The Ramsey Show - App - How Can I Best Structure My Business? (Hour 1)

Episode Date: December 29, 2022

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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the pods of moving and storage studios, it's the 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. We help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Christina Ellis, Ramsey Personality, number one best-selling author, is my co-host today. Open phones here at 888-825-5225.

Thank you for joining us, America. Our latest numbers reveal that there's about 22 million of you out there. Thank you so much. We're honored. We appreciate that. We are here to serve you. 888-825-5225. Mark is with us in Knoxville. Hey, Mark, welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave, how you doing? Better than we deserve, sir. How can we help? I am self-employed. I'm the only employee. I have been for about 25 years, always filed as sole proprietor. And my brother is telling me I need to switch to C-Corp.

I'll save money, but he can't really explain to me why. And when I tried to look it up, I don't know if I can since it's just me with no employees. So is it something I can do? And if so, should I do it? You can do it and you should not do it. And you should not take any more accounting advice from your brother. Okay. Okay. Now, if you do want to, the only reason for a sole proprietor like yourself to incorporate

or to open an LLC would be to risk manage. Meaning, what do you do? What kind of business is it? It's auto detailing. Okay. So if someone was walking past where you were auto detailing, they tripped over the hose and broke their face, okay? And they said, said oh this guy

looks rich we're going to sue him well you have two options and uh number one you'd have insurance that would pay him for his broken face because it was your fault his hose your hose tripped him i guess i don't know how the world works today but i reckon that's how it happens right and uh the second thing is if your business assets the things that your business owns are owned by an llc a limited liability company or a sub s corporation the only person that they could sue would be the company that owned the hose which isn't you it It's your company. Your company's assets consist of your tools, probably, right, and whatever cash you have in the company checking account.

So they could sue you and get all of that stuff, but they couldn't come after your personal home, your personal checking account, because it wasn't you that owned the hose that tripped them. It was this company over here that you own. Okay. So it's what we call risk management. There's no tax benefit at all for a sub-S or an LLC

because 100% of your profits pass straight through and land on your personal return, and you get taxed on it exactly the same way you would if you didn't have this. And you can write off your business expenses as a sole proprietor exactly the same way. Personally, what I would tell you to do is talk to your insurance broker, get a good business insurance policy that covers some liability if someone tripped over your hose, and I wouldn't bother to incorporate. The reason I wouldn't is it's going to cost you to incorporate or to build the LLC, and then you got to file a tax return on that entity every year

in addition to your own tax return. So you get this bill from your tax preparer for producing this. The only reason you would want to do this is if you have a large target on your butt now are you worth over a million dollars personally no okay then if somebody might want to come out find some excuse to come after you then you'd have a target on your butt then you might want to do this but your business isn't of enough size that somebody's probably going to go lick their chops and go oh i'm about to get rich here okay and mark i have general liability business insurance then you're fine what you're talking about yeah what he's trying to see saying is that he he was also a sole

proprietor but he switched to the c-corp because he says it's going to save him money something to do with social Security or something. I don't know exactly. You can write off the Social Security portion as an expense. That is an addition, and you do that with a sub-S as well. A C Corp, you get taxed twice. The corporation pays taxes, and then when it pays you, you pay taxes again. So a C Corp is asinine for a small business holder because you

a small business owner because you get taxed twice i've got uh a bazillion llcs um and i have one s corp i don't own a single c-corp and i don't um uh and i don't own anything anymore everything is now in some entity's name other than mine even my cars are in something else's name i don't own anything anymore. Everything is now in some entity's name other than mine. Even my cars are in something else's name. I don't actually personally own anything because I'm a walking target. I see. And so you're saying that I should either do escort just to have the liability savings or just stay where I'm at with my general liability insurance.

