The Ramsey Show - App - Don’t Bury Your Head in the Sand – Pay Off Your Debt! (Hour 2)

Episode Date: October 3, 2023

Девочка-пай Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. I am here. Jade Warshaw joined next to Dr. John Deloney. And I hold in my hand a copy of your new book, John.

Release day! Release day! Ah, Building a Non-Anxious Life. And I must say, the cover is quite flattering. Guy's pretty handsome. I'm not gonna lie. Not gonna lie. Who is that? Dave requires that we have our faces on our books. And those digital editors back there can do a number on a on an ugly on an ugly face and an ugly picture man

they're pretty amazing no dude this looks great you just look directly at it it's wonderful um building a non-anxious life you had all this pre-sale hoopla but today all that's over and today is d-Day. That's it. And now you just hang on and hope it connects like you hoped it would. Oh, it will. I have no worries about that, John. It's awesome.

Your writing is spectacular, and I'm excited about it. Happy to know you, if I'm honest about that. Happy to know you and Sam, too, man. Well, let's take some calls. The number is 888-825-5225 we'll go directly to the phone lines we got christy in sarasota florida what's going on christy i'm so excited to talk to you guys we're excited to talk to you i just have to say i just have to say you guys are my favorite duo don't tell anybody right we're gonna tell everyone especially Kim. I'm so excited and I just can't hide it.

All right, so go for it. What's up? So, okay, I'm wondering if I should, which I think I know the answer, but I'm wondering if I should go into debt to prioritize my health. So I'm not dying. I just got a diagnosis of polycystic ovarian syndrome, and that has the potential to affect my fertility I'm not trying to have kids yet I'm just trying to be proactive so that once I do try

to have kids I don't have any issues when I knew there was a problem I could have prevented so the um treatment that I want to do is $3,900 paid in full. And I checked before I was like, I see you use a firm. Is there interest? And they were like, no, but it's a $600 payment that you have to make to qualify for zero interest. Um, and so I have only $17,800 in debt, student loan debt. That's it. Um um and then of course our house we did the whole thing we sold the cars we sold the guns we had a garage sale like my husband and i went really really hard um to get some of that taken care of um and so we're committed and i'm i ask myself all the time because i don't get to call you guys every day what would what would the Ramsey personality say to me yeah

and my thought is that okay I'm not dying prioritize your health in the ways that you can and kids are important to you yes of course yeah um look okay so you've got the 17 you got almost 18,000 dollars in student loan debt do you have other debt laying around no okay, so you've got the 17, you got almost $18,000 in student loan debt. Do you have other debt laying around? No. Okay. What do you guys earn? What's your combined income? So our combined income, we do own a house and we only have a $1,000 emergency fund.

That was a mistake, but whatever. Well, you're walking through the baby steps, so I get it. Okay. Right. We earn, so I earn 47. My husband earns 68. So next we take home, we take home about like 7,000 a month, which is awesome. And then we have two, um, 18 year old girls that were kind of mentoring and helping, um, living with us. So, um, Elizabeth, who has kind of like become like almost like a surrogate

daughter is paying 400 and then the other elizabeth is paying 900 a month so they pay you 400 900 okay yes so we're taking home almost uh 8300 a month yeah okay um so here's what i would do simply and you tell me i'm going to tell you what i think do simply, and you tell me, I'm going to tell you what I think the solution is, and you tell me why you think it won't work or why you think it will work. I would pause the debt snowball, and I would save up for this procedure, and I'd pay cash for it.

Right now? Yeah, today, this month. Okay. Because this is not just about kids. This is a complicated thing, and you know, I'm sure you went down the Google rabbit hole. No, I didn't.

You didn't? Good for you. Wow. I did some research. I was like, okay, because when I got the diagnosis, I was like, are they sure? Like, I was like, did they get, because I had no symptoms. I was so confused. I don't have painful cycles.

Like, I'm a very healthy person. And so I was like, really? And so I did some research and then I just went to my doctor and I was like, what the heck's going on? She kind of shut me down. And that's why I want to go like the naturopathic route. Yeah. Because I'm like, I don't feel respected. Well, I would, I would get a second medical opinion before I did that. Okay. So I'm talking to you, like I would talk to my sister. You do whatever you want to do. Okay. Um, if you're my sister and you called me and said,

Hey, my doctor won't listen to me, shut me down. I would say, cool. They've cashed out. Um, not that your doctor isn't right.

