The Ramsey Show - App - Having No Debt Lets You Live Life On Your Terms (Hour 2)

Episode Date: June 29, 2023

Rachel Cruze & Ken Coleman answer your questions and discuss: What to do when your spouse isn't on the same page and continues to financially sabotage themselves, from the blog: How to Survive Divorce: Protect Yourself and Your Finances When you don't owe anyone anything you have autonomy and options, from the blog: 10 Characteristics of Debt-Free Living "Should I invest in a company 401(k) as an intern?", How to pay off debt with an inconsistent income,  from the blog: How to Budget With an Irregular Income Mastercard is joining Ramsey Solutions and finally trying to get users to cut up credit cards - but for a different reason, How to choose a side hustle in while in Baby Step 2.  from the blog: 27 Side Hustle Ideas to Earn Extra Cash Have a question for the show? Call 888-825-5225 Weekdays from 2-5pm ET Here's an EveryDollar deal just for our listeners: get a 14-day free trial PLUS $15 off your first year of premium. Click the link below and start budgeting today! www.everydollar.com/TRS Want a plan for your money? Find out where to start: https://bit.ly/3cEP4n6 Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts: https://bit.ly/3GxiXm6 Interested in advertising on The Ramsey Show? https://ter.li/s64ye3 Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

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🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the pods, moving and storage studio, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth,

do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. I'm Ramsey personality, Rachel Cruz, hosting this hour with fellow Ramsey Personality and bestselling author and good friend, Ken Coleman. And we're taking your calls, America. So anything in regards to your money, your job, your career, your work, your relationships, give us a call and we will talk through your situation and we'll give you our thoughts and hopefully give you some guidance on what to do next. Now, if you've been listening to the show for a while and you're enjoying it, please consider sharing the show. Word of mouth, you guys, is so, so helpful when it comes to people hearing this message and getting hope in their life. So share, like, subscribe, leave a

review, all the things. Again, it helps with not just the algorithm of all these platforms, but also it helps more people get this show so that they can hopefully change their life. So we're going to go to the phones this hour, and we got Josh first up in Virginia Beach. Hey, Josh, welcome to the show. Hi, guys. Thank you so much for taking my call. And I really want to say God bless you guys and your ministry that you do. You help a lot of people. And I listen to your show all the time.

So I appreciate all of you guys and what you do for us. Thank you. Thanks, Josh. I appreciate that. How can we help? I have kind of a complicated situation. I am currently doing the baby steps. I'm going through Financial Peace University.

I've been doing the every dollar budget and really been hitting this hard. I'm married. I've been married about four years. My wife is not on board with much of the financial improvement. And the complicating thing with that is she keeps threatening me with divorce and separation. I pay 100% of our bills and I feel almost like a prisoner in my own home because I help support not just myself, but her and her son. I have a 12-year-old stepson, and I work full-time as an ER nurse. I travel for work, and I go to school full-time and hoping to change careers. So I've kind of just been at just kind of like a mental breaking point.

I don't know exactly where to go and how to find peace at home, and it's just something hard to deal with. And I listen to you guys all the time, and I thought you'd be a great place to reach out to. Is the threatening of divorce over the FPU steps, or is it something else? No, we're not on the same page with just about anything. Financially, we've been separate the entire time we've been

together. It's worked for us. I know, Rachel, you're big on having a combined account. The hard part about this situation is she has financially sabotaged herself to the point where I'm okay with the separation. I want what's best for everybody. But she cannot support herself and her son. Okay, so let me just put a little caveat. When we do talk about combining accounts, we think it's very crucial. And when it doesn't happen,

we always say there's a reason why it's not happening. And it can be a multiple reasons, you know, if they were burned before in a divorce and they're scared or they want the control, like whatever, there are reasons of why that doesn't happen. And our push is always, okay, let's get to the reasons that isn't happening. So for you, just in that one example, as you said, the reason is, is because she financially has sabotaged herself. And has she sabotaged herself in other areas too, Josh? Not just money? Is this, this sounds like every part of your marriage, you guys just aren't, you're not a fit.

