The Ramsey Show - App - Don't Stay in a Whole Life Policy! (Hour 2)

Episode Date: June 5, 2020

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live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, it's the Dave Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. You jump in, we'll talk about your life, your money. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. The phone number is 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Fort Collins, Colorado starts off this hour.

Courtney is with us. Hey, Courtney, what's up? Thank you so much for taking my call, Dave. First of all, we are in a little bit of a predicament. We were in the middle of Baby Step one when my husband was in a car accident that totaled a police vehicle that I had. So we're dealing with all that, and we know we now have to replace that vehicle. Our biggest issue is that my husband is pretty much a road warrior for work. So we put about 40,000 to 50,000 miles a year on a car with about 1,000 miles a week. And we're just trying to figure out.

I know you're going to tell me not to take a loan. We're trying to figure out our best option on how to get something that's going to be semi-reliable for the income. Right. Okay. semi-reliable for the income right okay um i assume uh that the car lease is basically going to be paid from insurance and you're not going to get any net proceeds into your pocket right i'm actually going to be about a thousand to fifteen hundred dollars upside down in it okay all right so you got at least got out of that mess okay Okay. Yeah. But then that leaves you with no money and no car, right?

Exactly. And your household income is what? It's about $75,000 a year. It just increased to that. Cool. And what is the car that you are driving? The car that I'm currently driving or the car that was totaled? No, the one that you drive.

That was his car that was totaled. Well, it was my car that he was driving that was totaled oh okay then what's the other car other car is a 2004 dodge ram 3500 oh that's normally his vehicle but since he's got this new job and started commuting we didn't want to write a million miles on that gotcha okay well that's a good thought. Well, there's a couple things running through my head when you tell me your story, and then we just got to figure out how to solve it from here. The lease was how much?

What was the balance on that that the insurance company is going to write the check for? Well, the balance on the lease was about $5,600, and the insurance company is going to be writing a check for about $4,600 and the insurance company is going to be writing a check for about $4,000. Okay, that's not the payoff on the car. That was just the remaining number of payments. The payoff on the car was $5,600 for the lease. You could have owned the car title for that. So it was a cheap car that was leased.

It was, and I was stupid when I bought it. Okay. Anyway, let's back up then. It doesn't really change anything, but it's just an interesting factoid. Okay, so two things to know. Number one, and you've probably heard me say this before, when you're a road warrior, whatever you're driving, you are destroying it. Whatever he's driving, he's destroying its value. Whatever you drive. If you drive a $100,000 car, if you drive a $2,000 car, you destroy its value 50,000 miles a year. Yeah.

It's going to be worth nothing fast. So the trick is to destroy the cheapest car possible that will get the job done. Now, get the job done, in my mind, is two things. One is it has to be reasonably comfortable. This guy lives in his car, so we're not putting him in a smart car, okay? I mean, he'd be in a chiropractor, right? So we're going to put him in a decent vehicle that's got a little leg room and a little metal around him and that kind of stuff.

The second thing is it has to be reliable because he can't be out there broke down on the side of the road and get his job done. Exactly. And so it has to be the, that's what I mean when I say the least car that will get the job done. That's usually an $8,000 or a $10,000 car, and you're going to buy a different, and you're going to buy a new one, a change, you're going to, not a new one,

you're going to sell that one and get a different $ thousand dollar car once a year and just drive put fifty thousand miles on it and do it again and it could be like a nice little ford taurus a honda accord um a little suv the smaller versions those kinds of things i don't care but something that's just very bland uh you know a toyota camry that kind of a thing that's got a lot of life left in it and you're going to take most of its life and then you're going to roll it every 12 to 18 months perfect now so how are we going to get that eight or ten grand well you were about eight or ten grand in debt already on cars if you go get a car loan for eight or ten thousand dollars put that in your debt snowball um you know you're basically saying i had a car loan eight or ten thousand

dollars now i'm gonna have a car loan eight or ten thousand dollars this is a net you know we're not going to use the fact that we this car got totaled to go buy a twenty five thousand dollar car we're going to use the fact that about a five or ten thousand dollar car got total we're going to use the fact that about a five or a ten thousand dollar car got total we're going to buy a five or a ten thousand dollar car so we're not going further in debt um because i think the numbers you're giving me are not the actual payoff of the lease because that car is more expensive than that you totaled than a five it's not a five thousand dollar car the market value on that car was considerably higher than that so there's some some number twist up and what's going on with the insurance company. I don't care about that.

