The Ramsey Show - App - Don’t Let Your Financial Mistakes Define You

Episode Date: August 12, 2024

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, Ph.D. in counseling, does the Dr. John Deloney Show, where he talks to you about your relationships, your life, and he's here to help me today. He's the co-host, number one best-selling author, and we're glad he's with us. You know, I always have a good time. See, he'll get you one way, I'll get you the other, so you ain't got a chance of getting away today. That's the way it is. Phone number is 888-825-5225.

Hannah is with us. Hannah is in Denver, Colorado. Hi, Hannah. Welcome to in Denver, Colorado. Hi, Hannah. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi. Thanks for taking my call. Sorry, I'm super nervous right now. It's okay.

We haven't lost a patient in years. How can we help? Well, here's our situation. My husband and I, we owe the IRS and the state over $600,000 in debt. Good Lord. How did that happen? Yes. You know, it's quite, it's overwhelming to even think about how it happened. Just not paying our taxes, and my husband is self-employed. For how many years? Quite a few. I'm actually not even sure on the date how far back it goes. So you finally started filing, and then you end up with trying to stay out of jail because not filing is criminal.

And so you go and file, and now they give you the total, and it's like, oh, my gosh. Yep. Wow. Obviously, you don't have $600,000, or you wouldn't have called me no that's right um and we are current on our taxes right now good um we were working with the tax resolution company yeah who eventually just told us after you know you have to pay them after you gave them 10 grand they did nothing yeah yeah they're so helpful yeah there's helpfulism anyway uh negative okay yeah i'm sorry uh so what did you what is your house worth uh we have um about four hundred thousand dollars in equity what inity yes and there's a lien against it so from the irs or somebody else

yes from the irs okay good and um what is your household income um 244 000 after taxes that's good news okay yeah so the tax resolution company that we were working with after everything was said and done they basically said um filing Chapter 13 would be in your best interest. Yeah, they are not credible because they shouldn't have taken your $10,000 because you are not a candidate for an OIS, an offer in compromise, an OIC. And they took your money, telling you, and I can tell you in 30 seconds, you're not eligible for that. Yep. An offer in compromise is only available to people who don't have any ability to pay.

You have tremendous ability to pay between your equity and your income. So the IRS would look at that in about 13 seconds and say denied. So those people just stole $10,000 of your money. So they're not credible. A Chapter 13 will put you on a payment plan. You probably can get a good tax attorney and just get on a payment plan okay you need to get somebody that's a pro an attorney that works on taxes that's legitimate that's not just selling oics one percent of the people that apply for an oic by the way

folks these things you see them on uh you see these commercials on television have you got a tax problem call 1-800 tax rs we have professional irs age former irs agents to help you that's the ad she answered okay and uh it's an oic an offering compromise in order to qualify for that you have to basically be completely zero net worth and almost no income ability. So 1% of them go through, folks. So those things are scams. Now, that's not to pick on you, Hannah. You just got taken advantage of. I'm sorry.

And you're scared to death. But a good attorney that has a tax practice, I have an attorney on retainer that represents us on tax issues, and I have a CPA firm that represents us on tax issues. Not because of this kind of issue, but because right now the bozos owe me a bunch of money that they haven't paid me back on a refile we did. So I'm having to fight with them, and I have to have some professional counsel to do that. That's what you need is somebody that's several hundred dollars an hour to retain, and they will will tell you and they will call and represent you and work with the irs and get a system in place a chapter 13 is a series of 60 payments over five

years obviously one a month and it does not reduce the tax bill and it does not reduce the interest with the irs you're going to pay the whole stinking thing anyway. So if you can negotiate that without bankrupting, which you can, you would be better off. And I think you can do it faster than that. Here's a sensitive question. You ready for a hard one? Yeah. Have you all talked about the fact that not paying your taxes has cost you your home yet? Oh, yeah. Okay. Yep.

So if I'm you, I want the IRS out of my life worse than almost anything if I'm you. Yep. And I'd sell that house and put $400,000 on it. Now you make $200,000 and you owe $200,000. And you can plow through that in a couple years. You have your life back in two years. Okay. So we don't have to file for bankruptcy.

You're not bankrupt. You're not bankrupt. Because they've already done about all they're going to do. They slapped a lien on the house. They may come after some bank accounts or something, because this is such a large amount but they won't if you're in active negotiations with them for a payment plan through an attorney they're they're they they they have a sense of decorum about them they can but i've never seen them do it in 35 years of doing what i do go after somebody that's in the middle of a negotiation with a good tax attorney.

Okay? Now, do you know how to find one? Because I'm not positive I know how to tell you, other than if you're doing business at that size, you probably have some people in the legal community you're already working with. Call them and say, who's the best tax attorney in town that's very smart and a little mean? Okay. That's what you need. Okay. And they'll mean. Okay. That's what you need. Okay.

That's what we're going to do. Yeah, they'll put you up. So if you start making $8,000 a month payments and you throw $400,000 at this, you'll be done in two years. You understand? Yes. And you'll get your life back. How long have you been living in this terror? It's been a while.

What's a while? It's been about four or five years yeah it needs to be over doesn't it yes it's emotionally it's emotionally not sustainable it's trauma isn't it no it's very draining yeah yeah i know i owed them a whole 38 000 when i went bankrupt in my 20s and it felt the same way you feel because they have so much power. All the other creditors, I could put a noose around them and deal with them with the bankruptcy I went through, but student loans and IRS and child support and alimony are not bankruptable.

You can put them in a 13, but a Chapter 7 to wipe them clean is what you've got to do there, and you're not going to do that either. It doesn't work. So yeah, you can get through this, but this lack of, uh, business excellence, lack of diligence on, I'll blame your husband on both of you for not getting your taxes filed. It costs you your house and you can look back and go, man, I learned a tough lesson. You'll get you another house someday. You make several hundred thousand a year. And John, I did the whole segment

and you didn't say a peep. Hey, there's sometimes I just need to be quiet and listen and learn, man. That's heartbreaking. Wow. But hey, she's got a path. She has a path. She has a path.

It's called hope. That's right. And do it. Yeah, you gotta do it. You've been living in the crap so long, you're gonna go crazy if you don't. That's right. You gotta get clear of it.

This is The Ramsey Show. Statistics show that half of Americans don't have enough life insurance, or they don't have any at all. I don't understand this, John. Why don't people want to take care of their family? They think they're not going to die or something? Well, I used to be one of those guys. I didn't even think about it. And one of my buddies said, hey, the only reason to not have life insurance is if you hate your wife and kids.

And I immediately went and got term life insurance. That's a gut punch. For decades, Dave, I've sat across people who've lost a spouse. They've lost somebody important to them. Me too. And they don't know what to do next. Terrifying. You're going to have a crisis here. You know, you got two options while you're sitting and talking to a young widow. She's concerned about how she's going to invest all this money properly and not mess this up, or she's concerned how she's going to eat tomorrow. That's exactly right. These are the two options.

It's saying I love you to your family. Term life insurance. Jeff Zander and the team at Zander Insurance makes it easy and affordable. I've used them personally for 25 years. They're the only people I trust. Go to Zander.com or call 800-356-4282. Well, you've almost missed it. It's almost sold out. We're going on the Live Like No One Else cruise in March, and if you don't get signed up pretty quick you're not going

it's all the ramsey personalities plus stephen curtis chapman emmy award winning recently inducted into the grand old opry 67 dove awards he'll be with us hanging out uh manit shohan from the food channel will be with us hanging out uh deanna carter will be with us as well country music star remember the song strawberry wine yeah she'll be with us as well. Country music star. Remember the song Strawberry Wine? She'll be with us. A bunch of other celebrities, but the Ramsey people and those folks will be doing all the shows and all the talks

and all the things on the boat. Including our pastors coming and doing a devotional running, Reverend. We'll have a devotional on there as well. Got a Reverend sitting in the audience out here. I was referring to him but uh the um so come on we'd love to have you we're going to be at turks and caicos saint thomas puerto rico the bahamas uh this is the uh ultimate big time cruise this is not uh the cheap stuff uh this is more of the expensive stuff and you should not come on this

cruise unless you're baby step four and beyond. If you're still getting out of debt and building your emergency fund, you're not supposed to be going on vacation. That includes with us. We're not hypocrites. There'll be plenty of time for you to do something else or the next one with us. So the cabins are almost gone. You can secure a cabin with a $600 deposit at RamseySolutions.com slash cruise. You can do the payment later.

No, that's not dead. It's reserving the cabin, standard stuff in the cruise world. And so get over there and get it done. This is going to be a lot of fun. We're going to be on there all week, all of us all week. My wife, Sharon, and I, we're going to be hanging out with you guys. So we're looking forward to it. It's going to be a lot of fun.

I'll be trapped on the boat with you. I mean, we'll to it it's going to be a lot of fun um i'll be trapped on the boat with you i mean we'll be together the whole week i'm kidding hey this is my first cruise ever you've never even been on my wife's first cruise is it oh wow you have wow this is it man we're we're taking our first cruise together with the whole and the whole boat the whole ship is going to be full of ramsey people. I'm telling you, man. You're going to go. Go with the cult. Go. That's the plan.

I'm going with that. And the cult leader. Mason is in Houston, Texas. Hey, Mason, what's up? Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my call. Sure.

How can we help? All right. So I'm recently engaged, and I'm in baby step four, five, and six. Congratulations. When are you getting married? Next year we're gonna plan it so it's not stressed cool uh so my question is once we're married hold on it's still gonna be stressful brother it'll still be we're gonna plan it so you have the theory you won't be stressed okay that's right all right i'll interrupt you go ahead all right so my question is once we're married and we combine our finances how do we surprise each other with gifts if we're

both reviewing the bank statements uh you're both reviewing the bank statements you're both reviewing the budget and the budget categories and we promise to stick to those so we have to have a category called surprise and and or sharon and i have just a miscellaneous his and her category just pocket money so to speak okay and you used to call it blow money and somebody said on the internet that it was for cocaine that wasn't what i meant so it's blow money it's his and her pocket money right and so um but you know um and two i'll just uh it depends on the person and so forth but um i've been married 42 years and i have discovered sharon doesn't really like surprises so um we go pick out what she wants me to buy her

i love it and that works a lot better anyway so I have one time came home with a car for her Christmas present and hid it in the garage. And it did not have the desired effect. So I paid cash for it. And but it's still she would have picked a slightly different car and kind of took the kind of took the buzz off of me giving my wife a car. But I wish there'd been a YouTube recording of that. She was sweet, but just a little passive-aggressive. David, why'd you get blue? David, if I had been.