Right. And you can can he's actually right you can write off the portion of a portion of your social security as a business expense but it amounts to you know it's not gonna it's not gonna save you enough in taxes to pay you back for the attorney fees to build the stupid thing or your tax preparer fees to file the extra filing every year it isn't worth it i i okay you know i wouldn't do it you've got 99 of the same write-offs that an s corp has i i wouldn't fool with it i you know i don't think you've got the risk management issue and there is no write-off issue and c corps are double taxed no never do that

the only time you do a c corp is if you're building something to take it public and sell it to some other big corporation or something there might be some advantages then. But for the normal person like you and me operating our own small business, no way, never a C-Corp. So just stay sole proprietor, keep up my general liability insurance and just leave it like it is. That's what I'd do. Keep your life simple, man. Okay. That's what I needed. Yeah. yeah good question thank you for calling in this comes up a lot with the entree leadership group the small business folks that we coach and counsel all the time we hear this same thing that comes up everybody's looking for some kind of tax dodge and they think that the rich have some tax dodge that regular people don't have and they don't

that is good to know and i think it's interesting that his brother brought this up after he's been in business for 25 years. Like, Mark's been doing a good job keeping up with everything and following through. And it was very interesting that his brother felt that now was the important time to have an opinion. Yeah. Well, there's, yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, the only, so if your business is small, you would never do it. Number one, if you're, uh, unless you have a large thing. So for instance, let's say you're worth $2 million and, um, you decide you want to open

an art studio. Well, you might want to put an LLC over that because again, if somebody trips on the threshold falls or whatever whatever whatever the scenario is that somebody decides they're going to sue you um and everybody's you know not everybody but too many people in our litigious society are looking for a free ride or a free ticket and you've just got to do risk management protect yourself as you start building wealth the other thing you can do guys once you get to on liability issues once you get up over a half million to a million dollar net worth you can pick up a an umbrella policy for about 300 bucks a year

for a million dollars and it covers that much more this is the ramsey show so Christine Ellis Ramsey personality is my co-host today open phones here at 888-825-5225 you jump in we'll talking off debt is smart. Saving and investing is smart. But there's one key to winning with money that people overlook, and that is protecting your finances from emergencies. This is where the right kinds of insurance come into play. There's 10 kinds of insurance coverage you might need. The rest of them you probably don't need. And we built a tool called the Coverage Checkup

to show you which types you need to add, drop, or adjust. We'll even rank your coverage list by importance, email it to you, connect you with a Ramsey-trusted insurance provider. All this is free. It could be the most important five minutes you spend. Donald wrote in and said, for anyone who has not completed the checkup, do it right now. You never know when something will happen, and you never want to leave your family in a bad situation.

RamseySolutions.com slash checkup. That's RamseySolutions.com slash checkup. Nick starts off this hour in Minneapolis. Hi, Nick. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hey, man. Thanks for having me. Sure.

What's up? Well, brace for impact here. I have a residential and commercial cleaning business that I run solo. So no employees. And like, I just, I work a crazy amount of hours. Like a busy week, I'll do nine to three and then go back out and work from like seven to 11. So I know it's time to start hiring. Like that's the only way I'm going to scale it.

But, you know know i just have some concerns that probably any other business owner would have and that's like the quality of my replacements like the consistency of work just because of the industry that i'm in like there's a lot of changes in my clients particularly the houses and then like the extra cost of the software and just the legalities and just all this stuff and i'm just trying to get out of this rut because i i should have probably hired like two years ago and i'm really to the point that i'm just like burned out yeah you're gonna fry out what you're doing is not sustainable you've got to get some help or you gotta or you gotta raise your prices and lower the number of clients one of the two

so yeah so man hiring is very difficult because there's all this mythology around it. Number one, the labor market's real tough right now. So it's hard to get people right now to do anything. Most businesses are struggling. The people we spent time with last week, entree leaders, the number one thing they're struggling with is getting good people right now. It's always been hard to get good people. Right now it's extra special tough. So that being said, here's what you're looking for.

