The Ramsey Show - App - Debt Is NOT an Income Problem (Hour 2)

Episode Date: February 3, 2020

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, it's the Dave Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. You jump in. We'll talk about your life and your money. It's a free call at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Claudia is in Nevada to start off this hour. Hi, Claudia.
Starting point is 00:00:59 How are you? Better than I deserve. Quick question. So you are the tiebreaker in our marriage right now. My husband and I make combined about $115,000 a year. And the only debt we have is the stupid debt, but we actually do use it quite a bit is that we owe $16,000 roughly on a travel trailer, and we want to pay that off. So we have two girls that I just put them in horseback riding lessons for the last month. They go each week, and it's $50 each week. They stay there for five hours, and they actually get hands-on in our working ranch and they take their lessons.
Starting point is 00:01:46 They absolutely look forward to it every week. And so I think it's worth it if we use it as a line item in our budget and maybe cut back from somewhere else. My husband says, gazelle intense, nobody does anything until this trailer is paid off. Sell the trailer. Oh. You know, we use it so often, we really do get a lot of use out of it.
Starting point is 00:02:15 Well, I mean, you like the horseback lessons better, though. My girls do. My husband likes the trailer. Okay. And so you make $150,000 a year. My girls do. My husband likes the trailer. Okay. And so you make $150,000 a year. You have $16,000 on a toy. I'm sorry, $115,000. Yes.
Starting point is 00:02:33 And you have $16,000 owed on a toy that's sitting in the backyard that you use a total of two weekends a year. We use it quite a bit more than that. How much do you use it? We use it on a regular basis. How much do you use it? We use it on a regular basis. How much do you use it? For hunting trips, camping trips. How many times a year do you spend a night in that trailer?
Starting point is 00:02:53 How many nights a year? Probably four weeks. You're exaggerating. No, we go for a week during spring break. We go a couple of weeks in the summer. We do a week for our hunting trip in October. That's at a minimum. That's being conservative.
Starting point is 00:03:17 Okay. And what is the family willing to do to get it paid off in order to keep this toy? Well, I mean, I only work part-time, so I don't mind beefing up my hours. Okay. What else is the family willing to do to get this toy paid off? How fast are you going to have it paid off? I mean, I'm willing to do whatever it takes only because I see so much joy in what my goals are. How fast are you going to have it paid off?
Starting point is 00:03:46 It's $16,000. You make $115,000. How fast do you pay that off? Probably in six months. That's good. Okay. And if you can do that and keep the horseback lessons, then get it done. The horseback lessons are not really moving the needle here mathematically but what they are a symptom of is i'm continuing
Starting point is 00:04:07 to try to do all the same old crap i've always done while i'm justifying keeping a toy around in my backyard and so you've got to not do that so that part your husband's on to something there okay but the math that he's attacking he attacking, he's not really moving anything. But, I mean, you guys don't need to see the inside of a restaurant while that trailer's sitting in your backyard with that debt on it. You really don't.
Starting point is 00:04:36 And you don't have time to go on vacation. You're working all the time to get this stupid toy paid off. That's what we're talking about here. That's a lot more than $50. A lot more than fifty dollars a lot more that's thousands of dollars that i just described there so have you have you stopped your uh contributions to your retirement that's the other thing see i can't help you if you're gonna half butt do all this stuff
Starting point is 00:05:01 you call me up about a fifty dollar thing with horsey riding and you guys are still going to restaurants and you're still doing all this other stuff i'm telling you not to do now you know better than that don't you absolutely i do okay that's what your husband's talking about right there that stuff right there so stop your freaking retirement. Stop going to restaurants. Stop going on vacations. Cut your life to a bone. Work your butts off. Get the stupid toy paid off or sell it. And the $50 horsey lessons aren't your problem.