Anyway, that may not be the case, Mason, with your lady. She may love surprises. But also, the older you get, the more you think alike, the more you're going to be able to figure that out. So you can have, for smaller things like flowers or whatever, you know, you can do that. The only problem is if she's seeing the debit card stuff pop up, she may see that pop up. Yeah, yeah, that's what I was trying to avoid. And you can move it to a cash transaction then, meaning you cash out your pocket money and keep it in your pocket.

I generally got $1,000 in my pocket. Okay, my pocket okay yeah i understand all right then we're on the same page i'm happy i cleared that up yeah very cool good for you and hang on we're going to give you a copy of the total money makeover as a uh pre-marriage planning gift and help you guys start to work on the whole system together john how do you all do surprises? Yeah, I don't think there's a greater surprise than buying something out of my blow money, out of my cocaine fund, as they say on the internet. But yeah, I like... I mean, if you're going to get something expensive, you usually can't get that. Yeah, I mean, we've been married for way too long.

So yeah, I'm not gonna surprise somebody with a car or anything uh back in the day i remember buying a car on payments like back in the day i did that too and i thought i was so i bought her a car i wanted that time that was like a like a kid buying his mother a tonka truck for christmas yeah yeah but yeah and also um we don't uh we have set days that we go through stuff and and so we're not checking that sucker 24-7. So I can buy flowers, and she's not going to check it every five minutes. That's true. Okay.

She's not super detailed on it. I mean, we sit down on Sunday nights and go through it, or Saturday mornings. By then, the flowers have already been delivered. There you go. That's good. Patricia is in Chicago. Hi, Patricia. How are you?

I'm fine, Dave. Thank you for taking my call. Sure. What's up? I've listened to your program for years. I'm in this situation mostly because my parents have both passed and I inherited some money within the last couple of years. So I'm in a situation now where I'm trying to decide if I should pay off the house.

I'm 70 years old. Um, I have approximately 160,000 in a, an Edward Jones account and I have in a checking slash savings in my bank right now, just because I haven't decided what I'm going to do. Approximately $115,000. I have a monthly income of about $5,900, which is a combination of a full security and a pension check. My monthly expenses are about $4,200. Do you have any other nest egg? Those two numbers you gave me, do you have any other nest egg? You have any other nest egg? Those two numbers you gave me, do you have any other nest egg? I have probably some money in some silver. Okay, but nothing big.

Nothing big. Okay. No, nothing big. What's the balance on your mortgage? $141,000. Okay. And the reason is, well, you don't need to know the reason. I had a business with an ex-husband, and when we separated,

I had to take over part of a laundromat business. Okay. And do you own that still? No, I got all that's gone. There's all the rental and all the laundromats gone. Everything's gone but the pain. Everything's gone but the pain. Okay.

Yeah, it was pain, too. Well, the $141,000, yeah. Okay. going with the pain okay yeah it was pain too i would well the 141 000 yeah okay um well here's what's running through my head okay okay i love to have you go into your final few decades with no debt because of the peace it gives you because of the stability it gives your financial situation and um and you're you know you're in a situation where your rent's not going to go up but even then you'd have zero and you that would put up if you had no payment that would free up a lot of money in your monthly situation agreed it would free up about 688. I just looked it up. I found out how much is principal, how much is interest, and how much is tax. How much is tax and insurance.

Okay, so you could probably invest $1,000 a month going forward if you didn't have a house payment. Yes, that's my thought, too. Okay, so in eight years, you would have $141,000 in an account if you did that. Wow. Okay. You're good at your math, Dave. Done it before. So you get with a financial advisor, a SmartVestor Pro at RamseySolutions.com.

If you'll commit to doing that, I would pay it off. It scares me in your situation because it doesn't leave you with a lot of money, but you've got a good monthly situation. You've got a good head on your shoulders. You know where everything's going. And I'm real comfortable with you in this because I don't think you're going to overspend and need the other 150,000 bucks that's left after you pay this off. So I would pay it off if you commit to $1,000 a month paying to yourself. Pay yourself. 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. AI will help us work or it will replace us all. But there's no such thing

as a crystal ball. That's why more than 40,000 businesses have future-proofed themselves with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud enterprise resource planning system. Ramsey Solutions uses NetSuite and you should too. Whether your company's earning millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and seize your biggest opportunities. With one unified business management suite, there's only one source of truth for the visibility and control you need to make quick decisions. NetSuite's real-time insights and forecasting help you see into the future with 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. Dr. John Deloney, PhD in Counseling, Ramsey Personality, number one bestselling author, my co-host today. If you didn't know, you can drop by and watch us do the show Monday through Friday from 1 to 4 Central Time. It's on the glass, and it's free, and so is the free coffee, and so is the homemade cookies. So when you come into our lobby, it smells like Mama's Kitchen instead of corporate America, and we'd love to have you do that. Also, on the glass here is where we put the debt-free stage, where people do a debt-free scream, and John and Megan are on it, and that can mean only one thing.

Hey, guys, how are you? Great, how are you? Doing great. Good, good. Welcome. Where do you all live? West Palm Beach, Florida. Very nice.

Well, welcome to Nashville. How much debt have you paid off? $97,868.64. Love it. How long did that take? 10 months and 7 days. 10 months? Wow.

What'd you sell? I have a great wife. Saved. I saved for a long time, and then we really got serious on our first wedding anniversary, and so I swiped. Oh, so you had a big old pile of money to throw at it. How much did you have in savings? Maybe about $30,000.

That gave it a jump start. Yeah, good jump start. And what's your household income during this 10 months? I started at like $107,000 and got up to $115,000. Good. What do you all do for a living? I'm a pediatric occupational therapist. Okay.

I'm a bookkeeper. All right. Very good. Very good. Thus, he knows everything to the penny. Yes, he does. Notice that quickly. Yes. Okay. Very good. So you've been married a year. Almost two. And what was the thing that happened at the one year mark? And you went, okay, we're going to have to address this. We kind of followed ramsey separately and we were ramsey-ish kind of doing this stuff and then on our one year anniversary we're like okay we're just ready let's knock it all out and it was get rid of our student loans yeah the student loans coming back was was that year um the interest was going to come back so we were like this has to get gone uh i wish they

were gone but they're not so i gotta have to do something yep so how much of the 98 000 was student loans all of it oh it's all student loans okay oh yeah these things aren't going away unless we make them go away it was a realization yeah 100 okay hey good for you guys for uh riding that uh federal promise as long as you did man you got right up to the edge of the cliff and it's like, oh, we're going over the edge. Good for you guys. All right, so just mechanically, did you just have 30,000 bucks squirreled away somewhere that he didn't know about?

No, he knew about it. It would have been way cooler if you were like, all right, I got a secret to tell you. No, my dad force fed us the ramsey podcast on every family trip road trip so i was just i'm a natural saver so that helped so you're a financial peace baby um for sure she she kind of is yeah yeah yeah even though you didn't do it you you grew up with yeah that's the point john how how did you how did did you find this crazy crew? My sister did FPU in college at Palm Beach Atlantic down there. And she told me about it.

And I remember just being, that's weird. Isn't life just debt until you're dead? You die? Debt until dead. But then she kind of talked about that a little bit. And then I made the mistake of going out and buying a car in the heat of a relationship issue with my ex-girlfriend at the time. And, you know, after buying that car, I was so like, I don't know, caught up in what's going to happen in the future. And so I actually emailed your show years ago,

or, you know, Ramsey years ago, just completely down about my future. And they encouraged me. They messaged me back. And then within, I had a seven-year loan. Within two years, I paid that car off. Wow. So we didn't yell at him. Nope.

And you don't still have that car, do you? No, I still have it. I still have it. He paid for it. I paid it off. I know, but Megan wants that car gone. Megan wants that car gone. Yeah, she's still driving her 2007 toyota camry so okay we're now that we're out of that now we have a new goal yeah okay good good for y'all yeah so what did that one year of intense or 10 months and seven days of intensity

look like um it was a lot of intentionality a lot of looking at the budget keeping up on track with it and not being afraid to say no like no we can't do that vacation we're not going to go out to eat um we want to go line dancing but the cover's 20 bucks so we're going to get there two hours early so we can avoid the cover charge but we'll stay hanging out yeah a lot of her telling me no to eating that that was the big thing yeah eating out no eating, I mean, y'all threw approximately $5,000, $6,000 a month at this. Yeah. And you weren't making a lot more than that. So you were on beans and rice.

Yeah. And because, I mean, that's even after throwing the 30 at it. You still had 60 to go and you did it in 10 months. That's a great photo of them just sitting there eating beans and rice. That's our one year wedding anniversary. What an anniversary, right? What was it like rolling into your new occupational therapy job in an 07 Camry

when your buddies know what you make? Or you're a bookkeeper. They're like, man, isn't that your old ex-girlfriend's car? Why are you still driving that car? What's it like, just the human component? Because people look at you where you work like, man, what are you still driving that car? Like, what's it like just the human component? Because people look at you where you work like, man, what are you doing? I think it was just like not being afraid to say like, you know, this is our situation. This is our reality.

And, you know, we're just really intentional with our money. And it's been encouraging and kind of sharing bits and pieces like with co-workers and with friends who are like wait what what are you doing why are you doing that um and kind of opening up the door to you know your debt they do give you the german shepherd look yeah cock the head sideways how old are you guys uh 28 almost 29 in two days and then i'm 31 31 you don't know anybody anything in the whole wide world nope how's that feel great feels great that that first month where the bank account went up and then it stayed up was was wild the weirdest thing that math yeah i love it way to go y'all so i'm sure mom and dad were cheering you on yes who else was cheerleaders um so my parents

his parents um and our church small group put up with our same prayer requests for 10 months so restaurant coupons lord we want restaurant yes yes way to go y'all very good i'm proud of you you got to feel like like accomplished yes yeah and we're excited we're gonna um coordinate our first financial peace class um at our church next starting next month so it's kind of a fun little ending so which car are we going to replace first with so that's that's also the issue we got a rental car up here and she started driving she's like oh this is nice. Maybe I should upgrade my 2007. Probably hers.

Probably mine. The technology has changed in the last century. Yep. Yep. You don't have to hook a horse to this one. Hey, if y'all don't know this yet, but life is going to come at y'all and hard things will happen. You'll get tough phone calls.

