The Ramsey Show - App - Financial Freedom Requires Sacrifice but It’s Always Worth It! (Hour 2)

Episode Date: September 22, 2023

МУЗЫКАЛЬНАЯ ЗАСТАВКА Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work they love, and create amazing relationships. I'm John Deloney, joined by Jade Warshall, and we're taking your calls on money and life and work and mental health and emotional health and a partridge in a pear tree. Anything you got, we got an opinion on,

give us a call, 888-825-5225. Jenna is just looking alive in there, taking your calls. She's ready. Let's go out to Flagstaff AZ and talk to Garrett. What is up, Garrett? Hey, guys. Let's go out to Flagstaff AZ and talk to Garrett. What is up, Garrett? Hey, guys. How's it going?

Thank you so much for having me on the show. Thanks, man. We're having a party in here. What's up? Awesome, awesome. Well, just regarding your last section of like the whole, if you doubled your income, which I recently have, I'm super glad to say that I have a bunch of people that I was able to reach out to.

So shout out to my parents if they're listening somewhere out there. Good job, man. That's awesome. I'll just get right to the point. Not good job you. Good job parents. Good job your parents. That's awesome. That's great. Yeah. Shout out mom and dad. Thank you so much. All right. Well, I'm 19 and I really want to be financially free by 30. And I've recently started a new job

where I'm working about part-time 20 hours a week, and I'm making somewhere between $40,000 and $50,000 for the year. But I'm also a full-time student up at NAU. And I just wanted to kind of get your guys' advice on maybe dropping out and working full-time and just kind of hear what you guys have to think about that. What are you studying? Construction management.

I'm not super passionate about it. I mean, I chose it because it's one of the quickest degrees to, right out of college, you start making about $80,000 a year. It's a terrible reason to get a degree. Terrible reason to get a degree. Yeah, but I mean, I also had a full ride scholarship to NAU, so I'm basically going. That's a great reason to get a degree. That's fantastic. Yeah. But I mean, I also had a full ride scholarship to NAU. So I'm basically going. That's a great reason to get a degree. That's fantastic. Yeah. Yes. No, for sure. For sure.

And I mean, that's kind of, I don't, I know if I do drop out or take a semester off or anything, I'm going to lose that scholarship that I'm currently working on. What's your, what's your job right now? Like you said, you've doubled your income. You're doing pretty well. What are you doing? Yeah, so I'm a server. I've been serving for a year and a half now, and I started at this new job that is really popping, and I make a ton of money there. And I know that I'll probably start making even more money once I become more familiar with the job. A server at a restaurant? Yeah, it's called Fat called fat olives so shout out fat olives you guys full of the shout outs i love it um no for sure so jade you and i've never talked about this so i'm interested to hear we may give him conflicting advice what do you think oh you know my thought is

okay the server thing here's what what's easy do. Whatever the thing that's making the money, it becomes your new favorite thing, right? So I want to make sure that being a server, when you look up, because you said, hey, by the time I'm 30, I want to be financially free. Do you see yourself being a server at Fat Olives when you're 30? That's really the question. A free server at Fat Olives. That's the question you have to ask yourself. And if the answer is no, then it's like, okay, what do I see myself doing when I'm 30 and figure out what that is? And then we're kind of reverse engineering and going backwards and saying, okay, what has to be true today so that that can be true when I'm 30? Okay, yeah.

So, I mean, my main goal, I'm really good with money. I've been able to save money my whole life. I have two paid off cars right now and been able to save money my whole life. I have two paid-off cars right now and about $6,000 in the bank. So I know that with this amount of money, I want to start getting into real estate and be able to have that work for me. Airbnb as well. Hold on, hold on. You're a server at Fat Olives.

