The Ramsey Show - App - Finding the Balance Between School, Work and Sports (Hour 3)

Episode Date: May 17, 2019

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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. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. You jump in. We'll talk about your life, your money. It's a free call at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225.

Carrie is with us in Cincinnati. Hi, Carrie. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? So we have read the Total Money Makeover, and we're in the middle of Baby Step 2,

and I'm also in the middle of reading Smart Money, Smart Kids for my kids to understand, you know, not to basically learn from our mistakes. We have three kids. My middle son is 14. He's going into high school. He plays sports, especially football. He actually has a couple of colleges already looking at him. However, we don't have any savings for him to go to college at this moment.

And I know scholarships aren't guaranteed. I know there are academic scholarships, which he'll probably get with a 3.6 GPA that he's got. But my question is, is that how do you balance the, you know, the classes he's taken in school, you know, football that can be five, six days a week, and then he does baseball as well in the spring and summer, and then saying, okay, now we got to to figure out how to come up with more money to help pay for the tuition if you don't get a scholarship. Okay. Well, what's your household income? Our household income is $120,000.

Okay, and you have three children, and you're in Baby Step 2. When do you think you'll be paying off your debt in Baby Step 2? Well, right now we've got 90 in student loans ourselves that we're trying to get through. So we're hoping to be done by the time not only my son is in college, but also my stepson who will be a sophomore. So we'll have two in college at the same time. So I'm trying to tell them we'll hopefully be able to help you, but I can't guarantee it. I think you'll be out of debt, and you'll have your emergency fund in place,

and it may be that you push pause on retirement because you're cash-flowing two college bills. Right. And making $120, you can do that. It's just going to be painful. But it's not even more painful than what you're doing right now to get clear of debt. I mean, you're not going to i understand that but i also want yeah so the balance is is that um you know you go ahead and start coaching them on um on a couple of things one is obviously you need to take take proper classes to get you prepared for school. Two, you've got to keep your grades up because that may be the way you end up going to school.

And, you know, there's nothing wrong with sports as a way to go. I mean, student-athletes are wonderful. And, you know, it's just they're not going to have a lot of other stuff going on between studies and being a student athlete. But that's also true if they are in college. You play football in college, you don't do anything else except study and play football. That's all you do. Right. Is there a point where we go, okay, you might not get a scholarship for school.

Now we need to start buckling down for you to start raising money for school. Well, I don't think they're going to be the source of that. If they don't get a scholarship, you're going to be in a position to help, and they're going to be in a position to work. Right. And they're going to choose a school that's inexpensive that the two that you working and them working can get them through if they don't go scholarship somewhere and so the other thing is i go ahead i start talking to mine at 12 and 13 14 years old about college choice

oh yes we've already told him he's going to a community If he does not get a scholarship He's going to the community school If he gets a scholarship, he's going to the free school Exactly This is if he doesn't get the scholarship He already knows there's a plan A and a plan B If he doesn't get the scholarship To go to whatever school

If he's going to the community school And he'll go to a local school It's just I also don't want Mom and dad's going to a local school it's just i also don't want yeah but in other words if he gets mom and dad's going to give him a free ride either if he got if he has a coach whispering in his ear that he needs to walk on someplace and not get a scholarship and another coach offering him a scholarship he's going to the place where they offered him a scholarship absolutely so yeah go ahead and get his little brain trained on that idea right now oh he's already been

trained on that he's asked a couple of times like where am i going where the money is yeah there you go where the best where the best deal is and if there's two deals that are 100 paid then you can pick the one you want and we'll help you and we'll help you do that too we're going to be involved in that decision so yeah you're you're right on track you're going to be fine i think this just gives you a lot of motivation to be at baby step 3b by the time that these two uh first two get into school because you're going to be largely cash flowing it if they don't scholarship and likely both of them aren't going to scholarship. So that would be an unusual family if you had two scholarship athletes. So, you know, but it can happen. But you're right.