And you're wrong. I think we have a culture now that goes to YouTube first and then challenges somebody with, with a medical degree. And we're like, you're like, I have buddies that are physicians and they're dealing with a medical degree and we're like, you're stupid. I have buddies that are physicians and they're dealing with this all the time.

But I also know there is a shutdown. You're stupid and I'm not, and I'm not having that either, right? So I would make an appointment and get a second opinion. This is a procedure that often when they go looking, it might not be nearly as bad as the MRIs would suggest, or it can be infinitely more complicated. And so I think saving up for that procedure, like Jade said, just pause the baby.

This is your health. And this is, kids is one part of this, but this is systemic, man. And this is about you being healthy in a bunch of bunch of ways not just having kids one day so i'd go get that checked out how does this sorry how does it how is what john and i saying is it hitting right do you feel like yes yeah so it's not it's not a procedure it's just it's me it's really hormone testing and then deciding how i'm going to be eating differently based on that hormone testing i would do a lot of research before you go down

that road okay and i am dude i i have sat in arguments with my medical doctor researcher buddies, and we've gone round and round and round and round. And there is a lot. And it pains me to say this, because this was my entire identity. There's a lot of snake oil out there. There's a lot of right stuff. And hormone testing is critically important. But sometimes a medical doctor is wrong.

And sometimes a medical doctor will shut you down because they hear it 5,000 times a day because people Google too much stuff, right? That's where a second opinion is going to be super important. And being honest with your physician and saying, here's what I'm thinking about doing. And please don't shut me down. But I'm scared about this other path and go that route. But $3,900 for some specialized essential oil testing is messy. And I know I just made everybody mad. Sorry, James, the mean comments are going to come. Hormone testing is important. It's good, but man.

Look, and just for anybody listening, if you want to have a baby, you can pause the baby steps, whether it's fertility treatments, whether it's adoption and you've got to save up. It's OK. You don't have to be debt free before you have a family. And I just want to say that loud and clear. Some people, it's their personal choice if they want to hold off on a family and pay off their debt first. But hear me loud and clear.

That's personal choice. We are never going to shake our finger at you for pausing paying off debt to have a baby. This is The Ramsey Show. This is The Ramsey Show. I am Jade Warshaw. He is John Deloney. We're taking your calls all afternoon. 888-825-5225 is the number. John, Ken Coleman and I were in D.C. yesterday and two days prior to as well, getting a feel for how everyone was feeling about student loans coming back online. October 1st was D-Day.

Dave was calling it Sunday Bloody Sunday, which I thought was funny. But the whole idea is student loan payments were restarting with interest. And so we went to see how folks were feeling about that and it's interesting you know there's been so many different narratives going around well maybe the government will come you know forgive them maybe that'll be the way out maybe some legislation will be passed and there'll be caps put in place maybe they should stop making the loans altogether and so there's a lot of a lot of thought and a lot of different opinions about this but yahoo finance published an article that said the u.s government's biggest financial asset john is student loan debt i'm going to say that again the u.s government's

biggest financial asset is student loan debt and i mean mean big time, like over 1.1 trillion. It says the value of federally backed student loans held by the government has risen by more than a thousand percent since the last recession and now tops at 1.1 trillion. And if you're watching on YouTube, you can look at this graph here. Student loans make up 45 percent 45 percent it says we hear a lot about government debt but what we don't hear about our government assets and so we're looking at this and the federal reserves financial account data found that the student loans make up the largest financial asset held by the federal government by a huge margin so I say all that to say, if we're waiting around for the government to do something in the

way of maybe not making loans, maybe forgiving your loans, anything that's going to cause this to not be an asset, I think that we're going to be waiting until the cows come home is basically what I'm saying. Hell is basically going to have to freeze over before that takes place. And then, and I'm saying that because here's, I want to light a fear under people's butt right now. A fire and a fear to go, hey, I can't just be willy nilly about this. Like I can't lollygag with my student loans any longer. I've got to come up with a plan to pay them off because- Hold on a second. Before we transition to that, I want to make sure everybody knows what you just said. Because you used a fancy finance word called, and I may not have known what that was. Yes.