Yes, sir. Don't say it like it's a bad thing, John. You're talking about real estate. And when somebody says, hey, I'm really good with money, and you're 19, and you're going to college, and you're a server, and you're like, I got two paid-off cars, I'm going to say, you haven't borrowed money,

but are you good with money? Why do you need a second paid-off car at 19? Well, the thing is, I'm at Flagstaff, so I just bought a car. I'm actually downsizing. It was much cheaper, but I needed a four-wheel drive, and I'm currently trying to sell off my other car, but they are both paid off. Here's my two, this is just me, and you can, this advice might be worth what you pay for it, Two important things I want you to keep in mind. This is a lesson from the great Tony Robbins. When you make a goal, I want to be financially free by 30. That's like saying, I want to lose 100 pounds. And he has this great exercise where

he calls somebody up on stage and says, I'm going to put $50 million into escrow if you think you can lose 60 pounds by tomorrow. And they say, and if you do it, I'll give you the money. And like, I couldn't do that. And he goes, yeah, you could. You could call a surgeon. I'll call a surgeon and we'll remove one of your legs for $50 million. And now it's like, oh, I could do that. When you have a goal that is, it is untethered to anything other than,

I want that finish line by this date, what happens is you start, like Jade said, you chase firecrackers, and you chase the next bright light in front of you, and then you start cutting corners because what you're not talking about is building a peaceful life. You don't want to have a great marriage and have kids that love you and want to be in your presence at 30. You're not talking about building an amazing career in a business at 30. You've just given yourself this

arbitrary date and this arbitrary finish line that is financially free. And so my challenge to you is not thinking about a finish line. Think about the life you want to build by the time you're 30. What is that going to look like? And I will tell you, I've never met a 30 year old. I haven't yet. I'm sure they exist. That came back and said, I had a full ride scholarship and I quit because I was making so much money waiting tables. So glad I did that. I haven't met that person. I have met many people who wish they had not taken out a bunch of student loans. But if you were my son, if you were my brother, if you were my brother's son, and you came to me and asked this question, I would say, dude, keep waiting tables, keep making that money

and take that free college education. Learn everything you can about construction management. If you're going into real estate, you're going to learn about plumbing and foundations and begin to use that education, not just for the certificate, but for the wider conversation you're going to learn. Make friends with contractors, make friends with landscape architects, make friends with the whole system. And then you walk away with a free four-year degree that's worth its weight in gold because you didn't pay anything for it. And then you head out and keep serving at Fat Olives. And by the way, don't get into real estate. Your first move into real estate

is buying a home for you that you can afford, right? And you're understanding, okay, this is what it looks like. This is maintenance. This is all those things, that's how you're buying a home, and you're doing that later on. You graduated college, and that's when you're doing that. I don't want you jumping the gun, because again, really to John's point, you could get yourself, the biggest problem you'll face right now

is trying to go too fast and make bad decisions, because you're trying to go too fast. You got plenty of time, you're 19. So let me back out real quick and let you just in on something. You're 19. You have a full ride scholarship. You're not getting a degree in something stupid.

You're getting a degree that you could have some certifications and go out and make a great living and help people have home. You could actually help people with your degree. And you are not scared of hard work and you have no debt. And you are saving.

You are so far ahead. Very good. Any 19-year-olds. Stay on the path. Stay on the path. I say stay in school. Finish that degree. And keep serving it the fat olives.

Fat olives, you're welcome for the shout out. Hey, everybody. the shout out. Hey everybody, I've got a brand new book coming out called Building a Non-Anxious Life. If you pre-order today, you'll get 75 bucks in free bonus items. That's us trying to encourage you, gently nudge you to pick it up before it releases in a few weeks on October 3rd. Everybody's dealing with burnout or stress, chronic stress, anxiety. We just talked about it earlier. I'm anxious about what the knuckleheads in Washington in their sandbox throwing toys at each other. No, I don't want to play. I don't want to play. It's making me bananas. Listen, can't do anything about them, but we can make intentional choices every day to create a non-anxious home and a non-anxious life and a non-anxious marriage

and a non-anxious business. And so in this book, you're going to learn effective techniques to identify and respond to life's challenges and ultimately transform your life. It's 20 bucks. Go to ramsaysolutions.com. And listen, please mark your calendars. October 5th, right here at the building in the event center, we are having a blowout book release party. I'm going to stay. I'll stay all night, sign everybody's books, take photos with everybody. We're going to have some wild adventures.

If you can imagine a party that a event, if you will, I'll be speaking. We'll have some special guests show up that they let me just kind of off the rails. This is a Deloney planned event. It's going to be equal to that level of chaos. What sorts of things will transpire here, John? I'm curious. I'll talk some. We'll have some.

My wife's going to make a surprise appearance. We'll have some musicians show. It's just going to be a little bit off the rails. Here's my goal. I want people, Jade, to get in their cars and look at the person they came with and say the words. What just happened? That was amazing. What just happened?