But I can see my way to where your income for three or four years, you're not going to be pouring into retirement. You're going to be pouring into kids' college so they don't have a $90,000 student loan that you have just cleaned up in your life. So, yeah, you're getting there. You have a plan. You're thinking about it. You're talking about it.

This is how people win. The way people screw up with money and screw up their decisions on where to go to school and what to spend on school and what to study is they don't half but pay attention. They just wander on off, and they don't think about it and um all we did at the ramses we weren't some kind of we didn't have any scholarship athletes and we didn't have any academic scholarship people at our place none of them um they weren't i mean they were smart enough to get into school smart enough to get through uh and uh you, the only sports they played were for fun, you know, intramural or whatever. But we did have an abundance of common sense.

And that means that we were intentional and thoughtful about what you're getting for what you're paying. And so they went to schools that we could easily cash flow and that we could see a good ROI, a return on the investment, what we spend for the education versus what you make. And there is no correlation between spending $100,000 instead of spending $20,000 and it changing your income. There's just not any. It's all hogwash. You cannot find a single piece of research that shows that where you go to school causes you to succeed.

There's not a single data point anywhere except in people's brains. But no one in reality can actually prove that. And so you just have to stop and think. What are we going to do here? And it's one of the reasons that we're calling for Congress to do away with the Guaranteed Student Loan Program, because it's hurting people. People are being harmed by their own government. These kids have gotten themselves in trouble, y'all.

And it's Congress's fault. Because they let this go on too long. It should have been stopped a decade ago, and it needs to be stopped now. The guaranteed student loan program needs to go away now. You're harming your own children. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. I get asked all the time about what people need to do to improve their family's money situation. Two of the most overlooked things are term life insurance and disability insurance. Both plans make sure that you have income to pay bills and take care of yourself and your family

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Call 800-356-1780 or visit zander.com and compare online. That's 800-356-1780 or zander.com. Well, I talk a lot on this show about your offensive game plan with money, how you earn and invest and get your debt paid off and that kind of thing. But a defense is just as important as an offense if you're going to win the game and there are 10 kinds of coverage that wealthy people use and they're things you need depending on your lifestyle and life stage and family situation you need to have the different right kinds of things in place as a defense mechanism. And so we developed a thing that's completely free called the five-minute coverage checkup. We'll rank your to-do list by importance and email you the list so you can get your plan in place really fast.

If you take the five-minute coverage checkupup just takes five minutes and it's free so get your phone out and text the word checkup to 33 789 completely free checkup to 33 789 or you can just go to DaveRamsey.com slash checkup, and you'll be able to do the five-minute coverage checkup completely free there. Maya is with us in Minneapolis. Hi, Maya. How are you? I'm doing great. How are you doing?

Better than I deserve. How can I help? So this morning, my husband and I hit submit, and we fully paid off all our student loans, and we are completely debt-free as of this morning. Yay! Yeah. So we're blessed.

But the thing I'm running into is after a year, because we both graduated last May, neither of us know how much is too much for, like, a fun budget, and we're both naturally savers. And I know you always talk about you can save, invest, give, and spend. And so I was just wondering whether percentage-wise or like kind of how to spend money, I guess. Yeah, okay. Good for you. Well, we'll go on to baby step three and make sure your emergency fund is in place. And then you start putting 15%.

That's a percentage in baby step four of your income away for retirement. And when you lay out your budget, then you're going to look and go, gosh, I'm putting 15% in investments. I'm doing giving as a part of generosity as a part of my monthly budget. And I'm spending giving as a part of generosity as a part of my monthly budget, and I'm spending X or Y. And if you are spending so much that you cannot invest or be generous, you're spending too much. If you're investing so much that you are not enjoying any of your money, then you're investing too much. And so you're right. Those three things, you need to learn to enjoy money. But the problem is that there's not a perfect stasis, a perfect percentage that you need to arrive at.

The problem is most people don't do all three. They do one or the other or two to an extreme, and they leave out one. Like they don't do any generosity because they invest and spend it all on themselves. Well, that's not going to work for you long term. That's not a healthy character position to be in. Or they give it all away, and they don't have any money invested for their future, and they never enjoy any money because they give it all away. No, that is not a proper view of generosity.

