The Ramsey Show - App - Don’t Trade a Life-Giving Job for Soul-Sucking Debt

Episode Date: March 31, 2022

Ken Coleman & George Kamel discuss: Pursuing a career you love at the cost of soul-sucking debt, Where we can agree with Graham Stephan on building wealth, Deciding between two jobs, What happens when you take out a business loan and then the business fails. Want a plan for your money? Find out where to start: https://bit.ly/3nInETX Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts: https://bit.ly/3GxiXm6

🎵 Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, this is The Ramsey Show. It's where we help you live your best life by being healthy, relationally successful, professionally, and peaceful financially. I'm Ken Coleman, joined by my colleague George Camel with a K, 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. George and I are here for you today together. And so you know this show if you've been listening for any amount of time. But if you're new to the show, we really are helping you in those three major areas, relationships, your professional and work life, and your financial life. They are all interconnected.

And so George and I are here for you. Listen, if you've got a really sticky situation and you feel like you need someone to help you today, but it's private in nature, Kelly is standing by. She'll change your name, your location. I just want to reach out to you and say, hey, come on.

We'll protect your identity because we want to help you get that breakthrough that you need. You ready to go? All right. Can Kelly change my name while we're at it? Kelly can do a lot of things. Very powerful. Wouldn't put a pastor. I would not. I would not. Let's start with Sebastian, who joins us in the City of Angels, Los Angeles. Sebastian, how can we help? Hi. I totally did not expect to be on the phone. I just called randomly. Well, great. I thought he called the wrong number for a second.

Did you want to order a pizza, or did you want to talk to us? Because we can help you with both. Oh, man. So I'm 21 years old, and I actually just sold my car. I got it with equity, actually. I sold my 2014 Mustang. Those gas prices were killing me. That car was just sitting down.

So right now I'm saving myself about like $700 a month now because of it. Nice. And it was just sitting there. So my question to you is I've made that mistake twice. I've bought two cars of those, sold them. I probably lost about like $8,000, $9,000 in those cars, but oh well, they were fun. I'm an EMT at the moment. I'm an emergency medical technician. I work for minimum wage and I don't want to be here forever. So I want to pursue nursing actually, nursing school. So at the moment, I am wondering whether

I should take my time with it. I can go full-time if I want to, finish all the prerequisites if I need to. But the problem is I can get waitlisted for like three, four years and might not even ever get in. Now, there's another option. It's called West Coast University, and I can get into student loan. It's like $140,000. No, no, no. Stop. Not a good idea?

Stop. No. You don't need to go into debt for $140,000 to be a nurse. And I'm going to tell you why. There's a lot better ways to do it. We'll break that down in a second. But let me just lead with the bumper sticker. Sebastian, any love or passion and purpose you would have for nursing will quickly dissipate within months of watching that massive student loan debt come in the mail. It's just going to kill all joy for loving on people. Do you understand what I'm saying?

I do. It's worth waiting for. It's worth waiting for. What are your options to do this? What are your options to do this without taking out debt? I don't have to. That's the thing. But I don't know. I think I'm just more like, like, I want to help people, but I also want to be making the money. I get it. I get it. You just ignored everything I said, Sebastian. Your response was, but I want to be making more money. And you think making more money as an RN is going to be the better trade-off. What you're not hearing is, George, give him an idea what those debt payments, what that's going to look like and feel like emotionally. Walk him through

that. Sebastian, what do you think you'll make your first year as a nurse i heard they're making average in california i'm pretty sure they start like maybe 70 80 000 that's correct in three days okay yeah oh yeah 70 80 thousand dollars so that's 70 grand after all the taxes are taken out and you live in california so there's a lot of them you're going to be left with as much smaller take-home pay. And then out of that, you're going to be sending a huge chunk of that, probably 30, 40% over to Sally Mae to pay off the student loans that you thought were a good idea. And then, like Ken's saying, you're going to be miserable because you're going to be stressed out about the payments every day you come into work going, how am I going to even put food on the table this week? How am I going to live my life and do the things that I want to do? Man, this was a bad idea.