Yes, exactly. That's the goal. That's the goal. So October 5th, it's $35. That comes with a book. And of course, we'll hang out all night. If you're going to be in Nashville, please come up. We've got people flying in from all over the country.

We'd love to have you. October 5th, go to ramsaysolutions.com or go to johndeloney.com and you can get your ticket there. I think I'll get me a ticket. You don't even have to pay. You know a guy. We'll hook you up. You're hooked up. Sam though? Sam's got to pay.

Alright, let's go to Neighborly Question of the Day. Today's Question of the Day is brought to you by Neighborly, your hub for home services. When something in your home breaks, Neighborly is the name to remember. And with the Neighborly Done Right promise, you know you'll get great service from their local network, from their network of local home service providers. Go to Neighborly.com today. All right, today's question comes from Kelly in Texas. She says, how do you celebrate wins

while working through your debt snowball? Well, I love that question. And I'm gonna say, John, that there's a two-part answer to this because it depends on how long you're gonna be in baby step two. Because if you're working through a debt snowball, that just means for the people who may not know new listeners, it means that you're

paying off your debt. You're listing them smallest to largest in order to do that. All of your debt except the house. So that's what this person is doing. That's called baby step two. And on average, most people are, you know, they're doing that between, it's taken them between 18 to 24 months in order to get that done. And there is the exception to that rule. Like my husband and I, it took us seven and a half years. So we know that there's a spectrum of time that it can take to do your debt snowball, depending on how much debt you have. So that kind of informs my two sides of this equation. If you're average and you're doing this thing in a year and a half, you know, to two years, the ways I would celebrate would be really small because I want to keep my

budget as slim as possible so that I can keep the momentum going of actually paying the debt off. So for me, if you're in that average category, a win would be like, hey, we're renting back to the future and we're watching it and we're ordering a pizza. Like that's a great celebration on a Friday night when you're in baby step two. It's not a big deal. It's not throwing you off track.

It's not costing hundreds of dollars. Conversely, if you're on the other side of the equation and you're you know this you're going to be in this thing for four years five years that sort of thing there then there's kind of a mental health component in this in this equation if i'm being honest yeah because you can't live scorched earth mentality for four and five and six and seven years that just does something to your soul it's never intended for that to be your way of life it's a temporary sacrifice right for a long-term gain it's not supposed to be like that all the time so when you're in that sort of situation

then you do uh need to build in bigger milestones and you do this ahead of time you don't just be like you know what i need a break because when you do that you'll never come back so you need to go into it saying okay when you know when the debt goes from here to here we go do this and when the debt goes from here to here we go do this set it up ahead of time and when you're uh when you have that longer period of time you can do bigger things to sacrifice or bigger things to celebrate like um if you've been side hustling for four years you're like i hate this side hustle i'm gonna quit i'm gonna quit that side hustle for a little while and give myself a break. Like that's a great way to celebrate. And then I'm going to quit for two months and I'm going to pick it up again.

If you've been driving Uber Eats for from 6am to 8am until you go to work, that two hours back feels like you just won the lottery. Oh man, it doesn't take much, right? No, that's right. I think here's an important thing psychologically, and there's some psychological research behind this. It is important, however small. If you light some candles in your living room and you all have a dance, you both make chocolate chip cookies together

and try to recreate that scene from Ghost. I don't know what weird things you all do. People do at their house. You have to mark it. You've got to mark it. even if it's going outside and just screaming as loud as you can until you're red in the face yeah you spray each other the water hose i don't know everything's sounding like an 80s montage do something to mark the moment we just paid off a 700 credit card we just paid off a 70 000 student loan mark them

because you're gonna lean back on those moments that you marked them that's why graduation ceremonies are important funerals are important weddings are important because they are markers they are moments that we all go remember that day that we said never again or that day that we want right so however big or small but it's not an excuse to yeah oh we paid off a $400 thing let's go out for a steak dinner no No. You're on to the next. You're on to the next. Exactly. Very good. Great, great, great question. All right, let's run out to Winter Haven, Florida and talk to Alden. What's up, Alden? How are we doing? Alden, you there?