Starting point is 00:05:36 It's all this other crap that you're half-butt doing-ish doing it. That's what you get into here, Claudia. So you guys do what you want to do. I don't care you're adults but you caught me don't make the mistake of call me ask me what to do when you already know what i tell you to do go do the stuff we're already telling you do then you don't have to have these arguments but this is the the deal is is the horsey lesson was the last straw because your husband has been observing that y'all are half butt doing all this other stuff and he's had it with that now i like your husband yeah and the way he got your attention was he
Starting point is 00:06:11 threatened to take the horsey lessons away and so keep the horsey lessons and fix the rest of the crap is what i would do or sell the stupid butt trailer everywhere you talked about going they rent places you can rent a cabin to hunt you can can rent a hotel on vacation. You can do all kinds of stuff without this trailer in the backyard. But if you want to keep it and you can pay it off in six months and you're willing to roll up your sleeves and go do it, I would probably do that if I were you. Thanks for the call. Kayla is with us in Illinois. Hi, Kayla. How are you? Hi, Dave. I'm doing well. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? So I'm 22 and I'm currently saving for a house in Baby Step 3B.
Starting point is 00:06:52 And I'm just wondering if I should be still gazelle intense here to hopefully try and pay off house in cash or if I should be able to enjoy a bit more of my money as if I were in 4, 5, and 6. Enjoy a bit more of your money. I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean. I mean, like, should I still be gazelle intense cutting out rice and beans, beans and rice, or am I allowed to bring in a bit more into my budget, or should I just really focus on 3B to pay off as much of a house as I can when that time comes? I got you. Okay. Anything beyond baby step 3B, we do not teach you to be gazelle intense. We teach you to let your foot off the gas and do other things while you're doing
Starting point is 00:07:30 it. Now, having said that, Sharon and I have at times in beyond baby step three for periods of time focused on a goal and been very intense. It's not required over 30 years for you to live on beans and rice in order to live a life that's right though in other words we might say hey you know we're gonna we're gonna chill here we're gonna stay out of restaurants and you know for for a year because we want to do this thing and we're gonna pile up we'd rather have this thing or take this trip or whatever it is then we would all these other little uh small things that happen when you let your foot off the gas after baby step three so you can do that if you in other words if you can pay cash for your house in two or three years and you're 24 years old and
Starting point is 00:08:16 you want to really sacrifice to do that that's a that's a goal worth being intense for but is it what we teach for you to have to do that after baby step three no we do not good question very good thinking good good frame of thought there we appreciate you joining us this is the Dave Ramsey show If you do this one simple thing that we all do, you are literally at risk of being hacked and someone stealing what you've worked so hard for. Do you ever use public Wi-Fi? I'm talking about getting online at a coffee shop, a store, the airport, or even at home. Hackers can use a simple $100 device to mimic Wi-Fi,
Starting point is 00:09:14 and with just a little bit of skills, they can take over your financial life. This means you may think you're on your bank's site or app or securely making that purchase online, but hackers could see and steal that information. That's why I trust CyberGhost VPN. CyberGhost thinks about cybercrime so you don't have to. You can try it for free for seven days, protect up to seven internet devices and keep all of your internet connections secure. That's CyberGhost VPN. Download it today from your app store and be secure in seconds. Andrew is with us. Andrew is in New York.
Starting point is 00:10:17 Hi, Andrew. How are you? God bless you, Dave. An honor to talk to you. You too, sir. What's up? I feel like I'm doing okay financially, but I want to try to do better with the right direction. So I'm 39. You too, sir. What's up? As for the student debt, my wife, half of it is hers, $70,000, and half is mine. My half is being paid with public service loan forgiveness, and hers is not. Budget-wise, I could pay over her minimum by maybe $50.
Starting point is 00:10:52 I want to try to attack it to get her. What is your household income? $67,000. I am the sole provider. Good Lord. My wife is amazing at everything else, but I am the only guy right now. And so she paid $70,000 to get a degree and doesn't use it? For now.
Starting point is 00:11:14 I mean, we have a two-year-old and another one on the way. What is her degree in? Great job. Counseling, mental health counseling. Did she get licensed? Did she get her master's? She did get her master's. She did not get licensed, but
Starting point is 00:11:32 it's just a case of she gave birth and she wanted to raise a baby. I wasn't accusing her of being lazy. I'm just saying you guys have a financial crisis on your hands because your income to your debt ratio is absolutely scaring the crud out of me, dude.
Starting point is 00:11:46 Y'all got to be terrified. You have a little shovel and you are standing neck deep in a big hole. Okay. And it's scaring me for you. I would be scared. So I want to do something to increase your household income because we've got to get rid of these student loans because the public student loan forgiveness program, are you talking about the 10-year program? I am talking about the 10-year program, and I'm already three years into it.