So I can see that future for you, and we don't want that. We know there's other ways you can do this. We know there's much more affordable alternatives. We know that you can extend your timeline and cash flow the experience so that you can graduate without debt and actually enjoy the work you do. Yeah. Sebastian, did you get the math that George just laid out for you? How much of that $70,000, $80,000 are you actually going to be able to live on?

Not much. All right, now listen. So George just gave you the financial breakdown. I want to come back to the emotional thing that I led with. Because if you do what George says and you do it and you know how to do it and you do it debt-free, there are going to be some long days as a nurse. True or false, Sebastian? Yeah. There are going to be some heavy days too, the stuff that you will see. Am I right, Sebastian? Yeah, definitely.

I was just working on the ambulance. I know. So Sebastian, if you're debt-free, you're going to be able to withstand and press through those hard, long, heavy days. But if you're not debt-free, in the midst of all that weight from the work, you will walk out like a zombie going, why am I doing this? And then you're going to call the Ken Coleman show, because I get these calls. Ken, I'm burned out. I'm trying to stop you.

I know, but Sebastian, I'm trying to stop you from that. You're on the front end of this deal. You can make a little bit more money. Why not go get a second job? You're 21. If you want to supplement your income, go do that, man. But stay debt-free in the pursuit of being a nurse. I beg you to stay debt-free.

Can you do it? I can do it. I know you can. Here's your homework, Sebastian. Go find the most affordable option to go to nursing school. Then let's do math and go, okay, what's this going to take for me to be able to cash flow this? What scholarships can I go apply for like it's a part-time job? How much can I work on the side to begin to save up for this or even work while I'm in school?

Then you develop a game plan, and when you take debt off the table, you're going to get creative. You're going to start going, all right, here's my game plan. Here's how I'm going to do this. I could save $10,000, $20,000 a year, and I can cash flow this thing in two years. Good. Let's do that. That's right. You got it, young man. You got your marching orders. George gave you good homework. Be a good student. Do what Uncle George said. And if you want to put the fear of God in you, please go watch the Borrowed Future documentary that we released. Oh, great call. Goodness gracious. There's no human being that can watch that documentary and walk away going,

I think student loans are all right. You'll get a good job at the end of it. Life will be okay. No. The horror stories, and they're not cherry picked. This is happening all over the country. People are really struggling. And I have a lot of empathy for those that are struggling with student loan debt. They feel like they got conned. And the truth is, if you keep waiting on the next president to fix your problems and get you out of debt, you're going to be waiting a very long time. And so you've got to own up to the thing that you signed up for, the student loan, the interest rate you didn't look at. It's on you. And the good news is you're the solution too. You can get out of this. Folks, listen to me. I'm the guy at Ramsey Solutions that talks about making more money and experiencing more meaning.

And you can. But listen to me. If you find that dream job and you're in a horrible, horrible pit of debt, that will weigh on you. And all of the dream and all of the love and all of the passion won't matter. Take it from me on this don't go into debt for your future this is no matter what time of year it is focusing on your family's financial plan is always a smart move. I get questions all the time about where to start and what to do first.

One of the most crucial and affordable first steps to take is to protect your family and get term life insurance. I know it's not glamorous, but all the other steps mean a lot less if something happens to you and your family has no financial protection. Getting term life insurance needs to be a top priority. I recommend 10 to 12 times your income and lock in rates for 15 to 20 years. This gives you plenty of time to get out of debt and build wealth. I've been recommending Zander Insurance for over 20 years and they understand and live this strategy and will take the time to help you find the most affordable term life rates. Go to Zander.com or call 800-356-4282.

It's not that expensive, it's not complicated, and you need to do it now. The Ramsey Show continues from our Nashville HQ. I'm Ken Coleman, joined by my colleague, Ramsey personality, George Camel with a K. I think it's going to stick. It's helpful. I think people are learning slowly. I do. I want people to know about you because you're an awesome dude. You're doing great work. I think it's going to stick. It's helpful. I think people are learning slowly. I do. I want people to know about you because you're an awesome dude. You're doing great work.