What caused you guys to get married in the first place? Was it different four years ago and it's changed? Yes. From when we first met, everything was great. I mean, we were really in love. Things were great. We actually met on vacation and just kind of doing a distant dating thing for a while. And as a traveling nurse, I took an assignment out here to kind of test how things would go.

It went very good. And then she went through a really ugly custody issue with her son and her ex. And I really tried to step up and, you know, be a good man and support her and her son. And I've been doing that. And the, um, the, the difficult part is, uh, I didn't find out about how bad some of the financial stuff was until after we were married. Um, and there was a multitude of things, but, um, I've been trying to support her and actually in getting into the financial piece and, uh, trying to work through the Ramsey steps. I was like, Hey, you know, we're not on the same page with a lot of things, but let's, let's maybe do this together. It might be like a team building

thing. Like, Hey, let's get excited about something. Let's do this together. And it's just opened up a can of worms that i just did not know was there and you know i i talk all the time about trying to help her but now i i can't and it's really okay so not to get too technical josh i'm just like the money side you called for the money so i know ken can probably probably speak into some of the other parts of this, but for the money specifically, what has caused her to sabotage herself financially? Is it that she spends too much? Is it that she's not working? Is it that she, yeah. What, what is, what's the main, the main reasons? Okay. I'm sorry. I know I'm kind of all over the place.

No, you're fine. You're fine. No, no, you're great. So she's actually an accountant of all things. So she struggled with personal finance where, you know, I know she took out a lien against her vehicle, which ended up breaking down. It was about a $10,000 loan against the car, which the car was, you know, not salvageable. So I ended up having to give her a down payment for her to get another vehicle. Uh, I know I found out that she's taken out loans against her retirement and her credit score, like I think it's in the low 500

range. So even though we were trying to go through this process of potentially separating, she can't even get approved to get an apartment on her own. So she's still living with me because she can't go out on her own. And for the last six months, even though we're basically separated, but living together, I pay a hundred percent of the bills. And I just kind of feel almost like a prisoner in my own house. And I've been trying to be a good Christian, man. I can't, I can't foreseeably just like, Hey, I'm going to break the lease. I'm going to move out. You and your son have to figure something out. Well, she has a lot.

She obviously has a lot of brokenness in her life and in her story that is not dealt with. And it's coming out sideways in all these different ways. And so have you guys done therapy? Have you guys done marriage counseling? Do you have a good church home? Do you guys have a pastor? Do you have a local therapist that you've seen at all? Have you gone that route? We've done couples therapy twice, and she actually even joined in on a phone call.

Twice, like two sessions? Two different, no, two different therapists, like 20 sessions. And then she actually met with me and one of the Ramsey coaches recently, and even that didn't seem to help. Okay, so Josh, do you want to fight for this marriage or do you feel like you guys have decided this deal is done? Where are you at? I believe it's done.

I just don't know how to do it with being a good person, being a good man and, you know, not leave them high and dry because I just, I have a hard time with that. So here's what I would recommend. I think you need to go see some counseling on your end and get as healthy as you can, because you're dealing with a lot, and I want you as clear as you can be with these decisions you've got to make. I'd also like you to see a pastor where you go to church and just walk through what do you feel is your responsibility

when this marriage dissolves. But if this thing is over, you're not responsible for her and this kid long term if she's going to keep making bad decisions. So you're going to have to walk through all of this and do what you believe is right. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I am Rachel Cruz hosting this hour with Ken Coleman. And Ken, you know, one of the reasons we talk to people all the time about becoming financially free, not owing anyone anything, is it not only just gives you margin, but it gives you options, gives you freedom to actually dictate your own life versus, say, being stuck in a job you hate just to pay these bills. I mean, it just gives

you the ability to have choices again in life. And that's huge. And I feel like you and Stacey, you guys have experienced that. But that's such a benefit of this message that that benefit doesn't have dollars and cents directly attached to it. It's more of a concept and an idea that is so true that not a lot of people in personal finance talk about. When they talk about good debt and leveraging and making it work for you, all of this, they don't talk about the effects of just when you don't owe anyone anything, you have autonomy and you have options. Yeah. It's true. Stacey and I, and I want people to hear this, that are sitting there in the middle of this or they're getting ready to start this. They've just joined the show and they're going, okay, the baby steps. I get it.