Starting point is 00:12:18 Have you not read that it doesn't exist? What do you mean? 35,000 people have made application. Ninety-three received the forgiveness. The government is not honoring it. Okay. It's not a good get-out-of-debt plan. They lied to you.
Starting point is 00:12:39 Okay. I mean, go Google it. Go Google and see what's happening with it. There's almost none of the applications are going through after people waited 10 years and did the public service. And so it's been a bad deal. So, yeah, what I would say is you have $140,000 in student loan debt, and we've got to come up with a plan other than $67,000 to get you out of that. And that involves what do you do for a living?
Starting point is 00:13:07 I work in social services. That's a nonprofit. Yeah. Okay. Can you pick up side casework? I'm currently actively looking for side anything, really. Sure, sure. I mean, if you can get casework it'll be pay be your best pay
Starting point is 00:13:25 aside casework and um and then your wife needs to go ahead and get licensed even though she's a full-time mom and i appreciate and i want her to i want to honor her decision to do that but she needs to go ahead and get her license so that she can do side counseling as well some evenings and weekends and stuff when you're around with the kiddos that she can pick up. Because a good marriage counselor therapist, as an example, make $100, $100.50 an hour. And you guys need the money. So she needs, and her side gig, she's got a master's.
Starting point is 00:14:01 Go ahead and get the license and let's get the counseling business started. It doesn't have to be super fancy. It doesn't have to be super fancy. It doesn't have to be a big deal. But she can add some real substantial dollars without sacrificing her too much of her time with her children. And I'm not asking her to go crazy here, but I mean, 20 hours a week would go a long way at $100 an hour, go a long way in this situation. It would increase your income considerably. And if you can pick
Starting point is 00:14:28 up casework on the side as well, we've got to begin to address these student loans because they're not going away, sir. I wish they were going away, but they're not going away. And the only way they're going to go away is when you guys get after them and you don't have a lot of margin in a $67,000 budget
Starting point is 00:14:44 to pay tens of thousands of dollars. $50 is you're going to be 100 years getting out, $50. You need $5,000 a month going towards this. And that's going to involve you all changing your income structure to be able to do that. I'm so sorry. I wish you weren't there. I feel scared for you. All right.
Starting point is 00:15:04 Erica is with us in Texas. Hi, Erica. How wish you weren't there. I feel scared for you. All right. Erica is with us in Texas. Hi, Erica. How are you? Good. Thank you so much for taking my phone call today. Sure. What's up? So I'm a single mom, and I feel like I'm drowning in debt.
Starting point is 00:15:18 And I pretty much need to know how to get started. How many babies you got? Two. How old babies you got? Two. How old? Six and three. How long have you been on your own? Not quite a year yet. How old are you?
Starting point is 00:15:38 33. What do you do for a living? I work for the government. Doing what? Pretty much it's data entry. It's like an entry-level job. Yeah. What do you make?
Starting point is 00:15:52 I make about $45,000. Okay, good. And how much debt have you got? So I have about $19,000 in student loan debt for a degree that I didn't get. And I have about $5,000 in student loan debt for a degree that I didn't get. And I have about $5,000 in credit card debt. And about $8,000 I have left on my car loan. Good. Okay.
Starting point is 00:16:13 Good. Good, good, good, good, good. Okay. And so you're 33, and you have a, what was the ages of the babies again, three and five? Six. Three and six. Okay. So when you have a 13-year-old and a 16-year-old and you're an old 43-year-old woman,
Starting point is 00:16:35 what are you going to be doing with your life then, career-wise? I've been thinking about going back to school and i've halfway started getting that process back i want to get i want to be in nursing oh you want to be in nursing okay good i would i do and that's kind of where i started my degree but i didn't finish it life happened and um so i've started that process and I think come summer I should be ready, but if I've got all these bills, how can I, you know, how can I go back? I'm just, I'm just asking, I'm just thinking with you. Cause normally what happens when you go through a divorce and you're sitting here, you've had a year of hell. Emotionally, financially,
Starting point is 00:17:30 babies are crying. I mean, you've had a tough year. And a lot of times people make really bad career decisions in the middle of that year because they're thrashing around trying to get enough money just to eat with. Right. And you didn that so that's good you're sitting in a stable situation will the state pay for your education at all i'm sorry you work for the state right right will they pay for education they do as long as i commit so many years to working here while I pay, you know, to offset what they've funded for my education. Let's calculate that because you need the job anyway. I mean, if it's 20 years, it probably doesn't work.