I appreciate that. It's been fun doing lots of shows with you recently. Yeah, second or third one this week. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're going to bring you the practicality that people long for, but we're going to have a little fun while we do it. That's not illegal. No.

We can have fun while you work. George and I like to have fun. By the way, he sits right next to me. So your desk is three feet away. And now we just moved about 20 feet over from our desks to have fun. By the way, he sits right next to me. So your desk is three feet away. And now we just moved about 20 feet over from our desks to the studio. To continue to sit next to each other. That's what we call a double blessing. That's what we call the proximity principle.

That's fair. Oh, boy. The unnecessary book promotion just dropped in there. All right, let's get to the phones. It is a free call, 888-825-5225, 888-825-5225. Let's go to Indianapolis, Indiana, where Ray is joining us. Ray, how can we help? Hey, guys.

Thanks for taking my call. You bet. What's up? So I had an interesting last six months. Lost a couple jobs over the last two years and just due to COVID. And now I'm working in a place, working in a factory. And in the last six months, they're now promoting me, which is great. But I also just had an interview recently and might get offered a job in marketing, which is why I left.

The problem I'm having is marketing would pay more, but where I'm at is probably a lot more stable. So I guess my question is, are my fears justified in wanting something that's purely stable, or should I take a leap on something that's going to be a little bit more opaque? Why is the current job, or the other job, let's call it the non-marketing job, why is that more stable in your mind? Bigger company. It's a bigger factory.

There is room to grow and places that I could go, other jobs I could get here. Do you want to go up that ladder in that factory, or do you want to move up the ladder that the marketing job will provide? Marketing wouldn't provide any kind of upward trajectory. Why? Because of the location that it's at, I would basically be doing the same job. I mean, I could be there 10 years, but I'd be doing the same job. Okay, and so you don't want to go into marketing.

You would rather go in. What would be the upward mobility type jobs at the factory that you're at? You know, I could work in packaging. I could work, you know, just a lot of different jobs. I mean, some of them I have no interest in, but some of them, you know, again, would offer more upward mobility. It's just there. I don't think I really have a passion for them either. Okay. So that's a problem because my point is that's just a J-O-B.

So you're talking about upward mobility into something that you really won't have any juice for. Do you love the idea of doing marketing? Forget that it's a limiting position in that company, but do you like the idea of marketing? Is that something you enjoy doing much more? Yes. Okay then. So here's why I would take the marketing job. I take the marketing job to get out of the factory world, which you don't want to do. I would get into the marketing world and now we've got experience and oh, by the way, a nice bump in pay. Is that true? Yes.

So we take the bump in pay. We get all excited about that, but we're really taking the job not for the bump in pay. We're taking it for the experience. You got your ticket into the marketing world. That experience that you're getting is going to be huge for you, and we know going in I'm not going to be at this company for a long time because I want to move up, George. And they're not offering the opportunity to move up, but it doesn't matter because I can move up by moving on. I see way more options than Racy's. You're not stuck at this company forever.

If you don't move up within a few years and you feel like you've gained experience, guess what? Another company is going to hire you for marketing because of your experience. That's right. So I take the marketing job with a mind of, I'm going to do a good job in the present. I got to win in that role. They'll be looking six months to hit the eject button and get out. I'm going to go in and crush it. And I know I'm going to crush it because I'm going to put everything I can into it because I see a and crush it. And I know I'm going to crush it because I'm going to put everything I can into it because I see a future in marketing and I know that there is a much better chance

of me getting to that future faster if I win in the now and then the opportunity for the next will come from another company. So you have a false narrative right now. If I go to this marketing company, there's no opportunity in advance. That's not true.

If you're good enough, they'll create a position for you. Or, again, you're not limited to stay in that company. You can go move up by moving on. So there you go. All right, let's go to Blake now in Atlanta, Georgia. Blake, how can we help? Hey, how's it going today?