I'm going to set that to the side. I'm going to call this about an even trade for you, $8,000 or $10,000 worth of debt for $8,000 or $10,000 worth of debt. Okay. Put it in your debt snowball and get rid of it as fast as you can. Now, this is not you had a $1,000 car, and you only needed a $1,000 car to commute two miles to work, and you went $10,000 in debt to get you a nicer car.

That is not what this is. This is an even swap for a road warrior to get his job done. Awesome. You hear me not moving up, right? We don't want to move up. The payment that I had on this previous car, I was taken really bad and didn't read the fine print, and I was paying $424 a month for a 2003 Nissan Murano. Woo!

Because I was trying to do the whole get around. Yeah, so this is a blessing, because if he had run that car out with that lease with those miles on it, he wouldn't run his miles up out of the lease. You wouldn't run your miles up out of that lease, and you'd have been surcharged out your ears for being over on your miles when you turned it in so this has turned into a huge blessing really i'm glad hopefully no one was hurt and that way we can just call it a blessing so i i that's how i'm looking at two things is whatever you drive you're destroying and the second thing is is we're going to do a break even a neutral deal here no new debt no

extra debt no nicer car but we're also not going to try to put a guy i'm doing 50 000 miles a year in a two thousand dollar car and expect him to get home on the weekend it ain't gonna work so i mean you can do a hoopty around town but a hoopty with 50 000 miles a year is not gonna cut it uh so you're gonna be and i really would never have more than about a $15,000 car. If you've got $2 million in the bank and you're putting 50,000 miles a year on a car, you can have a nice one, but it has to be the one that sits in the driveway, your weekend driver, you know, and you're always going to have a $15,000, $10,000 car if you're worth $5 million.

I mean, I would never, if I was putting that kind of miles on a car, put it on a nice car because you're destroying it. You're destroying the value of it. I would never, if I was putting that kind of miles on a car, put it on a nice car. Because you're destroying it. You're destroying the value of it. And, yes, you can put miles on a car and they survive. That's not the question. But you're just taking a $100,000 car and turning it into a $10,000 car in 20 minutes. So you just don't want to do that, folks.

And people do it on the road all the time. They do it in the name of business and rationalization and all this crap. And just don't fall for that, folks. Hey, Courtney, thank you for calling in. I hope that was helpful to you. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Most people's money problems come from not paying attention. That's why before I spend a dime of my money on something, I do the research and make sure it's going to live up to what it claims. Recently, I got a great pair of sunglasses from a company called Shady Rays. When you're looking for sunglasses, it feels like your options are limited. Name brand sunglasses cost too much, and the cheap knockoffs are ugly and really don't protect your eyes. Discovering Shady Rays is a

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Paulina is in Portland, Oregon. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. How are you, Paulina? I'm good. How are you, Dave? Better than I deserve. How can I help? Hi, well, I'm 26. I've looking to buy a house for about three years now the market down here is tough it's low inventory in my budget and it's just overall pretty high prices and so it's kind of been rare that a house that interested me has come to market either due to location or condition and

um it's killing me to have money making use of a little interest in a savings account i paid off about 150 000 um and i'm just like scared to jump into any old house because this is my first big purchase like this and i just want it to be more you know blessing rather than a curse and so i'm curious kind of like am i being too picky with housing should i jump in on something looking at it from an investment standpoint? So you're out of debt. Yeah. And how much do you have saved? Total, I have about $160,000.

Saved? Yeah. And you're looking at what? I'm looking at putting about $150,000 down. On what price of home? Well, using the rules of the 25% of your take-home, my take-home, so after I take out for taxes and retirement, my take-home is about $3,000 a month. Okay, but your gross income is what?

How much are you taking out for retirement? Right now, and I know I need to reduce this based on the baby steps, but right now I'm taking out 18%. And my gross income last year, it's going to change this year because I switched from night shift to day shift. We're moving a little bit of a pay differential. But my taxes this year came out for about $89,000. And that was about half the year on night shift, half the year on day shift. So you're thinking about buying a price range home of what?