Life's hard. And y'all have built a foundation and you're one of your marriage that you don't even realize how thick that concrete is on that foundation really good and when it comes y'all are gonna know we can do anything yeah we paid off a hundred grand in 10 months because that's who we are and we can come like we'll join forces and and it's us against the world and that's so awesome i'm proud of you guys thank you spreadsheets help like that that was that was a big thing for me being a bookkeeper i looked at a spreadsheet we had a chart on our wall a visual representation i saw every single

day so i mean just knocking that out that made us realize oh man are we ever going to do this to oh it's gonna take like 14 months actually might be like 10 actually you know you know it's so it whittles it down once you're focused and you you see it and you're well when you get a sense of traction it it um motivates you to cut deeper yeah because i want that traction more than i want that thing or that experience or whatever it was i was getting ready to spend money on the traction means more to me than that and when you do a good visual representation like that and you do you're tracking it and you're right and you're both on the same page it's like you know

you know i saw a bumper sticker said nothing tastes as good as it feels to be thin you know that kind of thing i beg to differ but anyway but yeah way to go you guys congratulations we're very proud of you. John and Megan, West Palm Beach, Florida. $98,000 paid off in 10 months and 7 days. Making $107,000 to $115,000 and throwing $30,000 of savings at it. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one.

We're debt-free! Yeah! That's how it's done, baby. Well done. This is the Ramsey Show. Today's question of the day is brought to you by Y-Refi. If you're in over your head with private student loans and you're tired of getting calls from collection agencies, you need Y-Refi. They refinance defaulted private student loans that other places won't touch, give you a low fixed rate loan that's built customized to you.

So go to Y-Refi.com slash Ramsey today. That's the letter Y-R-E-F-i.com slash Ramsey today. That's the letter Y R E F Y.com slash Ramsey might not be in all States. All right. Today's question comes from Carly in Nevada. Carly writes, I'm 30 years old. And my goal for this year was to save money for my first house. After finding everything you teach recently, I understand now that I can't buy a house with so much debt. I'm on baby step two and I've already paid off my three credit cards. During this process, I find myself feeling guilty and stupid for all the stupid mistakes I've made and how I put myself in this position.

My dream was to have my own house by 30 and here I am stuck with a bunch of stupid credit card debt and really nothing to show for it other than an overpriced car that I shouldn't have bought in the first place. I'm very disappointed at myself. And to be honest, this guilt is eating me alive. How do I get past this? Ooh, good question. Dave, I think we have a culture that tries to duct tape and wallpaper and Xanax and Netflix away guilt. And I think guilt can sometimes be a good thing. I think it can let us know, Hey, we made a mistake. The challenge is when guilt becomes that shame. And the way I would teach this is guilt is you picking up a brick or somebody handing it to you and saying, you

shouldn't have done what you did. And that's right. Um, I did something dumb. Shame is when you take that brick and you put it in a backpack and you decide to carry it everywhere and you say, I am dumb. And so, Carly, I think it's okay to say, man, I had this goal and I didn't even know how bad off things were. And now, what's a house get you? It gets you peace. It gets you a place to always always live a place you can close the door and say this is mine it gives you safety and security well now you're working towards that goal and so you don't have the house at 30 but you are on the path towards safety and security

and so i want you to hold that guilt hold that brick and then set it down and go to the next right thing and the next right thing is to pay off this credit card debt and let these memories remind you anytime it comes up like i want to buy this car let's go on this vacation i can't afford you're going to remember this feeling and then we're going to go do the next right thing and you're going to be a homeowner in the next few years and so just keep on this path but i think guilt can be a good thing sometimes and then we have to decide what's the next right move dave what do you think i think that's exactly right all all the inordinately okay successful people that i know that have a fabulous marriage a fabulous ministry a fabulous business there there's someone you

would look up to and you'd say that person's successful, all of them are colossal failures. They have failed their way into it. I mean, the number of missed shots that Michael Jordan has taken is much greater than the number of hit shots. Babe Ruth only hit in the 300s, which means that 7 out of 10 times at bat, he got out, he didn't get on. You know, I mean, so 70% failure rate on you know i mean so 70 failure rate you know and yet was the king of swat right so the uh i mean those are kind of metaphors or motivational

speeches but it is you know so failure is guilt to me failure is i did something dumb it hurt it left a mark i don't want to do it again okay uh shame is i am a failure and that's all ever be so i'm just going to sit here i'm just i am a failure i'm a disaster i'm a horrible person and um you know i'll never be anything else and people in my family people from the neighborhood that i come from people the race that i am the sex that i am they can never get ahead and you embody this failure and you name it you right and that that's what you don't do um so i am a person who filed bankruptcy and lost everything i had a million dollar net worth prior to that starting from from nothing, bootstrapped it, lost it all by the time I was 28 years old. I had a brand new baby named Rachel, was born in April. I filed bankruptcy in September. I was definitely a failure as a

father to provide a household for my children and my wife to live in. I was a failure as a businessman, no question about it. I failed those things. The end of the story is I didn't continue to fail them, the children or the wealth building or anything else. I learned from it, and I said, okay, God, I was stupid, and stupid hurts. It leaves a mark, you know? But I've never met anybody that was successful

that didn't have those marks. No one is just like dropped into a little bottle and come out of your little test tube unscathed with no scars. And we call you a success. There is no such thing. Right. In fact, there's, there's a lot of folks that, that I work with and say, I don't trust people

without scars. Yeah. Larry Crabb, you say, I don't trust a man doesn't walk with a limp. You have never gotten a ring. And Dave, I want to call out something else that Carly experienced, because this is relatively common. Sometimes people don't find the Ramsey plan

until they're 30. And they've been going along, just doing what everybody told them to do. Yeah. And it can be unmooring, because the person you lose trust in the most, you lose trust in the system, you lose trust trust in yourself and it makes you doubt every next right decision how do i know what the truth is that's right because i just built a credit score like

you told me i took student loans out like you told me and i bought a car on a loan because you told me i can't trust anything or anybody anymore you know what you you know when you're in that situation and you've lost that confidence what you haven't lost confidence in is your spirit. Your spirit, God's spirit in you, the Holy Spirit will say, when you bump into the truth, you feel it. It's in your guts, yeah. You feel it. It feels different. It feels it has a peace to it, peace that passes understanding.

There's a peace when you bump into the truth when you bump into a line it's frenetic and crazy and chaotic and running around and dog chasing its tail and 515 kites in the wind bumping into each other and you're like oh yeah let's go do that yeah oh that one always leaves a mark you know and so you knew you knew but you went forward anyway you know and so the trick carly's is i uh the guilt shouldn't eat you alive that means you're moving over towards shame and self-identifying with this instead i would say you know what i did something really stupid and i don't do that anymore i don't do that anymore that's your new identity i'm better than that yeah so i was playing golf with a guy in the pga the

other day um not this week but about six or eight months ago. And, you know, he shoots around 200 par. He's, you know, 65 years old. He's a retired PGA guy. He's a serious, serious world class. And I hear him muttering to himself. People cuss themselves on a golf course. Like they talk to themselves like nobody should be allowed to talk to themselves. Right. It's the worst self-talk I've ever seen in my life on a golf course. Like they talk to themselves like nobody should be allowed to talk to themselves.

Right. It's the worst self-talk I've ever seen in my life on a golf course. And this guy is muttering to himself. And I start listening and I'm like, what are you saying? And he said, well, you notice I missed that shot. And, um, and I said, well, what'd you say? And he said, I said to myself, um um you don't usually miss that shot you're better than that instead of like you suck you're horrible you miss everything you know that's what most

people do on the golf course right instead and he goes and then you know he'll drop a birdie or an eagle while i'm standing there and he'll go yeah that's what i usually do and it's just the opposite and he said if you know you just you're telling yourself what who you are and your body responds man that's powerful yes it's powerful and i thought you know what i and i i you know it's easy to get frustrated doing something you're trying to learn and it's just you go no i don't usually do that i don't usually i don't usually hit it over there i usually hit it over here i'll notice the time that um you and i played golf uh you i you didn't say that what you yelled but you thought that i could see it i didn't i didn't say a thing i was trying to be real quiet no when you ducked

out of the way when that ball well the happy gilmore swing where you run at the ball is um i'm not great at golf and then then there's somebody's child in another county got killed it was um yeah but anyway i didn't know you couldn't tee it up on the fairway yeah well we told you and um there you go you should go fishing everything we do with johnson adventure fishing instead yeah that's it yeah and well. Everything gets wet, so it's either way. Hey, man, I did hit that ball hard off the clubhouse. You did. You bounced it off the ceiling of the clubhouse.

I didn't mean to do that. Off the roof of the clubhouse. The guys inside came out and looked at me. I'm usually not embarrassed. I was embarrassed about that shot. Ah, yeah, I was too. I didn't even hit it. No.

Hey, folks, don't talk to yourself like you wouldn't allow somebody else to talk to you. Amen. Quit talking to my friends so-and-so that way. I hear John say that all the time. Quit talking to you that way. This is The Ramsey Show. Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions. It's the Ramsey Show. We help people build wealth, do work that they love,

and create actual, amazing relationships. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Dr. John Deloney, Ph.D. in Counseling, Ramsey Personality, number one best-selling author, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. The call is free and some say the advice is worth exactly what you pay for it. John's in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Hey, John, how are you? I'm good. How are you, Dave? Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? So I gross about $50,000 a year, and the only debt I have is about $2,000 in credit card debt.

I've got a truck that I have paid off. It's worth from $8,000 to $12,000. That's from Kelley Blue Book. I was wondering if I should sell that truck and pay off my credit card debt and also pay for an engagement ring um and cash wow you got it bad i know you are in love a guy from mississippi just told me he's selling his truck for a girl are you all right man i lost out one part uh so i uh i work for a pole mill i'm a forester and uh they pay for a truck for me to use and i can use it for whatever i want so that's why i'm thinking about paying for her personal truck.

Yeah, okay. He's like, hey, guys, I don't love her that much. Slow down. Slow down. I'm not going to be without a truck, guys. It's okay. Oh, you're great. Thank you for letting us poke at you, brother. We're proud for you, man.

That's cool. Okay. So it's a truck. It does change the story.. That's cool. Okay. So, um, it's a truck. It changes. It does change the story. So that's good. Extra information. It changes the story because of the truck you don't need. Yeah. And that kind of makes it a no brainer. If it was your daily driver and you needed something to get to work, uh, I might tell you to roll up your sleeves, take a side hustle and do whatever and, and plow your way through the saving for the

ring and and the and the knocking out the little credit card debt but you can knock it out in one fell swoop now the trick is this when the truck sells all your problems are gone credit cards gone rings bought right yeah so it's kind of like you instantly got your butt out of the trap with no pain or little pain except truckless yeah be careful that you don't go back to your old habits make sure that the guy in your mirror says i'm chopping up all these credit cards we're having a plastic to me a plastic surgery party no more plastic no more debt we're not borrowing money for anything ever again last time i did that it cost me my truck yeah you got to get that message in your head okay because a lot of people if they get

out too quick they just keep doing the same stupid butt stuff and they go right back in debt yeah and you don't be that guy no no so how long you been dating her oh it'll be a year and a month how much is the ring gonna be about six thousand nice ring it's a lot of ring man yeah you think cut back on the ring dave tell me one month one month's pay is generally my angle you're a little over that not too bad dave tell me one month my there's no correlation between size of ring and length of marriage except possibly an inverse correlation the larger the ring the less likely the marriage is to last uh not exactly but uh it's the only possible there's no there's no research on it actually

but there's uh lots of stories of 70-year marriages 60-year marriages 50-year marriages with a a little tiny chip of a something but yeah you somewhere four five six you'd be okay i wouldn't go over that that That's your max. And, Dave, I like the idea of putting $3,000 or $4,000 in an account in case this work. His boss calls and says, hey, you can't drive my truck on the weekend. I have enough to do all three. Yeah. And you start baby step three building your emergency truck.

