The Ramsey Show - App - How Do We Get Back on Track? (Hour 1)

Episode Date: November 18, 2019

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Music 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. The paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thank you for joining us. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Troy is with us in Kansas. Hey, Troy, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show.

Hello, Dave. Hey, what's up? hey i um so i've been struggling um i work a full-time job and uh i live paycheck to paycheck um i have i'm married with three kids all under the age of four um and my wife she's a stay-at-home mom she does the budgeting while i make money and we're still coming up short somehow and uh i don't know what we're doing wrong okay how old are you guys uh 25 okay what do you make a year around 42 000 okay how much debt have you got not counting your house um i'm actually i filed bankruptcy about a year and a half ago so i'm still going through that i still have though about a year and a half ago. So I'm still going through that. I still have, though, about $1,000 in debt that's about out there, which is medical bills, which I can add to the bankruptcy. Now, you're in a Chapter 13 paying payments?

Yes. For five years? Correct. And how much is your Chapter 13 payment a month? I pay $100 a month for that. And how much debt is there in the Chapter 13? A little bit over $22,000. What's it on?

Mainly medical, and I had an $8,000 car. It was a bad decision. Was that a repo? Yes, it got repoed. Okay. So you're paying on the repo, and you're paying on medical, and you got a new $1,000 medical. Who's sick?

It was just me. I had some health issues in and out. You don't have health insurance? I did, but it didn't cover 100% of everything. No, it doesn't. Okay. And you had no savings to cover. So your deductibles and your co-pays are what added up.

Correct, yes. Yeah, okay. All right. Well, number one, you're not doing a whole bunch of stuff wrong. You're probably just fairly normal. I mean, you make $45,000. You're 25 years old with three kids to feed. There's no room in this budget much.

It's not like you had one little blink, like a little medical event, or one little blink, like buying a car you can't afford, and all of a sudden you've got a real problem. And so it's not like you did did something that was super super stupid you just had no wiggle room and tried to wiggle that's all i mean that's just where you are so uh the answer to the equation is um to get more uh detailed and better at doing a budget with your wife i make the money and she does the budget. It doesn't work.

The two of you, she can do the budget, but then the two of you need to sit down and go over it, and we need to have a detailed plan of how we're going to live every single month, each month, on paper, on the money that is coming in or less than the money that is coming in. And you're not doing that now. You're bringing home the check, and she's making it go as far as she can possibly go, and she's not doing too bad a job.

But it's not great. It's not great because it's leaving you all vulnerable to every little wiggle. Does this sound right? Right. Yep, that's correct. What I want to do first and foremost is dial up the quality of the budgeting exercise that you and your wife are doing together, and then the sticking to that budget that you do together. Because if you don't, you're not going to wiggle out of this.

You're not going to accidentally wake up one morning and go, I won the Super Bowl. No one accidentally wins. So you really got to do lots and lots and lots of detail. Now, that's thing one. Thing two is, what do you do for a living? I locate utilities. Okay. And you're 25. What do you want to be doing when you're 35 that pays $100,000

a year? Well, my goal is, I want to get into either law enforcement or fire. That's the goal. What are you doing to get there? Right now I'm a volunteer firefighter. How does that get you there? They will pay for me to go get my EMT schooling and get other schooling.

My department pays for it. Not many departments do that. What does an EMT make in your area? I honestly haven't looked that far into that. I don't know. I think I'd want to know before I went to school. Because you make $45,000 now. If they make $38,000, you don't want to do this.

Okay. Does that make sense? Yes. Your goal changes because you don't want your dream to be a nightmare. So let's detail out where we're going. I'm thinking that an EMT, depending on what area of Kansas you're in, how rural the setting is, but an EMT in your area probably makes 50 or 60. That's my guess. And so then the next question is, when are you going to school?

It's a tech school. I know. When? Oh, when? My goal is to go here in January. Okay. Get into night classes while I'm working full time. That's it.