I want to get rid of debt in my life. I want to have financial peace. But I want you to think of it beyond just the financial peace. When Dave has said for decades, live and give like no one else, the idea here is that you really are free. When we ask people that step on that stage all the time across the studio from us, what does it feel like? And the emotions are it just feels so freeing. And what happens is now they can decide to do things that they never could before. And so I'll take people back. If you don't know our story, I was in my early 30s when I decided to make a wholesale career change. I was heading one direction.

30 what? 30, 31, 32? 31, 32 when I decided that I thought it was time to pivot. But I struggled for two years just to get the confidence to step out and do it. It wasn't from a money standpoint. It was actually, do I have the talent to pull this off? Yeah, it's a risk. Can I provide for my family if I move into broadcasting well when we finally decided that it was time to to take a shot uh we were uh let's see

I was 34 34 35 we had three kids um and we had a nice home nice neighborhood and we decided we were going to go all in on my radio show, which was in the Atlanta area, the Ken Coleman show. And I said, okay, I can speak. I had already gotten my first book deal, but we're going to go all in on this radio show, get sponsors for it. And one of the things that we decided to do, and again, this is because we could, we had walked through the baby steps. We had taught FPU, So we knew how to squeeze. And so we decided we were going to pull back on our expenses. And we knew we were going to make less money for a season. This was a calculated risk, Rachel.

Not a crazy risk. Just, all right, we're going to give this a run for one to two years. We know how to budget. We know how to cut. One of the things we did was we decided to sell our house because we were going to make a nice windfall from it. but we were going to save that. And then we were going to rent and cut our expenses drastically, smaller house. So we did that.

And about a year into that move, God opened up the door to actually come here to Ramsey. And that was not a part of the, we didn't see that. We just were like, we're going to step out and do this. And when we did it, God stepped in. And for somebody out there that's going, okay, all this God stuff, I don't go to church, I get it. So let's remove the spiritual blessing part that we see. But what was actually practical for us is that because we didn't have debt, because we knew how to manage our money and budget, and we knew how to cut, cut, cut, cut, cut when we paid off all of our debt, we realized that we could take a calculated risk and not go backwards financially long-term. Short-term, yes, not

long-term. And so we look back on that fondly, Stacey and I, as we wouldn't have had so much faith if we didn't have the financial freedom to say, we can pull this off. So I tell the story to say, whatever your situation is, folks, on the other end of this debt-free journey, these baby steps, it's not just college funds paid for. It's not just a nice retirement. It's not just a paid-for house. It's not just college funds paid for. It's not just a nice retirement. It's not just a paid for house. It's really margin. And when you have margin financially, watch this, you have freedom to make different choices and try some things and live that life that you really want to live, whatever that is, whether we're talking about a professional context or we're talking about some personal decisions you want to make, it doesn't matter. Margin leads to freedom and that

freedom leads to that life that you truly want to live. And that's what everybody's looking for. It's just, I want to live my life. Forget the freedom politics side of it, just free will. Like, I just want to do this here, When? How? Why? So I share that story to encourage folks that may be thinking about this journey and going, this is a slog. Or they're in the middle of it, that on the other side of this, whether it's a professional dream or a personal dream or a financial dream, that's what this is all about. It's not just about discipline and budgeting. That's what we do to get margin. Right.

But this is about freedom. Oh, yeah. And to be able to have choices in your life and the ability to make the choice, right? I'm like, because for so many people, they're so strapped in it. And I think when you kept saying, you know, live the life that you want to live,

I think part of the lie in our world today that we've believed is the kind of life I want to live looks a certain way. It means I have nice cars. It means we go on vacation whenever we want, all of this. And what ends up happening to that lie, especially if you don't have the money for it, you end up in debt for that. And then it gets you right back to the cycle. So the life you really want to live, you guys, is what we're saying is a life of peace, a life where you sleep at night,

a life where you actually have a say over your own money. Like there is something so powerful about autonomy. And to say, I have the ability to make choices in my life. And the hard thing is, is money, right, wronger and different. We I have the ability to make choices in my life. And the hard thing is, is money, you know, right, wrong, or indifferent. We all have to have it. We all have to manage it, whether you manage it well, or you manage it terribly. It's a part of your life. It's a tool. And so you have to be able to say, okay, I can't escape this. It's going to be a part. So either it's going to be a thing that controls me and the thing that forces my decisions, or it's a thing that I'm going to control and I'm going to actually tell it what to do. So there's such power in that.