Hello? Hey, man. Yeah, I can hear you guys. All right. Hey, we're up against the clock, brother, so go ahead and get right to your question. What's up? All right. So pretty

much me and my wife has built up a pretty amount of a good amount of debt. And how much? Be specific. How much debt you got? So for consumer debt, we have roughly about $55,000. My wife has a student loan of $7,000. And then we have a vehicle which is about 45 okay so is it the 7k plus the 45 or is it the 55 plus the 7k plus the 45 yes all those together okay all those together so really you're over a hundred thousand correct yeah okay roughly about how much you make? So net income we make about, monthly we make about like $43.50 a month. Okay. Yeah, so right now I'm the only one primarily at work. Me and my wife just recently had twins about a year ago,

so she hasn't fully gone back to work. So right now everything is kind of. So what's your question, brother? Yeah, so I'm just trying to see, you know, She hasn't fully gone back to work. So right now everything's kind of... So what's your question, brother? Yeah. So I'm just trying to see the best way to kind of work through that debt. Okay. My screen says that you're considering bankruptcy. Is that true?

Yes. So earlier in the year, we did kind of go through that process. You don't kind of go through it. Did you file? Yeah. No, no, we didn't. You just looked into it. You looked into it.

All right. Correct, yeah. So here's what I think. I think right now you guys are in a season. Your wife has just had babies. She's not working. You're bringing in a little more than $4,000 a month, and you're seeing over $100,000 of debt, and you're like, a hundred thousand dollars of debt and you're like oh crap right this is a lot yeah um yeah this is temporary

so i want to start by saying that like sometimes in a moment can be like oh this is going to last forever we're never going to get out but it's it's temporary your life's going to change i'm going to hold him over because this is an important call um brother alan stay on the line man and um we're going to go to break and then we come back we're gonna come back to you um okay because this is important i know you got a lot going on and jade's got some wisdom it's gonna give you some peace in your household with those um new babies and your lovely wife okay all right so hang on brother we'll be right back this is the Ramsey Show. I'm John Deloney, joined by Jade Warshaw.

We are talking to Alvin, who lives in Florida, is recently married, has two twin babies. They're about a year old. And has $55,000 in consumer debt, has a $45,000 car loan, has a small student loan, and is just feeling like he can't breathe. Does that sound right, brother? Yeah, definitely.

Cool, man. All right, so we were talking right before the break. Go ahead, Jade. Yeah, so let's look at this. You were considering bankruptcy. Of course, John and I are going to do everything we can to talk you out of that. Because in this case, if I thought it were the answer and the best answer i would tell you and i do not think it's even close to being the right answer i think that you're uh closer to a light at the end of the tunnel here than what you realize number one i mean

you're making a little more than fifty thousand dollars a year you got one hundred and seven thousand dollars of debt right now your wife is not working because she just had two babies but if she were working she'd probably be bringing in around 50 as well and you already know you can live off of one salary so you would have been debt free in one year so like i just want to put that in your brain as you're closer to the finish line than you realize okay now i want to look at this car uh forty five thousand dollars for a car is this your only is this are you a single car family or do you have another car that's paid for a secondary car um so right now that's our only vehicle so that's the only car we have yeah so we upgraded once we got the the babies oh i see so you owe you five thousand on it. What's it worth if you were to sell it?

I'm probably like 30 because we just got it about a year ago, too. So so you and you bought it brand new. Yeah. And so you taking a fifteen thousand. Did you roll negative equity into it? Because that's a big hit. $15,000? No. Because we traded in a car, but yeah, I think we added about like, it was the negative equity was about like $6,000. Okay, so that feels right. Yeah.

Okay, so $15,000. What's your credit like? Credit is not good because we've, while we were doing the process of when we looked into bankruptcy, we did speak to a lawyer and they did advise that, you know, we don't make any payments or minimum payments. So we took a couple of hits when we didn't make those payments. Okay. So we're just, yeah, we're recently just getting back on track.

Are you back caught up? Not yet. Not yet. Yeah. Okay. So $15,000 is a big hit because technically it would be 20 to, technically it'd be like 23 because I'd want you to if you were able to with your credit if you're able to get a loan for the difference i'd also want you to include enough to get a cash car

in this case i just don't think i would because you're still gonna it's not gonna make a big enough dent to truly truly matter for you um if you weren't so far upside down i might suggest it and you still could, I'm not saying not to, but you've got to decide how worth it is, how worth it it's going to be to you. Um, in order to take that hit. Do you see what I'm saying? Right. Yeah.