That's just strange you know and so just doing some of each and it will change over time and as you build wealth it will change what you do how much you do of each what percentages you do of each for instance the percentage that sharon and i of our income that we use to enjoy is very, very small. But we have a ridiculously large income. And so it doesn't take a very, very small percentage. We get to do ridiculously crazy, wonderful things. But percentage-wise, the vast majority of our net worth, of our income, is in generosity and in investing. There's very little of it is on lifestyle, and yet we have very nice lifestyle.

But that's changed over the years back in the day you know just getting a decent car finally was like god finally we got rid of the old blue astro van you know y'all remember those we had a blue astro van god that thing was so lame uh sharon wanted rid of that so bad you know finally we got the suburban you know to use, a kid hauler, right? And she drove that for a little while. And then we got a used Lexus SUV. And, you know, and so, but pretty soon the cars were no longer a thing. And so, but you'll just, you'll go through different phases of how, of what percentages go on these different things. That's what I'm saying.

And you're just, you're at phase one of that. Let me send you a copy of the book the legacy journey it talks a lot about wealth which is kind of what we're talking about right now uh they're all the other books i've written are about money and the legacy journey is about wealth and it's um now warning it is written from a purely christian perspective and so if you're offended by Christian stuff, just use it as a thing to line your trash can or something. But I'm going to send you one anyway. But it's all about what God says about wealth. And it's not a prosperity thing. I'm not a prosperity guy.

But I'm not against success either. And neither is the Bible. So anyway, we'll send you out a copy of the legacy journey proper view of wealth because that's kind of what you're struggling with here dylan is in austin texas hi dylan welcome to the dave ramsey show hey dave thanks for having me on your show sure what's up um so i've got a couple of quick questions for you. My fiance and I, we just moved to Austin a couple of months ago, and, you know, it's pretty expensive here. But so we're renting an apartment, a one-bedroom apartment right now. What I was wanting to do is I thought about, you know, within the next couple of years, having enough money saved up and maybe trying to possibly get a manufactured home, because that's about the most cost effective thing that I've come across here. to know would it be a wise decision uh to get something like that would the value go up on it if i put it maybe on an acre of land or something no trailers don't go up in value trailers go down

in value okay yeah mobile homes don't increase in value now if you put it on a piece of ground the piece of ground might go up in value more than the trailer goes down in value and make you think it all went up in value. But it was the dirt that did it, not the mobile home. Yeah, yeah, I understand that. So it is not cost effective in the long run because your housing is going down in value, and it's the most expensive thing you've bought. So you're going to be better off to save and do a traditional home purchase after you all are married. So just spend a little bit more money and get something that you know is going to go up in value.

Exactly. Exactly. Okay. Because, I mean, you could buy a really nice $70,000 double-wide, I mean, or $100,000 double-wide. Yeah, that's what we were thinking about. Yeah, they're very, very nice. Maybe getting a double-wide. But then visit that $100,000 or $70,000 item 10 years from now.

What's it worth? $30,000. $30,000. And if you spend $100,000 on a little condo of some kind and visit it 10 years from now, what's it worth? $150,000. Yeah. So what about maybe turning it into an investment property or something? It goes down in value.

It's not an investment. Investments are supposed to go up in value yeah don't buy one okay because the thing is right now where we're renting at we're we're spending um upwards of maybe 1200 a month listen you do whatever you want to do, honey. Don't buy a mobile home. Dave Ramsey just told you that, okay? You go decide what you want to do. Thomas is with us in Houston, Texas. Hey, Thomas, how are you? Oops, wait a minute.

I'm going to come back to you after the break. I'm bumping up onto a commercial. Wasn't watching what I was doing. Got sidetracked. I do that sometimes. Squirrel! This is the Dave Ramsey Show. We'll be right back. Amy is in Portland, Oregon. Hi, Amy. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Oregon. Hi, Amy.

Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Thanks for having me. Sure. What's up? Well, I'm calling to do my debt-free screen. I love it. Good for you.