Don't burn all this money, man. Yeah, don't go spending the rest of it. Well, I've got about $5,000 in my savings, and then I've also got about $5,000 in a Roth separate from my 401K. Okay, good, good. Well, you don't touch the 401K or the Roth, but you take the $5,000 and the proceeds from the truck that are left over after the ring and the credit card's gone,

and you build your baby Step 3 emergency fund. Okay? Yeah. So, well, good for you. Congratulations. We'll give you an engagement gift. It's called the Total Money Makeover Book, and it'll show you guys how to navigate your way through these baby steps.

And as long as you are willing to sacrifice for this woman the rest of your life the way you are right now you probably got a shot my brother and i want to tell everybody out there who's wondering if this person's the one for me i want you to remember back to the mississippi guy who sold his truck for for love if it's less than that you need to move on yeah yeah usually some of them that call us it's the other way around it almost always is the other way around i don't see love like this i'm kind of getting choked up dave this is mississippi i mean the only other thing that would be more if you're from the south like we are and you sell your truck for a girl it's a big deal my goodness that's a big deal yeah i mean some of you yankees don't understand this but um if you sold your bus pass and your tesla that same same thing yes so if you're from california you sell your tesla yeah that's it

i guess i don't know look dave's all choked up man dave you don't have to cry it's okay john's they're in love man i got a head cold all right uh kyle's with us in hartford connecticut hey how what's up? Hey, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Actually from Brooklyn, Connecticut. I thought he was asking close to the city. I don't consider this a city.

That's fine. So my daughter just turned 12 yesterday. We had the talk about saving for her first car because that's what I had to do as a kid. I don't believe in giving your kids cars. It doesn't teach them any responsibility or money management. She also got baptized a couple, a week ago. Wonderful. That has nothing to do with money or anything, but she did end up getting some cards with some money in it.

Okay, good. Which obviously has nothing to do with being baptized, but she got that with some money in it okay good which obviously that has nothing to do with um being baptized but she got that and your little girl's becoming a woman that's awesome man what a great thing for you as a dad here's what we did at the ramsey house we did 401 dave and what i did was match so if you put zero in the account you're gonna get you a bicycle right because i'm gonna match precisely zero but if you take that money some of that money from those cards instead of blowing it at the mall or wherever it is 12 year olds blow money nowadays um i don't guess people go to the mall anymore but anyway when our kids it was the mall and so where you put that

money in there you put ten dollars in there, you put $10 in there, it becomes $20 because I'm going to match it. Very good idea. It was a good incentive plan, and it also kept me in the conversation with them all the time, including I got to guide them through the purchase. And that was an interesting experience. I will tell you this for your parents listening out there, put a limit on this idea. You might have one little character that's a bookkeeper and saves 30 grand and he's looking for a $60,000 car. Now don't do that. This is The Ramsey Show. This show is sponsored by Better Help. 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.

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to shift the focus from doing it all by ourselves to knowing that we can only be well and whole when we ask for help. Therapy can be a great source of help and support for any area of your life. And if you're thinking about starting therapy, try BetterHelp. BetterHelp is 100% online therapy, so it can fit with your schedule. To get started, just fill out a short online survey to get matched with a licensed therapist. And if it's not the right fit, you can switch therapists at any time for no extra cost. This month, start to build your support system with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash Ramsey Radio to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Ramsey Radio. Many years ago, we were doing an event in San Antonio, and one of the guys called and said you know Max Lakato is in San Antonio I said yeah

god if I could get to meet Max Lakato and Max and Steve Green met me at a little restaurant down there down by the Alamo and I've still got the picture that's got to be 20 plus years ago Max at least that we've been friends at least it's great to see you dave probably about 40 million books ago for you um he sold over a hundred million max lakato books that's pretty crazy wow my wife bought most of them my wife bought most of them my mom's got a whole max lakato shelf so she's got i've got a max lakato shelf and most of mine are signed i'm just telling you i'm big dog here the new book is what happens next a traveler's guide through the end of this age man the end of the age is popping up everywhere people are talking about it right i think so it's kind of in the air i've run into several people lately uh and people uh doing books on

their witness so henry cloud just did a book on his personal testimony uh wiki willie robertson just did a book on his personal testimony yeah gospeller and those guys are friends as well and so there's a lot going on here so so end of the age doesn't feel like a natural max lakato topic what brought this up well thank you again for letting me on the program always great to see you it really is the guy who drove me to the airport the other day i said tell me your life story and he said have you ever heard of dave ramsey i said you're kidding me i'll be with him in just a few days he said well thank him, and he told me then about 10 minutes worth of testimony there, Dave, of how he is completely debt free except for his mortgage. I said, well, hang in there.

You'll get that one done. So thanks for all you've done for so many. Yeah, you too, brother. Yeah. So, Dave, you and I are both getting older. And one of the things I've noticed as I get older, I'm assuming you're getting older too. I don't know. My body, that's not my spirit. I am so curious about the next life. I'm just fascinated with it. It's like it just- As it gets closer. As it gets closer and

the clock is ticking and the sand is dropping through the hourglass, I think, what's it going to be like? So that began about five years ago. And then I began seeing more and more chaos and confusion in the world. And I thought, is there something happening in this day and age that's unique to our day and age? And went on a personal study and then it turned into a series of sermons for the book and uh here it is it's just coming out right now what happens next yeah so the book uh the bible gives a lot of prophecy in the old testament uh certainly revelations in the new testament or the revelation uh with john written on the island of Patmos. How do you line that up in a modern world so you can actually try to figure out,

okay, what is coming next? Yeah. Well, first of all, I think we point out that this world we're in right now is in a pandemic of anxiety. It's just people are stressed out. And there are so many things that contribute to this, as the two of you know so well. But one of them is that people do not know what is going to happen after they die. Or they do not know if all the events that we're watching in the world are leading us into or signals or signs of the end times. I think one of the great ways to deal with the anxiety

of the world is to help people understand that this life is brief, but the next life is great. They just get excited about it. And so that was part of my motivation in this. And this book follows a timeline. I start in the book of Genesis, end up in the book of Revelation. So it's the whole Bible and what the Bible provides in terms of a specific timeline of events that will happen before we finally enter what we can call our eternal state or the new heaven and the new earth. And I'll just say I am so energized by what i read so encouraged and excited i hope people can get on this excitement train with me because it's it's something to be thrilled about book is what happens next a traveler's guide through the end of this age with new york times best-selling author max lakedo uh sounds like it's an absolute must read i've not gotten through it yet i just

got it you just came out you sent me my copy about two days ago i think officially tomorrow street day yes sir okay all right cool so um you and i and john was in a christian college for a while as a dean of students and uh we've all three seen some wacky stuff around the rapture and people not living this life well in the name of the rapture you know what i'm talking about absolutely like i get people i don't need life insurance i'm gonna be raptured yeah yeah well your wife might you know and so uh i mean it's just i get into this kind of stuff so are you uh this fear of the rapture or this promise of it, and somehow they think they figured out it's a certain date.

Yeah. End times is the Serengeti of theological topics. It's the wild and woolly. It attracts the crazies, and it stirs up the anxiety. And so it has been the camping ground of pastoral malpractice forever. Great word. Wow. Great word.

You should write. Wow. So you acknowledge that, yeah. But then again, the Bible is about 30% prophecy, much of which has been completed, much of which has yet to be fulfilled. So if you want to understand God's message, of course study the Gospels.

Of course, study the doctrines of the Apostle Paul and John and Peter. But don't miss out on the end times. Don't be intimidated by it. Allow yourself and you owe it to yourself to get excited about what's about to happen. And I do think that though there are a variety of opinions, Christians can gather around the bodily return of Christ, the promise, the assurance of salvation for the saved, and the ultimate judgment of those who reject Christ. Now, in the book, I go into more detail. I talk about the rapture, about the tribulation, about our wedding in heaven, about being rewarded in heaven,

about the millennium, about the return of Christ. I just follow that sequence, that timeline that I believe the Bible provides us. But whether you agree or not with my timeline, let's get excited about what's about to happen because it's going to be wonderful. I can't wait to dig. I know exactly what I'm going to get through that. That's this week because I leave Sunday for two weeks in Turkey.

We're visiting the seven churches, the seven churches of Revelation. Perfect. And a study on the site. Oh, that'll be the ideal. It's a great little small group of us going and got a good teacher going with us. It's going to be a lot of fun. So what do you say to the person that's not familiar with the Bible? Maybe they're not a person of faith and people start talking about the end times.

Sounds kind of like hokey pokey, like, you know, Jerry Jenkins and Left Behind, it gave us a picture of everything, but also got made fun of a lot by people that weren't of faith. Yeah. Two or three things on that. Number one, our God is a God of great interventions, interruptions. I mean, the great stories of the Bible are stories of God doing what nobody ever imagined that God would do. Open the Red Sea, manna from heaven, Elijah calling fire down. Most of all, God becoming a baby and living on earth and dying for our sin, raising from that grave. And so these miraculous interventions are the nature of our faith. And so scripture anticipates more of those.

And so it's part of what we believe that God does extraordinary things. And consequently, things like the rapture and the tribulation fit in that genre, not the common day to day experiences, but these mighty interventions of God. And then secondly, I would say to the person, down deep in your gut, you know this world's not working. It's not working. It stinks. I mean, there's so much violence, so much heartbreak, so much heartache. And yet from the very beginning in the book of Genesis, God promised a paradise in which men and women would get along,

would get along with God, get along with nature. And though Adam and Eve didn't keep their part, God always keeps his part. And that's going to happen. That's going to happen. MaxLicato.com. The book is available August 13th. That would be tomorrow for most of you that are listening live.

And you can purchase it anywhere great books are sold. And yet another bestseller. I'm sure what happens next, a traveler's guide through the end of this age. I can promise you a hundred percent of what he writes. I will pick up and read. We've been friends a long time, but he's also one of the most grace filled,

thoughtful men on the planet. That's writing on the subject of Christianity today. So I love it. Thank you, my friend. Thank you, Dave. Great to see you. Great to see you both. We love you. Give your wife a hug for us. And same to your family. Be good. Max Licato, this is The Ramsey Show. and did 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

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Equal housing lender. 1749 Mallory Lane, Suite 100. Brentwood, Tennessee 37027. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Andrew and Kimberly are with us on the debt-free stage. Hey, guys, how are you? Doing great, Dave. Welcome.