We're having a blast. What's going on with you? It sounds like it. It sounds like it. Okay, so quick question. I don't really know exactly what to do about the situation and i'm trying to find some some legal advice as well i don't know if you came to the right place me and ken are both attorneys at home yeah george goes by esquire here in the office we don't even call him george great great great um okay so i had a

business prior to covid it was a remodeling business. I did very well. COVID hit. A lot of my crews took unemployment. A lot of my guys took loans for their own LLCs and left. And I made the decision at that point in time to try to survive and keep the business going. So I took out a loan. It was an unforgivable loan at the time because my crews were not employed. They were all 1099.

None of them were W-2. So I could not get that forgivable loan. Now I'm in a situation where my business did not make it. I had to go and get another job. And I still have this loan to pay back, but it's a loan on a business that's no longer operating. That's a big problem, Blake. It's one of the reasons why we, especially business owners, tell them to do it with cash. This is the equivalent of me taking

out a student loan and I don't finish college. There's no way to say, well, hey, I didn't finish college. Do I have to pay it back? Yes, you took out the loan. How much do you owe? So it's a $96,000 loan. Is that all of your debt, personal and business? No, no, I have a little bit more. What else is there? I have a car loan, which I drive a car. That's about $30,000. And I have student loans, which is about $12,000.

How much is the car worth in this market? It's a brand new car, 2022. It's a $35,000, $36,000 36 000 car well today you get to sell a car my friend because you are i can't i can't i feel like i can't because you know i drive for my current job wait wait wait george was not george was not saying you need to be fred flintstone i didn't say you you can't drive a car i said you can't drive a $36,000 car when you're broke. You owe $30,000 on the car, yes? Yes. So net six grand. Go get yourself a six grand car.

Yeah, I love – George, I'm going to pull up some – George, help him out of debt. I'm going to pull up some great $5,000 cars online just to prove the point. This is one of my favorite things to do. I always saw Ken as a used car salesman. No, I'm just an interweb researcher. Here we go. Yeah, so just real quick. So I tried to do that, right?

I tried to do that. And every time I buy a used car, especially in that price range, which I totally understand and I get that, you know, I'm constantly putting money into it to keep it running. Well, stop buying crappy cars. Get an inspection before you buy it. Yeah, well, I drive about 150 miles a day, so it needs to be a car that's extremely dependable. I got you, Blake.

Get a Honda or a Toyota. Let George help you. I'll have suggestions shortly. Let Blake stop. You're going to lose this. I'm going to help you out. I'm going to get him a reliable car for five grand. George, help him out.

Blake, we're getting a Honda or Toyota sedan. Hey, I'm trying to come up with those. It's happening. You're jumping ahead of the game. Well, I'm just telling him what he's going to be looking for. You're going to find the exact car

and prove to him that it can be found. I'm going to the Atlanta area. You can drive 150 miles a day on a Honda or Toyota and it'll run forever. You don't need a $30,000 car. You're justifying

why you need a super expensive car while you're broke because you drive a lot. That's true. Right? Agreed. George, what do you make? What's your income?

About $150,000. Whoa! That is some good news, Blake. That's awesome! So once we sell this car, you are down to your $12,000 in student loan debt and then your business debt, correct? Yes. And so we're going to do the debt snowball. We're going to take all the money you have and everything but $1,000 we are throwing at that debt.

In order. The debt snowball. Smallest to largest. We're ignoring interest rate. We're going to knock out the student loan in a few months. Then we're going to attack the business loan with a vengeance. And then we're never going to touch debt again. Agree to agree?

I agree. Boom. We got there. And Ken's – I'm seeing cars on Ken's screen. I've got a Subaru Forester for $5,200. I got a Ford Focus. Blake is going to look so uncool in this new car, and I love it. I'm sorry.

Ford Fusion, $4,800. All of these, not mechanically expensive to keep up, and I'm running out of time. I'd have much more, but I've got to get to a break. Blake, you got this. This is the Ramsey Show. I'm Ken Coleman, joined by George Camel. And we are here for you this hour, 888-825-5225. We're talking about your money life.