I'm thinking about I really don't want to go with high of $300,000 because it just kind of scares me. I want to have a nice, healthy cushion. I'm definitely more conservative. So your question is, should you buy a $300,000 house now? Kind of. Yes. Yes, you should. There's also like life happening.

You're being too freaked out. Calm down. It's just a house. There's a house on every corner in Portland, Oregon. And if you don't like this house, you know what you can do with it? If you don't like this house, you could sell this house and buy another one later. Okay. So it's not like you make a mistake here that you can never, that it's going to ruin your life or something.

Just be careful and thoughtful and say i'm going to buy a nice property in a nice neighborhood not something weird not some white elephant thing but something that if i don't want to stay there i can resell it if my life changes and i and i you know and i want to move to boston i can sell it and so you just think about it that way and buy something reasonable. And with $150,000 down, making $89,000 at 26 years old, the other $150,000 on 15-year fixed rate will be just fine. You should go buy a house. The other thing that I'm kind of catching is, like, I live about an hour and a half out of Portland, and it's a college town, and the college rental market really drives up prices here. And so a lot of the properties are kind of...

Paulina, too much drama. It's a house. It's just a house. If you buy it and you don't like it, get you another one. It's just a house. This is too much drama. If you don't want to live in that town, move before you buy. But if you're going to live in that town, just look around, calm down, enjoy the process.

And just buy you a house,do you're in good shape you're doing really good doing really good just enjoy the ride i mean you're 26 years old you're debt free with 150 000 in the bank you know what that makes you you're a freaking unicorn i mean there's nobody like you you're so far ahead of the game. Way to go, kiddo. I mean, you're the Rambo of money. You killed this. Okay? You got this.

You're doing good. Lisa's with us in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Hi, Lisa. How are you? I'm doing great, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. Okay.

Okay. Well, I have a question about a letter that we got about an overdue credit card account and a quote program that they're offering us as far as repayment. Now, this has not been sent to collections, so it's like still through Discover. That's who I called, who I got the letter from. So obviously the letter's like, you need to pay or we're going to send this to a lawyer and the lawyer's going to see you for the full amount and everything like that. How far behind are you? Months and months, six months. Six months, okay. What's the balance?

I mean, I don't want to say. It's about $13,800. Gotcha. And what's your household income? Too gross. I just started. I'm trying to think, sorry, I just started working recently, so maybe $75 gross between the two of our incomes. And I take it you don't have any money. No, we're still like stupid.

Okay. And what is their offer? What's their offer? Well, what they're offering is a quote program um it's 60 months uh like 0.9 percent fixed interest um there this includes like a credit toward the account they're like we'll give you a credit it was either 12 or 1500 just credit toward the account um and and i'm turning that sorry what do you got to do it looks like what have you got to do the thing that scared us about this and this is like why my husband was like we've got to call dave and ask him um was one of the requirements is that for at least the first four months, it's like they do a setup on automatic payment.

Okay. They said after four months that we can call and say, okay, you know what? No, now we want to pay you every month versus it being automatically paid out. How much is the payment? The payment, it's like $230 a month or something like that. How much other debt do you have, not counting your house? Probably at least an equal amount. Not including the house is probably another...

Okay. So $26,000 in debt, making $75,000, $80,000 a year. You should be completely debt-free in under two years. Would you agree with that? I hope so, yes. No, I don't hope so. You should do it.

Yes. Okay. $26,000 in two years is $13,000 a year making $80,000. If you can't do that, you're lame. Okay. That's not hope. I mean, that's math. You should do that.

You need to get on a budget, and you need to quit going out to eat. Okay. And you need to stay home from your vacation, and you need to get this dadgum mess cleaned up. I would take the deal. This is called a renovation or a rehab. You may have seen one of those two words in the language, a renovation or a rehab, to rehab your account or renovate your account. They're trying to do this not only to get paid, but to also keep you as a customer for life.

You and I are going to do this to get the $1,200 and the.9 while you pay it off. Okay. Yes, I would. So we don't need to be worried about them having access to our account. No, I would not. Because you're going to pay them off really fast anyway. Yes. Yes.