Where do y'all live? Hammond, Wisconsin. It's near the Twin Cities in Minnesota. Gotcha. Okay, the Minneapolis marketplace. Yes. All right, cool. Welcome's near the Twin Cities in Minnesota. Gotcha. Okay. The Minneapolis Marketplace. Yes. All right. Cool. Welcome. Good to have you. And how much debt have y'all paid off? $172,000.

All right. How long did that take? Four and a half years. Good for you. And your range of income during that time? We started at $140,000 and we ended at $280,000 last year. Whoa. That's kind of nice. What do y'all do for a living? I'm a construction manager for GC. And then I manage my family's You Pick and Agri-Tourism berry farm

and also sell seed as well. Oh, wow. Good for you. Okay, cool. What caused this jump in income? He had a really good year. Ah, okay. And I've been climbing up as well.

Okay, so promotions and a bumper crop. Yes. It's definitely I'm married up. We'll put it that way. Oh, that's always the case. But you sell seeds from your place? We also, I go to farmers' doors and sell seed to them as well. Corn and soybeans.

Yep, corn and soybeans. Okay, but you got like with the current rise in preppers, you got to be crushing with the home seeds, right? Oh, we don't do that. Oh, okay. That's completely different. I mean, right? Oh, we don't do that. That's completely different. I mean, most of our, with our egg tourism business, it's strawberries, raspberries, pumpkins, corn, maize. All those fun activities.

Yep, flowers right now. They just want to come in and get organic. Amazing. Good for you guys. That's very good stuff. And it's real stuff, yeah. Yes. Good for you guys. Way to go.

Cool. What kind of debt was the $172,000? It was our house. Yeah! Wow! Look at that weird people. How old are you two weirdos? Good for you guys. Way to go. Cool. What kind of debt was the 172? It was our house. Yeah. Wow. Look at that weird people. How old are you two weirdos? I'm 34 and Kim is 33.

Way to go. I like how he paused. Like, are you going to say it? Well, I never know how old I am. So he knows more than me usually. Well played, man. I love it. So what's this house worth?

About 330. And you own it and you're 33 years old. Y'all are so whacked. I love this. Yeah, we're excited. Yes. Way to go. It's exciting, but our journey's not over yet.

We're hoping to build someday. So still have some big goals in front of us. Cool. Cool. Well, you'll be able to do it after you did this goal. That's a lot. 172 in four years. Yep.

And we had a little bit of a pause in there. We bought our house in 2019 and then we saved saved up for an adoption so we adopted in 2022 so we had a little bit of a pause as we were saving up for that and then hit it really hard in the last year very good good for y'all that's not a little pause you brought a human home that's amazing yes that's a nice one that's a good pause i like it yeah so what happened five years ago that kind of put you on this? Because what you did is very different. You know that. We call you weirdos, and that's a compliment around here.

For sure. It's not derision. So what got you started on this different track from most people? Yeah. Well, it was actually 10 years ago. Yep. We met at college down at UW-Madison, and we were dating. And I suggested to her that we go through financial peace together when we're just dating very seriously.

So from a really early start in our relationship, we kind of got on the same page in finances. This is our second round of paying off debt after working through the baby steps. You know, baby steps, she'll know the numbers. $56,000 back then. Yep. We had a truck and then both of our student loans that we paid off in the first round and then began saving up for the house after that. And now you get to maybe step six and pay off the house. Yep. Exactly.

You did it perfect. Yep. We're going to be selling our 10-year anniversary in about a week. Wow. So yeah, about a little over a 10-year journey together. Now from 23 to 33, pretty impressive. Nice climb. Well done. How much in your nest egg, in your 401ks and Roth IRAs? little or a 10-year journey together now from 23 to 33 pretty impressive nice climb well done how much in your nest egg in your 401ks and roth iris about 850 so your baby steps millionaires too oh

no i'm sorry that includes the house sorry net worth is net worth 850 okay so you're almost baby probably about 18 or 24 months yeah so by the time you're 35, you will be. Good. Way to go, y'all. Way to go. Very impressive. I'm just thinking of the guts it took as a 23-year-old to look at the woman you loved and said, let's go to FPU. Will you take FPU with me? She needed 48 hours to think it through.

That's awesome. Yeah. I jumped right in. He was definitely the saver, though. So I was like, oh, does this mean I can't spend? But afterwards, we were always on the same page. I know how to work the budget to let me spend and he knows how to just save. So we're a good, happy medium. What was your biggest obstacle in paying your house off?

Probably just stopping for the adoption. That was super hard to just want to pay that in cash and having to save up all of that money as you're only paying minimums on the mortgage and seeing how long it might take if we had to stay on that track but as soon as we were done and Luca was home and finalized it just skyrocketed as we went past that so definitely hard to take that baby or the break and the baby steps but totally worth it a break in the baby steps for a baby sounds Sounds fair. Definitely worth it. Where's Luca from? Honduras. Okay. Very good.

Very good. Good for you guys. Well done. What do you tell people the key to paying off your house by the time you're 33 is? I'd say for us, it's being on the same page as first. Yeah, like pre-marriage counseling.

Basically it was. Yep. We've coordinated three times. Thank you. You know it was. Yep. We've coordinated three times. Thank you. You know, the Financial Peace University. And that's definitely helped us as much as the people who've gone through it, if not more. Just keep us on the same page and get me refreshed back into it. You know, Kim's very much in the budget.

It's sometimes a little struggle for me to make that a priority. But, you know, I'm always on the same page, usually financially. It's just a matter of like taking the time to get into the details can i just get a weird question of course this is in no way to disparage anyone who's ever been on the debt-free stage y'all two seem like you genuinely like each other and i don't mean like y'all are just like in love what's the secret y'all look like y'all are friends and i it's emanating through this glass here that y'all genuinely like each other. Yeah. He supports me a bunch, especially even this year.

My job's kind of crazy. So he is behind me 100%. Yeah, it's been a really good year, but it's also been a really busy year. And we've got amazing parents, and all of them have helped out in their own way. It's been a huge part of it to help us along. Can ask for better support from our family and friends. And Dave, I love that I asked him that question and they both spoke of somebody else speaking to them.

Neither of them said, well, I and both of them are, you just seem like humble, kind, lovely, wonderful people. And I'm just smiling ear to ear. I'm so grateful for you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. But I also want to share, like, it's, our lives aren't perfect. Of course not.

Yeah. The adoption journey was a lot, a lot for us. Oh, it's a lot. You know, you're seeing the highlight reel, something we're sharing now, but it's been 10 years of working through challenges day to day. And it's crazy when it kind of happened. It was like a surprise almost, like how fast it came up.

But it was a long journey. Yeah, we were planning for 2030 and then we were planning for 2026. And then it was 2024 and we're like, whoa, we're done. We're here. Here it is. Yeah.

Here it is. Now you're in a great position that when life throws you a new curveball, man, you're on a foundation that's going to hold. It's so beautiful, man. Congratulations. Thank you. So it occurs. Very cool. And now you're in a great position that when life throws you a new curveball, man, you're on a foundation that's going to hold. It's so beautiful, man. Congratulations. Thank you.

So it occurs to me that if anybody didn't think you were doing something right, it wouldn't have bothered you at all. No. So even if you had naysayers, it was like, what? Yeah. I travel for work and they're all. Who gives you a vote? They're all, you should have a Delta credit card and no thanks.

I don't need to go into the lounge. So yeah, I hear you, but we're good. We're good being over here doing what we want to do. should have a delta credit card and no thanks i don't need to go into the lounge so yep i hear you but we're good we're good being over here doing what we want to do i don't know how many people when we we used to live in iowa and had amazing renters that we rented house from and just treated us like their own grandkids and uh how many people said you should buy a house you should buy a house you should buy a house and we waited until it was like good timing for us and even beyond that a little bit um and made sure we were really financially set for that changes everything a huge thing that i just have to share is like don't give into the pressure of you know what everybody else is saying do what

what fits your family the best people who have successful lives are very careful about who they give a vote to not very many people yeah not many if if anybody but not many for sure bless that two of them are talking to us right now i'm a really big john fan dave you're pretty cool too me too there you go i'm a big john fan congratulations y'all we're very proud of y'all all right bring the kiddos up let's introduce them with their names and ages how old is mr luca he is 18 months oh luca go baby i love it and how old is the princess and what's her name she is peyton and she's seven all right she's a big seven way to go big peyton good stuff all right andrew kimberly peyton and luca 172 000 paid off 33 years old with a paid for house did it in four and a half years, making $140,000 to $280,000.

Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free! Yeah! Whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you do it. I love 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

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at chministries.org slash budget. That's chministries.org slash budget. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Sometimes you can be sitting right next to someone but feel a thousand miles apart. We created Questions for Humans conversation cards as a tool to help you connect on a deeper level with the people you love. Dr. John's idea, he created almost every one of them. Some of the team jumped in and helped him. And these things have blown up. Millions of dollars of these have been sold, helping people start a conversation.

Questions for humans, conversation cards. So we've got them for couples, for parents and kids. And for friends. And for friends. And for the month of August, they're only $12 a set at ramsey solutions.com uh going on in the sale john um when y'all first came and told me you were doing this i thought well that's cute and it has turned out you have really touched the nerve of people don't know how to sit down because these stupid cell phones they don't they have lost the art of having a conversation person

to person yeah and and they need a tool to help them. That's it. And I think it's easy to blame people. And the next best thing, or the thing better than blaming, is to say, okay, here's a tool. Yeah. And here you go, man. We'll help you with it. And we realize there's a problem. And it's a really sad situation, actually.