You've got to go slow enough to get the right people. Okay? Yeah. Don't bring on the wrong people because you get desperate. And you're late to the party, so you need to get with it. But you need to spend enough time. One interview won't do it. You've got to interview them more than one time at a minimum of four times you ought to sit down with them separate times to

figure out what kind of a person that you're going to lend your name to because everyone that works for you is in marketing because if they screw up something the customer is going to tell everybody that your whole business is a screw up if they do something if they do something right there your customer is going to tell everybody that your whole business is great and so with a thousand folks on plus almost 1100 people on the ramsey team if one of them screws up and i may not even know them but it doesn't matter they all go well that day ramsey you know immediately i get blamed which is i mean that's what i signed up for so i'm not i'm not bitching about it but that's what you're signing up for so not delegating to someone who you aren't comfortable with you hire them first and you haven't trained them yet you can't just

hand them the keys to the kingdom and walk away and oh no i don't want to be a control freak that's not a control freak that's called training because you're turning over your reputation to these people and so the the rule on delegation is this and it's in the book entree leadership i'll send you a copy of it it's easy to delegate to christina when she goes on a major television program and answers questions on behalf of her and on behalf of ramsey on say fox news i can delegate that to christina she's sitting beside me i can delegate that because i can trust two things about her that i know that i know that i know because we've spent enough time together training we've spent enough time together to get to know each other and here's the two things I know I can

trust her competency she can answer the question correctly with a smile her on camera ability is excellent the camera likes her she likes the camera that's why she's on there more often than I am and so that you know and i can trust her integrity she's going to do the right thing if someone corners her in an adversarial interview on camera she's still going to do the right thing she's going to be sweeter about it than i would but she's still going to do the right thing and so when you can trust their integrity and their competency they are trained to be able to turn something over to them and you can still sleep at night and that's not being a micromanager

that's called being a wise business owner that's good well in this market with so much competition for jobs and a lot of employers struggling to find employees how can a small business like nix stand out and get high quality people who have integrity? Well, number one, you're going to have to pay them well. Not overpay them, but you cannot be at the bottom shelf. You're going to get what you pay for in that sense. Number two, you've got to give them the dignity of speaking into their destiny and into the destiny of the whole company. And so everyone at Ramsey's always talking to each other and to me and everybody in the whole place about how we can all get better

we're all trying to figure out which play to win to run to win the Super Bowl and we argue about it no I think we ought to throw it no I think we ought to run it no I think we ought to run at the left I think we ought to run at the right I don't care I mean we're always arguing but we're arguing about one thing how do we score and win a Super Bowl and so you got to get people involved with their dignity and that kind of thing the second the last thing and i told these small business owners this last week working for corporate america sucks even if you make more money you're treated like a freaking number and they will throw your butt in the street at the first sign of a stock downturn you'll be the first one thrown out of there so oh that guy makes a lot of money dump him that gal makes a lot of money dump them corporate america has no soul it's a transaction

when you're running a small family business you're working with the owner or right beside the owner or you see the owner quite often you know you have an advantage because you actually treat people like people it's just your nature and people would lot rather work for a small business assuming the pay is reasonable because the environment is a thousand times better than corporate stupid butt america that's lost its mind i'm telling you man you don't want to work over there and people people sometimes leave here and go to work over there and they'll call me up dave i made a huge mistake yes you did yes you did well i know here a lot of people love the culture working at ramsey that's one of the big things that people talk about people love just the environment here the people who are here and that's exciting but i think a lot of small business owners you know when they're

first hiring they're not thinking about setting an intentional culture which it's important from day one it's important from employee number one yeah but i figured out with our first like 10 employees we didn't have you know what our benefits were your check cleared that was our benefits package your check was good you know that we had no benefits the benefit was you got paid and it actually went into the bank and everything shut up you know and so you know if you want some health insurance go get you some this was before it was required you know if you want some of this go get you some uh you know you don't have that no i don't have that i don't even what that is you want time off try making some bunch of money so you can get some time off and so you know this is uh uh this is how we started and so we didn't have any we couldn't compete and we still

don't try to compete head-on with the corporate america benefits package if you want a benefits package then you're probably not a Ramsey team member. We've got great benefits nowadays, but you come here for other stuff. You can get more bennies somewhere else. But you're good to your people from day one and from the get-go. There's a human transaction. Right. That's your brand advantage.