What we're saying is, or what that report is saying is, the U.S. government's emergency fund is your student loan payment. Yeah. The U.S. government, what was it, 40% was? 45%. Put that against, throw that throw that graph back up there yeah against how much cash it has yeah this is so to put in to put in perspective total mortgages like when you have a mortgage to the federal government 4.6 percent if we have

the currency checkable deposits and currency 11.1 percent so cash yeah other loans and advances so miscellaneous loans and advances 7.7 percent the government will make loans to other countries to help them out with you know food shortages things like that yep but 45 taxes taxes receivable 16.4 student loans 45 so what we're saying is almost 50 of the the business of the U.S. government, the cash that runs the machine that is your roads, that is your FBI, that is your government, that pays the salaries of your congressmen and women, is student loan repayment. Yeah.

It will not go away because it's half of the economic engine. If that goes away or it's not half the economic engine it's half the assets yeah that's a mess that's a scary scary place to be so i say that to set the stage for this idea if you're waiting for these to go away they're not going anywhere and not only are they not going anywhere but if you don't pay the piper you're on the hook for some serious business here. We actually at Ramsey Solutions, we put out articles all the time about topics that are important to you guys. And we recently put out a topic that

said, what happens if you don't pay your student loans? Because I know I'm getting up in folks grill right now, but I know there's a lot of you have just decided I'm not going to pay it. That's okay. I'm just not going to pay pay it and let me tell you why that's a terrible idea number one we just said because they're going to keep making them and number two it says federal student loans owned by the u.s department of education and federal loan servicers have the power they have the full power of the government behind them to get this money from you of course they do and they're not going to sleep on that because we need the money as we've just explained. So if you decide that you're not going to pay your loans, let's walk through a couple of the things that can happen to your butt. Number one,

if your loans, your loan will become delinquent immediately after you miss a payment. So if you mess around in October and you're like, you know what, I'm not ready. I'm just not going to pay it. You'll be delinquent and you will be charged a late fee up to 6% of the monthly payment. That's crazy. So add that to the interest, late fees, terrible. Next thing it says, your loan service will then report your student loan as delinquent. And if that goes on for more than 90 days, of course, they're gonna report it to Experian, Equifax, TransUnion, that's your credit report. So now it's gonna start to tank your credit score. If you keep letting it go on past that,

it goes into default. And this usually happens after about nine months of missed payments. So you're totally in default, okay? And once your loan gets into default, so once you've gone about nine months without paying your loan, here's what will happen. Your entire amount, so let's say you owe $80,000, the entire amount becomes due. That's called loan acceleration, and it's a very real thing, and it's a very scary thing. So if you think that you're going to mess around and just willy-nilly

like, I'm not going to pay it, they can't make me, you're getting into some really serious water here. If that happens, at this point, you're in default and it's reported again to the credit agencies. But even if you wanted to apply for deferment, forbearance, you can't at that point. You've already proven you can't be trusted.

You're no longer eligible for any of the income driven payment replans right payment repayment plans so if after you know being delinquent for 90 days finally decide for nine nine months you decide oh you know i think i'll do the save plan no you can't do it or i think i'll jump into one of these idrs you can't do it okay you won't be able to apply for any more financial aid which that's probably the only silver lining here is you can't go further into debt by applying for more student loans if you go this far down the road which is good um but here's here's the kicker it's the federal government and uh they can reach their old winnie the pooh paul into your honey jar called your bank account and they can garnish

your wages uh they can take your social security they can take your tax refund they can garnish your wages. They can take your social security. They can take your tax refund. They can take your passport. Many people say, no, they can't. No, they can't. How would they get it? Remember when I think it was both the Trump administration and the Biden administration wrote checks for COVID and they magically appeared in our checking accounts,

direct deposit. That means it can come out also. Now, this is talking about garnishing it from your check, that your check's just going to be hundreds and hundreds of dollars lighter. Yeah. But I think there's a step past that, y'all. They have proven in the last few years, they have the technology to just put stuff in your account,