Good. See, what I'm saying is we have to have a goal to not make 45 or we'll always make 45. Right. And you've got some steps laid out in front of you to get to that goal that's good good planning well done and so you just got to start dialing this stuff in and go okay what can i do to get my income up on the short term what can i do to get my income up in the long term and uh and let's manage the money that we have super super super tight and um you

know the the last piece is is what can she do from home while taking care of three kids that can add a little bit of money to this equation. And so I'm going to do two things for you. I want the two of you to go through our class and our one-year membership financial piece, and we'll put you in the financial piece university class, which will detail out exactly how to handle money, but also exactly how to do this budget and how to handle that EveryDollar app, which is included in this. And I'm giving it all to you free. Okay? All right.

And I'm also going to send your wife a copy of the book Business Boutique by Christy Wright, Equipping Women to Make Money Doing What They Love. Lots of ladies find things they can do from home that make serious bank while watching their kids. It's not that unusual. If you're like me, your wife's smarter than you are. So she might be able to make more than you while watching the three kids. It's possible. So, you know, because here's the deal. You've got a below average household income, not way below.

You're not at the poverty level. You're only 25, so that's not unusual. But the average household income in America is $59,000. And that's statistical data. That is not my opinion. And so what you've got to do is say, what am I going to do to get above average, to have above average financial results?

And so the mess that you find yourself in troy is not because you're a stupid person you are not a stupid person you're dealing with limited means you're a young dad trying to pull this off and you've done a pretty dadgum good job even though you've made a few mistakes here and there i'll talk to people every day including myself who've done dumber things than you've done so you're not doing too bad you plug into this you get in this financial piece with your wife. Tell her to get in that book, and let's figure out a way to make some money, and let's go onward and upward, my brother.

This is The Dave Ramsey Show. Are high health care costs getting you down? Are you confused trying to navigate your options? Do you wish you could find an affordable affordable biblical solution to your health care costs? Based on New Testament principles, Christian Health Care Ministries, or CHM, helps Christian families, churches, and ministries join together as the body of Christ to share their major health care costs. Christian Health Care Ministries is the original health cost-sharing ministry, a Better Business Bureau-accred organization, CHM members share to pay each other's medical bills. It's not insurance. It's Christians financially and spiritually supporting each other. It's what Christian Healthcare Ministries has done for over 35

years, and our members have shared over $2.5 billion in medical bills. To learn more, We'll be right back. Thank you for joining us, America. We're glad you are here. Michelle's with us in Texas. Hi, Michelle. Welcome to The Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. My honor.

What's up? Well, I just wanted to also say thank you so much, because about four years ago is when my husband and I were just being stupid and not getting with the program. Reality didn't hit us. You know, we were living day by day and didn't think about the future, and now I'm 40 and he's 38. And about four or five years ago, about four years ago,

I found your plan on Google by just kind of searching for a basic budget. I said, we need to just do something. So I was looking up basic budget steps to actually start a budget plan as well. And I found your plan, but I didn't know it was you. I didn't know who had written it or anything about it. I just printed it out, and I said, we're going to follow this. So we basically just followed it without doing any extra hardcore research, just kind of went step by step.

And in the last four years, our income has really grown. We've both worked really hard. My business got better, and my husband just kept doing better with, with work and raises and everything. So it really helped us push forward. We don't have kids. So now we're on step six already. Um, the problem in my question is, um, because I didn't know really in depth what that plan was all about. It just, you know, it was just pay off house early. We refinanced.