That's what we told people in the other days. We've got no benefits. Your check clears. That's your only benefit. But guess what? We're working on something that matters, and we're working on this crusade to help people change their lives and change their family trees if you want to be part of something that's big and it's moving this is where it's going to be and we'll always share with you if we make some

money but we'll also share with you if we're starving to death yep and i think that's how you have people like in staff meeting this morning we celebrated somebody who had who's been here for 20 years and i feel like we're often celebrating people who've been here from the beginning and they just love the humans. They love, you know, serving on this crusade with you because you've been awesome to them. Well,

it's, you treat people like people treat people right. Instead of treating them like a transaction, like a robot, they're not a unit of production. I mean, you know, people have kids and grandkids

and dog is sick and there's you know they have lives and and you actually can treat them like that if you're a small business and that's your brand advantage when you're hiring that's what you're looking for Nick and but then just make sure you're delegating to people you can trust their competency and their integrity hold on we'll get you a copy of the Entree Leadership Book and send it out to you. Christina Ellis, Ramsey personality, number one bestselling author, is my co-host today in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage. Jim and Ashley are with us. Hey guys, how are you? Good. How are you guys? Better than we deserve. Where do you guys live? We live in Clarksville, Tennessee. Oh, just up the road. Yeah. Welcome to Nashville. Good to have you.

Thank you. And how much debt have you guys paid off? $625,000. Wow. How long did that take? 30 months. Okay. There's a story here. What's your range of income during that two and a half years? We started around $45,000 and ended at $60,000 plus a $7,000 side hustle. Gotcha. What do you all do for a living? I am an office manager at Crow Estate Planning and Probate. And I'm a stay-at-home dad.

Cool. Good for you. Okay. How do you get rid of $600,000 on $45,000 income? That doesn't work. You must have sold the house. We sold our rental in California. Ah, okay.

All right. And what did it sell for? It sold for $810,000 and we uh some of that money to pay off our house in in clarksville tennessee that's fun yeah what's the house in clarksville worth um i think it's about 325 okay very good very cool good for you guys okay so you paid you paid that off and you have any other debt nope that was it you're just now officially weird people. No mortgages, paid for house and everything. We did have, we also paid off $55,000 in the combined total of student loans, credit cards, a car, and we had a turf payment.

Oh, you did have other debt. Okay. We did, yes. Cool. All right. Cool. So we knocked all of that out and the mortgage with the sale of the rental. Correct.

That simple. And it took 30 months to sell it? We started for the first $55,000. That was about the first year and a half. And the last little bit was just kind of getting the house sold and just kind of letting the money go to pay off that house. So you kind of didn't want to sell the rental at first no we thought renting was going to you know renting was going to be fun and um it's you

know passive income um and it honestly it kind of turned out to be a nightmare yeah i bet so um i mean you managed to do it right in the middle of covid too yeah yeah that kind of um you know we always thought maybe we'd go back to california that's where we're originally from uh we moved out here shortly after we got married and we're like you know maybe we'll go back maybe we won't and then we kind of looked at each other and said are we really going to go back so what got you started started on the Ramsey way? Well, in about 2020, I started with a podcast. And about a month or so in, I had sent a text message to a mentor that I had. And I said, Hey, I'm listening to the Dave's Ramsey show. What do you think about this guy? You know, I'm interested to hear your piece.