Yes, we are. Yeah. I mean, you need to be completely debt-free in under two years. And you need to get your every dollar budget downloaded. Get your butt in gear. Okay? It's time to get after it. You've been sloppy, and you know

it. And I know it. I can see it between the lines in this discussion. But you can do this. You're smart. You're articulate. You can do this. So if you're going to screw around with this account, I might not do it. But smart you're articulate you can do this so if you're going to screw around with this account i might not do it but if you're going to pop it in the head and pay the whole thing off in under two years all of your debt except your house this is a fine deal it knocks 1200 bucks off and gets you a better interest rate while you're doing it and it gets you on track

and uh so yes i would do this and discover you know, it's a standard thing that these companies sometimes will offer. It's not an unusual offer, a renovation or a rehab. And, you know, what they're hoping to do is to, you know, keep you addicted to the heroin. That's what they want. They want you to continue to stay drug addicted to their product. But we're not going to do that. We're going cold turkey, and we're going to pay them off real fast. But we're going to take the $1,200 to help us do that and the

better interest rate to help us do that. Good question. Thank you for joining us. Teaching you to live on less than you make. A concept Congress can't grasp. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. For most of us, health care costs seem to increase every year, and saving money on health insurance feels more and more out of reach.

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Doing wonderful. Wonderful to have you. Where do you guys live? Oklahoma City. Awesome. Welcome to Nashville. Thank you. And all the way over here to do your debt-free scream.

Yes, sir. Love it. How much have you paid off? $95,000. Cool. Good for you, man. How long did that take? Took about 22 months. Wow, you killed it. And your range of income during that time? It was about $90,000 to $100,000. $90,000 to $100,000. What do you guys do for a living? I am a registered nurse at a hospital in Oklahoma City. And I'm a pastor. Good. Very cool. Good for you guys. And what kind of debt was the $95,000? So 92 of that was all student loan debt.

Actually, all of my student loan debt. And about three was a small car loan. Okay. All right. So Hope comes into the marriage and she's like debt free. Debt free. And she's saying, I hope he's worth it. How long have you two been married?

Two years. Two years, yeah. Okay, so that's what started this whole thing then. Yes, sir. You get married, and 22 months later, you're done. 24 months later, yeah, very good. Okay, so tell me how this conversation goes. How did you end up doing our stuff?

How did you end up here, standing here, doing a debt-free screen? Yeah, so actually, we were talking about doing the whole Dave Ramsey plan even before we got married. And so when we got married, we both actually had kind of two conflicting ideas about it. So I had the longer 10-year plan in my mind, and she had a pretty intense two-year plan in my mind. So she kind of pretty much more had the Dave Ramsey plan, and you had the Samson plan. That's exactly right. Okay, I got you. Okay.

That would be it. Yeah. And so we got married after we got back from the honeymoon. I wanted to make a big-ticket item purchase. So I brought it to her, and she immediately shot it down and wanted to talk about the debt. And so we'd just been kind of putting away that conversation for a while. And so we just been kind of putting it away that conversation for a while. And so we realized we need to have this conversation. It was actually probably the biggest money fight that we've ever had in our marriage. And it was pretty early on.

And so I remember, you know, I got pretty upset. She got pretty upset. She made me go outside and mow the lawn, which I absolutely hate. Because we were not going to pay money to mow. I downloaded your book, Total Money Makeover, on Audible. I was actually listening to your book while I was mowing the lawn. And fuming. I hate mowing the lawn. I really

didn't want to listen to you. She'd already yelled at you. then I'd yell at you. You're just completely beat down to nothing now. And I think I mowed the lawn for like three hours straight because I listened to the book the entire time. I didn't stop. Wow. And so at the end of that, I realized she was right and I was wrong.

And I wish I could just tell you I went back in the house and told her, you're right. That didn't happen. Well, I mean, he's all sweaty. He's been cutting grass. We'll cut him a little slack here. We will. My pride came into factor.

And so it was actually about a few weeks later, I went on a trip with a good friend of mine named Dane. And we had this long conversation in the car. Shout out to Dane. Yeah. And I realized she was right and I had to long conversation in the car. Shout out to Dane. Yeah. And I realized she was right and I had to have this conversation. And so all this time, actually, since that, she stopped talking to me about the whole debt thing.

