd say run Camel. Don't hire those people. No. If that was a law firm, I'd say run. Yeah, do your research on that. Do you see us on a park bench with our faces plastered on there? That'd be kind of funny.

Been in an injury? Coleman and Camel. You know what? We would use that photo that has yet to sit. We've got to share that photo today. Do we have the Step Brothers photo that we can share on YouTube? That's a tease. That's a tease.

We recently got together all of the Ramsey personalities, and we did a new photo shoot. brothers photo that we could share on youtube well look so we tease that's a tease we recently got together all of the uh ramsey personalities and we did new shoot a new photo shoot and it turns out that george and i individual photos were back-to-back schedule wise and we had a we had a little fun with that we decided to jump in we reshot the cover to the movie of step brothers step brothers and it's uh that i could see that on the park bench But I'll tell you where you could see us together outside of the show. You know where we can see us? Ramsey Cruise. On the Ramsey Cruise.

It's called the Live Like No One Else Cruise, and it is coming, George. It is going to be here before you know it. And I'm told here on my production notes that we've had more than 85% of the cabins booked. So people are starting to lock in, and we're going to be going to Turks and Caicos, St. Thomas, Puerto Rico, and the Bahamas. George will have an entire vat of sunscreen. I'm a 50 SPF guy.

Yeah, he is. Are you really? Yeah. You might as well just wear a head-to-toe sweatsuit. Well, here's the deal. I'm thinking I'll be pale for the rest of my life, but my face will look exactly like it did 50 years ago. Okay.

That's my strategy. Whatever you tell yourself. I don't want to look like a baseball glove that got left out in the sun. Yeah. That's not my strategy. Well, you're over here working on your third base tan. Listen, it's just called being outside.

I'm not, you know. I can't risk it. Okay. Well, you know, we're going to be all over the place with the catamaran sailing, jet skiing, horseback riding. I want to see you horseback riding on the beach. I feel right for your personal brand. I think horses want to stay far away from this guy.

Folks, listen, I'm trying to have fun with this, and you can see that he's a scared man. You're bringing up trauma. I told that girl to sell the horse. You're a terrified little fellow is what you are. You're scared. I'm going to make you get outside your comfort zone on the cruise. the horse you're a terrified little fellow is is what you are you're scared it's i'm gonna make you get outside your comfort zone on the cruise uh by the way i'm told there's pickleball courts on the ship for real yes by the way i have people been reaching out to me on instagram saying

hey i would like to uh to set up a pickleball match with my husband and you and all this kind of things yeah i'll do that for charity it's the only way you're getting i'll be holding court literally there. All the food is included, even room service. You can lounge by any of the pools, hot tubs. See me and other enthusiasts at the Pickleball Court and State of the Art Fitness Center. And you can hang out with all of us Ramsey personalities and also our exciting celebrity guests,

Trey Kennedy, Stephen Curtis Chapman, Manit Chauhan, Deanna Carter, and more. This is 7-Day Cruise, March 22-29, 2025. You do not want to miss this unforgettable vacation. You can book your cabin right now by going to RamseySolutions.com slash cruise or click the link in the description if you're listening on YouTube. That's going to be fun. I also have mad respect for anyone using a fitness center on a cruise. I'll be there.

You and Deloney will be in there lifting, power lifting, some would call it. Four days out of the seven days, I will be in the gym. Jade and I will be leading. Got to hit the weights, man. I think Jade and I should lead Zumba classes in the fitness center. That'd be fantastic. There we go. Yeah.

All right. That's more my speed. All right. Very nice. All right. Let's get to the phones. 888-. Yeah. All right. That's more my speed. All right. Very nice. All right. Let's get to the phones. 888-825-5225. Sally is joining us now in New Orleans, Louisiana. Sally, how can we help? Hi, guys. I am in the middle of a lawsuit. I joined National Debt Relief, and a year later, I'm being sued by one of the credit card companies that I put into the program. And I've listened to what Dave has said about offering a 50% cash direct offer to the companies.

But at this point with us in legal situations, my question is, should I circumnavigate and go around my legal representation through National Debt Relief to make a direct offer myself to those companies and try to get us out of this mess without too much of a bleed on the back end for me. Well, let me recap for those that are confused about what's going on here with this National Debt Relief. I think this is how they approach it. They go, hey, let us handle it. You don't make any more payments. You make those payments to us and let your credit card debt go into default. The collectors will come after you, your credit will implode, and then we'll settle on the back end. Is that how it goes? They've taken care of three of my four beautifully, but number four, they've dropped the ball on. And now you're getting sued. How far are you into the lawsuit?

A week. Okay. Have you talked to your legal representation about trying to just settle this outside of court? I have talked to him before. He was the one that brought to my attention the reason why they haven't made a successful settlement already. And that was because I didn't have enough money in the savings account with National Debt Relief. And the comment that I keep being given is, don't worry, we're taking care of this for you. You might have to put more money in, but we're taking care of this for you. I would stop giving these people a dime. I don't like these companies.

I think they're scummy, and you can do the same thing on your own. You don't need these companies to do this for you. My fear is they do bring certain skills to the table that I don't necessarily have, such as the negotiation skills. And specifically because we are in legal lawsuit at this point, if I drop, if I pull Discover from their program, I lose my representation. Because they're the ones representing you. Have you talked, have you talked to your representation? He hasn't really been able to give me too much additional information than what they have. He's kind of a middleman.

I would just go – I would call the company. They're not doing you any favors here. Yeah, no more money. No more money. They want to keep stringing you along because that means more money in their pockets. Yeah, so I'm going to jump in really quick here. Sal, I would be on the phone with them saying, I want to talk to you. I want a phone call with whoever your person is there, your customer service rep, and whoever this representation is.

I want a call. I have already paid you X amount of dollars, and I'm in this mess because you all dropped the ball, if I heard you correctly. Is that right? Yes. So at this point, I've already tried calling National Debt Relief several times. I have not been able to get a supervisor. They tell me they'll call me back and we don't. I have talked to the lawyer. My lawyer has been in communication with me as well as with paralegal. But at this point, I took the last five days to devise my own plan to come up with the 50%.

And according to the lawyer, we have three months before the judge makes final rendering, final judgment. What I want to do is I want to approach that credit card company and be like, look, in the 90 days, in the three months, I will give you 50% right here, right now in cash. What do you owe in total? $18,000. What was all this debt for to begin with i jumped into my running my business before i got laid off with covid and i had already had a part-time company i was running and i ran that full time so it was good decision or

good intentions bad decisions i just feel like we're not changing any habits here. We went into this debt knowing we couldn't pay it back, and then we used this company to get a deal on the debt. And I just want you to take some ownership. You're unemployed? No, no. I have taken ownership. I'm actually fully employed as of November.

I've gotten about 80% of all of my debt worked out and straightened out. This is the last thing hanging on my hands. Yeah, it sounds like you've got $9,000 cash in hand. That's what you're going to make the settlement offer on, correct? Correct. Well, I like that, George. She's taking some responsibility. I would just go around them then and say, I've got $9,000.

Can we settle this? Can we drop the lawsuit and be done with this? It's the last debt. And they'll take it. Do I do this before? Do I do this before I drop national debt relief or do I keep them in my back pocket? Well, if the debt's noted as paid in full, there's no reason to use them anymore. Okay. So don't tell them anything.

But to your question, the first action is you go directly to the credit card and get it settled. Okay. And here's the thing. I don't know the fine print of these contracts that you signed, so I would read the fine print. You might need to get outside representation, a lawyer that doesn't work for that company, to look this over. So we are not lawyers, but we can't give you the advice on that. I did watch Matlock growing up. That's as close as Ken got, which is pretty good, actually.

I mean, Andy Griffiths, fantastic show. So, Sally, I hope you can clear this up. I hope the nine grand does it, and I hope you never use these companies again, and I hope you've cut up the cards. Man, that would stress me out. So that's how these companies work, Ken. They say, hey, don't make the payments anymore.

Let it go into default. We'll take care of it. Then we'll settle. Yeah. I don't like any of this. I don't like it. You can pay off the debt yourself. You can settle yourself.

You don't need to pay these scummy companies. By the way, that was a commercial for George, that phone call, to never take those services. Here's why. She can't get a supervisor on the phone. Oh, they'll call you back. Let me tell you something. The supervisor doesn't exist. There's a guy going, hold on one second, and he's like doing his fantasy football team for five minutes

to make you think that he's trying to get a hold of the supervisor. He just stepped out of the office. I'm so sorry. He's not going to be able to get with you ever. Oh, it's a scam. He doesn't exist. He doesn't exist. Alright, I of the office. I'm so sorry. You know what? He's not going to be able to get with you ever. Oh, it's a scam. He doesn't exist. He doesn't exist. All right, I'll tell you who exists. We do.

We'll be right back. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm Ken Coleman. George Campbell is alongside. The phone number is 888-825-5225. Allison is up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Allison, how can we help? Hi, good afternoon, guys. Thanks for taking my call. I just want to give a little background of what I'm asking about. I'm dating my boyfriend just under two years, and we have definitely talked about the future together. And the next step would be living together. We feel rent is just a waste of money we like to buy a house um neither of us are in the financial state to buy a house um his parents have graciously offered to basically have us buy their house from them um for 350 000 which is you know pennies in this market uh with the agreement of if we were to ever sell that we would have to split the difference with them whose parents my boyfriend's parents

this is an awful idea that's why i'm calling um did you feel like it was an awful idea when you called or did you think it was a great idea and you're just being nice to my really dour response. I was kind of 50-50. I came from a divorced house, and my parents argued about money every single day. My boyfriend's parents are still together. They lived middle class, so did we. I also have student debt. My boyfriend doesn't have any, so I'm just trying to, I guess, think of the future. I'm also thinking, am I going to sign off on a mortgage without an engagement? So I know that's playing

into it. Yeah. Yeah. Those are all legit questions. I mean, George can go through the litany. That's your gut telling you, red flag, red flag, red flag. Don't do this. It's not the opportunity you think it is. And also, you splitting the difference with them, what happens if you stay in this for 10 or 20 years and this house becomes worth a million bucks and you just gave away 300 grand? Right. Do you see how convoluted it is? Can I give you an alternate vision? Can I do that, Allison? Yeah, I'm all ears. I'm willing, yeah. Here's the alternate vision. You and your boyfriend don't live together until you get married. And when you get married, you join finances.