Starting point is 00:18:14 If it's three years, it works really good. Right. Because I'd rather work for them for three years and get paid than I would be in debt or struggle to wait three more years to get started on your nursing degree, that kind of thing. Okay. So you've got a tight budget. It's scary.
Starting point is 00:18:35 But what you're telling me mathematically will work. You can work your way through this. We're going to have to work you out of debt and get your long-term career goals adjusted and begin to tool you up so that you have a great life 10 to 20 years from now in the second chapter of your story. Okay. You can do it. It's scary though, isn't it? It's scary. Yeah. I'm going to walk with you, okay? I want you to go through Financial Peace University, our class and our one-year membership, and we're going to walk with you and help you with every bit of this.
Starting point is 00:19:08 And I'm also going to send you a copy of Ken Coleman's book, The Proximity Principle on Careers. But I can show you how to get out of this debt. I'll show you. We'll put you in financial peace. I'll pay for it. You'll be okay. You're going to make it, kiddo. You call me if you're scared, okay? This is The Dave Ramsey Show. We'll see you next time. Ministries, or CHM, helps Christian families, churches, and ministries join together as the body of Christ to share their major health care costs. Christian Health Care Ministries is the original health cost-sharing ministry, a Better Business Bureau-accredited organization CHM members share to pay each other's medical bills. It's not insurance. It's Christians financially and spiritually supporting each other. It's what
Starting point is 00:20:26 Christian Healthcare Ministries has done for over 35 years, and our members have shared over $2.5 billion in medical bills. To learn more, visit chministries.org. That's chministries.org. Christian Healthcare Ministries is a proud sponsor of Dave Ramsey Live Events. chministries.org It's hard to grasp $1.7 trillion in anything. $1.7 trillion in student loan debt out there. $850 billion, almost a trillion, in credit card debt. I know those numbers seem huge and they seem like they apply to you but
Starting point is 00:21:25 you know what somebody's in debt this is nuts might be shocking to some of you but debt is not an income problem well i could be out of that too if i just made enough money you know you really cannot out earn your stupidity i tried it for a long time. You can't do it. It's not an income problem. It's a behavior problem. The problem with your money is just like the problem with my money. It's the guy in my mirror. You have to have a plan for it. You have to make the money behave. You have to get out of debt. The best plan that we know is just what I was doing that single mom a minute ago. Put her in Financial Peace University. You can be a single mom with $19,000 in student loan debt. You can be a social worker with $140,000 in student loan debt
Starting point is 00:22:11 who gets the news that the government is not going to forgive his debt and his wife's at home with their baby. You can just have a $54,000 car loan making $240,000 a year. None of these things are pleasant. Let me help you with pleasant. I'll tell you the interest rate on my credit card, okay? Zero! I don't have one! I'll tell you the interest rate on my car loan.
Starting point is 00:22:39 Zero! I don't have one! You know what the interest rate is on my mortgage? Zero! I don't have one. You know what the interest rate is on my mortgage? Zero. I don't have one. Is that helpful? I got your interest rate beat. You know what else I got? No danger of any of that crap being repoed. No danger that if anybody calls my house from American Express, it's anything but a freaking wrong number.
Starting point is 00:23:05 No danger. Financial peace. Two words that don't go together, like airline service. Think about it. Most people have at least some degree of fear because they have some degree of debt. But we've done detailed research. 100% of the foreclosures occur on a home with a mortgage. Let's get your house paid off.