She just kind of left it alone, it seemed like. And while she was quiet, I felt like God was just talking to me for the whole time. And I know for her. For me, I think initially when we had got married, Samson was being like this super sweet husband that constantly wanted to buy me things, wanted to get me like a new car and he wanted to purchase some things as well. So one of the more difficult things was in the beginning, just having enough foresight to know that even though that would be really enjoyable and sweet, it wasn't really good for our family long term. But I did kind of i had the advantage of having

lived in west africa for a year and so my whole life was in one suitcase and i never really remember feeling um upset about that or like i didn't have enough but then coming back to america i quickly became wrapped up in the consumeristic mindset again. And so for me, it was much more personal, um, to kind of get back to that place of contentedness that I was in Africa. And so apart from this whole financial thing, um, I had told God, I had a conversation with him and I said, I'm just so tired of fighting with my husband about this um if you want things to change in our financial trajectory I'm not going to say anything else and you're just going to have to handle it and so for months I just so he comes he comes back from the trip with Dana

now it's his idea yeah exactly so we sit down together and, you know, I tell her what God has been talking to me. And then she tells me what God's been telling her. And so we took, basically, we took all the money we had in savings down to our just $1,000 emergency fund, put the rest, and kind of jump-started the plan. And it's actually funny because one of the things we talked about, we had all these goals in our life. You know, as a pastor, I knew at one point I wanted to plant a plan. And it's actually funny because one of the things we talked about, we had all these goals in our life, you know, as a pastor, I knew at one point I wanted to plant a church and I knew that we wanted to have a baby. And actually this last month we planted a church in Deer Creek, Oklahoma and Hope is pregnant. We're so excited. It's all coming together. Very cool.

Very cool. So you sat down then, I guess, and started doing a budget and just took the total money makeover material and ended it from that. Absolutely, yes. Okay. Very cool. So what do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is? You pay off $95,000 in 22 months. I think, for me, the key was self-denial.

And so I did something a little bit more radical. I took a year off of shopping completely. So I didn't buy clothes, accessories, shoes, perfume, makeup, hair products. And my friends really did think I was crazy. But for me, that self-denial really taught me so much about myself and what really brought value. That was just tied to your prayer in the West Africa thing as it was getting out of debt. It was more of a spiritual walk for you. It was really, truly more spiritual than financial, but it did help with the financial aspect as well.

Oh, definitely helped. Yeah. Staying out of the mall, keep you some extra money around for sure. And for me, I would say it's being in agreement, being in agreement with hope and being in agreement with God, having that three-string cord in our life and putting him first. Absolutely. And that really changes the game when you're together. We, since then, have never fought about money to this day.

No, we haven't. That's true. Very cool. Very cool. Well done, you two. Thank you. Great story. I'm proud of you.

Thanks. Did you have people cheering you on or people thinking you were nuts? We did. So it was actually funny. We didn't tell anybody we were doing this for about a year. It took a while. Last January in a staff meeting, I told our senior pastor that we were doing this. And so the next Sunday, his sermon included us.

And so he kind of told the whole church about us. He threw you out there. Yeah, he did. And so by then, we really had to stick to the plan. Yeah, you became a sermon example. Now you've got to do it. That's very true. Very cool. Well done, you guys. Thank you. Very well done.

Proud of you. Good stuff. So we've got a copy of Chris Hogan's book, Retire Inspired, for you. We want that to be the next chapter in your story. Yes, sir. Because you've already hit these goals, planning a church, having a baby. So now it's time to move on. Let's be millionaires and outrageously generous as we go along. Very well done.

All right, it's Samson and Hope, Oklahoma City. $95,000 paid off in 22 months, making $90,000 to $100,000. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free! Woo! Three, two, one. Where'd you be? Love it. Well done.

That's how it works right there. How many couples, when they start their marriage, don't do that? Most of them don't do that. These guys start their marriage, don't do that. Most of them don't do that. These guys start their marriage and, you know, a couple bumps there, but really come to the conclusion we've got to work together. We're not hitting any of our life goals not working together. But sometimes people just go off to their corners and live the next 10 years and don't talk about this.