which means they can just take it out. Yeah. When you wake up and you're like, wait a second, I'm supposed to have $3,000. Why do I only have 200 or zero? And you're looking like Will Smith in the pursuit of happiness. The problem is they just went into your account and they took your money because you owed it and you decided not to pay. And so this can get very seriously, very quickly. And I hear, I hear naysayers in the background, John. Sometimes I can hear the peanut gallery, you know, throwing peanuts at me even here on the on the air. And I hear somebody going, but Jade, I'm doing the 12 month on ramp. I don't have to pay it. I'm

doing the 12 month on ramp. And what that is, is in a stroke of genius, Biden has said, hey, for 12 months, if you're not ready to pay, you don't have to pay. And we won't report it to the credit card companies. We won't count you as delinquent. And a lot of people are thinking, hip, hip, hooray, that's great. But what will happen is you're still going to be charged interest. And so your balance is going to continue to go up.

Guys, you can run, but you can't hide. When you sign your name on the dotted line, you owe the money and there's nobody coming to save you. Not when the student loan industry is making up 45% of US assets. They ain't going anywhere. You're going to have to pay the debt and we want to help you pay the debt. We're not saying this to get onto you. We want to help you. There is a way out. That's all I got to say. There's a way out. 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.

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So learn more today and join at chministries.org budget. That's chministries.org slash budget at chministries.org slash budget. What is going on, everybody? You are listening to The Ramsey Show. My name is Jade Warshaw. I'm your host today, joined by your other host today, Dr. John Deloney. I'm here to talk about the money stuff. John is here to talk about the mental health and wellness stuff, but he knows the money stuff too. Let's be honest about that, John. That's right.

And if you want to talk about both money and your relationship, our first ever money and marriage getaway. How's that for a roll into a commercial? James, does James approve? October 19th through 21st, money and marriage getaway, our first ever marriage retreat. You and your spouse will be equipped with tools to cast a vision for your family,

set goals, and create a life you both love. You're going to have undistracted time to disconnect from everyday life, reconnect with your spouse. We're going to be talking about money, intimacy and sex, communication, boundaries, all of it. Tickets are $799 for this multi-day event.

There's going to be a party. It's going to be so fun. It's going to be a blast. If you're out of debt and you got room in the budget, we want to see you. RamseySolutions.com slash events. Just a few tables left. Make it a weekend. Get away and come see us. Oh yeah. I'm excited about that. I'll be there too. Myself and George Cameron will be there. Yeah, you're speaking at that, too. That's going to be fantastic. Speaking is a fluid term, John. I'm going to be doing a thing. Oh, a thing? You'll have to show up to see what it is.

But it's musical. You know it's going to be a good weekend when they're hiding stuff from... Yeah. It's awesome. I can't wait. It's good. Cool. All right.

Let's go to the phone lines, John. We got Molly in Hartford. Connect, I cut. What's going on, Molly? Hey, guys. Excited to be talking to you thanks for having me on you're welcome good to hear from you what can we do to help yeah so i just wanted to kind of organize my thoughts with you guys my fiance and i um have been uh really tuned into you guys started, I don't know, I probably came up with a Instagram video and things just really started to click. I've been listening to you guys every day and we're just really on board and excited about getting our debt paid off. So I have about $128,000

in student loans. I have a master's degree, clinical social worker. My fiance has about 15,000. It's car, credit card, and personal loans. We have a combined income of $157,000. So we just wanted to get our ducks in a row and start to tackle this because we want to buy a house and that's not happening with all this debt. So when are you guys getting married? We're getting married May of next year. May of next year. Okay.

Sorry, I missed that last part. Can you say it again? Speak directly into your phone. Yep. Yep. May 2024. Okay, sweet. I'll hop in and tackle the first part. that last part can you say it again speak directly into your phone yep yep may 2024 okay sweet um i'll hop in and tackle the first part um molly so i'm telling you this not to put bad vibes out

in the air but only because we what we do for a living we hear the other side of the story so so often okay until y'all get married oh yeah I would have his debt and I would have your debt. Yes. Because you don't want... Yeah, we're very aligned in that. Good. You don't want to start working on your debt. Something goes sideways.