We're talking about your relationships. We're talking about your work life. We're talking about your relationships. We're talking about your work. All of those are interconnected, and if you are losing in any one of those areas, it can affect the others, and we are excited that you're here. We're also excited to look out into the lobby of Ramsey Solutions to see Josh and Emily on the debt-free stage. Welcome. Thanks for having us. You bet. Where'd you guys

come in from? Sunbury, Ohio. All right. Very nice. That sounds lovely, by the way. Well, thank you. Yeah, absolutely. And you guys are here to do your debt-free scream. How exciting is this? Oh, we've been waiting. This is awesome. All right. Let's get the details. All right. So how much debt did you pay off? $149,400. $149,400. And how much time did it take to pay that off? 22 months. 22.

Whoa. George, I detect some intensity. Absolutely. 22 months. All right. And what was your range of income during that time? Started out at $120,000. And when we finished, we were right at $200,000. Oh, wow.

What do you guys do for a living? I'm a firefighter paramedic. And I'm a software engineer. Ooh. Okay, so what was the cause of the bump? About what? $80,000. I got a promotion.

Nice. Way to go, mama. And then I had a pay bump and a lot of overtime. Whoa. Nice. So this is both of you getting after it. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome.

How tired are you right now? It could be nap time. That's awesome. So what happened 22 months ago? So it was the start of the pandemic, and I was taking care of all of our finances. And so all of that burden fell on my shoulders, and it always felt like he had to come to me and say, can we this can we fit this in to the month you know can we afford this monthly payment

and I was always the no person or yeah we can but deep inside it's like we really shouldn't do this wow and so and so what what happened then did you know about Ramsey Solutions Dave Ramsey what was the the moment where we go okay who's going to help us do this? Or how are we going to do this? So Emily had actually seen it on Facebook, on one of the ads. Okay. Because we're getting two weeks free. Yes.

In the very beginning of the pandemic, Dave did a two-week freeze trial. So we binge-watched FPU in that first two weeks. Wow. Our social media team loves to hear that. That's very cool, man, the impact there. So what kind of debt was this? Everything. We had 21 different accounts.

What? Anything from credit cards, student loans, multiple cars, a timeshare. Wow. So you got out of the timeshare? No. No. That was not able to happen.

We paid it off. Okay. Paid it off. Well, we know that, right? How do you keep up with that many accounts? No. No. That was not able to happen. We paid it off. Okay. Yes. Paid it off. Well, we know that, right? We're debt-free. How do you keep up with that many accounts? That feels stressful on its own.

Right. We had good online banking, but we didn't ever want to move banks because I'm like, there's so many in there. I can't move them all. Wow. So I didn't detect much of a story here, Josh. So when Emily kind of brings this up, she says, hey, Facebook ad, two weeks free. She brings it up to you. I didn't detect a lot of pushback.

Did you jump in pretty willingly? Yeah, I did. One of the big causes was when we were a few months prior, we had looked at, you know, when could we retire? How much is this going to take? And when we looked at what we actually had left over at the end of the month, we're like, well, we won't be able to retire. Um, and that's a, was a big thing for us. You know, what can we leave to our kids? What can we live on, you know, after our work life is over. So when she found that online, it was like, this is a blessing. Wow. So you guys binge watch. Yes. Did you quickly get some momentum?

Was it hard to kind of get going? Talk to us about after the binge. It took us a little while to get through all the accounts and actually list everything out. And we were still finding things. That was huge. An eye opener. We did an Excel spreadsheet and listed them all out. I'm like, shoot, there's 21 there.

You know it's better when the hardest part is just listing out all the debts, not even paying it off. Oh, my goodness. So we got the ball rolling, and that was definitely an eye-opener to see that we could make this snowball work for us and not against us. And you realize you're working too hard to be this broke. You're going, we make six figures. How can we not do this?

I asked her that a lot. We can't afford this, but we make this much money. Was there a point in the journey? So we got a 22-month journey. Was there a point you look back on and you go, okay, we got real momentum here. We felt it. Then we were like, okay, now we can see that this is going to happen. Once the student loans went away, I was like, ooh. Those are finally gone. We don't have to deal with them anymore. How much of the $149,400 was the student loan? Roughly.