We did a lot of dumb things. So basically we refinanced two times, and the second time was in June. And I just recently found, you know, started doing more research, and that's whenever I found out, oh, he really preaches on 15-year mortgage. And we refinanced the second time into the 30-year again, but we were health poor for a while. So in the last four years, paying off all the debt and everything. How can I help you today? today it's basically my question is in in should we now that we've already refinanced we're kind of stuck with it or we stuck in a few years should we refinance to a 15 or no because we're no listen

here's the thing if you take your 30-year mortgage you take your current interest rate and you calculate the principal and interest payment on a 30, that would be the principal and interest portion of your current payment, and then you calculate the payment on a 15, if you pay that difference as extra principal without refinancing, you will pay off your home in exactly 15 years. You never refinance to convert from a 30 to a 15. You only refinance to get a lower interest rate, and you will not get a lower interest rate substantially today than you would have gotten when you refinanced last summer. And so it's not going to be worth it for you to refinance in interest rate savings.

So if you pay a 30 like a 15, it goes away in 15. You don't need to go to the expense to refinance. You're right. While you were at it, you might as well have done a 15, but you didn't. So there's water under the bridge. All right. Doug is with us in Maine. Hey, Doug, how are you?

Great, Dave. It's really exciting to get to talk to you. You too, sir. What's up? I'm hoping you can help my wife and I have a little bit of guidance in terms of what to do as we're updating our will and our trust. We have two minor children. One's 12 and one's nine. We're both 42 and we are in good health, but we're trying to think through at what age should we let them have access to our nest egg if something happens to us?

And our concern is trying to make sure that this is a blessing, not a curse. Exactly. Exactly. Well, I mean, if you were to both die, which is when this would come into question, and while they're still minors, you should be leaving all your assets into a trust to be used for their benefit. Now, I had the same exact kind of trust set up when I was your age, and I had minor children. Now, what I did with that trust was several things.

One is, I said, the income off of the investments that that trust goes into. And by the way, I dictated that it went into four types of growth stock mutual funds, growth, growth and income, aggressive growth and international, all with track records longer than 10 years, like I teach, in other words. It's going to be invested that way, not put into a CD in some bank, a certificate of depression. So I dictated the investment, and then based on that, I said the income off of that goes to the guardian to take care of the children, not the nest egg, just the income off of it.

In addition to that, they could do a little bit of a drawdown for a first car or for college or for a major medical issue. But other than that, the nest egg was not to be touched, and only the income off of it, which would be plenty to take care of the kiddos, food, shelter, clothing, for the guardian to not have a financial burden for taking care of my children. As a matter of fact, they would end up with a blessing in that regard because there's a lot of money coming off of that nest egg.

So that's the first thing I did. Then the second thing I did is I actually put in there that they had to show some level of, in other words, they were not going to draw down on the trust unless they graduated from college and until they graduated from college. They had to show a level of responsibility. We wanted the trustee to verify that they were living on a budget and verify that they had gone through Financial Peace University, which I assumed would still be in existence. Okay? And you don't have to do that.

I did that. It's my product, so that makes a lot of sense right but in other words i wanted to verify some way um that they were being responsible with the money and they weren't um you know on the back of a yacht snorting cocaine with a reality star and then i'm funding that from my grave which is not my goal for my children alive or dead and so um i wanted to verify all that then past that uh we did a release of a percentage at college graduation, assuming that they were living a life of character and they were living a life of financial responsibility. We would release a portion of it at college graduation,

another portion at 25, and another portion at 30. That's how I did it. But I'm not saying that's the only way or that's the right way. It's just what I did. I put as many controls on as I could, but I didn't have a thing where it stayed in trust for their entire lifetime, assuming they were going to be too stupid to figure out how to handle money by the time they're my age or your age, right? Hopefully by then, you know, it needs to be released

and they would handle it with a relatively normal amount of money, meaning less than $10 million. Great. Well, thank you for helping out. I appreciate it. Yeah, I hope that makes sense to you. But the beautiful thing about a trust is if you can dream it up and figure out a way that it's measurable, you can make that a stipulation. Perfect. All right.

Well, thank you. I appreciate it. Hey, thanks for the call. I appreciate you calling in. We did have one guy that had church attendance in his. If his kid's not going to church, they don't get money. That's okay. I ain't got no issue with that.