Heaven forbid it goes sideways, but it goes sideways. And now you're in a legal mess. There's not as much legal protection as if you get married. There's ways to untangle things, as awful as that is to think about. Everybody's got a path out, whereas when you break up, it's just a mess. Okay, go ahead. So I want to make sure I understood you clearly about the debt. You've got $128,000 in student loans.

I thought I heard you say your fiance has $15,000 in student loans, but then you listed out cars and personal loans as well? Yeah, I don't know if i said that wrong sorry so he just has the 15 000 and that's car credit cards and personal he does not have any student i'm the only one with student loan okay so you guys are about like 143 000 in debt and you'll be making 157 000 so to john's point i agree you're keeping it separate and the plan is this until you both get married you're both working the baby steps as individuals and more than that yeah you're doing that but the conversations that are having that you're having during this time are really going

to set you up um those expectations of what you expect the accountability levels all of those things are good to start having those conversations now. So you can kind of start to see what each other's identity is as it relates to money. Because you might hear Dave talk about, you know, the nerd and the free spirit and things like that. And there's a lot of that nuance when you come into a new relationship. I can tell you when my husband and I got married, I didn't like anybody telling me how to spend. I'm just going to be honest. I didn't like that. And it made me feel trapped or it made me feel like, I don't know, like I was getting

in trouble when somebody says, hey, make sure you check the account before you spend. So understanding those nuances between each other, having those conversations starting today really is going to help you going in explaining, hey, if you're going to ask me, if we're going to talk about money, you know, here are the tones that trigger me and here's why. Like just talking about that as much as possible, going in is going to be super helpful, kind of understanding each other's background as it relates to money and why you think about it the way you think about matters so so much so I don't know have you had conversations like that at all oh yeah yeah so when I started this I kind of brought it to his attention like hey I've been

listening to this guy Dave Ramsey and I just feel like I woke up like and I my head came out of the sand I'm like holy shit like I've been um you know with the student loans, not paying anything, but you can't go back in time, right? Like it is what it is. Um, I, um, on Friday had an interview for private practice. I'm going to be doing a part-time job, utilizing my degree and making extra money and all of that is going to get thrown at the loan every month. So I'm excited. I'm motivated. What do you make every, what do you make every month as a clinical social worker? So my, what is it? It's $67 a year. Golly.

Have you finished your licensure yet? I'm not fully licensed. I'm LMSW, so Licensed Master. Okay. And I have all my hours completed and everything. I just need to take the test. Okay. I lost my mom a year and a half ago to brain cancer.

So there's just been a lot going on. So trying to just get back into the swing of things and just, yeah, feeling you guys definitely motivated me and we're excited. I want to jump to my next question. Let me tell you one thing real quick. What I'm seeing across the country right now, because you're not alone in being a mental health practitioner and graduating with a whole, whole lot of student loans, that if you look at the actual cost, I mean, the actual ROI on that, it's not great. I would consider strongly looking outside your traditional scope of practice. What does that mean? Possibly getting a job as the head of residence life at a local university, looking at

other positions that are going to pay significantly more money for the skill set of a social worker. I can think of very few jobs outside of precision technical stuff that would not benefit from having the training you went through as a social worker. It would be an amazing addition to any number of businesses as a project manager, as any number of things. But I want you to consider working outside your field, especially while you're paying all this debt off. I don't want you making $67,000 trying to dig out of $130,000 hole because what's going to happen is in two or three years, you're going to resent your clients and you're going to resent the fact that you got this job.

You're going to go to work every day frustrated and be down and I don't want that for any of y'all in that ecosystem. Okay. So do what you can to get out of this thing as quickly as possible. Yeah. I second that notion. So you said you had a second question. Yeah. So we've been, like I said, diving in, understanding all this. And I just want to wrap my head around the concept, the no credit card concept and having credit. So my fiance and I, we are renting right now. But when we think about buying in the future, if you're not utilizing the credit card, once we're out of debt, how do you buy a house without having credit? Absolutely.

What does that look like? Yeah, that's such a good question. And we get it all the time. I mean, it's a great question. You don't need credit if you're going to do manual underwriting, which we have Churchill Mortgage to help you with that. It's a mortgage company that looks at your actual money and how you're managing your actual money.