Instead of sitting down and saying, hey, we've got to get rid of this debt so that we have the margin to live our dreams. Having babies, planning churches, what are your dreams? What's in the way of your dreams? Financially, I'll tell you, mathematically, it's called debt payments. When you don't have any payments, you get to live the dream, baby. People ask what you're doing, how you doing? Say, I'm living the dream. you've heard the saying right that's it i'm living the dream i had a dream and i'm living it it's not and sometimes that's meant in a negative way like sarcastic but not if you're really doing it it's not sarcastic hey i'm living the dream i'd like for you to join me that's what this show's about. This is the Dave Ramsey Show.

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Jordan's with us in Iowa. Hi, Jordan. How are you? Hi, Dave. Good. How are you? Better than I deserve. How can I help?

Thanks for taking my call. I'm in a bit of a dilemma. I have a degree in business marketing. I came out just before college, which is a blessing. My husband, we put him through law school. So you can imagine that was a lot of student debt loan. So my question is, would it be silly for me to go back to school for nursing, which I've always wanted to do, when I can contribute now with my degree in business. Mm-hmm. Okay.

Have you gotten a husband's student loans paid off? No. How much are they? $175,000. Whew! And your household income's what? $60,000. Your household income is $60,000, and he's an attorney? Yeah, just60,000. Your household income is $60,000 and he's an attorney?

Yeah, just started. Okay. And what do you make? I'm a stay-at-home mom, and so that's kind of what my dilemma is, is, you know, we're now, we just started your whole program, and so we are starting, we're on phase step two, obviously, with the student debt loan, but now I'm kind of deciding, you know, now that we talked about me going back to school or getting a job, the job was obviously the first conversation. And then I decided maybe I'll go back to school because I really have always wanted to do nursing.

But that just now kind of seems silly when we are going to be in Babes Step 2 for that long. Mm-hmm. Were you in the workplace before? Nope. I, out of college, we got married and had our kids, and so I've just been staying at home since then while he was in school, yeah. Right, and you have a degree in marketing and business, right? Mm-hmm, yeah.

So really, your goal was to stay at home. What was your career goal? Well, we got pregnant in college, so, you know, it was a surprise. I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I'm just saying you have done what you wanted to do. What you wanted to do was stay home, and the only reason this discussion is coming along is money. Yes. Yeah. wanted to do was stay home and the only reason this discussion is coming along is money yes yeah so in other words let's say his student loans were all paid off and he was making 150 000 a year you wouldn't be a nurse you'd be at home well i think i would go back to school at that point

so i think that's your goal your goal is not to be at home if he was making a ton of money you wouldn't be at home i think i would want to be a nurse you can work you know part-time or full-time and i do like getting out of the house so i feel like i would still want to do that okay all right hmm it's interesting that that has come up now and not a year ago. I know. It's been crazy. You know, I probably would tap the brakes on that. If you're going to go into the marketplace right now,

I would just go get you a good marketing position, making $40,000, $50,000, or whatever you can make doing that, and then let's get his income up as fast as possible and clean up his mess. And then once that is cleaned up and the kids are a little bit older and you can cash flow and pay cash for nursing school, that's probably... Well, that's the thing is I can cash flow nursing school. And so it's just debating whether or not I want to cash flow our extra money. You have $175,000 in student loan debt. Yes. So the money you're spending on nursing school is

not going to that. Exactly. Out of $60,000 household income. So not only are you not bringing in an income, you're taking some of the income that would have been going towards the debt. So this is a double negative. Okay. So for now, I mean, I don't mind. You can do whatever you want to do, but you're just, you're piling on. You're creating a bigger problem mathematically than solving any problems. That's what I'm trying to figure out.

I think I'm, like, I don't want to create more debt. Well, you're spending money and not making money. Yes. That's what I mean by a double negative. It's a two-punch, one-two, right? And so, again, I'm not saying never go back and be a nurse. I'm saying we should get some headway towards this, get his income doubled, and get your income doubled and get

your income to 50. And then we can clean this 175 up over the next couple, three, four years, then go get your nursing with cashflow once you're debt free. And then, then that puts you in a position to do that. So if you're willing to go into the marketplace, meaning go get a job, that's probably the direction I would go. And if you're willing to go get your nursing degree today and be away from the kids, then you're willing to go get a job, that's probably the direction I would go. And if you're willing to go get your nursing degree today and be away from the kids, then you're willing to go get a job. And that's what I would do in this situation. Again, it's a temporary move to clean up the mess because you've got a big mess there. Carlita's with us in Baton Rouge.