You know, there's a reason why everybody loves fairy tale stories and Disney and cartoons. There's a reason why we all love to take our kids there. Because all of us want to dream. All of us do dream. We want our dreams to come true. It's not a silly child's fantasy. What are you dreaming about right now? Totally.

Whatever it is, whatever your answer is, when you heard me say that, what are you dreaming about right now? What do you long for? On the other side of that is the discipline to work the baby steps, to get to a place of financial margin. Your dream is that close many times. If it's realistic and it's actually fundable, then take hold of this. That's why we do what we do. That financial piece leads to you taking a shot. You got one life. Take a shot.

What are you dreaming about? And you can make that dream come true, but you won't without margin. And without margin, it's a nightmare because it will haunt you. I never got a chance to take a shot at that, but I did have a nice F-150. That's the true trade-off. I don't want to be a downer guy, but it's like you can have all the nice stuff now, but never have that fulfilling life, that dream looks like it doesn't have to be glitzy and glamorous quality of family quality of relationships quality of right these things around you that when people are on their deathbed what do they talk about and surveys show

this concept and there's always studies about this about like what do they say top five top five one of the top five answers is i didn't live the life true to myself, meaning they're regretful. I was living through someone else. Living someone else's dream, comparison, trying to keep up with everybody else's life, and I let that dictate my decisions. So, just running your own race. I didn't live the life that I desired to live, and you can't when you have no margin. Yep. Absolutely. Yeah, it's powerful. And I will say this too, Ken, because Winston and I were just even texting my husband and I this morning about a project that we want to do.

And at the house, and I'm like, and it doesn't stop from baby step seven, but we still have to save towards this thing. The discipline continues. It's not like you get to baby step, you know, four, five, six, seven, and suddenly it's like millions just fall out of the sky. No, you're still having to implement this stuff, but you do it with such control. You do it on your terms and no one else's.

And that's the freedom and margin Ken is talking about, which is so, so powerful. I love that word, Ken. Such encouragement. This is The Ramsey Show. So listen, you guys, we have people that tune in every day to this show, and they listen to every episode of The Ramsey Show, and they know this stuff, but they still feel stuck. And why is that? Well, because knowing about money isn't the problem. Actually, doing it is where you see progress. Personal finance is 80% behavior. It's only 20%

head knowledge. And the proven way to change your behavior with money is by taking a university, a Financial Peace University class. This class is the difference in trying just to get into shape on your own versus hiring a personal trainer. You will have a coordinator holding you accountable and other people in the class pushing you and cheering you on. That's why this class has worked for millions. After nine weeks, you will never handle money the same way again.

You will make progress faster than ever. So don't just listen to the show, commit to doing what it takes to win. So join an FPU class, Financial Peace University, at ramseysolutions.com slash FPU. Again, that's ramseysolutions.com slash FPU. All right, we're gonna go to Brian in Atlanta, Georgia. Hey, Brian, welcome to the show. Hey, guys, how are y'all doing? We're doing great. How about you? I'm doing well. Thanks for having me. Yes, absolutely. How can we help? Yeah, so I'll get right to the point. I'm currently in an internship and my company offers a 401k.

And I think I already know the answer to this, but I'm fairly new to the show. So I thought I would ask, should I invest in my company's 401k or just start my own personal Roth IRA and invest through that since my internship is temporary? Yeah, that's a great question. Do you have any debt, Brian? I do not. I'm on scholarship for school and I'm debt free. Oh, good for you. So you're in college right now? Yes, ma'am. Good for you. And how much do you have left in the internship and how much do you have left to school? So I have a year and a half left of school and probably, I guess, about a month and a half left until I go back to school.