It works a lot like a normal mortgage process. It's just more detailed. And at the end of the day, you're going to actually get a house that you can afford. They're not going to loan you more money than what you can actually handle. So stay on the line and Austin will pick up and give you more information about that. But yeah, America, it turns out you don't need a credit score, not even to buy a house. This is The Ramsey Show.

You are listening to The Ramsey Show. My name is Jade Warshaw. i am your host uh but not the only host next to me is dr john deloney and we will be taking your calls we'll chop it up with you give us a call the number is triple eight eight two five five two two five anything you want to talk about uh your life your money real quickly um we had a call earlier where the lady was talking about John credit. And is it really possible to exist in the world without a credit score? Is it really possible to buy a home without a credit score? And I kind of wanted to take a moment because I know people have that question. It's like, okay, I'm paying off all my debt. I've said no more to debt. And the reality is when you start walking through baby

step two, which is paying off all of your debt except the mortgage, when you start walking through that process, you most likely will start to see your credit score go down. And it goes down before it goes to zero or indeterminable. And as that happens, you do kind of have this moment of, oh crap, like I'm in it now and I have to fully commit to this because you see that avalanche happen and you're like, oh, wait a minute.

Everything that society told you to work for, like this, you know, 800 credit score and you see it start to go down and it does do something to you psychologically. And then you go, oh wait, I don't't need it anyway it doesn't matter at all yeah it was a light bulb moment for me dave and i were having a conversation off air one time and i realized oh wait a minute dave if you just gave me a million dollars in cash that would not affect my credit score has no nothing to do with how much money i am how how wealthy I am, how well I'm doing.

It has to do with my dating relationship to a woman named debt. Yeah. That's it. How much of it you use, how much debt you use, how much debt you have, how long you've had your debt, how many lines of debt. Like it's debt, debt, debt, debt, debt, debt, debt.

That's it. So think of it this way. What if, i don't know what's one of the apps that like the swipe right apps tinder let's say tinder tinder has a datability score and the whole country is obsessed with making sure you have a great datability score and then you get married and they're like well if you don't keep blogging in here your datability score is going to go down and you're like what do i care't keep blogging in here your datability score is going to go down and you're like what do i care i don't care i'm married like i've committed to

this person very similar thing oh that's such a good analogy like the debt people like if you if you don't keep borrowing from us we're gonna we're gonna take your number down and we're gonna give you a zero we all remember getting in trouble when we got zeros so we don't want a zero it's like i just i'm just i'm just out of this game yeah i'm not playing this game with y'all anymore and the bank wants your money the mortgage company wants your money and so they're gonna ask for a couple more pieces of paper and a couple more bills and they're gonna go oh you're super doing great you're actually responsible come on in and i love that you framed it up like that because at the end of the day this whole game is set up on the idea that

you can't make it on your own. You're too stupid. You're too broke. You're too poor. You can't make it on your own. You need us. And so we're going to score you based on only us, which is crazy. And so the young lady who called in, she was like, you know, we're doing this plan, you know, we're committed, but what happens when it's time to buy a house and i was selling her yeah so when the time comes your credit score goes to zero and if you want to buy a house you 100 can i'm telling you that because i did it i know john you did it i bought a house george just bought one george did with zero credit score of zero my score wasn't zero but his was zero and yeah mine was zero it took some extra paper yeah Yeah. And again, sometimes I hear the peanut gallery.

They're like, well, of course you guys did. You work for Ramsey. I'm sure you just went in there and they did it for you. No, I did it before I worked for Ramsey. So normal people can just go in there and you get a manually. It's a manual underwriting. Manual means you do the work. Like there's no automation there, right?

So it means they get all of your paperwork. They want to actually see, if you have a small business, they want to see your tax returns. They want to see your pay stubs. They want to see what you're earning. They want to see if you've been earning that for a while. They want to see all of your actual numbers and actual money, not just relationship to debt. And then they're going to say, okay, based on this, you know, here's the mortgage that you qualify for. And for me, John, I think that's, I have way more, that makes me feel way better than a rocket mortgage that you can do during halftime at the football game and just type in your stuff. Oh, I got approved. They don't know. They don't know

what money you don't have. Why would I ever want to get approved for a rocket mortgage? They'll loan you as much. I mean, a monkey could do that. Like anybody could just go, well, you put your name and your social security number approved. Like basically that's all it is. You know, your credit, see what you owe. Yeah. But with, yeah, with no credit, it's absolutely possible. Not only is it, I almost hate to say the word possible because that makes people think that there's part of it that might not be possible. It's normal. Like it's not just possible. It's, it is what it is. Like the companies that we use for that and that we're always going to put towards you. And I love Churchill Mortgage. They've been amazing. We bought two houses through them. And that's the way this thing works, guys. When you commit to the process, this is how it works. You're committing. It's like John said, you're married. I'm opting out of the game.