Hi, Carlita. How are you? I'm well, Dave. How are you? Better'm well, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. How can I help? Well, I'm calling because I've actually just read your book, Complete Guide to Money, and we have whole life policies.

I'm sorry. I know. And based on your book, I know you're sorry. And we have a lot of debt. All right? If we catch out the whole life policies at this point, we were probably getting, I'm looking at the policies now, about $25,000 to put towards $68,000 of debt. Good. And I'm thinking, is that the right thing to do?

Because this is a 20-year policy. That's my dilemma here. It's been for 20 years. Does that make a difference? I know you said get rid of it, but we've had it for 20 years. Of course, over the 20 years, it was a $20,000, my husband and mine. It has sucked. It's sucked for 20 years.

It's going to suck for the next 20 years. And no matter what my agents say when I meet with him, I'm setting up that appointment. You don't need to have an appointment with your agent. You just call the company and cancel the policy. Okay. That's exactly what I was thinking based on all that I've read, based on all that I've heard. But I just wanted to be sure that even with that 20 years in.

Do you understand what I'm saying, though? If it's been bad for 20 years and it's going to be bad for 20 more years, the fact that you've lost money for 20 years doesn't make the next 20 years any better. It doesn't make that just because I'm in there, have been in there for a long period, it's going to be good because I've done that. I mean, you've been getting ripped off for a long period of time, and now are you going to keep getting ripped off? That's what we're asking.

I don't want to keep getting ripped off. Yeah, that's what I'm asking. I mean, you've been getting screwed for 20 years, and you're just going to stay in that line. Don't get out of that line. It's not working for you. Get you some term insurance in place on both of you. Get that money out of there, and let's use it towards the 68

and start working towards getting out of debt as fast as possible. That's what I would do. Vanessa's in Champaign, Illinois. Hi, Vanessa. How are you? I'm good, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. How can I help?

So, I have an auto loan with Santander and they continue to tell me the balance is going up and I'm trying to pay it off aggressively and I'm just wondering if there's any way at this point it's completely upside down.

Is there any way we can argue with them to get the balance down? Because at this point it's completely upside down um if is there any way we can like argue with them to get the balance down because at this point mostly it's just fees and interest and you know it's they're bugging me like three times a week and i've made my payment that we set up so i just wonder if there's any way to you you have a pay you what do you mean you have payments you set up? You were behind? Yeah, so we're making the payment that, you know, we owe to them. And then they call us and say, oh, you would owe another $150. Okay, wait a minute. You took out a car loan.

Were you behind on the car loan? At one point, yes. But then. Are you current now yeah then why would they call you and want more money if you were paying your monthly payment on time that's what i'm trying to figure out and every time i try to call them and get like that's not logical or so what can i do there's a whole bunch of stupid and crooked people out there, but I've never heard of a car company, when you were paying your car payments on time, calling you and bugging you for more money.

There's something screwy in your story. It doesn't make sense. Are you behind? Is it a repossession? So at one point it was repossessed, and they said that they charged off the account, but then they're still collecting the payment. They didn't come get the car, though. And, I mean, that was years ago. This is like a five- or six-year-old loan.

Is this some kind of high interest rate ripoff loan because you had horrible credit? Yes. Okay, that's why you're getting screwed around. All right, you got subprime idiots. Okay. I couldn't figure out what was going on. That's just weird. Yeah, what you do is just start hitting it fast and hard.

It's only $5,000, $1,000 a month. Go get extra chopped liver pizzas. Knock it out. Fast. And get these morons out of your life. And stay off of lots like that, man. These people will kill you. This is the Dave Ramsey Show.

In the middle of these uncertain times, Ramsey Solutions people will kill you. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. In the middle of these uncertain times, Ramsey Solutions wants to give you some hope. For the very first time ever, we're giving you Financial Peace University free for 14 days. Go to DaveRamsey.com slash hope so you can watch from home. Please hear me loud and clear. The government is not going to bail you out of your student loans, at least not completely and not without a catch. What they're talking about only impacts federal, not private loans, and you need to take responsibility for what you owe and pay your debt down quicker.

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