Okay, that's awesome. And you're planning on just paying for school? You have it paid for tuition and everything for the next year and a half? Yes, ma'am. Awesome. Good for you, Brian. So I would hold off on investing in the company's 401k. I think it's awesome that they give you guys the option to do that even as interns, but I wouldn't. It's a month and a half long. And by the time, honestly, you get all the paperwork and everything through, it's like you're going to have

to move it over to a traditional IRA after that. And it just kind of becomes, or yeah, it just becomes a lot. So because it's so short term, I would say no. And I would also say no right now too, Brian. It's just because you're in school. And there's a lot of transition that will happen, is going to happen, that will happen that you're not aware of. There's just a lot of life between now and the next two years. So once you graduate from school, transitioning into the real world, it's expensive. So just having cash on hand is going to be really important. So I would just take any money that you would have invested and any money that you make

above that tuition, and I would be saving just in a high yield savings account or a money market account for these expenses that are going to be coming up. And then once you graduate, and you land a full time job, you're going to be ready to invest. And we encourage you to do 15% of your income into retirement. And that's going to be split between, yes, that 401k at your company or the company you will work for in the future if they have one, a matching situation, and then the Roth IRA. So you're in the exact right headspace, Brian, looking at your

options. I just think it's a little too soon just because you have so much transition coming up in your life. And yes, compound interest is a wonderful thing. And we talk about it a lot on this show, but you're going to have plenty of time. Like if you graduate and you start a job and you start investing even by 24, 25 years old, you're going to be a multimillionaire. So there's not a rush here. And I would rather you have cash on hand to be a buffer between you and life during the season than it being invested.

Yeah, I agree. I wouldn't add anything. Stack the cash. I think you're absolutely right. It'll come. Your time's coming. Now you're going to get some people that may disagree with that advice.

Yeah. But we're looking at the big picture and make sure that you stay focused on the big picture. Okay, sounds good. Awesome. Thanks, Brian, and well done on all the work and internship and college. You're doing great. All right, let's go to Gabe in Kansas City, Missouri. Hey, Gabe, welcome to the show. Hey, how are you? We're doing great. How can we help? So I'm currently in $3,500 in debt, and that's in family debt. And I don't make a consistent income to afford both to pay my grandpa back and make my bills. Okay. How old are you, Gabe? I'm 20, ma'am. 20. Are you in school? Are you working full-time?

I'm working full-time. Okay. How much do you make? On a good month, I can make up to $3,000 on a bad month. I've made as little as $200. What do you do? I am a line cook and, um, I help my friend manage his stream. Okay. So what's causing the big discrepancy if you're a line cook and are you able to determine ahead of time or in the middle of it to go, this is not going to be a good month. Might be a medium month. might be a medium month? Give us a little more detail.

It just varies. Something like in July, like July 4th, we're going to be, I know I'm going to be working seven days a week, making a lot of money. But a month like January, I worked maybe four days out of the month. Okay. What you doing the rest of the days? Yeah. I actually go take care of my parents. Okay. What's their situation? um it's uh my dad's just uh he's in the navy so he's he's not home very often my mom just

it's it's a lot of uh personal stuff i i don't like to talk about it too much gotcha well let me ask you this then without diving too much into that uh are you able to work let's take that january example i understand that you're going and doing something with mom there but are you this then without diving too much into that. Are you able to work? Let's take that January example. I understand that you're going and doing something with mom there, but are you able to work? I am very able to work. Well, then you've got to have a backup plan. If you're going to stay in the line cook side of things or any business that you would call seasonal, I'll use that as a description. A lot of people do seasonal work. And so in the seasonal times when it's hot, I mean, you're working a lot, you're making some good money, but then when you've got these down

months, you've got to have a backup plan. And so we can walk you through, and Rachel can help you with the budgeting side of things and paying off debt, but you've got to have consistent income that will help you walk through this. So when you've got these off weeks, you need another job that has some flexibility, or you're going to have to walk away from this line cook job and go, well, it's really good when it's good, but I need something that's more consistent. Wait, is that Dave Ramsey? Ken Coleman. Close enough.

Close enough. Close enough. I was going to say, I have this um baby steps to a millionaire book and i've read the entire thing and i tried and unfortunately i used all my savings and everything to pay for my bills and i've looked to um talking about uh consistent uh having a consistent cash flow that's what i helped help my friend do a stream of. I get some money from that, but we're just trying to get it. But listen, Gabe, I'm glad you read the book.