Oh, gosh. Probably $45,000. Yeah. Wow. So a big chunk there. And then he sold a bunch of stuff. Yes. What was the hardest thing to sell for you emotionally?

Emotionally, probably a barn, actually the material for a barn that I had bought a few years prior. I was going to put up on a property and I said, you know what, let's go and get rid of it and take the money. I mean, I sold that everything from that to tools. And then just to finish everything off, I sold another truck. Wow. So you delayed the dream of the barn to clean up the nightmare. That was your reality. That's powerful. That is strong. So what's the key? What would you say to people that are listening and watching your story right now? What's the key to getting out of debt? I think just focus and paying attention to what's going on around you. So we looked up and realized we were almost $150,000 in debt, and we didn't really even know how we got there.

So, you know, understanding and learning, you know, all about finances and understanding that, you know, there's a lot of money going out the door every month, and we had no idea where it was going. And get yourself keyed in with a support group, with a key group of community members. A big thing for us was our church. That and a nonprofit for first responders for mental health and suicide prevention. So we were able to get really tied in with a couple of key groups that helped a lot for that support. That's incredible. Well, we're so proud of you guys.

You're heroes. And thank you for your service as a firefighter. That's absolutely incredible. So you guys had a lot of cheerleaders. Did people think you were crazy too? Yeah. Yeah. A lot of the people at work definitely couldn't understand it. They're going, what? Why are you doing that?

You don't need to be doing that. That's fine. Payments, you can make the payments. That's what they would definitely say. And now they're going, wait, how'd you do that? Tell me more. It's amazing. So we see a little bit of that support group over there to your right in the lobby.

We've got the kiddos, Nicole and Jared. I mean, we want to bring them up. But what does it mean when you look at those kiddos now every night when you tuck them into bed and know you guys are debt free? What does that mean to you as a dad, as a mom? When I look at them truly, I just think that they won't have to live through that same thing. They get to see the example of how to manage your finances. And we're getting ready to start the kids program, the junior program with Nicole. How old is Nicole?

She's six, almost seven. And Jared is? Two. Oh, my goodness. So amazing. Well, a couple things we want to give you to honor you. Hang on. Are they ready? Is Nicole going to scream?

She's ready to go. We're not ready to go yet. We've got two gifts we want to give you. One, we're going to give you a copy of Dave's Total Money Makeover for you to give to somebody else. And we're also going to give you Dave's latest book, Baby Steps Millionaires because that's what you're on the path to becoming. You're going to do it and it's going to be unbelievable.

So we want to give you those two books. All right, so are the kiddos ready to go? Nicole, have you been practicing? Ready, buddy. She says yes, George. She's ready to go. Josh, Emily, Nicole, and Jared, they're from the Columbia, sorry, Ohio area. They paid off $149,400 in 22 months, making $120,000 all the way up to $200,000.

Josh and Emily, take it away. It's time to hear your debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free! So awesome. Little Jared got into the act. He was on mom for a little bit, and then he got down, and he's all fired up. And, George, what a lovely reminder of what this is really about.

When we say things like financial peace, it has a very personal application. And in this case, look at the little man. He's excited, and one day he'll get to watch this footage and really understand what that celebration really means. I like to think about that. This will live on YouTube forever. It'll still be around, and he'll go back and watch and say, my parents did that to change our family tree.

I love it. Man, powerful. So good. So proud of you, Josh and Emily. Two beautiful kids. Their lives forever changed, Nicole and Jared. This is why we do what we do. This is why we're here for you today.

There's somebody listening, somebody watching today that feels like it is impossible. And I hope you've paid attention to just a bit of the story that we heard from Josh and Emily. They did it. Millions of others have done it. And you can do it too. We believe in you. We're here for you. Stay tuned. More calls, more breakthrough coming up on The Ramsey Show. Welcome back, America. You are joining the conversation here on The Ramsey Show. I'm Ken Coleman, joined in George. George got a little too close there. Joined by my colleague George Camel.