Starting point is 00:23:37 If you don't have a house payment, you know how hard it is to become very, very wealthy? It's not very hard at all. You don't have a house payment, you don't have a car payment, you haven't got a student loan that's been around so long you think it's a pet. Sally Mae doesn't have her own bedroom. American distress and discovered bondage. When you don't have any payments, you know what you've got? Money. It's magical, baby. It's magical. We'll show you how to do it. Check out Financial Peace University, 888-22-PEACE, 888-227-3223, or online at DaveRamsey.com. And we'll show you not only how to get out of debt, but you know Dave Ramsey, he doesn't know anything about building wealth. He's extremely wealthy,
Starting point is 00:24:20 but he doesn't know anything about building wealth. So we can't show you, we can't help you with that, because Dave Ramsey is an idiot about wealth building. I just love reading these stupid things from broke people on the Internet. So I probably have made more millionaires than anybody else in America, considering I didn't give them any money. I just showed them how to do it. The Everyday Millionaire Project has kind of confirmed that for us. So you can do what you want to do, baby.
Starting point is 00:24:43 But I don't know how to work on your car, but this I know how to do. I can show you how to do this. John is with us. John is in Texas. Hi, John. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? Hey, I'm a 36-year-old, 100% disabled vet, and I just got a new job where I'm now making $50K a year. I have a 15-year-old stepdaughter along with two other kids, and I have 529s for all of them. But obviously I'm more focused on my 15-year-old than my other two. The other two are 2 and 4.
Starting point is 00:25:23 Agreed. So I'm trying, how much do I need to put into her 529? Okay. Wow. Thank you for serving your country. What's the nature of your disability? A bunch of things. Okay.
Starting point is 00:25:41 What are you doing making? Body ailments. Okay. What are you doing? What's yourments. Okay. What are you doing? What's your career that you're making 50K in? I work at a fuel farm. Okay. Cool.
Starting point is 00:25:54 Well done, sir. Very well done. You're scrapping and clawing and getting after it. Proud of you. I'm trying. You're correct. Mathematically, obviously, the 15-year-old's got three years, and the other kids have got 15 years to save money. I would use the 529 for the younger ones for sure,
Starting point is 00:26:11 because the benefit of the 529, it's not a magic tool. All it does is allow your college savings to be tax-free growth, okay? And so the amount of growth that you're going to have, let's say you put $10,000 aside for the 15-year-old, okay? If it grows at 10% for three years, it's going to grow $3,000. Tax-free on $3,000 is nice, but it's not that big a deal. Now, if you set aside $2,000 a year for a baby for 18 years, that's $36,000 you put in. That would have grown, because of all the time it's had to grow, to more like $126,000, which means you've got $90,000 in growth in that account, and that would be tax-free.
Starting point is 00:27:09 Now, taxes on $90,000 saved is a big deal. That's the 529's best use is the babies. It starts early because the vast majority will be growth. But the 529 for the 15-year-old is not that big a deal. You know, I have some veterans benefits to pick up some of her tuition. I have a Chapter 32 benefits i can use i've also been investing uh in her 529 i've been putting 250 dollars in it for the past four years so i've already gained two thousand dollars on good okay well i mean again you're saving taxes on the growth right but the and the growth is not going to be huge,
Starting point is 00:27:45 but it doesn't hurt anything. It's a good thing, but it's magical when you start real, real young. So, yeah, use your veterans benefits and use the 529 as best you can, and then sit down with a smart investor pro, and they can help you calculate how much you need to be putting into those younger ones per month in order to be where you want them to be when they're 18 in terms of what do you want those balances to be. And you can do some estimates on that based on what you think are best,
Starting point is 00:28:15 based on some research on what tuition will cost at that time and what you need to save towards that goal. And you can get there. So, hey, thanks for the call open phones at 888-825-5225 jason's with us in florida hi jason how are you hey dave what's going on gonna make it brother how can i help okay um my question or dilemma is this we have a second property you took wife wait a minute you just cut you wait a minute stop you cut out all i heard was we have a second a second what property we have a second property right okay and we went out and it's been about two years now we've been doing this now we have three three girls and one, she's about to be 16.
Starting point is 00:29:06 Now, college is coming up, and the wife has issues where she might want to get rid of the property. One, because she's scared of being a landlord. And then two, to have cash on hand for when the girls need to go to school. Okay, so what would the property sell for? $240, $250. have cash on hand for when the girls need to go to school. Okay. So what would the property sell for? $240, $250. And what do you owe on it? Like half, not even.