How much have you paid off? Me too. I have paid off $97,885 in 35 months. Woo-hoo! And your range of income during that three years? Well, around $98,000 up to about $114,000. Very good. But I want to kind of backtrack.

This is my fifth year of nursing. I went back to school and became a nurse. And, you know, five years ago, basically started at nothing, zero. Wow. On food stamps and head housing and have just worked my way up to where I am now. Amazing. So you're an RN. Correct.

And you made $114,000 in the last year. Yes. And you went all the way to subsidized housing and food stamps all the way to the bottom and then came all the way to the top. Yes, yes. How did you end up in that mess well so um i i got divorced i went through um it was a pretty pretty rough time um for myself and my two girls um abusive relationship but um but throughout, I started working in banking at an early age.

I was about 21 years old and worked my way up to a loan officer and had been in the banking industry for about 20 years. And so when I got divorced, it really was a wake-up call for me to really decide, you know, if I want to make a change, now's a really good time to do it. And so I quit my job and kind of got into nursing school, and I just put my whole heart into basically going for a different, new, better dream. Wow. And so you've been out three years? Five years. Five years. Okay. What happened three years five years five years okay what happened three years ago that made you decide to attack the debt well i um my my last year of

nursing school i was commuting about two and a half hours um to clinicals and um during that time i was able to um listen to you on the radio and um i knew once I was done with school that the next right thing to do was to tackle this debt and get it paid off. I wasn't smart going into school. I wasn't, I was kind of indifferent to borrowing money, coming out of the banking industry for so long It just was what you did And I knew, like I said, that it wasn't the smart way And if I wanted to really build that legacy

And be what I wanted to be, not only. So what flipped the switch three years ago? We're going to attack this. You've been out of school two years at that point. And it was two years of transition. And I sent some photos, but I have two girls, Rachel and Lauren. And my youngest daughter, Lauren where she was safe and comfortable. Gotcha.

You know, because we had to change schools. I mean, there's just a lot that goes into planning. But you knew there was going to be a point where you would be able to say on the debt ready set go and that was 35 months ago it was it was i i got to a place where um every everybody was stable so to speak and what a journey you've been on i mean you've been on a serious journey so what do you tell people now that you did this in 35 months i think the getting out of debt is the small part of your story probably but 35 months what do you tell people now that you did this in 35 months? I think the getting out of debt is the small part of your story probably, but 35 months, what do you tell people that the secret to getting out of debt is?

Well, coming from, you know, I heard the call yesterday of the woman, kind of similar in my circumstances. She was a single mom of four, found herself homeless, you know, put herself through nursing school, and I heard you talk about you're not defined by your past, or those labels that kind of came with it, and that was a huge transition or transformation for me to get to the point where I decided that I was not going to just merely survive and just accept the bare minimum and get me to a place where I am winning. And so now my motto is I'm either winning or I'm learning. And I'm tired winning or I'm learning. And I'm not.

And I'm tired of learning so much. And I'm tired of learning so much. Right? Right. That is great. I love it. Well, congratulations. Thank you. What a deal you've been on.

How old are you? Thank you. I am 48 years old. Oh, man. And so this is awesome. And now you're an RN and everything's paid off and you can make serious bank and you're going to be able to put together a very, very serious level of wealth by the time you get to retirement.

Very good. I'm proud of you. I have a proximity principle story if you have time to hear it. I don't. I'm out of time. I don't want to mess up your dead free scream is what I don't want to do. That's too important with everything you've been through. But we'll make sure Madison collects it, and we'll get you on the King Coleman Show and do that, okay?

I would love that. Yeah. But anyway, so we've got a copy of Chris Hogan's book for you, Everyday Millionaires, How Ordinary People Built Extraordinary Wealth and How You Can Too. Very cool stuff. And if you don't have a copy of Ken's book, we'll send you one of those since you gave him a shout-out anyway. Okay? So we'll send you both of them.