And he said, you know, Dave's a great guy. Keep listening listening and so that kind of got me hooked I bought the total money makeover shortly after and like I said the rest is history wow very cool just like that so actually uh he's got the podcast going is he giving you a hard time um he's we've talked about reading me reading the book and um he pretty much just every day I'd come home and he'd talk about the plan and the baby steps. And then, you know, we would talk about knocking each one of them out. And then he listens to the podcast every day. And so when we're in the car, we listen to it or we watch it on YouTube.

There's no fun anymore. It's really cool, though, to see everybody, you know, come from different walks of life and really stick with the plan and be able to pay everything off. It's awesome. So you sold the house. What else did y'all do in this journey? Because you mentioned the side hustle, a 7K side hustle. What was that? So we cleaned my offices that I work for in Clarksville and in Hopkinsville. Okay. That's awesome. So what would you say is the key? Because there's a lot of people who are looking at that number thinking, whew, that's impressive. What's the key to getting out of debt? You know, Stephen Covey has a really good quote that says,

begin with the end in mind. And our definitely end goal was to be stress-free, to really, like you said, live like no one else so that we could live like no one else. And I think that was our biggest goal we wanted to change our family tree we didn't want to be like everybody else um you know because normal sucks amen good for you guys well done hey we're proud of you who are your biggest cheerleaders each other and uh our families we have jim's mom here from california

to celebrate with us today as well very fun awesome good stuff we got the live and give bundle for you that's the uh total money makeover book the baby steps millionaires book that's the next chapter in your story and a one-year membership to financial peace university the brand new version that has george and rachel and deloney and me and everybody's in it so be sure and watch that through if you haven't or give it all away or whatever you want to do it's for you it's the live and give bundle so very very proud of you all right what's your uh your child's name and age let's get him get him in the shot here his name is james and he will be two in january all right so james came uh just

about well right in the middle of all this yes Yes. Yeah, that's part of the deal, huh? Good job. All right. Fun stuff. I love it. All right. Jim and Ashley and James, Clarksville, Tennessee, $625,000 paid off in 30 months, making $45,267. Count it down.

Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free! Yeah! three two one we're dead free that is how it's done i love it wendy is with us in omaha nebraska hi wendy welcome to the ramsey show thank you for taking my call i appreciate that um so um the reason why I'm calling is I wanted to know if my ideas of moving to Japan to be close to my grandma is a financially good idea. I'm a school teacher for the past 20 years, and I raised all my three kids as a single mom. So I don't really have much of a retirement other than the 4-3-B that I received from the school. So, and I do own a house.

I mean, I think I still owe about $98,000, but it's worth about $275,000. Good. How old are you? 49. Cool. So old are you? 49. Cool. So you want to go to Japan and do what? Be maybe administrator. I do have a two master's degree,

so I'm hoping to get into an international school or something and get into administration. You'd be near your grandmother. You'd be making a lot of money, a lot more than you make now, right? Right. I'm hoping to. No, I wouldn't go if you don't because it's very high cost of living. Right.

And so, I mean, I talked to a guy yesterday, as a matter of fact, that is in the IT world, and he moved his family, and they lived in Japan for three years. And the company he worked for furnished all housing, and they doubled his income and so they looked at it as a short-term adventure and he piled up a huge pile of cash in a short period of time but if you're going to go over there and make the same amount of money and the cost of living be twice as much as it is where you are no thank you i don't want to do that

okay okay what do you make now? I make a 70. You should make a hundred and a half with a master's in administrative. Yeah, I haven't tried for the administrative positions yet. I mean, but no, I wouldn't go over there and make the same. You're going to go backward if you do. What about your kids? You're going to leave them behind, right? Right.

Well, they're older. They don't count anymore. Well, youngest one is still with me. But then I'm also concerned about my house. I do have a four-bedroom home. I would just sell it. How long are you going to be in Japan? Well, my grandma is 92, so I just didn't want her to be alone.