And maybe you attack a lot of that debt before you ever put a ring on it. And you get debt free. And you guys rent for two years or whatever it's going to take, three years to get a good down payment. George will walk you through that formula of what we recommend, but we just take our time and we're not thinking things like, oh, what a waste of time, us actually being married and not owning a home and just have this alternate vision for, hey, we can take our time and move into this and not be saddled with a really weird, clunky arrangement. And George, explain our formula on all of this. Well, what you're looking for is 25% of your take-home pay going toward the mortgage,

and that's with two married people. And there's a lot of issues with doing this before you're married. There's a lot of issues doing this with his parents involved and them having a financial gain in this. It just gets real messy. What happens when you guys or if you guys break up? And now not only are you, hey, I'm on the mortgage, he stopped paying, but now the parents are involved with the sale of the house. And they don't like me because I don't want their boy. It's just a mess. And I hope that doesn't happen. I hope you guys stay together forever. But the next logical step is not let's live together and buy a house even though we're broke. The next logical step is how do we get out of debt? How can we take steps toward marriage?

And then once we're in a good financial position, we buy a house. But right now what's clouding your judgment is this, quote, deal that you're getting on this house. It's not that. I mean, I'm going to be 32 soon, and he's going to be 36 in a month. So we're kind of thinking, you know, we want to get married, we want to start a family,

start a life together. Great. The market right now is just... Do it. But you don't have to buy this house. This has nothing to do with the market. Let me tell you what happens, because I know these stories.

You guys move in together to this new house, and for four more years, you talk about getting married because guess what? Now you've kind of already played house. So what's the point of getting married? Why the rush? And we're broke, so we can't pay for a wedding. And therefore, you're going to build up resentment and that's going to not end well for this relationship. And so we're just showing you what happens on the other side. We're not trying to be naysayers. We just get too many calls when people hoped it would work out a certain way, and then life happened.

Right. I get it. And like I said, I came from divorced parents. I'm personally in debt. I'm working extremely hard to tackle and just get rid of it so him and I don't have to worry about it. And he is the complete opposite. Doesn't have any debt, didn't have to worry about, um, parents, financial struggles. So, you know, we're coming from two totally different point of views. And when I bring up to him, um, you know, I don't want to find a mortgage away if I'm not engaged. Like I need at least a commitment. Um, he, he kind of, I don't want to, he danced around the idea, but he idea but he like he goes well we're going to do

it eventually like we're going to be together like you know but i i really want to live together before we do i'm like yeah me too but if i'm going to sign a mortgage without a ring like i don't see how that's fair to me yeah you're right don't i'm not going to get into my traditional views of all this but you certainly should not sign a mortgage when you are not legally married to him. Yeah. I mean, at first I was like, I don't want to buy a house unless we're married. And then I compromised with, I need at least an engagement, so I know it's coming. No, don't compromise.

Don't compromise. Make him, listen, you got the leverage, sister. He needs to step up. Right. he's to step his game up is he gonna is he gonna pop the question or not you should play this back for him on youtube i'll tell him i'm the bad guy today i don't care man up bro put a ring on it don't put pressure on her to get into a ill-advised deal and what's wrong with you and to use this as leverage to hang over your head is just strange and manipulative. It's weak. Say, well, once we move in, then I'll propose. I want to try it out.

I want to live with you for a while before I decide to commit to you. This is what's wrong with men in America today. We've got all these freaking women walking around that have got a lot to offer, and they're in their 30s, and they can't get married because you've got a bunch of freaking children posing as men. We've got a man problem in the United States. And women, you know what you ought to do? Just tell these guys. Go pound sand.

I'm not going to live with you. I'm not even going to date you for a long time if you don't show some dadgum commitment. I just got to tell you, George. I get a little irritated with it. And this is a problem. And he's in his 30s, Allison, right? He's 36. He's a man-child.

Why doesn't he just buy the house on his own? There we go. He's so financially well off. There's a notion. Right. He doesn't have the money, right? I think I shocked allison yeah um i i do you know i i want me to say like he has been the i know this is probably sound contradictory but

um he has been like the most amazing partner i could have ever asked for and like we don't have any issues um but you know when it comes to this is where but when it comes to this like we obviously have two um standpoints he's he's seeing it as let's get you know the living situation on the road and we can finally move forward and be together and he commits first like renting renting is one thing but like a mortgage i don't know i know it doesn't sit right with me i thought we told you that allison don't keep waffling on this and listen he may be a great boyfriend but he's a boy and until he starts acting like a man i'm gonna tell you something i wouldn't do any of this with him i wouldn't do i wouldn't do any i wouldn't move in

with him either and if that means you're renting don't look at that as throwing away money. You're buying patients. If you have to get two or three roommates until this is all figured out and you guys are married, I'm okay with that. That's how I did it before I was married and it worked out great. And it really helps you avoid so many issues that can come up when you jump into this next step, which is the biggest financial move you will ever make in your life is buying this house and doing it with someone you're not married to is a recipe for disaster. All right. I got to ask you, if this were a dating show, what's your statute of limitations, if I can borrow a phrase, on how long a guy should be in a serious relationship like this before we start to say, hey, dude, you have commitment issues? Here's what I'll say. What's the length of time? If it's high school sweethearts,

I think you can get more time. If you're in your 30s, I give it two to three years, max. Oh, that's way too long. Two to three years, max. I think a year. I think 12 months. If you're in your 30s and you've been seriously dating someone for a year, if you can't decide by that point whether or not they're a life partner, you're out. I like getting past the first year. That's when you finally have your first fight. The first year, it's all gumdrops and rainbows. No, I think that's about a three-month period. This is fascinating.

You've got to know how they fight. Conflict is everything. You've got to know how they fight before you say yes. Alright, Ken's an old man, but I think we're on the same page. I believe in commitment. Been married 26 years. I believe in a thing called love. Take that and stuff it. This is The Ramsey Show.

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insurance for over 25 years i trust them and you can too visit zander.com for instant online quotes or for a more personal touch give them a call at 800-356-4282. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm Ken Coleman. George Campbell is with me, and we are here for you. 888-825-5225 is the phone number. 888-825-5225. Portland, Maine is where John is waiting.

John, how can we help today? Yes, hi, how are you? Good. Thanks for taking my call. You bet. What's up? So I'm looking to make the right decision here. I've made a lot of right decisions and a lot of wrong decisions over the years,

but we've been paying a lot of stuff off. We're at the end of baby step two. I have a side hustle and a full-time municipal job. And the side hustle is growing and growing fast. We've gone from two cars down to one as we've paid off a lot of stuff. But I'm at the point where I kind of need a second vehicle to get to some of these side hustle jobs and the opportunity to make a lot more money, almost double through the side hustle. What's the side hustle? Do you mind if we ask? So I install emergency vehicle equipment, emergency lights, sirens, police cars, fire vehicles, stuff like that.

No kidding. So a lot of your customers, I guess, are municipalities and counties? Oh, yeah, a lot of them. Correct. Very cool. And so if I understand you correctly, you paid off a car, you sold a car, but you're down to one vehicle, and you need another vehicle just to allow you to get to the work, and that will allow you to double your income. Yeah, so I've recently changed the business model a little bit. Instead of building full police cars for municipalities, I've found it more profitable to do what I would call service work. Say a department needs 10 new computers installed and already built.

It's kind of like doing brakes and struts instead of engines, if you want to think of it that way. It's just simpler, and you can knock more out. Nice. Correct, yeah. So the money has been great over the last few months. And going forward looks great, but it takes me a little bit further away from the house. So what's left vehicle with my wife and four kids, um, I'll go ahead and ask you a question. What's left on the debt? One vehicle right now, the Ford expedition for the family, a wife and four kids. She stays home in homeschools. They do co-ops during the day while I'm at work.

So they do use the vehicle to go to different, different different and it's worth about 35 and we owe about 27 and we paid off a lot of credit card debt a lot of other debt and that's all that's left how much more money would you be making per month if you can add these new clients probably on the low side it will three to to 4,000 more a month. If I can get to like two of these jobs a month that are a little bit further away. What if you slowed down your payoff of this car in order to use that cash to buy a used car to get you from point A to point B?

So another, to put, to give you the full picture, another thing, cause I found the Ramsey show about a month and a half ago, we were already doing a very similar process. But I've been investing 8% to 10% of my pay since I've been with the city here for eight years. So my other question is, should I pause that, which would add $450 a month onto our payoff plan? There's already $150,000 in a 457A.

Should I pause that for a year or so while I get the rest of these paid off? Yes. Okay. Regardless of your situation, we tell folks to pause investing during baby step two because of the accelerant. Yeah, definitely. So to put it in perspective, the car I was looking at was about $12,000 for the business. I would buy it and write it off with my LLC. Do you need a specific car for this business? No, I need something. I'm looking at an EcoSport, something very small, good on gas.

Me and a tool bag, me and a toolbox. I feel like you don't need to spend $12,000 to get just a car from A to B if it's not like a work truck. So are there things that are in the $ to 6,000 range? I'm going to try the six to eight to get that decent little eco car. I think you could do that. So yeah, yeah, no, I definitely hear what you're saying, especially with the automotive mind. The only other thing I've thought about, which is crazy to think about, is that my oldest is 10 now, Buying this $12,000 vehicle, there's a job coming up that I could take that's a week long that I'd travel to in December for a week and probably make $13,000 in that week and pay. Well, here's the deal. What does that have to do with the 10-year-old? This could be his first car if I buy something that's going to last five years.

Oh, I get that. I get that. This might be a six-month car. You might upgrade. Once you're out of debt, upgrade to a little bit better and then upgrade to a little bit better. And the chances are he's going to want a different car that's his, that he gets to go shopping with you. We're trying to save you 6,000 now. I'd rather save you that kind of money now. And then six years from now, the whole different ballgame. Yeah, I understand. That makes sense to me. Yeah. So John, what I would do if I was in your shoes is I would pause investing. I'd slow down the steps in order to save up real quick and get you a beater car to then increase and increase the speed of the baby steps. Did you say you're mechanical? You can fix cars?

