The Ramsey Show - App - How to Deal With Credit Card Debt Collectors (Hour 3)

Episode Date: July 30, 2019

Retirement, Insurance, Debt   Tools to get you started: Debt Calculator: http://bit.ly/2QIoSPV Insurance Coverage Checkup: http://bit.ly/2BrqEuo Complete Guide to Budgeting: http://bit.ly/2QEyonc Interview Guide: http://bit.ly/2BuGnZE   Check out other podcasts in the Ramsey Network: http://bit.ly/2JgzaQR 

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, it's the Dave Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thank you for joining us. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Dan starts off this hour in Colorado. Hi, Dan.

Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? I'm 58, almost 59. I've had a rollercoaster life financially. Owned my own business 21 years.

Did really well, then really bad. Should have finally closed in 2016. Probably should have done it five years earlier. Took a year off and by some miracle got a job at 56 in 2017. And now I'm doing pretty decent. Make about 80, 90K a year. My wife makes about 54 we paid off a lot of our credit card debt that had accumulated from the business and everything else uh probably

about 40k in the last uh two and a half years good for you um well done yeah well it was 92k but um now we're faced with some decisions. Some of those credit card loans, when they're given out cheap paper at 299 fixed, you know, 10 years ago, we used those as SBA loans. So SBA instead of the SBA loans. And what happened is we still have some of that 2.99 fixed left, maybe about 5,000. Then I was, I'm a disabled vet, so I was able to lock in a 325 refi in 2012, and I still owe about 206 on that. The problem is my retirement's only 40,000, and now I'm faced with investing it uh making more than the 3.25 uh or the 299 that i have left over in debt or should i go ahead and pay that off because right now i'm looking at 82

before i pay off my house and uh wait a minute you make you make 145000 a year. Why would you be at $82,000 paying off your house? It's only $200,000. Because I was forced into refining in 2012. I know, but you only owe $200,000. You make $145,000. Right. That's not $82,000. Well, we actually, no, $1982 is when we pay it off.

I'm sorry, by when I'm aged 82. No, that's ridiculous. You're not hearing me. $200,000 and you make $145,000? Why would you wait until age 82 to pay that off? Well, first

I wanted to get my credit card debt taken. Well, that's $5,000. Well, no. At the time it was $40,000. No, now. I'm talking about today. Right. Today you do not have an 82-year-old projection on paying off your home from today. No.

You only have $211,000 in debt to your name, and you make 145 50 000 a year out of 145 has you living on 90 and that puts you out of debt in four years with everything by the time you're 60 right would you do that no i'm just saying i'm just saying don't don't don't throw out the dramatic 82-year-old because that's just dumb. That's not even true. So now let's go back, and what we teach is what we call the baby steps. Baby step one, save $1,000. Two is be out of debt everything but your house. You've got $5,000.

You need to knock that in the head right now. Get that done as soon as possible. Do you have any money in savings at all that's not retirement? Yeah, we started saving up that six months. We have $7,000 in savings. Write a check today and pay off the credit card and cut it up. Even though it's $2.99. Today, you're not going to borrow money on a credit card to build wealth.

Today. Stop this. Stop playing with this dadgum debt. It's not been your friend. It's still not your friend. The faster you get rid of the debt, the faster you build wealth. So next step is write a check today, pay off the credit card. Then the next step is to have an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses. We call that baby step three. Baby step three is three to six months of expenses. I want you to rebuild your savings as quickly as you can for a rainy day fund.

You guys have seen some rainy days. You know there's a need for that. Have that in place in your all's house. That's probably $20,000. I want you to save. Okay? It's not going to be very high performing, but you're going to do it really, really fast because you make really good money, and you're going to be on a budget now where you make every dollar behave because you're 56 and you have about a 14-year horizon to get everything done and in place. Well, I'm 59 now, but almost 59.