And yet this has been a lot of fun, a lot of humor around it. People are giggling. Yeah. We get them out and use them sometimes in a meeting around here and you know some of the answers are hilarious and you get people it's almost like an icebreaker yeah and my favorite thing is i can get in the car and my wife says hey will you take our daughter somewhere with can you take her to the hardware store with you i know that just tripled the time it's going to take me to get to the hardware store and i get that sunday afternoon dad that heaviness and my daughter can

feel it and she'll just grab these out of the glove box and say hey dad i'm gonna ask a question and it i drop my shoulders and she asked a question and we laugh and i ask one back and it ends up being a way that we can come back together it's just cool man i just love it get off the task and on to the relationship on to the most important stuff yeah exactly questions for human cards on sale right now ramsey solutions.com in the store for 12 bucks and uh get you several different sets they've got them for everything couples dating parents and kids i pulled out i pull out a friend question dad what's dad dave what's one song or album that makes you super nostalgic you know i i have that experience pretty regularly just on the 70s channel yeah you know and one of

the things i like on that it'll pop up on xm or even if i'm on spotify it'll pop up and show the year that song came out. And I go, God, you know, when he did Time in a Bottle, I was 12. Because I remember being deeply in love. That's right. When Croce did Time in a Bottle, really? I was 12 because I felt like I was 22. But I wasn't. It was 1972. You know, I love that because it helps you do that

Sharon I'll be riding along and we'll say we were 14 and didn't know each other when that came out yeah and there was some crush in middle school or something that's tied to that so that happens all through the 70s stuff yeah for sure especially the mid you know mid 70s stuff or even the early that played in the mid yeah that kind of thing of thing, right? So that was our teenage years. So, yeah, that's cool. That's fun. That does do that, though, for sure. Open phones here at 888-825-5225.

Amanda is in Knoxville. Hi, Amanda. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave and Dr. John. Thank you for taking my call. Sure. What's up? My husband and I have about $91,000 in debt, Hi, Dave and Dr. John. Thank you for taking my call. Sure. What's up?

My husband and I have about $91,000 in debt, and I'm looking at starting a side business, freelance grant running for nonprofits, and wanted to know what are some things to keep in mind when I start this side hustle, and how do I go about finding clients? It sounds like something you found on the internet actually i have i have done it as part of my business before on the on the um public side you've done the grant writing side yeah yeah i haven't done it you know okay so well anytime we're doing marketing,

we do what we call a persona of what the customer looks like. So who needs grants written typically? What does this customer look like? In my area, it's a lot of, like, animal shelters and, like, United Way has a lot of grants and non-profit sides that they do. So there's a lot of various. Can I throw. In Upper East Tennessee, there's a lot of various non-profits in the area. Can I throw you another one that would be even bigger where you are right now?

Sure. The lifeblood of a research university professor is grants. And the thing that I didn't learn how to do through two different PhDs was how to write and secure a grant. So if you were to advertise at the local university, and you're right next to a monster school there in Knoxville, if you were to advertise, I assist with grant writing services,

you may have more work than you know what to do with. Jump on some of the grad Facebook pages or post-grad work. Coffee shops, put up signs. Yeah, anything you can do to get a hold of a Ph.D. candidate or even a Ph.D. A new professor, yeah. A young professor that's trying to get tenure. And if you can help them write them and even secure them, you have a gold mine at your fingertips there. The nonprofits, what you're looking for there is a mid-range nonprofit.

A super small, primitive, poorly run nonprofit will not get the grant, if you write it for them the super big ones like a united way they do their own they don't need you okay but somebody um you know a school trying to get computers a uh that kind of thing you'll get that but the big nonprofits you're looking for something kind of in the middle something that's established and they're good at running their non-profit they're good at fundraising in general but they want to supplement their budget with some new grants and they're already raising you know one to ten million a year uh that's a good size but if you get something like united way where you're talking about hundreds of millions they don't need you okay so you're shopping among ministries primarily school principals yeah school

principals especially uh private schools uh hospice um anything like that that that um and you're just going to get out there and put the word out. And what will happen is as you fish in these different ponds that we're giving you, you catch a couple fish in each pond, they'll spread the word to the rest of that pond, and you'll end up with one that really starts being a gold mine, one of the areas. We don't know which one it is yet. And another one that's like number two, another one that's like number three, and then the other one won't be worth fooling with. And it might be the one you thought was going to be good.

But that's what you do. And Amanda, when it comes to getting new clients, there is no substitute for activity. I want you to get rejected a lot. I don't want you to get rejected in your mind and do nothing and sit and be paralyzed by the prospect of being rejected. I want you to get rejected in your mind and do nothing and sit and be paralyzed by the prospect of being rejected. I want you to really get turned down a lot. Like if you get turned down a hundred to 200 times in the next 12 months, you'll make a really good living during that 12 months. And you'll learn a lot about who needs your service and who doesn't and how to customize it and tinker with it to get it

there. But the thing that someone that doesn't come from a marketing background needs to get used to is the sign of success in your world is massive amounts of failure. Massive amounts of rejection equals you get to do this or you don't. If you go talk to four people and four people turn you down and you quit, you didn't understand what I just said. Yeah yeah i've seen people be successful not by i need to book five clients this month i need to make 200 phone calls this month and the the client booking will generally take care of itself or you've got a bad product exactly and not phone calls where you leave a message phone calls where you talk to somebody right or you drop by and bring them a cup of coffee uh hey everybody i brought starbucks um and come in and try to get a meeting with the director of the non-profit and go hey this is what i do oh you don't you don't

have a need who does who do you know that does by the way i've secured this many millions of dollars in grants before i can help yeah man you may have a line out your door in that community if you get a year where you got 10 million dollars worth for some group of people over time you go last year i got 10 million dollars in uh people go huh have a seat we'll buy you coffee yeah wait wait right here we're going to get donuts yeah to go with the coffee that's the thing but all of that comes from massive amounts of no's. Because your ratio is probably going to be a 95% no ratio. And 5% is where you're going to make your living and you don't know who it is.

I'm guessing, but I'm probably not wrong. This is the Ramsey Show. 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. Dr. John Deloney, number one best-selling author, Ramsey personality, host of the Dr. John Deloney Show, and a Ph.D. in counseling. He's my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Daniel is in Cincinnati. Hi, Daniel. How are you?

I'm good. How are you guys? Better than we deserve. What's up in your world? Well, I'm just 21, and I'm looking to get married soon and graduate from college in December, and I'm just trying to figure out when it's financially feasible for me to get married. That's fun. How old is she?

She's 20. When does she graduate? She's not in college. Okay. So she's working. Yeah. What does she make? She probably makes in between $20,000 and $30,000 a year. Okay. How long y'all been dating? About eight months. Good. Okay. Are you working now?

I am working. I'm a co-op right now, and then I have another co-op rotation coming up in September, and then that will likely turn into a full-time job. Which will be what? It'll be probably in between, on the low end it'll be $60,000, and on the high end it'll be $75,000 a year. Doing what? Mechanical engineering. I'll be working as a machinist type job making prototypes. Okay. So you got a four-year degree in mechanical engineering or an associate's trade school? Associate's trade school.

Good for you. Okay. So sounds like your household income at that point would be somewhere bumping up close to $100,000. Okay. Does that sound right? Yeah. That's what I have estimated at. Okay. All right. And you're going to graduate and that income would start in January? Yes. Okay. Well, if I'm her dad, I'd like for you to be freaking gainfully employed. So I would say after January, if I'm her dad, what would you think? Yeah, that sounds pretty reasonable. That's kind of what I would think.

And if I was her dad, I want to see you guys. There's nothing magic about this. I want to see you all get close across that year mark, and I want you all to get some premarital counseling. Okay. At 21 and 20, I'm as concerned about the financial. Y'all, I mean, couples figure some of that stuff out um i'm i want to make sure y'all have thought through some things that at 21 and 20 i just

even know to think through okay just like on how to build a life together yeah yeah i wish i had done that and i got married at your age and it was a mistake to not have i mean we had the uh obligatory 20 minute meeting with the baptist preacher two weeks before the wedding but that's not pre-marriage counseling right okay okay um and um yeah and so in depth figuring out what she believes and what you believe and where you come from is a big deal. And it's worth the money and the time and the effort. And the data tells us that,

that successful marriage is, uh, one of the things you can do to add to the probability of having a successful marriage is in-depth marriage counseling prior to, and I'm going to give you, uh, an engagement gift, financial peace university. And I want the two of you an engagement gift, Financial Peace University,

and I want the two of you to do that during your pre-marriage counseling time. Go through that class together on how to handle money. Because the next time, as you get closer to this, if you're actually engaged and you actually have a date, and next time someone says, what does she make, you need to know. You don't even know what your fiancé or your girlfriend makes. Within 30%, you don't even know what your fiance or your girlfriend makes yeah within 30 you don't even know yeah okay so you need to know this is what she makes and this is what does she have any debt

uh no do you either one of us do oh wow that's a great advantage okay well if the two of you know that and you know what she makes and she knows what you make and her dad knows what you make and he's happy with that and you guys sit down and lay out a game plan and say we're this is what rent can be this is what we're going to spend this is our budget our spending and you've done what john john suggested and you've gotten into each other's uh family background and how the family functions or dysfunctions and how that's going to affect you guys going forward because it will um it just gives you a huge advantage it gives you a playbook instead of just going out in the middle of the football field and saying hike you know instead you've actually got a playbook to run touchdowns and win and um instead of having to make it up as you go now couples do

make it make it up as you go but more of them make it when they have a good playbook coming from some good, strong pre-marriage counseling that'll probably lead you to sit back down with a counselor ever so often for a tune-up. Okay. I've been married 43 years. We ever so often still do a tune-up. Just sit down, check out, how are we doing here? How are we doing here?

Oh, really? We're not? Oh, and i thought we were okay and what do i know we do that a lot in my house yeah we do it we do it without the coach but sometimes we do it with a coach so um yeah that that's what we'll recommend and we'll give you financial peace university to get you started you're ready in january to be married money-wise you don't have to have anything more than you got. You're in good shape. But be in agreement about how we're going to do things. That's a big deal, man. Hey, and also, Christian, we're going to give him a build.

Yeah, Daniel's on the phones here. But Daniel, we're going to give you building on an anxious life. I want you to use that as a roadmap for building a new home together. If we go along these six stages and we decide, hey, we're going to build our house this way, you're going to set a foundation that's going to be strong when the storms get rough, and they will. It's just life. Yeah, that's good. That's a great gift. Awesome. All right, Kyra is with us in Bowling Green. Hi, Kyra, how are you? Or is it Sierra? Sierra. Sierra, I'm dumb. I'm sorry.

What's up, Sierra? That's okay. Okay, so I'm so excited to be able to finally have a question to ask you all. Me and my husband have $40,000. You sound like you're in a barrel. Can you talk directly into your phone, please? Yes, can you hear me? Yes, ma'am. Perfect.

Thank you. Okay. We have $40,000 to put towards our mortgage, and we have the option to either just put it on the loan and it's short in the term. We have a 30-year mortgage. Or they can do a revision of our payment to drop our payment, and we are wanting to know which is the best option. A, don't revise your payment. You're not trying to get a lower payment.

You're trying to get out of debt. Okay. So just stick it on the end. Yeah. Or. It actually sticks it on the beginning. Okay. That's where it goes.

So if you get out your amortization schedule, you know, the one that's got like how much of each payment goes to interest how much to principal and the remaining balance it's got this long page to it you know what i'm talking about yes you get that out and you take your principal balance and go down forty thousand dollars that's your new payment okay you eliminated all that interest. Okay. And so you're going to see the amount going towards principal of your payment after the $40,000 application changes dramatically. What's your loan balance today? Around $400,000. Okay.