Oh, let me tell you even better. I can barely put gas in a car, all right, full admission. I have no skill at all. But if I had your skill, I'd absolutely be looking at something, you know, really, really cheap because you can fix it up and keep that thing moving, you know. Something with, like, major gas mileage is just you, you know. We also bought our house back in 2013 when the market was the opposite of what it is now. So we're in a really good position there as well. That's great. Sounds like you're doing great. Welcome to the tribe.

You're doing great. Yeah, the car is just the last thing, you know. And I think later on this might become your full-time gig if you want it to be. Could you do this full-time? Could be. I could. The stress of running the own business, and this is kind of a good work-life balance. I didn't grow up with any structure, nor did my wife.

So we're trying to give the city job, give that to the family, and then the side hustle's been great, too. What's your biggest stressor as a solopreneur? So doing the full police cars, they could take, doing them on the side, I could have one vehicle apart for three to four weeks, and it's like when my mind's on the project, I can't get it off the project until it's done. I got that. So shifting to this new type of work where I go for a day or two or three, and when I leave, all the work's done, and I don't have to think about it.

So I have found ways to make that better. But long-term, I call it the best of both worlds right now. But you are right. That could change in four or five years. You might be able to find a guy who's also mechanically handy and you delegate it and you have a little team. Who knows? I like that idea. I tell you what, if I'm him, again, you look for some young dude coming out of high school that needs to prove to his parents that he could make good money as a mechanic and doesn't want to go to college.

I'd get that kid in there and mentor or teach him. Or a guy who doesn't want to work in the traditional mechanic role. This sounds like a cool, you know, you get to be a part of a startup business. That's really cool. Make good money. You could really grow that thing. Wow. Side thought, but I like it.

Riches in the niches, Ken. I love it. Oh, is it? I don't know. You're so happy with yourself. I think that's nice. I wish, if you weren't watching on YouTube, you should have seen how smiley you were when you said that.

Did you, like, think about that phrase today before the show? I think you're upset because you didn't say it first. I'm going to be honest. You love a good rhyme. I'm sick with envy. Exactly. Can we help Renee real quick, George? Let's do it.

All right, let's try. Renee is in Fresno. Renee, how can we help? Hi there. I was calling because I'm currently in baby step number two, but we're actually probably going to have all of our be out of that step by next year, like mid next year. And I was calling because my husband retired from the Navy and we found out in his retirement that if our girls go to college in California and a UC or state school, their college is completely paid for. Amazing. So, yes. So I'm still wondering if I should be saving for either a college fund or put a savings

account for each of them in a high-yield savings account in case they either want to go out of state or maybe towards a master's program. I'm just kind of trying to think down the road. I would, but I would not until you're out of debt with an emergency fund and you're investing 15% for your own retirement. Okay. Otherwise, there might be extra things, living expenses, books, who knows what they might need to cover. I would work with them to create a plan to work and save along with mom and dad working the money plan. Okay. Okay, perfect. I think that was everything. That's incredible.

Fantastic. Thank you so much, Renee, for the call. And we also need the stipulation. You are going to one of these in-state schools that's completely paid for. We don't get to choose, but I really want to go to XYZ private school across the country. Well, you better have the money to pay for that because mom and dad ain't paying. Yeah, especially in this situation. Absolutely.

They need to know the value of what that education will do for them debt-free. And if they need that, go watch Borrowed Future on YouTube. It's a documentary we created completely free to watch. It will change the game with these conversations. And Ken, you do a great job in it, laying out some facts. Well, you know, we're in a world today where the value of a degree is increasingly fading with the American people, and we're starting to see that it's fading within the workplace with many, many major organizations within different industries saying we don't require a college degree anymore. So the more you pay, the more you go into debt for it, the less ROI.

Yeah, good stuff. All right. Great shacket today, George. Thank you. It matches your glasses. It's always a pro move. Thanks for hanging this hour. This is The Ramsey Show. This is The Ramsey Show, where we help you win in your life. We help you win with your money, win in your professional journey, and win in your relationships. 888-825-5225 is the phone number.

888-825-5225. I'm Ken Coleman. George Camel is with me. It's Coleman Camel time, and we are here for you. Let's get to the phones. Jeff is on the line in Denver, Colorado. Jeff, how can we help? How are you guys doing?

Good. How are you? Good. I've got a question for you guys. I started fixing flipping houses this year as like a side hustle. My second house is about to hit the market within the next week. But my question is, like, I'm going to have about $160,000 in profit once this sells as my estimated profit. How do I shield myself from this massive tax bill that's going to be coming my way?

How massive is it? Have you actually done the math? Yeah, I'll be about $160,000 of profit that I'll need to pay taxes on. No, he's asking, have you done the math on your taxes? But, you know, depending on your bracket, what your marginal tax rate is versus effective tax rate, are we talking, you know, 16% of that? I don't know what the taxes are in Colorado. Yeah, I'll be about 20% of that. Okay. Have you already figured in, like, you have existing expenses just on the actual renovation?

Not yet. Okay. Well, that's the first thing. I hope you got some accurate records on all that you spent, correct? Yep. I got everything documented of what we put into it. What do you think the ballpark is? Like we put $160,000 into this last property.

Okay. Well, you put $160,000 in and you got $160,000 out? $160,000 is from both properties. I think I made a profit of about $80,000 from that first property and about $80,000 from the second property. But you said you put $160,000 in. Into the investment, yeah, to flip it. This is bad math. It's telling me that you're not making money in this business. So let's start over, Jeff. Either I've confused you or you're not tracking with us, okay? Okay. So you've got one house that you're saying, or is it two houses that you're saying you've got the total profit of $160,000?

Two houses. So I sold a house in February this year, and I'll profit $80,000 on that. I profited $80,000 on that house. And then the second house is about to hit the market and I should profit about $80,000 on that. Okay. Is that after getting your money back from your initial investment? Correct. Okay. All right. I got scared. I was like, oh no. I did too. Okay. So the bottom line is you need to get with a tax pro. George and I are not tax pros. RamseySolutions.com, great place for you to see a good list of tax pros, and I would contact them. They'll help you find every legal nook and cranny to go, what can I write off as a deduction from this business?

Is it through an LLC you're doing this? Correct, yeah. Okay. Well, the reason we want you to go to a Ramsey preferred or, you know, the approved tax pro is because a lot of accountants and tax people out there will try to get you to spend money just to lessen your tax bill. And to me, that's about the most mind-numbingly stupid advice I've ever heard. You know, well, go buy this and go buy a G-Wagon for 130 grand. Just to save money on taxes. No, save the money and pay Uncle Sam, you know, and that's just how it is. So with your regular expenses and everything else, that's what you're looking for.

But don't get sucked into that idea. Just a warning. Okay, that's good because, yeah, people have told me go buy a new truck. Yeah, it's the don't need. I don't need a new truck. Thank you. Never spend to save. Yeah, don't spend money to

save money it makes no sense so uh you're a good man appreciate the call and congrats on uh flipping the houses there yeah and just set aside that money and put it away in a high-yield savings account and then be ready to pay that with your quarterly estimated payments don't wait you know a year year and a half to make these tax bills. Make sure that you're paying that quarterly through the IRS website to avoid any fees and penalties. All right, Sarah's up next in Detroit, Michigan. Sarah, how can we help? Hi, thank you for taking my call. I'm a tad nervous, so I apologize. You're doing great. Thanks, I'm very nervous. So I was wondering if it would be in my best interest to take money out of my brokerage accounts to pay off my Parent PLUS loan. How much is in the brokerage account?

The two brokerage accounts are about $93,000. Okay, and how much left on the Parent PLUS loans? Well, I'd say about $68,000. I just started paying this year. Okay. And what were you saving up in this brokerage account for? Because this is non-retirement. You're just investing on the side. Yeah. Yeah, I just, when I first got married 29 years ago, I just opened up some IRAs and this brokerage account, which I didn't even realize what it was until just recently. I just put that money away and I never touched it. Good. Well, the good news is this is likely long-term capital gains.

And so it won't be a crazy tax bill, but you will have to pay taxes on the growth of this money. And so I would pull out that $68,000, be ready to pay the taxes on that, and be done with this debt. Get it out of your life. And the interest rate on these Parent PLUS loans is excruciating. Yeah, it's like 7%. And I want to pay it because in the long run, for one, I don't want to give the government any more money than I have to. And that's going to double by the time I get them paying it off. So that's why I thought- Yeah, you have the money. I would just go ahead and pay it. And it's going to hurt a little bit because you've worked hard to invest and save this money,

but it's for a purpose. And right now that purpose is to pay off debt. And for the rest of your life, it will be to instead build wealth and leave a legacy. And so I'm sorry that you got to use it for something not fun, but that's kind of the price we paid when we signed up to pay Junior's College. I know, I know. So I was worried because I don't know how to figure out the capital gains, but... That's a simple fix. I'll try and do that on my own. Yeah, it's a simple fix. You can reach out to a Ramsey-trusted tax pro at ramsaysolutions.com slash tax. They can help you figure out what you're going to owe and help you figure out what you need to set aside in order to pay this tax

bill. But it's not going to be anything life-changing. It's not going to be a $25,000, $30,000 bill. So you don't have to worry about that. But you have the money to pay it? Well, I was thinking if I take out the full 93, I'm going to save some back to pay for the taxes. Sure. I won't use the whole 93. If you don't need to use the whole 93, you don't need to pull it all out right now if you have other goals. Well, to be honest with you, I'm going to pay off my credit card debt. Oh, my goodness.

You buried the lead, Sarah. There's the story. Do you have any other debt you'd like to disclose? Well, I have other debt, but no one asked me that. You're the best, Sarah. I listen to your program, so I know about the cars, but I don't have asked.

She listens so she knows what to reveal and what not to reveal. She don't want our advice on these other things. Just that one. I would pull as much as you need to pay off all of your debt and pay any taxes due.

Yeah, because I still have a bunch of 401s and stuff. Would the 93 make you completely debt-free? It would probably pay off everything but my cars and my mortgage. All right, that's a start. How old are you? Well, I'm 58. I'm old. My cars and my mortgage. All right. That's a start. Yeah. How old are you? Well, I'm 58. I'm old.

What is it? Where does 60-year-old Sarah want to be? Does she want to be debt-free? When did 58 become old? I don't know. Ken is heading there. I'm married, too, so. Okay.