I would love that, too. All right. Very cool. Way to go go kiddo amy in portland oregon all the way from a divorce into subsidized housing and food stamps all the way out now she's a nurse paid off 98 000 in debt in 35 months made 114 000 in the last year count it down let's hear a debt-free scream three two one i'm debt free i love it well that right there tells you the truth, doesn't it? And the truth is windshields in cars are bigger than rearview mirrors for a reason. Rearview mirrors for looking at the past.

Windshields for looking at the future. Yeah, you get to decide. You get to dial it in. Are you going to turn left? Are you going to turn right? Are you going to go up that hill? Where are you going? You get to decide.

You get to make those choices. The dignity of choice. Did you see the number of choices that lady has made in the last decade? Oh, my gosh, what a hero. See, you get the dignity of choice. You put yourself in a proximity of something, like Ken Coleman says, and you say, I'm not defined by this. This is I am passing through.

You know, Mike Todd used to say, I have never been poor. I've only been broke. Poor is a state of mind. Broke is I'm passing through. I've never been poor. I've only been broke. She was broke. I was broke.

Some of you are broke. Some of you are poor. Some of you are poor. But that was a decision. Broke is, I'm just passing through. It doesn't define me. It was just that bad thing that happened to me once in the past. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. I'm going to go ahead and get started. Our scripture of the day is Psalm 9, 9 and 10. The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble.

Charles Spurgeon said, trials teaches what we are. They dig up the soil and let us see what we're made of our question of the day comes from blinds.com they have a 100 satisfaction guarantee this is a bizarre guarantee it means even if you screw up that if you mismeasure your blind or you pick the wrong color for the shades they they're going to remake them free. You get free samples, free shipping, and with the new promos every month, you save even more. This is an incredible company, the largest seller of window blinds on the Internet. Use the promo code to get the best deal, Ramsey.

Alan is in Virginia. My son's been attending a really good private school in the Norfolk, Virginia area since the sixth grade. Since attending this school, we've paid anywhere from $6,000 to $7,000 a year for tuition. Since my wife has returned to work, they're now requiring us to pay for $14,000 for a year for eighth grade. We're on baby step two with the last debt being $14,600 on a car. Our combined income ranges from $120,000 to $130,000, depending on overtime. Public school systems are bad, but I'm not sure this is wise. What should I do?

Well, it's 10% of your income, a little more than maybe 12% of your income. I suspect your wife is making more than an an extra five thousand dollars or six thousand dollars which is what this is costing you uh by her going to work so the net net of their increase in tuition and her increase in income is that you have a higher household income than you used to have after tuition you have more left over after tuition than you used to have even with their increase unless your wife is only making $5,000 or $6,000 a year, which is not the case. Okay, so if you've made the decision that this school is the path, then you've got the money to work it through, and you've got the money to get your debts paid off, and you've been kind of lollygagging along, and you need to get with it. You need to lean in and get with it. Sharon and I had our two kids in an expensive private school

when they were in kindergarten and first grade, even up into the edges of second grade. And it had two problems with it. One, it was expensive, too. It was on the other side of town, so all we did was drive all day long back and forth back and forth back and forth all day long and we just knew this was not a sustainable lifestyle so we made the decision back then a million years ago to move to an adjoining county where we live today that had a much better school system than the one we were scheduled for at the time and um so the schools are in the county we live in are ridiculously good the public schools are

and so um number one in the state and um you know in and always scores very very high nationwide as well so just excellent excellent people uh by and large and an excellent uh experience we had with the public school system from from that point on from the first second grade on uh for the oldest one and you know so on so that's a possibility i don't know if you move to a different county in adjoining county where you get a better system if you don't want to pay the bill but that's what we did and it's partly because we didn't want to pay the bill um and so um i you know i i if you want to do this and it's a it's there's three reasons that people do private education for a child uh prior to college uh one is the quality of education two is the safety and three is sometimes there is a religious affiliation you know they're catholic

then with their kid in a catholic education they're christian they are they're evangelical christian they want to be in a um an evangelical christian education situation um those are both understandable um higher you know higher uh scores is understandable safety is probably the most understandable of all three um but there's always more than one way to skin a cat and i think sometimes we use uh rationalization like we do with everything with our kids to do stuff that we just want to do and um there's you know wonderful private schools in our immediate neighborhood a lot lot of our friends' kids went to those schools, and our kids did not. And, again, I can find no data points that say that that is a precursor to success,

that it leads to success. It doesn't. There's no data point that says people went to that school more successful than people didn't. And that's probably true of your son and the thing you're dealing with there. So you just got to look at it and make a choice that feels right to you guys. And it just cannot be a super high percentage of your income. But in your case, it's not. So you're okay.