It's excitement. That's all. I'll tell you what I'm excited about. So we've been doing some fun TikTok videos where we show a video. And for our listening audience, you're going to get to hear the audio as well. And we comment on it. And some of them have been stuff that we think is kind of ridiculous. And so we

critique it, if it's a nice way to put it. Now, if Dave's on, he goes, you know, it's a rant. But that's what Dave does, and we love that about Dave, you know what I mean? Spoils his supper, but makes for great, great broadcasting. So today, George, I'm teeing you up here because we have a different clip, one that we are not critiquing. We actually go, you know what? Some good stuff in this, and maybe people need to hear it from somebody else.

And today, our star guest contributor via the old talk, as I like to call it, George hates that, is Graham Stephan. Tell me about this Graham Stephan, because he's in your lane. You're the millennial. You're the cool kid around the block. I got three teens. Yeah. So Graham, he's 31 years old, close to my age, and he's a big deal on YouTube. He's got 3.74 million subscribers, and his channel's all about finances. Mainly, he focuses on real estate investing and other types of investing. And so he made a lot of money at a young age in his 20s, became a millionaire through this process. And

he makes a whole lot of money now, about $6 million a year through all of his YouTube ad revenue, sponsorships, affiliates. That's extraordinary. And so he's a good kid. We disagree on a lot of things. Our views on debt, very different. Our views on investing, very different. But I saw this clip and I thought, you know what? He actually has something interesting to say here that I think we can all agree with. All right, so let's roll it. I would say the smartest financial decision was probably investing in real estate and living. No, I would say is living below my means, living so extreme for so long i would say it really was not until about

it was a year ago when i started like spending money a year ago and even then it's it's not been like frivolous stuff but a year ago i wasn't even in here i was in an 800 square foot duplex it was a one bedroom one bathroom um worked from the garage, and I had kept that up. I mean, I was doing even over a million dollars a year, still living in that same 800 square foot duplex in mid city. Like this is I don't want to say it was like a bad area, but like when you think of the income, you don't think of like mid city L.A. Absolutely not. And yeah, and I just didn't spend any money. And that was the best financial decision ever.

This house was the first time I had ever done something for myself, was this. Wow. Look at that. So this is a youngster, social media star, living below his means. Yeah, and he started with, well, my best financial decision I ever made, real estate investing. And he goes, no, no, no. Yeah, I like that. He backed it off.

You know what it was? Living on less than I made. And that is a principle that we can definitely agree on. This man was bringing in a million dollars a year, living in this 700 square foot place. He could have got a nicer place, but he said, you know what? I'm going to sacrifice for a period of time so that I can achieve my bigger goals. I don't need to get all flashy now and have this lifestyle creep. Now that I make good money, I'm going to go spend it and be real flashy. And so I really respect his hard work, his sacrifice.

He's a hardworking dude. Even today, making those YouTube videos is not easy. And he puts in the work. And I think aside from us disagreeing about leveraging debt and doing the real estate his way, I think we can agree that we need more young people who are willing to sacrifice, who are willing to not compare themselves to other people, who are willing to do the hard work to get to where they want to go. What's at the base of that, George? There's a real takeaway too from this. Because of a successful young guy like this what he's saying is without saying it he was focused on the future not the present if i'm present focused hey i'm making a million dollars i'm going to start living it up i'm going to spend it if i'm future focused i don't even realize

i don't even think much about my 800 square foot duplex he didn't say that yeah but that is synonymous among all successful people, whether we agree with the way they handle their money or not. Successful people have a focus on the future. They make decisions that are not based on the now. They make decisions that are based on the future. So the now becomes prioritized. It's like I will make great decisions in the now if I am focused on how they affect my

future. That's another big takeaway that I don't want young people to miss. One of our debt-free screamers recently said, you got to have a vision beyond Friday. Man, I love that. I'd like to steal that. Yes. I hope no one was listening to that. But I think that's at the heart of that. A lot of these young people, they follow Graham, they follow his YouTube channel, they subscribe because they want to be like Graham. They want to be wealthy at a young age. They have options and freedom and meaning and all this kind of stuff. They don't want to work until they're 65 in a job they hate.