Yeah. I'd make a plan with your spouse and go, hey, let's go into our 60s completely debt-free. Let's have a retirement that we're proud of, a legacy we're proud of, and not having to scrape by. So that's what I would be aiming for, and liquidating this brokerage account is one step toward that. I'm proud of you. Yeah, thanks for the call, sir. And 58 is not old because that hurts Ken's feelings.

Well, to be clear, I just turned 50, all right? So, you know, it's all perspective, George. Halfway to 100, Ken, just saying. Thank you, George. This is The Ramsey show. What does the future hold for business? Ask nine experts and you'll get 10 different answers, economic growth or a recession business taxes will go up or down.

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actionable data. And when you're closing the books in days, not weeks, you can spend less time looking backward and more time focusing on what's next. And speaking of what's next, download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com slash ramsey. It's free at netsuite.com slash Ramsey. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show. I'm Ken Coleman. George Camel is alongside. The phone number for you to jump in is 888-825-5225. It's time for a question of the day, George. And today's question of the day is brought to you by YRefi. YRefi refinances defaulted private student loans and builds a custom loan based on your ability to pay.

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Let me reread that. It's Yrefy.com slash Ramsey. That's Yrefy.com slash Ramsey. This may not be available in all states. Today's question comes from Colin in New Hampshire. I recently got my license to be an architect. I'll be having a conversation soon with my bosses about a new role and responsibilities, which should include an increase in pay.

I have no reason to suspect that my employer would underpay me. However, I would like to go into that meeting with an idea of what a fair salary would be. Looking at the numbers online, they range anywhere from 65, which is less than I make now, all the way up to 100K. I understand there are nuances to salary, such as years in the field or type of experience. This makes it difficult to gauge, quote unquote, fair. I want to manage my expectations of what I should be making. Where can I find accurate salary data to know what fair is? Yeah, good question here from Colin. And I would just focus on the fair part of this. The fair part is really the wrong thing to be focusing on. You've got to set

your range based on what you're making now. And so he's saying the low range is 65. So he's already done his homework. So wherever you got this information is the same place that you're going to look at for what's right for me. So you're just looking at comparative salary analysis for people with experience and skill set similar to yours, and you're going to look at where you're at on the range. So he's already given us the homework. So 65 on the low end, 100K on the high number, maybe go a little higher because it can always come down. So maybe if you felt like, all right, I feel like accurately I could command an $80,000 salary, I'm going to ask for $85,000. That's what I would do. So aim a little bit higher.

A little higher. Give that company a little room to come back with a counter. And you've got to know what your number, where you go, I would not feel good. I would feel resentful coming into the office every day. Now, hopefully that, again, is based on viable information, which Colin has gone out and done the research. And he said, I just got my license, which tells me he might be more entry level. So I wouldn't expect the full 100K. But I'd also want to know when I go in, what does a growth plan look like to grow in this role? What is that ladder if I want to step in and have more responsibility? That would at least help me

not flounder in the role going, well, I should be making more. Well, who said? That's right. That's exactly right. So good question. Really good question. To the phones we go, 888-825-5225. Rachel joins us. She hails from the Washington, D.C. area. Rachel, how can we help? Hi. I'm in a pickle, and I really don't know what to do. Okay. Um, so I am, um, right now I'm actually currently overseas and, um, in Asia. Mm-hmm. And, um, because, um, my husband, I guess I too believe like the U.S., the cost of living in the U.S. is outrageous. And so we're overseas just to kind of get the cost of living down.

We are currently living off of, like, VA benefits, veteran benefits right now. And my husband as a, what? How much are your benefit payments? Total four grand. A month, and that's what you're living off of. That's from your husband's service or your service? Husband. Okay, all right, keep going. And then, so that's why we're currently share.

However, I recently got a job offer that pays a stipend and room and board, $18,000 stipend, and then housing. What about salary? Yeah, so it's $18,000 for the academic year for nine months. Okay, I'm confused, Rachel. What is the job that you just got offered? Tell us where that is. It's a residential hall director at a university. And so you're only going to make an $18,000.

That's what the stipend is. Yeah. And then they provide housing and meals. And meals. Okay. All right. And so what is the dilemma? This is in the U.S., I'm understanding?

Yes. Okay, so what's the dilemma? In the U.S. Where are you at? Where's your husband at? Working. No, no, I'm sorry. Where's your husband on this idea of you moving back to the States?

Where are you at on moving back to the States? It feels like you want to do this, but I'm just getting clarity. Yes. on moving back to the States. It feels like you want to do this, but I'm just getting clarity. Yes, I want to, that's the thing, like I want to honor and respect my husband. I'm, you know, I'm Christian. However, like we've done this before and I developed a lot of anxiety overseas, being away from friends, family. Okay, so Rachel, let me jump in. So he wants to stay, you want to go. Thank you, George. Is that right? Yeah.

Does he know that it's causing you all this anxiety? I assume this relationship is not going great overseas. Yeah. So if I'm him, I want a better marriage, and therefore I'm going to compromise and go, okay, let's go back to the U.S. and figure out how to afford to live there, because living overseas is not the solution to the cost of living issue. How can we help you? Okay. It's just a lie.

I know, sweetheart. We have about three minutes, and so we want to try to help you. How can we weigh in? Where would you like us to weigh in? So my husband has a real estate business. I use that kind of lightly. Not really, but kind of. So last year he made $100,000, but he got the properties in 2022 and then sold them in 2023. And are the real estate, is the business in the United States or overseas? Yes, in the U.S.

And he's managing all of this overseas? Yes. Okay, keep going. And anyways, so, but he hasn't made an income in a year now. So I'm in the dilemma of, like, do I stay overseas to support him and his business, or do we move back to the U.S.? I don't understand how you staying in asia supports his business when his business has not made money in the last year it's in the united states it's across the world i am so confused about all of the details around this except for one thing i'm not

confused about you guys have a massive massive marriage issue and you got your husband who wants to stay in the in the in the stay overseas and it stresses you out and you've done this once before so we got a track record you don't want to live overseas he wants to live overseas you're willing to go get an eighteen thousand dollar stipend to be an RA just to escape wherever you are. This is not good. We have to get on the same page quickly. Well, the reason why I wanted to take the job at the university is so that we could save the four grand a month. Okay, but would he move with you? Would he move with you? Yes. So that's what you wanted our opinion on,

is should you take an $18,000 stipend to get out of wherever you are? You guys were making $150,000 between his business and the VA benefits, so this is not a cost-of-living issue. You guys need to move back to the U.S. and both get normal jobs and stop finding weird shortcuts. Yeah, and taking this And stop finding weird shortcuts. Yeah, and like taking this, well, we can save the $4,000 so he doesn't have to work.

It just, the whole thing is so anti to what we believe here. Yeah, move back and start working and get a marriage therapist quickly. This is The Ramsey Show. There's a time in your life and in the baby steps for renting, but you don't want to do it forever because when you rent, you're still paying for a mortgage, just somebody else's. Plus, rent means instability in your budget because it always goes up, never down. So when you're ready to buy, make sure you work with a mortgage partner

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Welcome back to the Ramsey Show. I'm Ken Coleman. George Camel is alongside. The phone number is 888-825-5225. We'd love to take your calls about your money, your professional journey, your work, so we can make more money, and your relationships. 888-825-5225. All right. I want you to think about something for me, George.

You ready? Okay. Hit me. Can you be imaginative? He's closed his eyes. It's good. I want you to look up a year from today, and you finally accomplished all the things that really matter to you. How does it make you feel, George?

Amazing. Accomplished. I'm floating. Yeah, absolutely. Does that involve going on vacation with me? That would be a dream, actually. The Coleman's vacation. I thought so.

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Wow. It's got stickers. Do you like the stickers? I think it can be fun. Oh, All right. Vision board, goal setting system, savings tracker, and more you can get yours today for $49.97. Don't wait.

This planner always sells out, so you want to get the best price, go to ramsaysolutions.com slash store, ramsaysolutions.com slash store. All right, Brian is up in Boston, Massachusetts. Brian, how can we help today? Yeah, hi. Thank you so much for taking my call. So I did have a question for you. I currently own two homes, our primary home that we live in that we owe about 223,000 left. And we do have a rental property that is paid for.

Unfortunately, I took a line of credit. I accumulated about $125,000 in debt there, and I have about another $35,000 in credit card. My question to you is, should I consider selling the rental property to pay off my debt and pay down what I primarily own on my primary home or continue using that as an investment, which is bringing in monthly income every single month. If it's bringing in monthly income, you wouldn't be upside down going into debt every month. So clearly it's not the investment we wanted it to be. What have you been spending this money on? The line of credit was when we moved into the home, we didn't plan correctly, should I say. We ended up spending more, moving into a much more affluent neighborhood, and we did, I think, overspend. I would say so. I'd have a hard time blowing $120,000 on a move-in.

And what about the $35,000 in credit cards? Part of that was a program that I decided to take, and the rest has just, at times, I may need to use the credit card to help. That's what I'm saying. If this was such an income blessing in your life, you wouldn't have to turn to the credit card to help. That's what I'm saying. If this was such an income blessing in your life, you wouldn't have to turn to the credit card to spend. And so that tells me we have some spending issues and habits here that we need to fix. And so I would probably recommend selling this rental. What can you get for it? Right now I could sell it for about $375 after

taxes and realtor fees, maybe get about $310. Okay. So let's say you took $310 and you paid off the line of credit. That's $125. You pay off the credit card. That's $150. That leaves you with another $150 to throw at your mortgage, leaving you with about $75 left on the mortgage. Correct.

And frees up those payments, right? Frees up the credit card payments you're making. Frees up the line of credit payments. What is your household income without the rental? I myself, without the rental, I make, depending how much overtime I work, anywhere between $150 to $250 a year and my wife around $120. Nice. Amazing. So you guys are making $370?000 and you couldn't cash flow any of this? Yeah, I think we've always been struggling ever since I was 12. I've been working. This is not a work issue. You've got a spending issue if you're blowing through $370,000 and going into debt.