Thomas is with us in Houston, Texas. Hey, Thomas, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave, how are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Okay, so I've been having issues with my money. I've probably made over, I'd say, $100,000 in six years as a waiter at a good restaurant. Basically, I've made really bad financial decisions over the years.

I'm getting ready to go to university. I paid cash for my associates, but I have over $25,000 in debt. I mean, literally, earlier this month, I completed Baby Step 1, was in Baby Step 2, but then had an issue with my car. Luckily, I had an emergency fund, but I could pay like almost 50% of my income in debt. And, I mean, I'm just having issues, Dave. I want to, you know, change my life. I'm tired of being broke, and I'm tired of living this way,

and I'm sick of it. How old are you? 24. I'll be 25 in July. Cool. What are you studying? Finance. Good for you.

Okay. All right. Cool. What are you studying? Finance. Good for you. Okay. All right. Excellent. Well, you didn't get into the mess quick, and you're probably not going to get out of it quick. It's a good thing you started the process. You had your $1,000, and you were able to fix the car. That's probably going to happen again. You had to stop and rebuild baby step one. Then you can start baby step two again but um you're going to be working like a maniac in order to reduce debt and pay for school you're going to work all the time uh and and so your social life that you've been doing up until now just disappeared if you want to change your life for a short period of time you're going to be completely out of balance

you're going to boot camp and you're just going to work all the, you're going to be completely out of balance. You're going to boot camp, and you're just going to work all the time. You're going to work three different jobs, whatever you've got to do, and you're going to have the money to go to university because that's a big deal. You need to do this. You need to follow through on it, and you need to clean up this other debt. Here's the good news. $30,000 changes your whole life. Doesn't it?

Yes, sir. Yeah. So go get it. Go get the $30,000. And that's doubling how much you've been working. You know, $100,000 in six years, I mean, that's $18,000 a year. That is not that much money. So you haven't been working that much or you've got a bad waiter job you don't have a good one so kick it into gear baby this is game on and it's the faster you earn the more

you work the faster you're going to clean the mess up and turn your new future into what you want it to be but you control these controllables they're up to you i mess up and turn your new future into what you want it to be. But you control these controllables. They're up to you. I think you can do it because I think I can hear it in your voice. I think you're ready. I think you got that thing going, that head bobbing thing. Like, yeah, baby, I'm on. You know, when you start doing that, that's when you're getting ready to change things.

I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. And that's exactly where you are, Thomas. Very, very, very proud of you hold on i'm going to send you a copy of ken coleman's book the proximity principle i have a feeling you need to be in proximity to some different things than you've been in proximity to the party is over young man it is time to work and that's how you will transform your life you can you'll have time to enjoy and recreate later but it is time it is time to earn money for a short period of time here it's not to change your value system it's not that we value money over life or something like that that's not it

at all some of your broke friends and your old party friends are going to think you've lost your mind, which means you are on track, sir. You can do this. It's very doable. And you've just taken the first steps. But if you've got that healthy disgust in your voice that I think I hear, you're going to be able to pull this off. You got this, man. Get after it. That puts this hour of the Dave Ramsey Show in the books.

Our thanks to James Childs, our producer. Madison filling in for Kelly Daniel, our associate producer. I am Dave Ramsey, your host. We will be back with you before we know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily. With the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus. This is James Childs, producer of The Dave Ramsey Show. Did you know you can now listen to The Dave Ramsey Show on Pandora and Spotify?

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