Okay, then you've got an 11-year horizon until you're 70. Okay, so we've got to get to rocking on this stuff. So you're going to get these first two or three little things done very quickly. Then baby step four is I want you to start saving 15% of your income. That's $20,000 a year into retirement plans until we get the house paid off. Above that, I want you to attack this house and get it paid off. But you need to be on beans and rice right now. You don't be running around all over the world traveling.

You don't need to be eating out every night. You two need to be on a written budget. The two of you are in agreement. We've got some catching up to do. Because here's what I want you to do. If you will save $20,000 to $30,000 a year for 10 years, you're going to have about $600,000 or $800,000, and your house will have been paid off years before that. See, $140,000 is your income.

Minus $20,000 going into retirement okay that leaves us 122 000 to live and pay big chunks on the house let's take 50 and throw it at the house a year above putting 20 into retirement 50 a year in four years you're not even 65 years old. Your house is paid for. You'll have at that point about $200,000 in retirement, and you've got five more years until you're 70 to put another $300,000 or $400,000 aside, and it'll double again. So that's where you're headed if you follow the baby steps that we teach. But you're not going to build wealth in the short term by borrowing on your house to invest. In other words, not paying off the house so that I can invest more. That has not been a formula that's worked for anyone.

Hold on the line. I'll send you a copy of the book, The Total Money Makeover. It will show you exactly what to do step by step. It will show you these baby steps I'm talking about. Pay off your credit card today. Immediately build that emergency fund of $20,000 as fast as you can. Then start putting 15% into retirement and everything else on the house. The house is gone.

When the house is gone, you come back and you load retirement up and even more and use all of your income to build wealth. And you guys have got to stop spending. You don't have time to waste money. You've got to be on a budget and do this. Hold on, I'll send you a copy of the book, The Total Money Makeover. I talk a lot on this show about your offensive game with money, how to build wealth by saving and investing,

but your defensive game is just as important. I mean, you have to protect your money and your family because when emergencies hit, that way nobody's caught off guard. There's 10 kinds of coverage you might need based on where you are in your life stage. And we built a tool that will show you what you need to add or drop in just five minutes. It's the five-minute coverage checkup. To get it, it's free. Text the word CHECKUP to 33789.

Text the word CHECKUP to 33789. Text the word CHECKUP to 33789. Are high health care costs getting you down? Are you confused trying to navigate your options? Do you wish you could find an 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-accredited 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, visit chministries.org. That's chministries.org. Christian Healthcare Ministries is a proud sponsor of Dave Ramsey Live Events. chministries.org. Thank you for joining us, America. Blake is with us in Indiana. Hi, Blake. Welcome to The Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? Well, I started a business back in 2017 with a partner,

and I was the only one who personally guaranteed all the loans for the business. And the business has since failed, and I've actually retained a bankruptcy attorney. But I discovered you about three weeks ago, and after listening to you, I'm wondering if I can dig myself out of this without bankruptcy. Okay. How much debt and what kind of debt have you got left over from the business? So there's about a hundred, I've got $130,000 in debt total. $55,000 of that is credit cards that I personally guaranteed for the business.

We were a car dealership, so I've got $16,000 left over to my floor plan lender. I've got $10,000 in an equipment lease and probably another $5,000 left over to miscellaneous vendors. And then I personally have an auto loan and a boat loan. And what do you owe on your car? $25 loan. And what do you owe on your car? $25,000. What do you owe on your boat? $18,000. Okay.

All right. And what's your income now? $70,000. Okay. Are you married? No. Okay. Single.

All right. Yep. Well, in a bankruptcy, you're not going to keep the boat and the car unless you keep the debt. Right. And so both of those are gone in either scenario. Right. You sell them and you get rid of the debt or you give them up in bankruptcy and you get rid of the debt, whichever, whichever, whichever direction you go. Okay.