That's the part we need to focus on here. And I think selling a rental is just one step in getting us a clean slate. But as soon as that's done, we need to refocus our habits and go, we work too hard to be this broke. Would you agree? I would agree. You guys have been working your tails off. I also think that I partially, these past several years, we've been able to putting away for for retirement i think i was just going about it the wrong way so we've saved up about 750 000 wow but of course that's in that's in retirement that's you know i can't touch that money yeah but you've been so so you've been how much you've been putting away a month towards retirement uh we the past i don't know four or five years we've

been putting away we've been maxing out. Okay. Well, the good news is your investing muscle is strong. You've got a great investing arm, but you're atrophied at your spending muscles. That's where all this is getting burnt. And so I do think you can keep investing, but I would definitely ratchet it down to 15%. Once everything's sold, make sure you have an emergency fund, get completely debt-free outside of your mortgage that's left, and then invest 15%, and let's start attacking this mortgage and be done with that. Probably within a year, you could be done. Making $370 with $70 left, would you agree we can knock out the mortgage?

I would definitely agree. I guess my concern on selling the rental property is I always viewed it as a safety net, not to get into a past, but my father always had a gambling problem. And so I've always been afraid of being without. You've been tearing holes in your safety net with this line of credit. And so if you're telling me it's a safety net, it's not. Right. So I would find your own safety net, and that's an emergency. Not the line of credit, right. I totally agree with you.

I'm just saying if you're leveraged up to your eyeballs, there's no safety in just owning that asset when there's all this debt attached to it. And the rental property is not spitting off enough profit. What are you making per month after all expenses on the rental property? The rental property? After you pay your line of credit. Oh, after I pay, I was making $23,000. So here's the other dilemma I have. $2,350 is what I was making on it.

Of course, I then would have to pay the line of credit, which was around $1,200 or $1,300. So we're doing all this for about $10,000 a year? Yeah. Correct. If I were to do college students, I can bring in about $4,500 a month. No, the point is, we're trying to help you see it's not worth it. This is a great opportunity for you to reset. Your overtime is much better, ROI, than making the $ making the 10 grand managing a property. Sell the house. It's not getting you

the ROI that you think. And if you want real estate down the line, wait until your house is paid off and then save up cash with this amazing income and no debt payments, and you will be buying up real estate in no time. And the 100% cashflow is going to help you buy the next one and the next one. And yes, it's a slower route, but it doesn't lead us to where we are today, making a crap ton of money with not a lot to show for it, going into debt every single month. So I wish you the best, changing your family tree, Brian. It sounds like you want to. You don't want to live the same life that your parents lived. You want to leave a different legacy, and that's going to take creating different habits. So I'm going to send you a copy of my book, Breaking Free from Broke. I hope it convinces you that the debt system is not a path to wealth or peace,

and that you can live outside of it. So hang on the line. Christian will pick up. We'll send you a copy of that. Best of luck to you with the sale of this rental and getting completely debt-free. And he could clean this up. The shovel's amazing, Ken, making 370 households. And he has saved a really nice chunk in retirement. So it's not like he's unstable. It's just the system he's been, or lack of a system, I guess I would say, that he's employing is not as effective as it should be. But he's done a good job. And to your point, the money's there. But I would get out of this thing now. And I talk about the flat

tire analogy. Some people are really good at saving and investing, but they have spending habits. And that's a leak in the boat. We got to fix. That's a flat tire. And so I like being well-rounded where we're giving, we're saving, we're investing, we're spending. We can do all of those things, but it has to be well-rounded

and in the right ratios at the right time. Yeah, because it does pay off. It really does. It doesn't seem like you've got a great strategy until you wake up 20 years in, and you realize you're ahead of everybody else. And, Ken, you work out. You understand.

You can't just do leg day. You're going to look weird. That's absolutely right. You've got to do some full body stuff. You can't skip leg day either. I've been skipping. Have you seen these guys at the gym with a giant upper body, and their legs look like noodles?

I'm right here. You don't have to talk about me like that. My noodle legs, my skinny jeans. That's fantastic. All right. George is going to do some squats during the break and we'll be back before you know it. This is the Ramsey Show. Hey, you guys. Health insurance costs are only moving one way and that way isn't down. And if higher costs aren't enough, the wait times to see your doctor are longer, and it's harder than ever to get anything approved through the bureaucracy. So, if you feel like the system is working against you, try a biblically-based alternative to health

insurance, Christian Healthcare Ministries. CHM is a health cost-sharing ministry that's helped hundreds of thousands of families like yours take care of over $11 billion in medical bills since 1981. And CHM has also helped them stay true to their values and avoid miles of red tape. And CHM support goes far beyond meeting financial needs. They'll also help meet spiritual needs. Members become part of a family who will pray with them and for them when they experience a medical event. So listen, y'all, there's no

better way to take care of health care costs. CHM programs start as low as $98 a month. So learn more today and join at chministries.org slash budget. That's chministries.org slash budgets at chministries.org slash budgets. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show. Thrilled to have you with us. I'm Ken Coleman. George Campbell is with me, 888-825-5225. We got to mention this network app really quick, because this is so fun. It's kind of a new thing. And I want to mention on the front end very quickly, um, is we will wrap up this hour of the show. Uh, people need to know that, uh, if you're listening on radio, we'll continue. Uh, but if you're on podcasts or YouTube, this is it for what you're going to get today, but you can get the rest of the calls. And we got a great lineup here as I'm looking on the board,

some great calls coming up. You can get it on the Ramsey Network app. You can get that in the App Store or Google Play. I just want to mention that real quick as we head into this segment. Instead of mentioning it at the end. In case we run out of time. That's right. Lest we run out of time.

Very good. I was hoping you'd be impressed. Well, I love the word lest. It doesn't get used very often. I don't think many people your age even know what it is. You bring out the best in me, Ken. Thank you. Let's go to Trayden in Indianapolis, who is joining us now.

Trayden, how can we help? Hey, thanks for taking my call. You bet. Here's my question for you. So I just started my fourth year of college for my degree in criminal justice, but I recently found out I'm going to have to take at least an extra two years after this one to finish my bachelor's degree. I just started a new job where I'm making $100,000 a year right now full time with the option to get upwards of $150,000. So I guess my question is, is it worth it to continue with school to get my degree that I most likely won't use or drop out and pursue my career? Well, the way you just positioned it, no, it's not worth it to stay. But let me backtrack a little bit. Why are you being

told all of a sudden that you need two more years for a total of six years for your criminal justice degree well uh during my sophomore year i had uh i lost one of my good friends of mine and it i didn't focus that much on school so that's that's where i got behind oh i see so you said you just found out it wasn't like the school dropped this on you this is just you don't have as many credits as you need yeah okay okay well what's the job you're doing now where you're making 100 grand with the potential to make 150 uh i'm a pipe cutter fantastic do you like it i love it oh man that done give me my gavel and my rope george uh the jury has spoken i absolutely would drop out of college okay what's the other alternative here you you're in school for three more years to get the jury has spoken. I absolutely would drop out of college.

Okay. What's the other alternative here? You're in school for three more years to get a criminal justice job that pays half of what you're making now? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no. What sense does that make? Does that make any sense to you?

Trayden? What was that? Does it make any sense to you to stay in you called us it's your call do you think it makes any sense okay unless you said I hate this pipe fitting job I really love criminal justice right I need to do this yeah it doesn't sound like that's the case did you kind of fall into it well I guess I'll do criminal justice where did this come from? I used to. I always wanted to do it. And then now, more recently, with how cops are looked at nowadays and everything like that, I just don't. And the pay cut.

I love what I'm doing right now. I absolutely love it. So it's just kind of hard. Listen, I'm glad you called. And the reason I asked you what do you think is because at the end of the day, it's not about George and I's opinion on this. And I think you were probably leaning that direction. And I'm going to tell you, you have a path to not just 150,000, you have a path to being a multimillionaire because you, you will eventually learn this trade to a point where you may end up owning your own business. I'm assuming that's

crossed your mind. Yeah. Yeah. Now you're creating jobs. And, and, and so this is a no brainer. And I appreciate the call though, because I think a lot of people think, man, I've been in it this long. I don't want to be a college dropout. You're talking to a college dropout. I am a college dropout, not a loser, not a grifter, drifter, all the things, right? I just knew that it was time to go work on campaigns, political campaigns. And so I didn't need to sit in an upper level government class when I had the opportunity to go be in part of the fight. And that was my path. So, you know, and then I ended up, you know, moving into my early 30s into broadcasting, which again, didn't require a degree.

So it's always, is a degree required or is it the best way? So the only way or the best way, and in this situation, you've got really clear direction for your future. So I say drop out and don't let anybody talk you out of it. Okay. Do you got any student loan debt or any other debt? I got maybe $15,000 15 000 okay you can crush that as you start working i would aggressively pay that off he's already working emergency fund you already got the job making 100k yeah okay man well now with your focus fully on this job the sky's

the limit knock out the debt get an fund, and start building some wealth, my friend. Yeah. You know what? He's not broke, but I want to keep him from being broke. So I want to give him a copy of your book, George. I appreciate that. To avoid the traps. There's a lot of them out there. You don't have to be broke to get a lot out of your book. And I want him to have a good path going forward. As you start making money, that's where the traps show up. You start to inflate your lifestyle, and this book is going to help you keep you on the straight and narrow trade. So hang on the line. We'll send you a copy of Breaking Free from Broke. Appreciate the call. Absolutely. Catherine is up in San Antonio, Texas. Catherine, how can we help? Hi. Oh, this is so exciting. Okay. I've always

listened to Dave Ramsey, and I've followed his advice and completely out of debt. I just, this month that passed, reached over a hundred K like net worth, like super liquid. Nice. Way to go, Catherine. Hello. Thank you. And I have like no debt. We have, me and my husband have no debt. Awesome. Wow. All investments and thanks to the room because I'm like a first generation immigrant. So definitely. That's what's up. Amazing. Yeah. And so I guess my question is this, now that, you know, we're at a point where we are

managing like in the six figures, I'm trying to figure out if I shouldn't invest in like mutual funds or ETFs or like kind of what balance to have. I'm trying to figure out, like make my money grow. Right now I have a target retirement fund for my Roth, but it's got like a 7% return annual. And I think those typically are lower than What account are you talking about? Is this your retirement? Is it an IRA or a 401k? Roth. That's a Roth. But is it a 401k or an IRA? You can have different... IRA. Okay. So this is not through your employer. You set up a Roth IRA.