Yeah, well, you'll see it move, you know, 10%, 15% when you do that. Okay. So it's an excellent, excellent job. Definitely the way to do it mathematically, definitely the way to do it from a behavior standpoint, throw it on there and forget it because it keeps you from messing around with stuff. Our goal is knock the house out. That's what millionaires do. So let's do millionaire stuff. This is the Ramsey show. Have you noticed the people that win at things who are successful at things, do them on purpose? We call it these days intentionality. I'm intentional about my parenting. I'm intentional

about my marriage. I'm intentional about my physical condition. I'm intentional about my money and I win with them. When you're intentional with your money, the way you do that is you tell your money what to do instead of wondering where it went. That way you don't have too much month left at the end of the money. Most people just spend like they're in Congress and then have half of their month in chaos trying to figure out a way to cover it. Oh, we'll just finance this with a bond issue. Yeah's a problem so you've got to write it down before the month begins and you've got to agree on it with your spouse for those of you that are married the easiest way to do that these days is with an app on your phone and the world's best

budgeting app to tell your money what to do is every dollar it's free in the app store and on google play and at every dollar.com i'm not kidding you and i'm not exaggeration when i say exaggerating when i say tens of millions of people have downloaded and are using this app where are you you need to start doing this. Go to the App Store. Go to Google Play today. It's free. Tom is in Montreal.

Hi, Tom. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Thank you, sir. How can I help? Yeah, thank you so much. I'm so excited. I'm sorry. So basically I'm calling because a little bit of background is I grew up in Africa and my parents and I moved from Africa to Canada about five years ago.

And I was lucky enough to find you on YouTube and start listening to your podcast. And I was really fired up and started doing the baby steps. And I'm currently on baby step number four. But my question is, I'm having a hard time convincing my parents to follow your steps. They are getting up in age. My dad is 60. My mom is 50. And it's just very hard for me to convince them to follow your baby steps because, you know, everyone here is telling them, oh, if you're an immigrant here, you have to have, you know, you have to go get a credit card to build a credit score. It's the only way you're going to be able to, you know, buy a house and eventually be able to thrive here. And so I guess that's my question is, as a person that has actually seen how beneficial the baby steps are, how do I convince my parents to be on board

in a way that, you know, gets them on board and not actually pushes them away when everyone around them is telling them that that is the way to do it in North America. Well, you've got a wonderful heart and you obviously love and honor your mom and dad. What you're trying to do in any culture is very, very hard children grown children to give their grown adult parents advice that is unsolicited um is virtually impossible we call it the powdered butt syndrome once someone has powdered your butt they really don't want your advice on sex or money okay and so you're it's an uphill battle your dad is still when he sees you he still sees a little boy yeah and uh he has to work at not seeing you that way so it's the one of the hardest angles to do persuasion from is up from child to adult or from child to parent very difficult now having said that The only thing I've ever seen to be successful is

For you to not talk about their situation at all Just talk about yours Okay, this is what I did Dad, this is why I'm so excited I was here and I was scared and I got on this plan And I was still scared but I wasn't as scared and then when I did this I got here And I know that i've talked to the mortgage company and without a credit score I can buy a house without a credit score and I haven't had to go into debt and surrender my newfound freedom

We left africa came to canada for freedom and you taught me that dad and i came here for freedom and i didn't want to give up my freedom by becoming a slave to a bank and so i did this and i did that and it's so exciting and i'm so excited and and no one can take your story from you that is your story right but don't start wagging your finger and so dad you've got to do this because as soon as you do that he's going to shut down if yes if you tell your story in front of them different ways different times enthusiastically of how you used to be scared you used to be broken now you're not and i did this and i did that and i'm so excited and just celebrate with me celebrate with me eventually one of them will raise their hand and say, do you think you could help us? Or, do you think that might work for us?

Or, that wouldn't work for us because. Oh, yeah, it will. Yeah, it will. That because is wrong. I can help you. I'll show you if you want me to show you. But if they open the door and start talking about themselves in light of this information now the door's open and you can gently stick your foot in it and go through the door

but i'm going to guess tom and say that an african culture might even honor their parents more than some other cultures to the point that your dad could very easily take this as dishonoring disrespectful if you start trying to tell him how to run his life without him asking yeah that is correct and and the thing that i'm worried about too is that uh with the african culture sometimes the parents uh they take kids as their retirement plan yeah and so he might be thinking that in five years um you know i can just retire my son is going to take care of me yeah uh instead for me i'm trying to get into to get on your plans that in in five or ten well if he brings that up you can you can say you know in africa

that was true dad but in canada it's true, and I'm not planning to do that. But I'd love to help you get ready for retirement. Let me show you how. Are you going to flip? Here's another idea, Tom. What if you sat down with your budget and said, Dad, I want to walk you through my budget. Here's how I do this. You see any holes here yeah and you're asking his expertise

he might throw his shoulders back and say that's right and then when he says well why are you doing this and this you say oh no no no i will never have a bank tell me what i have to do i i came to north america to be free and but you're at you're inviting his limited amounts of expertise which might set the table for a future conversation but he'll have a very real economic picture of what son's going to have in five years right yeah that might be a different way to do it maybe not but yeah you're pretty much sending him a mathematical signal i'm not going to take it be able to take care of because i can't all right yeah or i might be able to take care of you i might not be able

to take care of a hundred thousand bucks you've run up on car debts and whatever else yeah that's a big deal and um the other for the those of you out there listening is probably not true for tom but just to expand on this a little bit further the other thing i look for is uh uncle louis who is the uncle in your family or the cousin in your family or the friend of the family that your dad looks up to? And if they are in alignment with you, have them come in and start talking to him about his stuff because they'll listen to him. They didn't powder his butt. And so bring in the outside

expert that they already look up to in the family if they're aligned with what you're wanting them to do um sometimes i've seen those things work on a a spiritual level too when someone's trying hasn't yet met god and it's oftentimes hard for a grown child to lead their parents to god because again they don't want to listen to them about spiritual things but the outside person that they trust that they've known for 30 years it's that weird christian over there they might listen to them and so you can use that but your story now your story your testimony is useful in either of these cases so uh you just tell your story nobody can take your story from you this is my story i you know you we can argue about doctrine

or we can argue about financial principles but um this is not theory this is my story this is what really happened this is the Ramsey Show. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the Debt Free Stage. Tommy and Sophie are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? Hey, Dave. So good. Hey, John.

Welcome. Good to have you. Where do you live? We live in Ames, Iowa, which is just north of Des Moines. Yep. Great. Good to have you all. So good. Hey, John. Welcome. Good to have you. Where do you live? We live in Ames, Iowa, which is just north of Des Moines. Yep. Great. Good to have you all. So excellent.

Thank you for being here. How much debt have you paid off? We paid off $111,181. Way to go. How long did that take? Just over four years, so 50 months. Excellent. And your range of income during that time?

We ranged from 43 to about 60 during that time. Wow. Y'all were crushing it. Very impressive. What kind of debt was this 111? Yeah, so it was a lot of student loans and then one car payment that we eventually paid off and then sold it basically right after. How long y'all been married? Six years, just past six years. Okay. So a couple of years into the marriage, something happened and you went, okay, we got to straighten this mess up. Tell me about what happened. Yeah. So in January of 2020 is when we started following the program. And a couple of months before that is when we listened to Financial Peace University on the CDs actually. And just like driving to work, driving to different events and stuff.

We listened to it together. And that was prompted by a couple of times the months before that overdrafting in our check or from our credit cards when we were like, you know, it would go to pay off the credit card and we had overdrafted. It was kind of like, you know, we were just using our credit cards, getting the rewards and then, you know, hoping that there was enough to pay off in the account at the end of the month. And then after a couple of times of there not being enough, we were like,

we need to do better. Yeah. Yeah. Steward this better. Yeah. Something's got to change here. Right. Right.

So basically your new marriage just financially wasn't working. Right, right. Everything's going in circles and a lot of stress, a lot of chaos. How'd you find us? So I kind of grew up in a Ramsey house. My parents had always suggested doing financial peace, but it never actually happened before I graduated. So that's kind of been around, but we were just going with the motions, using our credit cards, paying it off at the end of the month and then. And he had mentioned a couple of times, like financial peace university, like my parents have told me about this. And I was very hesitant at first. I was like, no, like, we're fine. We don't need a budget. Like we're like, we're doing fine. And

then as those, you know, uh, overdrafts came, then when we're not doing fine. Yeah, right. I can't get off, you know, like in school and college, there's always the curve buster, right? When the professor's grading on the curve and there's always one person who gets 100. Y'all have effectively done this. Y'all are making 40 to 60 grand and y'all paid off $110,000.

And what I hear all the time is, I don't make enough money. I don't make enough money. I don't make enough money. And for, what, four and a half years, y'all just hit the hammer. I mean, you lived on nothing. Nothing. Yeah, we really did. We really lowered what we did.

We didn't go out to eat. We didn't do anything, really. We really limited a lot of things so that we could actually accomplish this goal. But if you spend six seconds on any social media platform, they would suggest if you don't go out to eat for four years, you die. Right, right. Absolutely. It was definitely challenging at times. But just the mantra and the goal of just being debt free, we kind of knew going into it, it was going to take us a while.

We're looking at our income. Tommy was just about to start grad school at the time when we started the program. And so, you know, we knew that he was only going to be, you know, he didn't have a ton of opportunity to make money during grad school. So we knew it was going to be a long journey ahead of time. Yeah. You talk often about like choosing something hard, like there's a hard choice that You have to choose it. And so we kind of chose kind of all of it. We were like, I'm going to do grad school. We're going to pay this off.

We're going to live very immediately. Let's do hard all at once. Yeah. Can you give America an example of a thing y'all did instead of going out to eat? I mean, you clearly still like each other. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Friday night pizza nights.

Making homemade pizza was one of the things that we looked forward to every week. We would splurge on the pepperoni and make the pizza dough at home. And that was kind of like our going out date nights. Yeah, and then sometimes we would also go out and DoorDash together. So it was a DoorDash date. Yeah, we had DoorDash dates. We would just go and deliver food and listen to podcasts. Other people's food. Yeah, so it was a DoorDash date. Yeah, we had DoorDash dates. We would just go and deliver food and listen to podcasts. Listen to podcasts. Other people's food.

Yeah. Yeah. So it was a lot of fun. Yeah. I do want to mention, of the total debt that we paid off, 43,000 of that was forgiven back in this past September. Could you say why? Yeah.