Just opt out. I always want to go back to solve for freedom. I'm not going to let some third party company or three three-party companies tell me my worthiness. I'm not going to cash out my integrity and cash out my autonomy to people I don't know saying, well, we've run the numbers. You're a 640. I'm just not going to play the game. I'm not going to play the game. And by the way, it took me and my wife a decade. It took a long time to scratch and claw and fall down and fail and take out another stupid loan and have to get back on the way. It took a long time.

It's not like, oh, it must be nice. No, no, no, no. Like, we got a lot of blood in the street on this one. But man. And usually when you, and for for those listening usually when you pay off that last debt like you owe nobody anything else it usually takes about a year or yeah about 12 months to see your credit score go down to absolute zero if you completely stop borrowing money and here's the thing if you dilly-dally with this and you're like i'm gonna keep that

one credit card open it's never gonna go to zero to zero. You're just going to have a bad credit score. And then when you try to go buy a house, you're going to run into problems because it's got to be good or it's got to be zero. It can't be, you know, but I'm going to keep this credit card open and then you're going to end up with a four, you know, 420 credit score and you're not going to be able to get anything. So it's all or nothing on this. And John to keep it just to keep it 100 real like let's let's shoot people straight on this what's the what have you run into in real life having a no credit like what have you run into any difficulties have you ever come up on a time where it's like oh these people are jacking me because i don't have credit like have you ever had anything that it's like the only thing that's ever happened to me is i one time and i travel a lot i went to um rent a car yeah and they were annoying about it and i literally walked away from that counter and i walked into another room and said will you guys

take my money i have an atm card and they were a debit card and they're like i started laughing within four minutes i had a car and they're like, see you later. And so that's the one time, the one time. Yeah, I'd agree. I remember one time I did get charged. It was a rental car and they gave me issues. And I think in the end, they ended up almost doing like a deposit times two to hold it. Gotcha. And it's like, okay, yeah. So whatever, I have the money. And so I would say that when you do go to zero credit score and no credit cards, that's probably the extent of it. You know, maybe when you go to buy an apartment,

because a lot of times they want to check your credit for an apartment. You know what? I bought some kayaks this summer for me and my family. And I had to call my bank and let them know. I'm about to make a big swipe on this debit card, so y'all know and um they're like great but i mean it was a phone call i mean exactly look when we went to buy our cat our car in cash they gave me a little bit of a hassle because you know they get they get a kickback on the financing and it was to the point

where they're like you could just finance a thousand of it even you know and pay it out and i was like no and then when i finally wrote them the check they you know it was like they're just running around like we don't know what to do with this check can we cash it we have to call your bank like they made it the most they made it seem like the most difficult process ever all in an in an attempt to make me change my mind so a lot of it's just hoopla because there's money on the other side of because there's money on the other side of financing. There's money on the other side of debt and they want that.

But the key is don't be swayed by that. When you walk in, you know the power of money. There's power in cold, hard cash. When you just slide it on over there. If a company doesn't want to take my cash, then that's great. Y'all have a great week. I'm gonna go do business somewhere else.

That's fine. I know, that's right. I'm not gonna lose a second of sleep over it. I'm gonna go do business somewhere else. That's fine. I know, that's right. I'm not gonna lose a second of sleep over it. I'm gonna move on, man. Life's too short. It turns out that you can exist in the world today with actual money. Who knew?

That does it for this hour of The Ramsey Show. Hey, it's Dr. John Deloney. If you love the show and want a deeper dive on your money journey, we have a weekly newsletter that gives you trending and helpful articles and tips on following the Ramsey way. Just go to RamseySolutions.com today to sign up for our newsletter. Again, that's RamseySolutions.com to sign up for our weekly newsletter.