I'd go back and reread it because you aren't getting enough consistent income. And when you get consistent income, then the baby steps, it works. Okay, but you don't have consistent income. I'm thrilled that July 4th week, you're going to make a bunch of money, but you've blown through your savings because you don't have consistent income. So I don't care where you do it, how you do it. I don't care if it's Dave Ramsey or Ken Coleman. If we don't have consistent income, we cannot get out of debt. We will not be able to save an emergency fund, and we will always be behind the eight ball, the metaphorical eight ball,

where we're just trying to play catch up. You're a young man. Seems like you're able to work. You need to be working. So let's make some better choices. Let's get a solid foundation of financial stability based on a job or jobs that bring in enough income to fix your situation.

That's right. Thanks, Ken. Thanks, Gabe, for the call. We'll be back. So this is fun news, Ken. Apparently MasterCard launches a global plan to recycle credit cards. Really? What do you mean recycle?

You mean literally recycle? They're trying to save the environment yes so on wednesday they launched a global project to recycle credit credit and debit cards as a part of a plan to save billions of cars in circulation across the industry from landfill oh okay they're partnering with a British lender. HSBC. HSBC Holdings. And MasterCard said banks across the world, and some of which have launched local initiatives, would be able to join the program and help them build economies of scale.

What is happening? Okay, so this is my favorite part. Under this plan, MasterCard will provide shredding machines. Does anybody who's been listening and watching this show for any amount of time see the beautiful irony of this? MasterCard is going to provide credit card shredding machines. So that they can recycle around 3.1 billion dollar or billion cards that are in circulation. Each one of these machines Rachel is capable of holding 10,000 credit cards so we should have one delivered here and put it right out. Well, you know what?

We should put it right next to the debt free stage and people can bring their credit cards in and shred them. That's fun. And, but they want to, they want to recycle them into more cards, but no, no,

not here. We will not. We could just recycle to recycle, but we're not going to recycle to create. I was going to say we would burn them, but then that would make the environmentalists mad because that would hurt the ozone if we burned recyclable credit cards. Because that's a terrible idea, Ken.

God, Ken. Did I just say that on the air? Come on, Ken. I'm sorry, but you can't cause an ozone problem. But anyway, the irony is rich. MasterCard wants you to turn in your old cards and instead of throwing them away and they go to the landfill they want you to shred them oh you know they could have coined that the ramsey way i really do think we should get a machine we got to know somebody

that's great we should call master card up austin and say listen um we want one of those machines we talked about it on the air and we don't like that you give people credit cards but we love that you're trying to save the environment and we want to help we love that you're cutting them up send us a machine but i you know what we could do we live in tennessee with a lot of lot of rednecks that can work on machines i think we get a shredder and then we have some of our friends here that are mechanically inclined. They come in here and they turn it into a chipper, like a wood chipper. So when we put the cards in, it makes that loud noise and it just spits out the credit cards into little itty bitty

pieces. And just like a wood chipper. Do you know what I'm talking? Have you ever seen that before? Like a wood chipper. You act like I'm 95. Do you not know what a wood chipper. Do you know what I'm talking about? Have you ever seen that before? Like a wood chipper. No kidding. You act like I'm 95. Do you not know what a wood chipper is? I mean, I think I do. It's a big giant machine. They take a whole tree. Yeah, yeah.

And it turns into like mulch. It's the greatest thing you've ever seen in your life. It's so pleasing to watch. I think we should do that with a credit card. All right. I think it's a great idea. MasterCard. I digress.

Well done on shredding cards. We are all for that. They're not going to stop issuing cards, though. Just shredding the old ones. Just shredding them. Yeah. All right. Let's go to the phones.