That's not a bad idea. You know, but, I mean, it could create some weirdness. All this stuff can create weirdness, but some people are so bent on screwing something up that they'll figure out a way, right? But you can put all kinds of stuff in a trust that you form like that for guidance. And, again, you folks can do whatever you want to do. I really commend Doug on the fact that he's addressing this. You know the number of 42-year-olds that don't have a will is 70%? That's ridiculous.

And so that puts him in the top 30% of dads on the planet right there because he's doing this and he's asking a question, not to mention all the other things he's doing that puts him way up there on the dad list. Way to go. Good job, dude. You're saying I love you to your family when you do an estate plan. It's weird. It's awkward as crud.

I call it the Monty Python meeting. You know, like we're planning my death, but I'm feeling much better. It's just a flesh wound. You know, I mean, that's what I call it. But we have these meetings once a year, and we go into all the details, and it's just flesh wound you know i mean i that's what i call it but we have these meetings once a year and we go into all the details and it's just icky as it can be but the point is is that it's one way i say i love you nowadays to my grandbabies that i have thought these things through not to where i'm being controlling but to where i'm being diligent and wise and i don't want to create toxicity and weird trust fund baby stuff.

But on the other hand, I don't want to work my whole life and build a fortune and two generations later use it to snort cocaine on the back of a yacht with a reality star. That is not my goal. Because that ain't living life large. I know some of you people that watch TV think that's living life large, but I don't watch enough TV. So I don't think that's living life large. Living life large is when my four-year-old granddaughter crawls up in my lap and says, I love you, Papa Dave. That's living life large. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. We'll be right back. In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage,

Brian and Rebecca are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? Hi, Dave. Welcome. Where do you guys live? Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Bit of a haul over here. Yeah. And you're missing pheasant season.

Sorry. Welcome to Nashville. And all the way over here to do a debt-free screen. Yep. Well done. How much have you paid off? $162,500 in 35 months. Love it. And what was your range of income during that time? When we started we were at $78,000 and then up to $147,000. Oh that's a nice jump in three years. So did somebody get a new job or different or get a job? I finished up my CPA exam and I'm now a partner at the accounting firm I work for. So doubled your income. Yeah. And I also got another job. I was part of the military and then I got a teaching job on top of it. Oh, wow. And she

finished up her master's as well. A couple of master's degrees in front of me. Way to go. Excellent. So what kind of debt was the 163? When we started, it was $1,000 in credit card debt, $21,000 in a motorcycle loan, $44,000 on a pickup. And then, yeah, we had a huge student loan debt of $96,500. Yeah, so vehicles and student loans. You bought some nice vehicles. So tell me what happened three years ago. Well, actually, we kind of started almost five years ago, but we didn't really start then. We heard about you then.

So we got your book as a wedding gift, and we brought it along on our honeymoon, and I had no desire to read it. But Brian, being the accountant he is, did. So I wanted to just lay on the beach, but he's reading intently. Five years ago. Yes. But you came home and it was two years before you started. Well, yes. So we read it and then...

Right after we were done with the honeymoon, then she had to take off for nine months for the military. So we weren't able to implement the principles right away. So we started, our church actually offered FPU in june of 2016 so ah that got you re-going yep yes and right before that is when we bought the you know bought a house right when she was getting home from the military and you bought a motorcycle no that was right after our wedding and then the day and then you bought a nice truck yeah the day after closing on the house we actually went and purchased the pickup you Of course. It was funny. I sold around the idea.

It was only $130 more a month, but that was irregardless of the fact that I already had a $600 car payment. And the day we go to start FPU that morning, he goes, just so you know, we're not selling the motorcycle or the pickup. And you sold both? No. We actually just sold the pickup. You kept the $21,000 motorcycle and sold the $44,000 pickup? Yeah. In South Dakota? Yeah.