How long are you going to be in Japan? Maybe five years. Sell your house. Okay. Buy another one when you come home. You don't want to manage a rental property or an empty house internationally. You'll take all the fun out of this experience. So what do I do with the money

that i get from the house put it in an investment to buy a house with when you get back all of them all of them all the money like all of the well i'm thinking like 150 000 i probably put it in some good mutual funds and so it'll be there when you get home and and it will have grown, and you'll be able to buy another house. And you're going to make a whole bunch of money, so you're going to add to that investment while you're going to Japan, or you don't go. That's what I would do. Well, and with this couple that just paid off their debt, they didn't want to stay in the rental business, and managing that while in Japan would be, whew!

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. So much wrong with this. This is The Ramsey personality is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Cameron is in Los Angeles. Hi, Cameron. Welcome to The Ramsey Show. Hi.

Thanks for taking my call today. Sure. What's up? Hey, so I need a little bit of help and guidance from you. I'm kind of where to start. I'm a little overwhelmed with a lot of my finances. I started yesterday by figuring out debts, and I've realized that I'm really behind on a lot of my basic utilities and taxes,

and I'm trying to get started on the baby steps, but I just feel so overwhelmed because I'm behind on so many things. So I kind of need to know kind of how to start on all this. It's a scary place, isn't it, brother? Oh, yeah. How old are you? 33. And what's your income?

I would say on average right now about $30,000-ish a year. What do you do? I work in the entertainment industry, so I do a lot of stuff for musical theater, so anything from costuming to wigs and all that kind of stuff. About how much debt do you think you have? Well, when I totaled it up yesterday, I'm going to just probably rounding it to about $10,000. Well, you know what? I know it's scary right now, but I just want to say good job getting on board. Like we're really happy that you're calling today.

Thank you. So here's the thing. Number one, we're going to send you a copy of the book, The Total Money Makeover. All right. And that's what close to 9 million people now have got that book and have used it. And I'm not selling you a book. I'm giving you one. So you just have to read it. That's all you got to do now um so here's what i would do in your

situation before you start the baby steps you need to be current with your utilities and current with your bill okay so the first goal to get current is make a list of what each bill like the electric bill what's it take to be current on the electric bill what's it take to be current on the electric bill? What's it take to be current on the water bill? What's it take to be current on the dot, dot, dot? Fill it in, okay? And that's just to be current. Follow me? And then your goal when you do out your written budget is you're going to budget out,

and any money you can squeeze out of your budget, you're going to work down that list, smallest to largest. So, like, if it takes 20 bucks to get a bill current well then that's your little one boom that one's done right easy right it takes 50 bucks to get another one current boom that one's done that's easy right and so the more of them you get in the current side the more your stress is going to drop because right now your stress level is like up in your throat you're chewing on your stomach yeah you know what i'm saying i remember that i used to remember that like i get a little sweat in the palm of my hand a little bit above my eyebrows and um and your heart rate goes up when you make those lists of stuff and you just

like freaked out like you've jumped off a building and you're just falling or something you know what i'm talking about yeah yeah that's how you feel, right? Oh, yeah. Yes, sir. So more of that is going to go away the more of this you get in control. The second thing is that just by making the list, your stress level is going to go down because now we've quantified the size of the dragon that must die. This dragon must die.

And you are a knight, young man. You're going to kill the dragon and it must die it may take a bunch of cuts it may take a bunch of swings of the sword uh you may get really tired and you're definitely going to get some blood on you but the dragon is going to die you're going to kill it because you're just the guy that's why you called us we're dragon we're night trainers we're going to train you to kill the dragon all right you can do this so the second part of this equation is there's two sides to the equation, income and outgo.