And we got Hannah in Illinois. Hey, Hannah. Welcome to the show. Hi. Thank you guys so much for taking my call. You're so welcome. How can we help? So I was wondering, little backstory,

I am currently in the middle of baby step two with about $90,000 of debt to go. And I work full-time plus go to school full-time plus I have two side hustles that I'm doing part-time. Wow. When do you sleep? I don't. Tell me about these side hustles really quick. What are they? I'm just curious. So I work at Joann's and then I also, so I work there part-time about 10 to 15 hours a week. And then I go into different stores and i do ads um and like into like kroger and put up their ads for them oh okay what do you mean put up their ads what does that mean like the banners hanging off the shelves oh okay so that's kind of like a task oriented thing and you go in and put them in how many hours a week are you doing that? Yeah. So that ranges from anywhere

from like two hours to five or six. Okay. So we'll call it four to six hours, three to six hours a week. Or is that a month? That's a week. Okay. Gotcha. All right. Keep going. So lots of stress. I have definitely felt my anxiety go up. So because of that, I have really taken a dive into my crochet and my crafting project in the little spare time that I have. And so I was wondering, I was thinking about starting another side hustle of selling those because it's not a cheap hobby um and to try and help bring some of that money back all right so the idea that i'm spending money to do this while i'm in baby step two but at the same time i feel like my sanity needs it what will it what will it sell for what will the stuff sell for um so i, I've seen things from anywhere from like small projects and like towels and stuff

go for like three or five bucks. I've also seen like stuffed animals go for 30 or 40. How much do you think you could net, Hannah? Realistically. And maybe let's just say you took the ads job away and you got three to six hours

back in your week and you focused on this, have you done any calculations on what your net profit will be? Not a whole lot yet. It is nice because I do get a nice discount with Joanne. So I get a lot of my spending. I do a lot of my shopping there for this. But I haven't done like an actual profit. So what are you making per hour on the Joanne's job and the ads job?

13 an hour there. At which one? Joanne's? Yes. And then how much do you make per hour for putting up the ads? 13 an hour there as well. Oh, 13 an hour. And much do you make per hour for putting up the ads? $13 an hour there as well. Oh, $13 an hour. And what do you make just at your full-time job? At my full-time, I am, I think, just over $20. Okay. $20,000 a year? $20 an hour.

$20 an hour. I'm so sorry. All right. Okay. So, okay, You should not start another side hustle. You, you need to be efficient right now. And I love that you're working. So let me first applaud you for working, but Rachel, I, I think that the hobby I don't like that it's an expensive hobby. But I understand having a little bit of a mental break and having something to kind of

recharge with, but I don't think this is a wise decision. You don't have a lot of time, and you need to be making the most of your time, and I'd like to see you get one side hustle. So if you want to stay at Joanne's, that's fine, but if it were me, I'd be going, I need one side hustle, not two, and one that pays me 20 an hour or close to 20 an hour because I make a 20 an hour in my regular job, so I know I can do it. And I just think you need to be making the most as you can. And less time. So look, you need some time.

Yes, take care of yourself. More money, less time. And just work the baby steps. And I know, Hannah, it's probably part of you being at Joanne's because you love crafting. Obviously, it's a passion for you, so I understand that. But I would say until this debt is paid off, your number one goal is to make as much money as possible

to get out of debt so that you can then not even have to work at Joanne's. You can just pay for the crafts because you have margin in your budget. You don't have debt. So I think that's the ultimate goal. But yep, I would say definitely working less. You want to take care of yourself. You know, when we talk about gazelle intensity, Ken, and, and getting out of debt, you know, for some people, they can,

they can handle a level of a workload for a period of time, and they just go at it, right. And then but we also in that in that same breath, we don't want you spiraling out mentally either, right? So I'm like, there's very much a balance here of you, Hannah, taking care of yourself. And then what Ken is saying, being wise with your time choice and your job opportunity choice of where you're working. So more money, less time. Yeah. ROI, return on investment, right? That's a financial term, but you have got to get return on impact here. And so what that means is all that time that you're putting into work, it's got to be a nice return. And so the side hustle on a passion project, that's down the road. I love that idea. Shelve it. Shelve it for when you're debt-free and you want to start selling

your favorite hand towels or whatever it is you want to do. You know, sweaters for pet rocks. All of it works, but it's not something we're going to make money on right now. We need to go make money. Get that 90 grand paid off, Hannah. You can do it. You got this, girl. Well, thank you, Ken, for being a wonderful co-host with me this hour.

Thank you to everyone in the booth to make this show run. And thank you, America, for listening. This is The Ramsey Show, and we'll be back. Hey, it's Ken. If you love the show and want a deeper dive on your money journey,

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