It's cold. Yeah, well, we got this little one on the way in December, and we both decided we were willing to sacrifice and get out of debt. So keep that paid-for motorcycle because we probably won't buy another one if we get rid of it. Well, good for you guys. This is fun. So you go to the class, and that tells you, okay, wakes up the beach conversation from two years before on the honeymoon,

before military and all that kind of stuff. And you come home from the class. Were you both on the same page at that point? Yeah, we were both on the same page. I mean, when we read the book, we loved the principles. It was just a matter of her leaving that. We didn't get to implement them in time is all. Okay, all right. And we knew we wanted to have a family eventually anyway.

And at the time when we started, my minimum student loan payments were just as much as our mortgage payments. So we both agreed that it would be pretty easy to afford kids if we didn't have two mortgage payments. Amen. FP actually got us on the same page because before i was never looking at the budget or doing anything so i would suggest doing trips or going somewhere or buying things and brian would say oh we can't really do that and i would say well why not we just got paid yeah so we ought to have money where's our our money? Yeah. Very cool. Good job, you guys. So what do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is?

Definitely budgeting and communication. For sure. You talk about it all the time, Dave. You know, it saved our marriage when she got back that summer with the finances, the financial stresses, and just communication stresses. FPU helped us communicate better about money, and then it just improved our communication in general, and it drastically changed our lives. It's the best thing we ever did.

Wow. Very good. Good job, y'all. You know, you always talk about it, how much you paid when the transmission went under your van, and we had the same thing. It was our second or third budget after we started the class. And we were so excited.

We had enough income to cover all the minimum payments. We logged in online, made that extra $129 student loan payment. And about 10 minutes later, we both realized that we had bought concert tickets for our anniversary. And we had forgot to book anything for food or getting down and back to the concert. So that's when we knew we were serious about it. We decided to sell our tickets to go to the concert even. Whoa. Wow.

Wow. Wow. Very cool. Outside of the two of you, who were your biggest cheerleaders? Our friend Ryan, who actually joined us here today. Wow. He came with you. All right.

We've led an FPU class together with him before. And our friend Kevin, who gave us the book for our wedding gift, they were big supporters too. But Ryan was the one that we work out together quite a bit. And he's always there egging us on. Come on, guys. Work harder. You guys don't need to come along this weekend.

We'd love to have you. But you guys got to stick that money towards the debt. So it was great. And you did it, $163,035. That had to be hard. It was so hard. It was a challenge. But, I mean, we would work every weekend.

He would truck on the side, and I would come along. What was the hardest thing you did? The thing you go, God, I will never have to do that again. It's interesting. So my dad drove truck while I was driving up or growing up. And so as soon as I got done with the CPA exam, I just transferred and used all that extra time. I was spending studying and I'd go drive truck every weekend. So I worked Monday through Thursday at the accounting firm and I'd drive truck Thursday night, Friday, Saturday, Sunday

just for extra income to help us get rid of the debt as fast as possible. How much did you make doing that? It was crazy. Some weekends I could make $1,000 a weekend for two or three days. It's like almost a regular job on the side. Yeah, and we would do a teamwork. Then I would make all the food so we never had to stop at the truck stops and buy for that or we'd bring cases of water.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, so just made an adventure out of it. Yeah. And you never have to do it again. Our families all thought that we were crazy, and, you know, for going and doing that, they thought that we were letting money control us. Was it worth it? Absolutely.

Definitely. Yep. It's fairly easy to tell crazy family members no. I mean, just family members know, when you have a plan. Yep. And when you're both on board together. Yeah, we both agreed, you know, it was a short-term sacrifice for our long-term goals, you know, and our family on the way. Yeah.

Yeah. Way to go. Congrats. Very proud of y'all. Thank you. Well done. Very well done. How's it feel now that you're there?