$30,000 a year in Los Angeles, California as an income sucks. You're starving to death. You have got to do some stuff to add to your income. And I don't care if it's something that's not pretty or not fun. What you need right now is some money ten thousand dollars would change your life can't say that about a lot of people yeah so the good the bad news is you got ten thousand dollars worth of debt the good news is it's only ten thousand dollars worth in other words if we increase your income with a good

strong part-time job it's fifteen thousand a year you're going to be debt free 100 and less than a year if you just live on what you make at your regular job yeah so part-time job is in your future i don't know if you're delivering uber eats or if you're delivering pizzas or if you're walking dogs or you're cutting grass i don't care what it is but you need to go do something for money good money don't take something cheap not minimum wage i want you to make some money and and just be i don't want you to do anything illegal and i don't want you to do anything immoral that puts your ethics at risk anything like that but short of that go get you some money because ten thousand bucks would change your life that's pretty cool right now that you can do that

so my prediction is you're going to be debt free in a year yeah i would like to it's you know i i find it hard as well in my situation because um i make my income varies month to month because the type of work that i do yeah it varies from sucks to not sucks as bad yeah so you have got to get some more income coming in and really your long term career has got to get better would you agree uh yeah you don't want to be making 30 000 when you're 50 right so what are you going to do what's going to move the needle you got you keep doing what you've been doing you're going to keep getting what you've been getting agreed yes sir yeah so we've got it we got to work on the career side short term long term and we've got to work on organizing the money and the expenses in a budget in the short term and you can walk right straight through this hold on we'll have austin pick up

we'll give you a copy of total money makeover and get you going well in the fear you're feeling right now it's super uncomfortable but i want you to turn that fear into the, what we call here gazelle intensity, where you're like a gazelle running away from a cheetah. And the good news is with $10,000, this can be gone quickly. It's scary right now and it feels overwhelming because you're looking at all these bills

and you're behind and there's debt, but you can tackle this quickly, especially if you take that fear and turn it into focus and use it to propel you forward into knocking this out yeah i think you're right if you're standing in the middle of the interstate and an 18 wheeler is coming you feel discomfort yeah and that's that's a good discomfort get out of the freaking row it's time for a change where you're standing is going to get you killed and that's what you're saying here where the way i've been doing things has got to change on the income side and on the outgo side. It has to change.

Otherwise, next year, you're going to be sitting exactly here with the exact same stresses, different names and the exact same bill problems, different names. And so the good news is you can just decide today ready set go this is america even in california it's still america you can still go do this and you can get out of that and you can change this whole thing and you need to look long term at your career and what you're going to do but short term right now i just want you to go get some money and clean this mess up renee's in denver hi renee welcome to the ramsey show what's up thank you for taking my call today sure how can we help um i'm calling because i'm looking for some guidance and motivation as my husband and i enter baby step number two um i'm struggling with letting go of all the control

of our finances and working with him on this because our debt seems pretty overwhelming and even though i know where to start i can't seem to get focused enough to make any progress well you're not surrendering control you're just letting someone else have a vote while you have a vote you still have your vote i just it's hard for me to work with him. We don't see eye to eye on a lot of things. So it's difficult for us to have those. So it's not a control issue. It's a disagreement issue. Yes.

If you were in agreement and both of you were voting that our goal is to get out of debt, the only thing we're arguing about is how to get there, that wouldn't be nearly as big a problem as I don't really care if we get out of debt versus you want you're saying i want to get out of debt am i missing something no you're right i think that we're both just overwhelmed it seems like we're being pulled in 80 different directions with our debts um so we're disagreeing on where exactly to start he wants to start with one debt and I want to follow the normal baby steps. Okay. What, like, how does the conversation go when you sit down and say, hey, we want to start baby step two? What's kind of his opposition? What's his perspective on things? He wants to start with things that are costing us the most money every month.

So the higher payment. But his plan got you here. So that won't work. Here's the thing. Here's my challenge for him. You can tell him I said this. I get it. I kind of think the same way. I'm a math nerd.

But what I want you to do is try my way for 90 days because I'm right and you're wrong, dude. Just try it for 90 days. If I'm wrong, you can go back to your old broken way. This is The Ramsey Show. Have you been inspired to make a change with your money? Want to know where to start? Take our three-minute money quiz to get a plan you can follow. Go to RamseySolutions.com and search for Get Started to get a plan for your money.