What do you do? What do you do for a living, man? So I do a home security installation. How secure is that job? Um, so it fluctuates. It's, um, you know, there's pretty much, you get based based off of, um, like install. So there's days you can get three or four installs and then there's days or, you know, you have nothing. So what do you do on nothing? Also there's nothing days. I try to, uh, recently started trying to do a couple of like Uber Eats, door dashing. Yeah. Um, just to try to get back cause that's what I got right

now. So I want you, I want you to keep doing that. I want you to keep doing that. I want to make sure that every day you're working at at least eight hours, whether it's your full-time job or doing Uber Eats. And then I want you to kick it up a notch and go, okay, now I'm doing my extra work and I'm doing extra side hustle. Because right now this is a season that you're going to work a lot. When's your wife due? Or she already had the babies.

She already had the babies. She already had the babies. It's been a year. Yep. Oh, they're a year old. Yeah. Okay.

Alden, I, if I'm you, um, I would sit down and tell my wife, I'm so scared I can't breathe. And I am going to spend 12 months stepping up, and I'm going to miss some big milestones in these little one-year-olds' lives, but we're playing a long game with them and i want you to look your wife in the eye and say i'm playing a long game with you

too and both of y'all had a picture of what life is going to look like with these two beautiful twins what's going to look like and that picture is still very very real it's tangible jade and i have both dug ourselves out of bigger holes than you have okay and we both know the sacrifice it takes it's gonna suck yeah but i want you to do the math i know you're you my brother are worth it your wife is worth it those babies are worth it so what does that mean you have a very inconsistent job i want you to do the math on what would happen if you walked in and became an assistant manager at a McDonald's making $18.50 an hour and you did Uber Eats from 5 a.m. until 8 a.m. and then after you got off McDonald's you delivered pizzas or you drove

Lyft until midnight. I want you making $100,000. You can go do that. And here's the deal we hear the stories every day. Every day. And those people are so tired they can hardly move their face. But they dig themselves out of these wild, crazy holes. And it's not forever.

It's for one year. Yeah, you're going hard in the paint for one year. One year. Do you have enough... Do you have enough courage to go work at McDonald's to go work at Walmart? Oh yeah. Well, yeah. Crazy thing. I used to be a department manager over there, so there you go. I have the courage. All right. Great. And Hey, I just, I just made that,

that I just made that job up. I just know that I'm looking at these service jobs that are $15 an hour, $16 an hour, $20 an hour that they cannot fill. And I know it sounds cooler, like, no, I do security installs, but you and I both know that's a sketchy schedule. It's feast or famine. It's good. And right now you don't have time for feast or famine. You need all feast all the time, right? That might mean I'm going to stock, be a nighttime stalker at Walmart. I'm going to do the night shift, stock boxes, and then I'm going to get off

and I'm going to drive until my eyelids start to close on me. And then I'm going to go to bed and sleep and do it all over again. I'm going to miss my family for 12 months. For all human history, men have been leaving their families to go do what they had to do for a season.

And this is that season for you. And on the other side, dude, what's he looking at? And that's the thing. Like we get so caught up on this side and this side's painful, but on the other side, there's peace. On the other side, here's what happens on the other side, John.

You're not thinking about all the things you did. It's over. It's over. It's over and done. And all you're looking at is, man, these are the spoils of my hard work. This is the fruit of all that we did, all that we sacrificed. And life is good, man.

And you know what the spoils are for this guy, for you, Alden? It's you rolling out of bed and your wife hands you a cup of coffee and these two knuckleheaded three-year-olds come barging all over you. I love it. You got nowhere to be. Your work doesn't start for another hour and a half. You can even get a workout in if you want to, if you to be crazy but everything changes there's a bunch of snack crumbs everywhere everywhere crumbs in your sheets from these kids and you just say get back up here anyway it doesn't

matter because you can breathe man yeah i love that and then your wife gets to go on a date again because y'all have money in the account every everything changes everything everything changes hang on the line here's what we're going to give you i'm going to give you fpu financial peace Because y'all have money in the account. Everything changes. Everything. Everything changes. Hang on the line. Here's what we're going to give you. I'm going to give you FPU, Financial Peace University. I want you and your wife to watch these lessons, these videos. These can be date nights because you ain't going out on dates anymore for a while.