You're maxing it out every year, I imagine? The Roth, no. So that's kind of what I'm trying to figure out. So I'm maxing out the benefits in my traditional 401k. Okay. Do you have a Roth 401k option through your employer? I do, and I actually just changed that so to traditional percent uh so four percent roth to roth and then like the three percent to traditional why the split um i just heard that like at this income level that I'm making, it's like good to like your, to keep your

tax rate from going up, but also taking advantage of my current tax rate. It's good to split half and half. So you're doing it slightly for the tax deduction because on the Roth 401k, you don't get the tax deduction. Yeah, exactly. You'll pay taxes on that money later. Right. So to split it, I guess. Okay. Well, I'll tell you what I do and what Dave Ramsey does. You do what you will with this information. Dave and I both do Roth 401k only. And if Dave had traditional money, he'll roll it over every year to the Roth side so that it grows tax-free.

And when he's in his retirement, if he ever retires at 90 years old, that money, it'll be like net income at that point. If you have 2 million sitting in a Roth 401k, that's 2 million you can spend without Uncle Sam getting his grubby hands on it, which I love. And you're not worried about what are my taxes gonna be in retirement and will tax rates go up in 30 years when I retire?

I like not having to worry about any of that and just knowing that I've already paid the taxes. So your question, should you do ETFs, should you do mutual funds, index funds? In a retirement account, depending on your options, mutual funds are a great bang for the buck. ETFs are not bad. Those are exchange traded funds. I'm sure you know, but I'm explaining for the audience. They're investment hybrids. So it has the diversification of a mutual fund, hundreds of stocks in there, but it has the tradability of a single stock. And so there's intraday pricing. So they can be bought and sold throughout the day, whereas a mutual fund closes at one price at the end of the day. So there's nothing wrong with them,

but it can create this sort of gamified thing where you want to buy and sell, which I hope you never do. You want to hold. So for those reasons, I would probably stick to mutual funds and index funds. ETFs might have a slightly lower cost, but otherwise there's really no big difference there. Yeah. Thanks for the call. Thanks, Catherine, for the call and congrats. I love that. I love her story. They are absolutely off and running. Great advice, George. Good hour, my friend. All right. Don't move, folks. We might be back for some of you. We might be back.

Join us on the Ramsey Network app. There you go. This is The Ramsey Show, where we help you win in your life. We want you to win with your money. We want you to win in your work. We want you to win in your relationships. 888-825-5225 is the phone number. I'm Ken Coleman. George Campbell is with me. 888-825-5225 is the phone number. I'm Ken Coleman.

George Campbell is with me. 888-825-5225. Valeria in Houston, Texas is up next. How can we help? Hey, George. Hey, Ken. God bless you both. Thank you so much for taking my call today.

You bet. What's up? So my question is, I am an aspiring entrepreneur. But right now I do work for Corporate America, making about $45,000 a year. I am in debt about $30,000. So I'm not investing in my 401k yet. But my question is, once I leave Corporate America to work for myself in the near future, where else do I invest my income since I don't have an employer 401k, so I guess I'm just going to have to retire broke or save my way to wealth. And there's a ton of options out there for self-employed folks and small business owners, one of which is a SEP IRA, a simplified employee pension IRA. There's also something called a solo

401k, which is great if you have no employees with the exception of a spouse. And then of course, you have options like anyone else does to an IRA, just outside of an employer, a traditional or a Roth. And if you have make too much money to contribute to that, which right now, 129 grand for single filer and 204 grand for married filing jointly, you can do what's called a backdoor IRA. And those options alone will get you real far. A lot of them have higher contribution limits than your traditional IRAs. And on top of that, worst case, you can invest in a taxable brokerage account outside of retirement if you run out of options, if you're just making buku bucks, which I hope you do.

Right. So there are a ton of options out there. And depending on the type of business, if you have employees, there's different options for you. And you can talk to a financial advisor to figure out what the best option is for your business and your team. And you can connect with one that we trust at RamseySolutions.com. And I hope that helps with that side of it. But let's get you to that entrepreneurship, if that's your goal. Yeah, what are you thinking?

Yeah. Well, I do love music. I just consider myself an artist so hopefully go into that realm god willing so were you basically you are the product yes and your release albums tour what's your plan no no no not yet um i mean i haven't even started, like a business plan or anything. How would you make money? Any idea?

Well, I guess maybe just starting out maybe on YouTube or just social media, I think that would be my way of getting into maybe. Well, it's a good way to actually put know put the art out there and and see what people think show your work you know that is that's a that's a great theme there so the marketing has changed for musicians and artists now it's you can put a song out on tiktok and and blow up overnight then there was the guy that uh the guy in the holler on youtube sang the song about oh that's from richmond or something that was quite a story story. You know, so you can reach the four corners of the earth pretty easily these days.

I used to play in the corner of a Starbucks, Ken. That was my gig. You know, the problem is, is you were before your time. I was ahead of it. I did have a YouTube channel and I would do cover songs, Ken. Were people posting music on YouTube back then? Yeah, this was 07, 08. And I would post a cover of a song like, you song like Rihanna's Umbrella or something.

And it would get like 150,000 views because there wasn't many covers out there. Hold on a second. Yeah. This is your chance to withdraw this because people are going to look this up. Is it still out there? You better believe I took that-ish unlisted and private. It still exists. Okay. But it is unlisted.

So you're telling me- You will not find videos of me at 16 years old. This would hold up in a court of law that you got 150,000 views of singing Rihanna's Umbrella? I wish it wasn't true, but that's what happened. That's pretty good. Well, think about it. The internet back then, there wasn't many great covers. And so mine, being what it it was was still one of the best covers on the internet and people wanted to see how to play it so i'd always show my you know

fretting and fingers while i play the guitar so people could learn very very impressive george i gotta say times have changed for valeria out there you gotta become a tiktok star now just to get a record deal or do it yourself and grind and hustle yeah all right wow things you know things you learn i gotta teach ken i didn't know that about you learn every day. I got to teach Ken. I didn't know that about you, George, and now I feel like I know you better. It's very exciting. Let's go to Todd, who joins us in Miami.

Todd, how can we help? Hi. Let's get right to it. So my son just turned four, and I was given a check, like $500. What would be the best way to invest this and future money that I get from him? Awesome.

I love it. Trying to build wealth for a four-year-old. I did the same. My daughter just turned one. And what we do every year is my parents contribute, I contribute to her 529 plan for college savings. Now, we don't know. Here's the question, right?

The million-dollar question, will my kid go to college? Will they actually need this money? And what if they don't? Does this money disappear? Is it wasted? The good news is with the Secure 2.0 Act, you can roll over up to 35 grand of this money later on down the road if they don't use it into a Roth IRA. Okay. So that's the best tax advantage. It would be under his name, right? Yes. So it would be on the 529 plans under his name. You can also change the beneficiary at any time. So let's say he doesn't go, but sister goes or cousin goes or whoever goes, you can always change the name. So that's one way to invest. The other way is a parent taxable

brokerage account, which is essentially you investing outside of retirement for your kid. The other ones that you probably heard about are the UTMAs, the UGMAs, UTMAs, UGMAs. The problem with these is that at 18, this kid gets control of this money no matter what, which is a scary proposition. I hope that these kids are great at 18, but to hand a kid the keys to a $200,000 account or a $500,000 account is a scary proposition. So I like the options that are more in the parent's control in case, just in case. And then, of course, once they have earned income, which a four-year-old probably doesn't unless they're doing like baby modeling or something, you can actually contribute to a Roth IRA, a custodial Roth IRA once they earn money. So that's another option for you.

Yeah, I like that, George. So a lot of options out there. Are you thinking about baby modeling for your princess? Can I be honest? Yeah. Yes. She is so beautiful, Ken. It has nothing.

I cannot take credit because she has blue eyes, which I don't have. That's true. She's way prettier than I am. Well, you're not pretty. And so I don't, if anyone knows any leads, I have no clue. Now, your daughter, she did some acting. Does a lot. She is making some real dough, man. That's incredible. And she's saving it. I'm very proud of her. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we do the Give Save Spend. That's awesome. Yeah, it's great. It's really fun. Really fun. Now,

here's what's funny. I want to call out something because I love what you said. You're absolutely right. But the irony is so thick, we must address it. You are worried about 18-year-olds having access to a large sum of money through an investment. Yet, through our lovely federal government, we will allow 18-year-olds to sign on a dotted line. Oh, I didn't think about this. For large sums of money that they don't even have. Yes. You're worried about them actually doing something stupid with

money they've invested. And you're right, by the way, but everybody's just sort of walking along going, sure, let them go into debt for $200,000. They're 18. If this is a business plan, 17-year-old walks in and says, hey, I want $150,000 for a social sciences degree.

Here's one for you to make your head spin around. They've got to be 21 to drink. But 18 to go hundreds of thousands into debt. Dollars in debt. I think we've got to reassess some of these laws, Ken. I think we've got to do something. It's a little backwards. Thinking about all that debt makes me want to drink.

But that's a separate deal. Thinking about all that debt makes me want to drink. But that's a separate deal. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm Ken Coleman. George Campbell joins me. The best way to make the most of your money is by creating and sticking to a budget. Every dollar makes it simple to plan spending, track expenses, and save for what matters most to you. Download Every Dollar for free in the App Store or Google Play,

or you can click on the link in the description if you're listening on YouTube or podcast. All right, let's go to Jacob, who joins us in Spokane, Washington. Jacob, how can we help? Hi, I'm just needing some guidance here. It looks like I'm going to have to relocate to a different city for employment. Okay. What's going on? I'm at my current job, and I keep getting along in sections.

And, you know, the small town that I'm in, there's not very many opportunities. I apply for several different jobs that order, again, the same line of work, or they're laying people off. What is causing you to get the lung infections? I work at a sawmill, and so it's the saw dust, it's the oil vapor of the environment. Oh, wow. So what's your question? Where should I look for a different kind of line of work? I've got...

Everywhere. ...skills working on me. Anywhere that's not a sawmill. Yeah. I mean, at this point, this is about your physical health. So I guess you start in your zip code. And if there's nothing in your zip code that you feel like you've got the skill set or the experience for, we start looking outside the zip code and then we expand, expand, expand. But at this point, there is no place that you wouldn't look is the general answer to that question. Right. What kind of work can you do that has the skill and the experience that you have is transferable

or could be pretty quickly if you got some basic training? I worked in manufacturing, so I know how to make parts, run press machines. I'm very high on manufacturing right now because of the opportunity. The head of the U.S. Manufacturing Association came out recently and said that they are looking aggressively for men and women who want a nice ladder in the world of manufacturing because they offer it. You can make six figures. Many times the training is paid for, great benefits, and there's an upward path. So as just one option, the fact that you've got some experience in manufacturing to me

makes you very, very valuable. It's an industry that is looking to hire aggressively. Did we lose you? Yeah, I'm still here. So what kind of, is there specific manufacturing positions that list that? Oh, no, I don't. I mean, again, I saw a news article, so he didn't get into this. But I'm saying the manufacturing industry is looking for people. It is growing. They're looking for opportunities. So my point is you start looking and you've worked in manufacturing before.