So her dad was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. And so back when Sophie went to college, her dad is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. And so back when Sophie went to college, they, or her dad had borrowed a bunch of money on her behalf with the agreement that she would pay it back. So yeah, we had, we had paid him probably about, what was it? $7,000. I think my total balance of parent plus loans was 50,000 that I was paying my dad back. And then by the time it was forgiven, it was down to 43. But that drastically, you know, reduced the amount of time

that we had left within the last year. So he passed away. No, he's still alive. But with the diagnosis becoming disabled. Yes. They did give him SSI and declared him disabled and they forgave the loan. Right, right. And when they forgave the loan, you were forgiven by your dad. Yes. They did give him SSI and declared him disabled and they forgave the loan.

Right. And when they forgave the loan, you were forgiven by your dad. Yes. It was his loan technically, but you had promised to pay it. Right. Good. It was the one silver lining from a very hard time. Yeah. Absolutely. One of the things my dad has said is, you know, he wished that they were in a place, you know, to be able to provide for us financially for school. And like he had felt really, you know, he had a little bit of guilt, you know, from having to take out all that money. And so, you know, this diagnosis is

devastating, you know, but it's the one silver lining and, you know, he's doing well, all things considered. So yeah's it's been very hard yeah yeah well i'm sorry for that i'm happy for the result and yeah still you still you still have made some amazing numbers yeah yeah definitely lots of side hustles a lot of different side hustles lots of door dash over the last year and is that what was the most lucrative side hustle yeah definitely okay yeah we did a lot of that door dash what would you make in a given week on average for door dash uh when we started going crazy with it it was probably about like 400 you know yeah but in a week when

we would do it normally a couple times a week um it's four to six hundred a month okay um but yeah it's it really really helped you know and just a thousand to fifteen hundred was not unusual right right okay all right wow good for you very cool proud of y'all who was cheering you on definitely our parents and definitely our church they were very encouraging um specifically uh sophie's parents they lived in town at the time and so a lot of babysitting, a lot of like countless hours of babysitting so that we could go do DoorDash. We'll go drive around, give people their food for money. So, you know, big thanks to them. And they were

definitely our biggest cheerleaders. We listened to a lot of podcasts during that time. That was also very encouraging. So encouraging. I mean, for the last four years, it's been the Ramsey show. You know, John, we started listening to your show right when you started as well and she was the 17th yeah yeah we're part of the original 17 listeners so um just lots of encouragement from the ramsey network as a whole and just listening to these debt-free screams you know hoping and um just having that goal that that'll be us one day. And it is. Yeah. Yeah, here we go. Somebody's door dashing right now listening to this. Yeah, me too. I promise you.

I promise you. Do it. Well done, you guys. We're very, very proud of you. Excellent, excellent work. Thank you. All right. And you brought your baby?

Yeah. Yes. How you doing? This is our daughter, Toviana. And she comes in the middle of all this too. Yes. Yeah, we had a baby. We had her

in october of 2022 so she you know in the middle of our debt-free journey you know we were like we we didn't want to wait anymore you know that was a non-stressful time just globally so yeah right yeah so she's been the biggest blessing in in life and just another huge reason why. Yeah, and her parents are heroes. Yeah, talk about choosing hard. We didn't want to delay anything for starting our family. It's like we're choosing that hard. Do it.

Do it. Tommy and Sophie and Toviana. Toviana. Toviana. All right. $111,000 paid off in four years, making $43,000 to $60,000 with a little bit of forgiveness on dad's situation. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free! Yeah! Yeah, baby! You gotta love it

our scripture of the day proverbs 18 for the words of the mouth are deep waters but the fountain of wisdom is a rushing stream will durant says one of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say i must have said that wrong well that's the history is that nothing is often a good thing to do oh do nothing yeah and and then something clever yeah okay i got it took me a second okay not clever okay. Mona is with us. Dave was in honors classes there in college. I'm just asleep. Okay.

Mona, what's up? Hi there. I'm calling because I'm torn on a Sally Mae student loan that I co-signed for for my daughter over 10 years ago, and it's still lingering, and it's not going anywhere. What are you torn about um paying it off and like taking fifty thousand dollars out of my house to pay it off because that's like the only debt that's over my head and if i do this i feel like my daughter and i won't be able to have a relationship because this was her responsibility. And I co-signed with the trust. Which made it your responsibility when you co-signed.

Correct. Yes. Which I was young and hopeful and didn't know better. What was she? Yeah. If you were young and hopeful, what was she? Yeah. Younger.

Younger and more hopeful and dumber. Yes. So why does it sever the relationship of her being irresponsible when you were too well i wasn't being irresponsible i guess yes you were know it at the time for co-signing for a school loan yeah i didn't i didn't think so at the time you didn't think she neither did she by the way now, since 10 years, learning about being more responsible and me helping her get to a better place, and then her still not paying it, how does that, what do I do with that? Why doesn't she pay?

Why doesn't she pay? Because part of her feels like that was my responsibility. She's a little bit angry and bitter, and I think she thinks that I have it so that I should pay it. I have two other children since then. So that's what you're really angry about her being an entitled brat. I guess that's pretty much it, sadly. Your relationship's already severed.

Somewhat. I've been able, I've done a lot of prayer and a lot of forgiveness where I could still be cordial and still love her and still be like, check on her and let her talk to her younger sisters. But I can't help her anymore financially because of this. Well, you're not required to help someone financially to have a relationship with them. Right. Okay. And if she puts that on you, then she's opting out of a relationship with you. She's using you as an ATM.

Yeah, pretty much. If she says the only way I'm going to talk to you, Mom, is if you give me money and forgive the student loan, then that's on her. Yeah, behavior is a language. She's telling you I don't value a relationship with you, and that's going to break your heart. Yeah, it does. It does.

But in the meantime, the only debt I have is my house and this school loan. What do you make? I'm 50 years old, about $124,000 a year. Okay. Every time, the only debt I have is my house and the school loan. What do you make? I'm 50 years old, about $124,000 a year. Okay. What I would do is just put it in your budget and try to pay it off as quick as I could. I would not put it on your school loan. And I don't want you to be the cause of severing the relationship.

You, just forget it. Both of you were young and dumb. You both shouldn't have done this. you both shouldn't have done this you both shouldn't have done it you've learned your lesson she hasn't oh well right let it go that's forgiveness and you know forgiveness is for you it's not for her correct yes i absolutely know that i've had to live it way too many times and then but then then if she comes at you and has something negative to say that's on her or if she comes at you and says i'm not going to talk to you if you don't give me more money because you're just rolling in it over here which

is obviously you're not that's an absurd statement you know but yeah i'm remarried and she counts my money i could definitely tell that like i guess she just think that i i can afford it yeah and she can't yeah um well the deal is this you've got a problem child yes that's an adult and you're just gonna have to learn to love her where she is without her without letting her in your boundaries inside your boundaries so i'm here i love you i'll cook you a meal i'll be your friend but i'm not your atm and mona right but you gotta forgive mona i gotta forgive who you you're blaming you you're carrying this stuff around you're blaming yourself every step of the way what did i do wrong how did i fail her what stop yeah stop how old is she yeah i was 29 29 she's 30 years old she's making grown-up choices

now correct and bad choices clearly because this is her last thing to pay yeah yeah clearly this is like last on her list so the next time you run into someone and they say, how's your daughter? Don't talk about any of that. It's now gone. I don't. No, it's gone. It's gone. It's gone.

It's in the front of your head. When someone says your daughter's name, that's what you think of. And I just want you to think of her as this troubled kid over there that you love. And it's kind of sad, but not like she's making bad choices because clearly she didn't pay the loan she owed me. Right. Okay. That's on you.

That's language about you. Am I wrong, John? No. Yeah. Yeah, you're outsourcing your frustration with yourself. And, yeah, I would – you all agree to it? I would be super mad if I made an arrangement with my kid to pay 50 grand back and they had a nice job and they were going on with their life and they looked at me and said am i doing that yeah

i'd be mad but my name's on the loan and then i get to choose what happens next and since my name's on that loan i'm gonna be mad at myself i'm gonna pay that dumb loan off then i'm not gonna carry that nonsense around it's a 30 year old kid not gonna be mad at her not gonna be mad at me i signed it yeah we're gonna do the next right thing we're done being mad about this loan it's over and you can spend some time in grief because you're heartbroken that your 30 year old kid is making bad choices yeah that does hurt that hurts it does hurt and but but no longer identify her as that as the bad kid i mean in your head it's not you know i'm not saying to ignore it and i'm not saying to but you don't have it's not your job anymore to fix it

yeah yeah she's 30 it's it's over your parenting's done it's really frustrating i gotta tell you i mean i got grown kids and my even my grandkid the oldest one's 10 now it's not long before he gets to make his own choices right another 8-10 years i want to be doing something so it's the most frustrating part of parenting is when they get to be legal adults and they no longer have to do what you say it was much easier when i just told them what to do and they don't have to do what i say and um you know thank god ours are generally living the values and the things that we believe and we're a fairly functional family but they don't have to do what I say. And, um, you know, thank God ours are generally living the values and the things that we believe. And we're a fairly functional family, but they don't have to do

what I say. And, uh, when Rachel wants to dig a swimming pool in the backyard, they didn't ask me, they asked Winston and Rachel, which is what they should do by the way, you know, and when the niece wants to remodel her house, she didn't ask me and she doesn't have to and i'm not insulted by that i don't get to have a vote in that anymore that's and and as a parent i'll just share with all of you uh i'm not frustrated either one of them about that but it is a frustrating stage of parenting especially when you get one off the rails like that one yeah and you got to watch it and you got it it's it hurts and lots of friends and the new daughter-in-law or son-in-law comes in, splits up the family, now nobody talks to nobody,

or somebody didn't wear a mask to Thanksgiving dinner, and they're still mad about it four years later. And it wasn't even Halloween, you know. But now since nobody asked, Dave, you can show up and see Rachel Winston's new pool and say, wow, I wouldn't have done that, and just walk away. No, no, no. Or you can cannonball first cannonball that's what i'm gonna do splash everybody oh man i've been watching that olympic

diving i think i can do it no i don't either actually you probably could you probably could i saw the commercials that were the cannonballs that's what i could do i think i've seen you break dance, Dave. I think you had a shot. Oh, no, you have not. I have not. Because that did not occur. That did not occur.

That is not how I was. I would have burned off all the rods and cones in my eyes. I would have burned off what little hair was left on top of my head. Yeah, you would have got to spinning so fast. That wax would have been good for something. It's hard, Mona. We're crying with you baby but forgive her forgive yourself quit being mad move on life's too short it's just a stupid loan everybody does stupid stuff that puts this hour the ramsey show in the books we'll be back with you before you know it in the meantime remember there's ultimately only one way to financial peace and that that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus. Take care.