Also, I'm going to give you every dollar for you and your wife to use. It's going to link to your bank. We're going to stay away from bankruptcy. And y'all are going to practice for the first time talking about money, sharing the same account. You're going to lean into this thing together and this is the best tool on the market for that. And it's going to help y'all plan your get out of debt tools. It's going to take care of everything. Stay on the line here and we're going to hook you up. Call us anytime you need anything. We got you. I'm proud of you, Alden. Yeah, it's big time. I really am. It's big time. This is one of those moments that a husband and a wife say, we're done. Yeah.

We're done. And you'll be stronger for it. And you and Sam had that. Me and Sheila had that. Look. Both of us are smiling right now, Alden. Because he's going to look back and it's going to be the greatest blessing of his life that they went through this. I'm just saying.

Gosh, dude. And then after that, run for Congress, because they need somebody like you there. This is The Ramsey Show. We'll be right back. If you are watching the news headlines and you cannot fathom how we owe $33 trillion and they're having fights about the dress code. You can't even wrap your head

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We're best friends. All right, let's go out to Salt Lake City, Utah, and talk to Sophie. What up, Sophie? Hello. So it's good to be on the show. My husband and I started listening a couple weeks ago. We have been pretty stressed on our finances lately. No contention, but, you know, it's stressing us out a bit.

And we started looking into the first couple baby steps. We have the $1,000. Great. So that's good. But we're really like, there's not a ton of wiggle room in our budget every month. And we're looking at the stock all investments. And we're wondering if HSA is counted in that investment group. Would you stop HSA? Yeah, contributions. Yeah. So that's super. I'm glad you brought that up. So for anybody listening, baby step two is the step where you're paying off all of your debt except your mortgage, right? And

in order to do that quickly, you want as much margin as you can get your hands on. And one of the ways to do that, obviously you can get your income up, you can get your expenses down, but a big way, like just a low lift way is to pause investing so right now uh sophie how much are you guys investing like whether it be in your hsa 401ks so we stopped our 401k last week when listening to this awesome um but our hsa is probably about 500 a month going into today. Yes, ma'am. Heck yeah, I'm stopping that. It's temporary. And that's the thing I want you to hear

and anybody else listening. When we're telling you to do this, it's a temporary pause because we know that it's far more important for you to get that money back into your hands every month so that you can get this debt paid off so quickly. It's going to make your head spin. And then you're going to have so much more time and so much more money to put towards investing.

I mean, percentage wise, I'm not sure what you were at before you started the Baby Steps, but I guarantee you'll be able to put a higher percentage when you're finished with Baby Step 2, and it's going to make up for any difference in time. Does that make sense? Yes. Okay, before you get off go ahead sophie go ahead um as far as hsa goes i was planning like i was thinking that was going to be your answer that was my guess but i have about 1700 in medical bills that need to be paid would you because we had a baby this year i was gonna actually ask that question so to jade so if i know i've got to have my kids braces tightened three times that needs to be paid, would you, because we had a baby this year. I was going to actually ask that question. So to Jade, so if I know I've got to have my kids braces tightened three times,

that's, that's less about investing in an HSA. That's just putting money aside that you know you're going to spend. And it's just a little bit of a loophole, right? Yeah, it's a loophole. I mean, if you're, if you just want to filter it through the HSA so that you're getting the tax advantage, that's totally fine. I mean, I, that's what Sam and I did. I didn't have a situation to where like my job was alt you know uh automatically putting money in an hsa i would just say oh this this medical debt is 700 i'd filter it through there then when tax

time came i was able to show hey this was a medical expense it went through the hsa that's fine if you want that tax savings i'm not mad at that but the idea of um just every month yeah compounding it there and not only that but i still want to make sure that you're filtering all this through the the debt snowball and i want to make sure you're doing them from smallest to largest even with the medical debt because with medical debt here's the thing let me just be honest in some cases with medical debt time is your friend because it's like, hey, I've had this debt for a minute while I've been doing my debt snowballed. You guys want to make a deal and they're going to make a deal.