You rally against this stuff all the time, Ken. But I think at the heart of this, the young people need to understand that you can get rich quick, but you can lose it even quicker. Oh, boy. And the way you keep your wealth once you build it is by living on less than you make. It's truth. It's truth. It's truth. Just look up some of these high-profile athletes that have blown hundreds of millions of dollars. He's one of my favorite fighters of all time.

But if you want to look out for the caution, Evander Holyfield. My goodness gracious. We're talking about unbelievable earnings, and you can spend it so fast. So on the way up, learn how to live on less than you make. Really good stuff. Good stuff. George, thanks for the clip. Yeah, we had to be a little bit positive here.

See, who says you can't learn from the talk? Well, that's the TBD. But there really is some great content. The same people that are rallying against TikTok are also watching Instagram Reels and sending them to me. Oh, they're watching videos on Facebook. Let's be honest. It's all the same. Videos is a video.

Everybody's got their social media opinion. All right, let's go to Ben now, who joins us in Phoenix, Arizona. Ben, how can we help? Hey, I appreciate you guys taking my call, and I appreciate you guys just doing this. It's very encouraging. Oh, I appreciate the call, man. How can we help you today? So I've never been amazing with money.

I'm kind of the opposite of that last guy, but I want to be better. But I've always kind of bought everything I can, and I finally just am about to finish college and just got a job where I feel like I'm, I know this is a stupid opinion, but prior to now it didn't feel like I made enough money to save any money. And so I feel like I'm in a position where I can, and I'm trying to be realistic and look at all my options, and I've been looking at the benefits,

and my wife and I are trying to have a baby right now, and I'm trying to decide on health care is my main question. Do you guys think it would be better to go for a nicer health care plan that's certainly more expensive because we're trying to have a baby and because we're likely going to need, you know, a lot of that money, or to go for a cheaper one and do an HSA. I heard you guys talking about HSAs the other day, and I don't know a lot about them. You guys seem like you kind of like them, but I don't know much about them. Yeah, absolutely. It's a great question, and you're right. There's a lot of differences with healthcare plans,

and when you're looking at one and you're going, hey, we're going to have a baby, you may not want to go with the quote cheapest plan in this stage of life. Now you can always change health insurance down the road, but I would be talking with your employer. They probably have a point of contact with the insurance company. I'd get in touch with the insurance company and I'd find out exactly what this is going to look like. Lay out the scenario and say, hey, how much of the bill are we going to have to foot if we have a baby? What does it cost? What procedures?

What appointments? All of that. And then you can start to look at it and go, all right, it's $1,000 more, but it's going to cover the procedure where we would have been in the hole for $2,000. Okay, this is worth it. So you don't have to go with the top of the tier health insurance, but I also may not choose the lowest one either. So it may be somewhere in between, but you've got to do some research and get some more information before you make a decision.

Yeah, and Ben, you are not on your own. George makes a very good point. Your company will have some representative who can at least help you with all those choices and decisions, or they'll get you in touch with the insurance company who is the representative. And you need to take George's advice. You'll take the fear out of this. You're quite intelligent. You can make the right decision once you understand all of the options.

So, you know, just look at it. Apples to apples, you know, pros, cons, you and your wife and sit down and go, what do we think is best for us? And I think you'll find that you're going to have some options and it's going to be okay. And I also want to say, you know, I got three kids. They're teens now. And George, you're yet to be a dad. I hope you're going to be a dad.

You're going to be a great dad. Thank you. But it is a scary thing to bring a kid into your world. And it sometimes is scarier than it needs to be. Yes, they are expensive. No question, man. They're like sinkholes. We love them to death.

But it's not as expensive in some ways as you think. You can do it. It becomes a budget line item. It becomes a budget line item. Follow our steps here at Ramsey Solutions. It's baby proof. It really is. All right, coming up next, more of your calls.

This is the Ramsey Show. Hey, folks, Ken Coleman here. Did you know The Ramsey Show is one of the most popular podcasts in the world? It's your daily dose of advice on life and money. Check out all of our shows from the Ramsey Network wherever you listen to podcasts.