Starting point is 00:29:36 Okay. So you get like $100,000, some change out of it after expenses when you sell it. And that would help the kids go to school, and that's her plan. Right. That's her plan. Right. That's her plan. That's her issues. Her issues are that. We've done all your steps. We have zero debt.
Starting point is 00:29:59 We're a primary residence. We're in that rarefied air where we have no mortgage. Man. It's a great feeling to have these feelings. Yeah. I'm scared in the sense where if we sell that property and we might not also, we're investing it in our children, yes, of course. Yeah. But I was also thinking of it as a retirement also. Yeah, it's not.
Starting point is 00:30:21 It's one or the other. You have to decide which one it is. I think it's for the kids' college, and you're 100% debt-free. I'm sorry. I think your wife wins the argument. Thank you for joining us, America. Sydney's with us in Idaho. Hi, Sydney. How are you? I'm good, Dave.
Starting point is 00:31:13 How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? So I recently have been actively listening to you. And I am currently technically in Baby Step 1. I'll have the rest of my savings on Friday, actually. And then we're tackling my debt snowball. Good.
Starting point is 00:31:34 I had registered for, well, applied for college, and I was kind of wondering if I should hold off on, I'd be taking two classes, paying for it as I go. I'm still working full time. What are you studying? And I was kind of wondering, um, I'm going for engineering. Good. Very good. Why? Um, I'm actually currently a freemer for a company. Been working there since high school and absolutely love it. I thought I wanted to go down that route. Wasn't sure. Give myself a year and now it's two years out of high school and so I'm like, I need to go to college now or I won't. Good, okay. So you want to study engineering and you're going to take the first two classes and pay cash for them? Yeah, I hope to. I only want to be taken
Starting point is 00:32:19 about two so I can still work full-time and then stay with my company because I can actually transfer over to engineering after I'm done with school. Okay. All right. That's a good start. And what do you make a year? Last year, I made $38,000 a year, and I just got a pay raise. Okay.
Starting point is 00:32:39 And so you're two years out of school. You're 19, 20? I'm 20, yeah. Okay. All right. And you're making 30 to 40 000 38 to 40 000 a year you're paying cash two years uh two classes at a time how long does it take you to complete your degree at this play rate um that's what i have a meeting with an advisor i'm i'm thinking probably about six years four four to six years. Okay.
Starting point is 00:33:09 I'm just not sure how much of a workload I can take on with school as working. I think you can do more than two as long as it doesn't interfere with the day job, so to speak, because the day job is the cash cow that's paying for everything, so we don't want to kill that, right, the goose that's laying the egg, golden eggs. So, but I mean, you can, you sound like someone that is not lacking in drive or ambition and I think you can handle a heavier load than that. I worked, when I was your age, I worked 40 to 60 hours a week and went through in four years and carried a full load, which, you know, but engineering is tougher than the stuff I studied and so forth. So you don't have to go all the way up that high, but I would like for you to do a little bit more, at least one more class if you can.
Starting point is 00:33:55 Again, it has to do if you can get the classes too in off hours, right? Yes. Because you can't just stop in the middle of the day and go over to the school, right? So you've got to be able to figure out your schedule part. The schedule part is a bigger problem than everything else. But I think if you ask the 32-year-old version of you, that person would tell you that they would rather you had less of a social life and less sleep and got it done faster. Okay. That's what I think they would rather you had less of a social life and less sleep and got it done faster.
Starting point is 00:34:26 Okay. That's what I think they would tell you that. Yeah, that would still be doable. It's like still continue on my debt snowball there too then. Yeah, but your main goal here is to pay cash. How much debt have you got? I've got $22,000 with my car. And how much do you owe on your car?