Every hospital is going to make a deal and you're going to pay less than what the bill was. So there's kind of a silver lining on that. Yeah, I like that. I like the idea of being intentional. And I'm with you. If you know you've got medical expenses coming and you want to just funnel it through that. Yeah, that's great.

That's smart. That's savvy. So good. Love it. All right, let's run it to Detroit Rock City and talk to Chase. What up, Chase? Hello?

Hey, man. What's up? Hi. Thanks for having me on. Of course. What's up, man? My wife and I are new to the baby steps and we're living paycheck to paycheck

and we're struggling to even baby steps and we're living paycheck to paycheck and we're struggling to even get the thousand dollars for the emergency fund with the bills that we have and to pay the minimums on the bills that we have. I just want to know where do we start? What do we do? And like, what are the order of the things like of importance that we need to make sure we get paid first and go from there? Yeah, that's good.

Look, let me first of all say I get it because when Sam and I started our journey, we didn't have enough money to pay all the debts. Like there was not enough money coming in. And that for us was the big thing. It's like, okay, like we got to get more income coming in. So my question to you right now is what is your income? I make about, it ranges depending on how many hours i work about eight fifty two thousand dollars a week uh she makes i mean if she paid her she works at a daycare so half of that goes to the daycare cost we have twin girls that we just had last year oh great um so what she brings home

about 200 a week after the daycare cost. Okay, so $800. A month? Okay. So you guys are about around $4,800 a month between the two of you? Yeah, and it will range depending on how many hours I work each week. And what determines how many hours you work each week?

The jobs that we have. I do service work for a petroleum company, so the amount of jobs that we have. I do service work for a petroleum company, so the amount of jobs that we have in that day, depending on how long it takes. I usually work around 48 to 55 hours a week.

48 to 55. Okay. We're about to double it. Yeah. I want there to be more stability in what you're earning. I don't want it to be like, oh, on this down week or on this up week. I want every week to be an up week and I want you to be

able to control that. So whether that's tacking on a side hustle or that's doing the same type of job in a different scenario where you're having more of a steady income, I'd love to look into those options. How much debt are we talking about? Including the mortgage or not including the mortgage? Not including the mortgage. So baby step two is all of your debt except the mortgage. We're looking at around $71,000. Okay, $71,000. All right. We got a little something ahead of us. So with this baby step one, help me understand what's keeping you from getting the $1,000. Because I can tell you statistically, most people are able to get the $1,000 saved within 30 days. And that's not just working their job. They're going, they're looking in their garage, they're selling stuff. They're

getting crazy in order to get that thousand dollars and i think that might be you might be lacking some intensity in that area so week to week you know we we go through we we don't have like a monthly budget so we try we go paycheck to paycheck so we try to figure out where all the dollars are going to go from week to week um okay so that's that mine ranges a bit. And then hers is usually steady, but so there's our first, there's our first issue. I want you guys to do a monthly budget and we're going to give you every

dollar before this call is over, because on every dollar you can plan out each paycheck when you're going to get it. And they've got a feature in there that's called paycheck planning. So you can decide ahead of time. Okay. The water bill comes out on this day and the mortgage comes out on this day and the daycare thing comes out on this day. And you can plan all of that ahead of time

so that you can see for the month. Because sometimes you need a broader picture, not just a weekly picture. So you can see really what's going on with the money. And I think that's going to help you a lot. So monthly budget, and we do a different budget every month budget every month because every month is slightly different, right? It's not a set it and forget it kind of thing. And then the second thing is getting that income and getting more going into the debt snowball, right?

So you can get this thousand dollars saved quick and then we're attacking that debt. It's a process. That's right. It's not going to be quick. Let me just say. And you're going to have to work and work and work and work and work.

But there's no more going home when there's no jobs. You're going to Uber Eats. You're going to be quick, let me just say. And you're going to have to work and work and work and work and work. But there's no more going home when there's no jobs. You're going to Uber Eats, you're going to the office, you're going to figure something else out. No such thing as a down week. This is The Ramsey Show. We'll be back soon. Hey, it's Dr. John Deloney. If you love the show and want a deeper dive on your money journey, we have a weekly newsletter that gives you trending and helpful articles and tips on following the Ramsey way. Just go to ramsesolutions.com today to sign up for our newsletter. Again, that's ramsesolutions.com to sign up for our weekly newsletter.