Where are the manufacturing jobs in Washington? And so my point is that with a little bit of effort, you're probably going to find a really good opportunity or two or three to be able to make this pivot. Okay. My point is it's favorable. It's a favorable industry is my point. What's your actual role called right now?

Sorry, you need to speak directly on your phone, Jacob. We're losing you. I think you put it under your armpit. Right now, I'm a machine operator. Okay. So I would start looking for those keywords in there, operator, machine, technician, whatever it is, and look in Spokane and see if you can get some interviews, see who you know in that field. And Ken can help you with that with some great resources. Yeah. I'm willing to give you, I really want you to kind of look into your future. And I want to give you the book, Find the Work You're Wired to Do. And it comes with the Get Clear

Assessment. This is about an hour of your time, just one hour to take the assessment and read the book. And I'm going to give that to you and put you on hold. I want you to check that out. I think you're going to see a pretty high level job description that can be applied across multiple industries. But yes, you need to make this decision and make it quickly to give your body a break and then start to move up. All right, let's go to Steve now in Omaha, Nebraska. Steve, how can we help today? Yeah, thank you for taking my call here. Hey, so we're deep into baby step number two, and I see a path to rolling into baby step three. But I've got two vehicles. One is a paid-off 2012 Rogue, but it needs about $5,000 worth of repair, just front-end work. And the other one is a Kia Telluride that I owe $15,600 on.

I just got an offer on it for $30,000, $30,500. So I've got about $15,000 worth of equity in the thing that I intend to pay for the repairs, pay off the remaining of our debt, and get us started on baby step three. We've discovered we could use one vehicle with the family. We do just fine. We've been doing it for two months. The problem is that since we still owe on the Telluride, we're not going to be able to get that payment for about two to three weeks after we

turn the car over, and then we're without a vehicle. Why is it going to take three weeks to get payment? That's what they've told us. That's what the dealership told me this morning. They said that they have to wait till the title comes back from the lender before they could release that payment to us. So that kind of put a pause on me because I'm like, who's buying the vehicle? I'm selling it back to the dealership. I would sell that private seller and get more money. That's my one thought is, can you sell it private? And does that expedite the title process? Because they're holding the title, whoever lent you the money. Yeah. It doesn't take three weeks to get the title.

Okay, so... So I would do this all in one fell swoop. Whoever's going to buy the car, you show up to the lender and go, all right, we're going to make this transaction happen. But it's an online, I mean, it's through Ally. We don't have, I mean, there's not a physical place we can go to for it. So that's the problem.

And so then the question becomes, I mean, I know this sounds silly, but it gets us to baby step three. Does it make sense to, even for just those two weeks, to put the payment to fix the other car on a credit card so that we can get completely out of debt? I'm going to be honest. I don't think I'd fix that rope for five grand. I was thinking the same thing. I'd sell it, get rid of it. You're sinking way too much money into that car, and I don't think it's going to be honest. I don't think I'd fix that Rogue for $5,000. I was thinking the same thing. I'd sell it, get rid of it. You're sinking way too much money into that car, and I don't think it's going to be worth much at that point. It's only got 84,000 miles on it, so I guess the thought is that we could drive it around for a while. It's our hoopty.

But think about it. If I gave you $5,000 cash and you got to sell the Rogue, you wouldn't go buy that car again. So I would take the five grand you were going to spend and whatever you get from selling the Rogue as is and go buy you a different car completely. Or just put it into the debt that I was going to pay off. Yeah, because you said you're going down to one car anyway, right? Right. And then you can avoid this repair cost. Yeah, I'd get rid of the rogue at whatever um i i have done this twice in the last 10 years i had a car an older car um and the transmission

was starting to go and i looked into what it would cost to fix the transmission and then i talked to the mechanic he goes list it for this someone Someone will buy it. And I literally listed it for about two grand and said- It was gone. The transmission is going to need to be replaced. Sold it quickly. The guy, and I literally said, do you understand the transition? He's like, oh yeah. He's like, I'll fix it up myself and blah, blah, blah.

$2,000 for me to get rid of a problem. I would try to sell this thing for two grand, 2,500, talk to your mechanic. I wouldn't put a nickel into fixing it. And Steve, you can pause the baby steps and sell everything you can, work as much overtime as you can, extra jobs as you can, to make as much as you can this month to create that margin to float you through this. Right. So, I mean, with that being said, man,

would you hold on to the Telluride we're making payments on, or would you just sell that anyway and still get offloaded? I would still sell it because it's going to accelerate your debt-free journey. It sounds like you guys really want to get to three and four. Right. I agree with George. It's going to slow you down. I'd get rid of it.

I like the fact – by the way, I still would go private sell. Private seller. I really would. I can't imagine what you could get for it. Because if the dealership's giving you $30,000, I imagine private sale, they'd give you an extra $5,000. Because the dealers, they've got some profit built into that thing. When they're buying it for $30,000, they're going to go flip it for $37,000. I'd see what the Kelley Blue Book value is on that.

Yeah, they were right in there. I mean, when I looked at the Kelley Blue Book, the private sale on it wasn't, I think it was like $33. That's $3,000 more than you had. Man, I'll tell you right now, this guy turning his nose up at $3,000. I'd take it. Yes, sir. All right. We've got to take a quick break.

We'll be right back. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm Ken Coleman. George Campbell is alongside. The phone number for you to jump in is 888-825-5225. Ian is up in Detroit. Ian, how can we help?

Hello, Ian. Hi. How's it going? Good. How are you doing? I'm doing great. My question is, in about two years from now, I'll most likely be married to my girlfriend, and we're questioning whether that after that two years, should we blow most of our investments to buy a house,

or should we continue to rent and let those investments grow exponentially? Tell us more about this investment chunk of change. I got about $75,000 in my TOD, so that's not Roth IRA and 401k, and she has about $25,000 in the same situation. And two years from now, let's say it's how much? Are you guys continually investing, or are you just letting this money grow for two years from now, let's say it's how are you guys continually investing or are you just letting this money grow for two years? We're letting this money grow, but we're also investing about 15 percent of our income. Into retirement or into this account?

Into this account specifically. We're also investing into our Roth IRAs in lump sums at the end of the year and 401ks gradually. OK, cool. Do you guys have any debt? No debt. Awesome. So by the language you gave me, which is, should I blow this investment account and spend it on real estate? It tells me you don't want to use this money for a house. I don't necessarily want to lose it because then I have to rebuild it, but also I realize a house is an investment.

Well, here's the thing. I think we need to separate investing for the sake of investing and buying a piece of real estate to call our own. And I think the problem is you didn't give this goal, you didn't give this money a goal. And so now it feels weird to let go of it for a purpose that you didn't intend on. So I think it's more about your relationship to this money than the actual goal. Because I would say, absolutely, if you're debt-free, you have an emergency fund, and you had $100,000, I would say, let's go buy a house together once we're married. Absolutely. So I don't see that as a waste of money. Our goal is flat.

Yes. And then guess what? You're also going to be investing along the way. You're not going to stop investing. We're just going to say, we're going to buy this house, we're going to invest 15%. And then while we're doing all of that, any extra money we can apply toward the principal and get this house paid off. And that gives you sort of a guaranteed return. Should we be trying to like split the down payment and our investments in half, or should we go all in? I would go all in. As much as you can put down, the better because that means a smaller mortgage that's easier to attack. And that's personally what I did, Ian.

When my wife and I bought our first home when we were married, we put, I believe, 45% down on a very modest townhome. And that allowed us to pay off that mortgage about 26 months later. So you can see how quick it can happen. And so that's what I'm telling you. I would not listen to the gurus out there who are telling you, just put 3% down, you can arbitrage the rest and get 17 properties. That's what you hear online, right? Yeah.

And what I'm telling you to do is more conservative, it's more peaceful, and it will guarantee your chances of success when it comes to wealth. Because you're not going to overbuy, you're not going to be over leveraged. So that's it. It's that simple. But it's hard to do because there's a lot of voices and there's so much noise out there, Ken, telling you to put little down and leverage the rest. And the Ramsey principle says, let's put down as much as we can. Dave loves the 100% down plan. If you can just pay cash and be done with it. You know, one of the things I was thinking about as you were walking through that is I would love for people to just get to the emotion that is equivalent to the way we teach.

Just get to that place. I mean, just get out there and go, okay, what if we did it the way George said? What would that feel like? Because I think we can get there. I think you can get there pretty quickly. And then go through the TikToks after the dopamine wears off. Yep. Because those are dopamine drivers. There's a reason it sounds too good to be true. Exactly. But you've got to get to that and go, okay, let's play this if the tiktok doesn't work and i'm stuck and i'm underneath all this debt versus the way george is laid out and i feel that which one of those feelings is worth having i wish they could get there because then i think

it's a lot easier to avoid the temptation yeah well a lot of people are too smart for their own good and all they do is look at the spreadsheet and the calculators and what could be and they forget that humans are not rational creatures. We are very emotional. We have to let psychology play into this. And for a newlywed couple to go into their marriage close to completely debt-free, it's only going to help the chances of that marriage succeeding. It's only going to give you more options down the line financially. So it's slow, but it works. That's right. Let's go to Grand Rapids, Michigan next. Mitchell is there. Mitchell, how can we help?

Hi. I was just wondering if I should get a HELOC for, I have credit card debt and I have a business that I'm trying to get. It needs an infusion of cash right now. And I just wondered if my home is paid for, and I wonder if I can use the Hulot line of credit to consolidate my cards and infuse some money into this business right now. No, no, no. Let's talk about your business. Why does your business need an infusion of cash and how much does it need? Yeah, it's a trucking business.