Starting point is 00:34:46 $16,000 with my car. And how much do you owe on your car? $16,500. Okay. Regardless of the rest of the discussion, your car is awfully expensive for someone making $40,000. Yeah. Yeah, my dad and I, I think, are working on that right now to try to get her sold. Okay. Well, then let's see. If $16,000 goes way down that that gets rid of a lot of your
Starting point is 00:35:06 debt snowball right yes yeah i think your dad's a good man to have on your team here okay yeah he's definitely been i kind of not listening to him and finally actively listening oh that means you're growing up yeah this is bad when the old man starts getting smarter instead of dumber that's a that's a sign you're getting old oh yeah he's stupid smart he's been preaching you since i was little and i was like i don't care about this abrams guy who the heck is he why is he better you are you are going to make a fabulous engineer cindy sydney i'm sorry you're you're going to do so good i I'm so proud of you already. Yeah, I think the main goal here is invest in Sydney, get the education, pay cash for it. Even if that slows down your debt snowball a little bit, let's speed up the classes as much as your brain and your emotions and your sleep quotient can do. And I think the faster you're an engineer,
Starting point is 00:36:04 the faster this world is going to be a better place. So you keep it up. Very, very proud of you. Very neat. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Jesse's with us in Tennessee. Hi, Jesse. How are you? Doing good, sir. How are you? Better than I deserve. How can I help? All right. I want to see what you thought about my situation real quick. So I make $60,000 a year counting my car lease. I have around $88,000 in debt.
Starting point is 00:36:32 And my wife and I are going through FPU right now. We are selling things. I am about to get a second job. We are going through all the steps. Cool. Basically, whatever you say, we are doing right now. So my question is, with my lease, I have two years left on the three-year lease, and we only pay around $330 a month, and I've already called the dealership.
Starting point is 00:36:57 The buyout is way more than I can afford. The buyout's around $22,000. But they did say that they would work with me, basically. They would take the car back if I, you know, just because I even mentioned just buying, like, a cheap car, $5,000, $8,000 just to get us by. So my question is, obviously, with my— Under what circumstances would they take the car back? They just said they would take the lease back if I bought, you know, a cheaper car. From them?
Starting point is 00:37:28 Yes. Yes, from them. Okay. Yeah, that's probably not going to work. Do you know what the car, you said $22,000 is the buyout. Do you know what the car is worth today? I looked on Kelley Blue Book, and it's around $19,000 to $20,000. Okay. So basically $330,000 times two years
Starting point is 00:37:51 is about $7,000. Does that sound right? Yeah. Maybe $8,000. About $8,000 really. Yeah. Okay. So you're going to be out of pocket $8,000 if you do that. If you just sell the car, you have to write a check for $2,000 to get it covered, right? Yes. 22 buyout plus 20.
Starting point is 00:38:10 And then you've got to get you a car. Yes. So it'd probably save you six, seven grand to go ahead and just sell it. But I don't know that you need to turn it back into them. I mean, you can look at a deal with them, but be real careful because they're going to hide that P under one of those shells. Yeah. Dealers don't lose money. They're not in the business for that. They're not evil. They're just in the business to make money. And so, you know, if you're going to trade something to them, um, uh, you know, you need to be real sure that what you're getting on the other side of it is super, super, super cheap and that you pay for it or almost pay for it or get it paid for real quick after that.
Starting point is 00:38:47 But if you can reduce your debt from $22,000 down to, say, $5,000, that would start to be interesting, wouldn't it? Oh, and save losing $8,000 in the process. Yeah, so I'll go talk to them, but otherwise I'm going to just sell it for 20, cover the two with a loan and borrow three or 4,000. Give me a little car to drive around until I get the rest of this debt paid off. So you would take a loan to cover the difference or whatever? Definitely. Oh yeah. You're already $22,000 in debt. We just reduced it to two. All right.
Starting point is 00:39:30 Well, I've been going so far as to no more debt. I didn't even think about it. Well, it is no more debt, but what we're doing is we're switching the debt around and having a net change of $20,000. Yeah, no, no, that totally makes sense. Would I go borrow more? No, and if you're going to go through all this, for God's sakes, don't go buy a $15,000 car. You've made no traction,
Starting point is 00:39:48 right? Yeah. If you're going to go through this pain, then go all the way down to nothing for a short period of time and drive like no one else so later you can drive like no one else. But your thinking's right. You're heading in the right direction. Very, very well done, sir. Appreciate
Starting point is 00:40:03 you listening. That puts this hour of the Dave Ramsey Show in the books. Our thanks to Zach Bennett filling in for James Childs and Kelly Daniel, our associate producer and phone screener. I am Dave Ramsey, your host, and we will right back. We'll see you next time.

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