Wonderful. It's unbelievable. No payments, baby. Oh, it's oh it's no payments but a house payment life is good well thank you for your service we appreciate that and we've got a copy of chris hogan's book for you everyday millionaires you're on your way to being one that'll be the next chapter in your story for sure you're heading that way and you got a great story already and it's a young story so you got lots of time lots of time to do this right very proud of you guys brian and rebecca sioux falls south dakota 163 000 paid off in 35 months making 78 all the way to 147 count it down let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one.

We're debt-free! Well done, well done. Love it, guys. Congratulations. It is amazing what happens when you decide that this thing is what you're going to do, whatever this thing is. When you get sick and tired of being sick and tired, when you finally say, that's it, I've had it.

She comes home from a tour of duty, and this young newlywed couple is having stress in their marriage. They're fighting. The money is piled up. The stupid payments are everywhere. Motorcycles and trucks and student loans out their ears. And then they just decided. Decision's a big thing. Here's the interesting thing.

You have exactly as much power as they have you can just decide right now ready set go Thank you. Adam is with us in Kentucky. Hey, Adam. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Thanks, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve.

What's up? So my wife and I, the only debt we have is a piece of property that's eight acres. And our thought was to eventually build on it. And we paid all of our other debts off, got our emergency fund, started our baby step four, and just have this, and we're going to pay it down as our down payment for once we've built the home. Now that we've talked to some contractors and builders, it's looking like the house that we want to build, even if we scale it down some,

is going to be too expensive for us as far as our budget goes. So I'm wondering if we should sell the land and go buy something that's already built or if you have another suggestion of how we should move forward. When you build your dream house and it's too expensive and it eats your lunch, it's called a nightmare. Right. And I've taken that call a hundred times. You don't want to be that guy later.

So I don't know what your budget is or exactly, but I heard you say you don't think you can afford or shouldn't do the building job on the land. Is there any alternatives? I mean, is the house you're going to buy if you sell your home and buy work somewhere else is it uh that much cheaper what's the deal yeah i mean we could we could if we're looking around like a 2500 square foot we could probably buy one um in about the 200 to 230 range and the cheetah's quote we've got so far on building something about the same comes out in the upper 200 like 280 to three over 300 and how much does that change how much is that over your budget then um one is like 310 000 that would be like 40 percent of our take-home pay, so it would be well over what we need.

And then for like $230,000 would be right about our 25%. Okay. Okay. And so the land, the value or the cost of the land is what's driving this up as well then? Correct. I mean, and that's got to be paid off. We still owe $70,000 on it as well, so we've got that plus. And so bottom line is the house you'd be looking at wouldn't have a $70,000 or an $80,000 lot under it.

That's right. That's correct. That's the problem. Okay. Yeah. How long have you had this eight acres? We just bought it in January of this year, so it's about a year. All right.

And what kind of a curve is your career on, your income on? Is it shooting up or climbing up or barely moving up? I would say over the next five years, we can get decent, maybe a $10,000 a year difference, but nothing drastic. Nothing that's going to make this doable in the foreseeable future correct well i would do something other than the bad idea then um you know i i we've kind of confirmed it's it's kind of heartbreaking because i like a piece of it or i like a piece of dirt my house sits on 20 acres i like having a little dirt around me a little buffer to keep human beings off of me. I like that.

I got a little country boy inside of me. And so I actually grew up in the suburbs. I'm not a country boy, but I got it inside of me. It's in my DNA anyway. And so I get, I mean, my heart hurts talking to you because I'm trying to help you figure out a way to do this, but I'm also not going to tell you to do something that puts your family in a bind because it does turn something that would normally make you smile into something that makes you frown. It turns a blessing into a curse when you do it wrong.

And so I don't hear anything here that says go ahead and build on this land, so I think you do sell it. What's the land worth? About $105,000. So you get a little bit of money out of it. And how much equity out of your home? We're renting currently. Oh, okay. All right.

How old are you? 27. And what's your household income? About $103,000. Okay. And what do you do for a living? I'm a firefighter. Okay. And what do you do for a living? I'm a firefighter. Okay.