And my partner has gotten sick, and a couple of the drivers were not dependable. So then we had a couple of weeks of low load, so that hasn't gotten back up yet, but the payments are due on the trucks and stuff like that. So that's what I'm saying. Well, the solution to being over leveraged on debt is to not get more debt. And that's what we're doing to this problem. We're not actually solving the root of it, which is we need to hire better people. We need better leadership. We need to solve some business issues and taking on more debt and moving backwards in your home, putting your home at risk for the sake

of trying to prop up this business is very unwise. You've done a great job to get your house paid off, and now we're moving backwards, which is not a great plan. My question is, is what kind of relationship do you have with the people who financed your truck? My guess is you're not missing payments very often, if ever. Is that true? No, yeah, we haven't. I would call them and tell them exactly what happened. This is real life. I had a partner who got sick, and then I had some people that just deadbeat it out on me, and they get that. People just don't check in. They don't come into work or whatever. They get that and say, okay, this is where I'm at. So we had lower loads, and so that's going to

be fixed by such and such a time and by communicating that I think you could probably get away with uh uh you know an extension on the payment or certainly not be charged a fee you know depending on the 30 days I guess my point is George I want you to weigh in here I don't want you to jump to a panic situation where you've been able to make the payment on the truck is probably very possible without it getting into some type of a repo situation. Is that true? Right, right. Trying not to get into that. But I mean, could you? Do you anticipate over the next 30, 45 days getting back to your normal load? Yes, I'm thinking it will because, yeah, and that's keeping the trucks, getting another driver. And we have one really dependable, and I think just getting that issue solved because a partner is not going to drive until his health issues are resolved.

What do you think, George, about what I said? I think it's worth a shot. I think working with them on top of getting on the ball and hiring the right person, that's a better solution than going further into debt to try to prop this up, all for it to maybe not work. And then we're back to where we are with more debt. And keep in mind, the people who finance this to you, they don't want to be stuck with the truck. They want you to pay. Okay. You know what I mean? Okay. Yeah. How much debt do you have in the business? About $78,000 right now. And how much debt do you have in your personal life?

About $60,000, $63,000. And how old are you? My credit card. $73,000. At 73, do you want to go into retirement debt-free with some dignity versus owing people money? Yeah. I think at some point we have to make some hard choices here. I haven't actually retired yet, but I'm still working. At some point you have to retire. Your body tells you. And so that's what I'm worried about is we got to clean up this debt. Yeah. We've been playing the wrong game for a long time. And so we can undo some of that. And that might mean selling one of the trucks,

slowing down the business in order to get some margin and get some foundation under us. But I would not go into debt to pay off debt. It sounds as crazy as it is. It doesn't work. You got to change the habits underneath. Good call. Thank you so much. We're rooting for you. Don't move. Quick break. We'll be right back. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm Ken Coleman. George Camel is joining me this hour. 888-825-5225 is the phone number. Our scripture of the day comes from Job 34, verse 32. Teach me what I cannot see. If I have done wrong, I will not do so again. And our quote of the day from Henry Ford, The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing. How about that?

Ancient wisdom. Love it. Sort of is ancient to you. 1800s, nothing to shake a fist at. I don't even know how to respond to that. 1800s and Henry Ford and shaking a fist. That was like yesterday for Ken, apparently. Well, for those of us who pay attention to this little known topic called history, I wouldn't call Henry Ford ancient.

Ancient is, you're talking about. Ancient Egyptian. That's a better example. BC, you start getting into Rome, 350 BC. I thought BC was before COVID. That feels ancient to me. Can't remember anything before COVID. I digress. I digress trying to educate. I'm pushing Ken's buttons, and at his age, they're easy to press. Oh, another shot of the age stuff. Pamela is joining us in Scottsdale,

Arizona. Pamela, how can we help? Hi, thank you for taking my call. You bet. My question is, do I have to go back to work full time? I'm going to take a guess by the sound of your voice with no details. I like to get out in front of this one. I'm going to say yes, but we'll see if I'm still right. Tell us more. Okay, I don't like that. I figured that too. I am assuming you're not thinking about going back to work for fun.

Exactly. Okay, that helps us. That's what I heard in your about going back to work for fun. Exactly. Okay. That helps us. That's what I heard. Lay it out for us. Okay. I'm a retired teacher. Let's see.

And so I get a pension, and I also collect Social Security. Give us the total that you're getting with both of those. So my monthly net is $4,300. Okay, keep going. I bought a condo, so I have a mortgage of $1,700 a month. Let's see. And I have a car payment. How much? $400 a month. How much do you owe and how much is it worth? I owe $22,000 on the car. And it's a 2023, so it should be worth over $30,000, I guess.

Okay. All right. I do have... Okay, go ahead. No, no, keep going. Okay. All right. I do have... Okay, go ahead. No, no, keep going. You're laying it out for us. We've got to determine if you're going back to work or not. I know.

Okay. I have a CB of $25,000, and I have savings of another $25,000, and I have an IRA of about $70,000. And that's it. Okay. And what makes you feel like you have to go back to work? Are you not able to pay all of your bills with a little bit of margin left over? I can exactly pay my bills, but then I have nothing to, you know, no entertainment money, no anything money. So I'm about $1,000 short a month. What are you spending your money on?

Because I'm looking at $4,300 coming in. You've got $1,700 in the mortgage. All right, so that leaves us about $2,600, and we've got a $400 car payment. So we've got $2,200 there for your four walls. I mean, not your four walls because you already got your house payment. Food and utilities. Transportation. So where's that money going?

I don't know. Well, and I've done the budget. I have, I don't know, well, I have, you know, utilities, phone, gas, groceries, hair. Let's say you went through it all and you audited and said i could do better on my phone plan i'm going to switch to a budget-friendly carrier i'm going to switch where i grocery shop do you think you could create a thousand dollars in margin i've tried and i just can't seem to do wouldn't it help if you just took that cd 25k and paid off your car today well that's my question i think that's what i should do

but i was wondering whether i should actually do that's my question. I think that's what I should do, but I was wondering whether I should actually do that. That's going to give you a $400 a month raise right there. Okay. And because you're such a nice lady, I'm going to get you one free session. I'm going to put it on George's tab for one of our financial coaches, because I think you need someone to sit with you and walk you through your actual budget and your behavior attached to what you're saying is your budget. Because I'm pretty convinced, George, that she's got more margin in there than she realizes. Absolutely. And I think paying off the car is going to help you today. And on top of that, leave the other amount in savings. That's

going to be your emergency fund. So we don't want to touch that unless there's a true emergency. Okay. And then outside of that, we got to figure out how to lower our expenses if we're not going to work. Now, I would encourage you, if you're able-bodied and you want to work and to use that for fun money, go for it. Do something that you enjoy that can still pay a fair wage and enjoy your retirement a little more. Okay. Thank you. How old are you? 66. Okay. Are you living alone? Yes. What would you love to do, even if it was part-time? Well, that's what I'm trying to figure out. I don't know. Well, you're a retired teacher. You're a retired teacher, so here's what I know. You're good at instructing people aren't you yes that is true I would be looking for some opportunities where maybe it's a an opportunity to do some customer service training for a small business something that's

easy and it's with adults because I don't think you want to go back into the classroom I could hear that I could almost hear a pang of fear in your voice when you talked about it. You're so smart. Well, thank you very much. George doesn't think so. So it's nice to hear someone say that every once in a while. I think I have to tell my high schoolers as well. Hey, guess what? Pamela said I was smart today. You gave Ken a big head pat.

You really did. No, but Pam, here's the deal. You are actually really good at the idea of training and teaching. And I think looking for opportunities for training work um maybe maybe even some tutoring you know where where the kid actually cares you know what i mean and and the parents are paying you um i think for you know for for going out with the ladies your fried green tomato group or whatever there you go is that a thing right it's a movie i Oh, I got excited. I was like, I need to be in one of these groups. She knows the movie. Pamela, you know what I'm

talking about when I say the fried green tomatoes. I do know what you're talking about. Thank you very much. George, try to keep up. Ken knows his audience. Yeah, that's right. That's exactly right. So, but I want to go back to something because I really want to make sure you take us up on this offer to work with one of our financial coaches and get into every dollar because if we eliminate that car payment i've got you at 2600 after your mortgage to be able to do groceries get your hair done pay for the cell phone i i think there's plenty of margin there i really really want to yeah i think you're just spending you're not paying attention and i think you're probably having more fun than you think you are.

Oh, I know I'm having a lot of fun. That's where the money's going. And so that's where working will help you enjoy that a little more without the guilt and without scraping by. Because I don't like that. And what's left on your actual mortgage total? Oh, $198,000. Because I would love to see that thing gone. I just bought that a year ago, so I feel like I'll never get that paid off. Well, that's the attitude we need, Pamela. Take that, George.

Well, at my age, it just seems impossible. It's not. Okay. We get callers from all ages, and even in their 60s, they get started, and 10 years later, they're in a very different place. Because you sound like you're going to go to being like 95 plus at this. Yeah. Are you actually in Scottsdale or close by?

I live right in Scottsdale. Can I tell you what I know about Scottsdale, Pamela? There's a lot of money in Scottsdale. There's got to be some group that's willing to pay you good money for your teaching expertise. There is a lot of money here. You're right. Here's what you do, Pamela. It's one of my favorite malls in all of America.

Here's a life hack. Choose your favorite store you love to shop at and get a job there. Oh, I'll bet you like Nordstrom or Bloomingdale's, huh? I do. I love all those there we go there's your deal going there she's got champagne taste on a beer budget i know but here's the deal you could go in and get in sales sell shoes or maybe get in the makeup department you love all that stuff you get a little discount little extra jingle in your pocket for all this fun fried green tomatoes business.

And we're paying the house off. An extra house payment. All right. Every month. Think about that. An extra payment every month means you could probably cut that 30-year down to 10 or 15. And you'll be alive to tell the tale. Do I need to work 40 hours? Oh, sorry.

Well, it depends. Do I need to work 40 hours a week? It depends. It depends on you. You get to decide. I'll tell you this. If you work with that financial coach I'm connecting you to and you do what they tell you to do, you're going to have a lot more money than you realize and you're going to be fine. You may not have to work at all. There's probably a thousand bucks in the couch cushions of your

budget that you just haven't uncovered yet. And that's what the financial coach will help you do. Pamela's living the high life in Scottsdale. She's like a postcard for retired folks. Fun stuff. Good job, George. This is The Ramsey Show. I'll see you next time.