All right. I think you're probably going to do this deal when you're about 40. Okay. I think that's what's going to happen. And you're going to be able to do it in cash or largely in cash because of what you do in the next 13 years. Right. And so doing it too soon is going to truncate your progress. It's going to cut your progress off.

But not doing it now and continuing to live with that kind of a financial discipline and wisdom is going to cause you, by the time you're 40, to be able to do almost anything you want to do. So, yeah, I want to give you hope in here that this is not a forever decision. Yeah. It's not biting off more than I can chew and choking on it. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, but then later I get all the steak and lobster I want

because I didn't eat too much to start with. So that's what we're talking about. It'll come live like no one else. So later you can live and give like no one else but that's that's the step here yeah you you can't afford it you're right i'm sorry but it's i'm not sorry because you're going to do it right and you're going to the thing's going to be a blessing and that's the deal open phones at 888-825-5225 you jump in all right. Jeremy is in Indiana. Hi, Jeremy.

Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi there, Dave. Thanks. Secretary Mark Hall. Sure. How can I help? Well, my new wife and I have a bit of an issue. We are in the middle of a custody battle, and I am a pilot.

I have the option to upgrade with my company, and we're trying to stay in this location. And if I hurry up, I can get the hours I need to upgrade and stay in this location right now. But that would require us taking about $4,000 out of our sinking fund that we have for lawyers and spending that and renting an airplane and getting the time that we need. And really, we both just kind of thought that we should call you. How much is in your lawyer sinking fund? And boy, is that not a truth statement right there. Yeah, that's not a good feeling.

We have right around $10,000 total, but that includes the emergency fund. We're on baby step two. We're actually going to financial peace tomorrow, and everyone going to be jealous. I talked to you today, but, uh, yeah, so about 9,000 in, in cash. And what's your household income? Our household income right now is 65. And if I do this, our household income, my, my salary will double. So it'll go up to about $115,000 to $120,000. In what period of time do this? Six weeks.

Wow. That's why it's a pressing issue. It all got sprung on us Saturday morning. What is your car's worth? Both of our cars are paid off. What are they worth? I drive a 2000 honda civic dave car and it's i don't know 1500 bucks and her her uh she's got an impala probably 3000 okay do you own anything that you can sell nothing we nothing we could sell

um nothing we could sell right now to come up with the money. And I guess the issue for us is that we have the money, and it just should be spent, is the question. Yeah, there's no doubt that this is a good expenditure. No doubt. But, you know, I don't want to make a choice between furthering your career and lose a custody battle. Yeah. That's the choice that's on my plate, if I understood your question right. Whether or not you spend this versus a potential emergency that's vague out there,

yeah, you go do this and you double your income in six weeks, no doubt. No question. Drop a dime on that, baby. But I don't want you to turn around then and have zero money because the lawyer needs some money or you never get to see your kid again right right so i don't know what your projections are on that or how where this custody battle is how heated it is what the timeline on it is what the legal fee need is um but you got to assess all of that against this yeah as of right now that's all paid up um she's still working off a retainer and you know we've cash flowed everything we've never so

probably in six weeks you're not going to need more money that's correct but you might in five months or ten months we we absolutely will in three to six months, yes. Okay. Yeah, I think you do it. You go forward. Because we're not putting your custody battle in jeopardy is what we're saying. And, you know, you're just starting with less of an emergency fund to start your baby step two that you're going to throw at the debt. But you're going to double your freaking income in six weeks?

Yeah. Definitely. I spend four grand to do that every time I got it. Yep. Good question. Thank you for joining us. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, guys.

This is Blake Thompson, senior executive producer of The Dave Ramsey Show. Did you know over 15 million people listen to The Dave Ramsey Show every week? And a lot of those people listen to one of over 600 radio stations across the country. To find a station near you, head to DaveRamsey.com slash show.