Right. How long are you behind on the credit cards? I quit paying on everything other than the truck and the boat in September. So my floor plan lender has already secured a judgment against me. American Express has just filed a lawsuit against me and so to discover. Perfect. Okay, that's good. All right. Well well you might make it

out of this i mean you sell the boat and sell the car and your own beans and rice and um let's just pretend that each one of those that you went to the uh floor plan lender and you said i don't have uh sixteen thousand dollars i have saved up four000, and I'll give you that if you want to take that as settlement. And let's just say you went through and you settled all of this for a quarter on the dollar. Well, that'd be somewhere around $30,000 it'd take you, and you could probably do that. And making $70,000 as a single guy, you'd probably do that in a year if you got rid of the boat and the car. Sure. And, you know, could you come up with $50,000?

Because some of them wouldn't take a quarter on the dollar. Yeah, but it's probably going to take a little longer than a year. It may take longer than a year to negotiate with all these people. Right, right. And the emotional stress and the amount of emotional abuse that you take through the process is unbelievable yeah i've kind of dealt with a little of that already yeah they're just they just are ridiculous and so um what i what i did um i actually had a three million dollars worth of debt and i had worked it all the way down to 378 000 before i filed i almost made i almost made it you know

and that was back in my 20s and i wasn't as tough then as i am now and i didn't know then what i know now so um it probably has more to do with whether or not you have enough emotional and spiritual gas left in your tank to fight like a maniac for one year really hard yeah if you could suck it up and do that for one year and you just argue with morons which is what you're going to be doing it's not negotiating it's arguing with morons and going listen i have four thousand dollars well we'll take seven thousand dollars maybe you didn't understand what is english your second language i mean i said four thousand dollars that's all i have these

are the conversations you're going to have over and over and over again i mean you're thinking to yourself are your parents cousins i mean why can't you understand this sentence you know and you're just have you just kind of have to have fun with it and you just beat the snot out of them because in a bankruptcy here's what they're going to get zero right so anything you give them is a bonus sure and you're not lying to them you don't have a hundred thousand dollars sitting in an account or you would have not called me you would have paid the bills exactly so you're saying i have five thousand dollars who wants it first okay you know and settle each one of these i would recommend that if i was going to work really hard on the first two i would get rid of the equipment lease and the floor plan people uh

american express is all bark and no bite they're so full of crap you can tell they're lying if their mouths moving there's a horrible company and their collections people break federal law on a daily basis they're just outrageous yeah and so you have to learn to just hang up the phone and have a conversation another day if you feel your blood pressure moving up just go they're getting to me this they're winning this argument i need to get off the phone this is a simple conversation i have this much money do you want it okay as settlement in full you have to get it in writing and never give them electronic access to your checking account because they lie they will clean you out right but if you can afford you know how many different credit cards are there in the 55 uh there's probably eight or nine. And so let's say there's ten creditors with the floor plan and the lease, right? Yep.

And so there's ten people we have to get to come to terms with. Ten battles I have to win, and then I win the war. Right. And if you've got any that are super small, that are like $1,000, pay it. Yeah, there's several of those. Just pay it and get it out of your life. Yeah. But if it hadn't been paid since September,

you've still got to get in writing what the balance is, or they'll come back and have tripled it with collections fees and stuff. Right, right, which a lot of them, they've quit adding fees onto them at this point since they're all going to lawsuits. I mean, if they're small ones, they're not going to lawsuits. The American Express bill must be large. There's two American Express cards. One's $13, had, they're not going to go. If they're small ones, they're not going to lawsuit. The American Express bill must be large. There's two American Express cards. One's $13,000, one's $11,000.

If they're north of $10,000, they will eventually go to a lawsuit. But there's not a lot they can do with that. Most of the time, they take it to same thing with your floor plan company. They take it to judgment lien, and it just sits there. Then if you ever want to buy a house or you ever want to sell a house or something like that, it's hard.

Some of them will go so far as to garnish your wages, but almost never. Okay. Now, the equipment lease and the floor plan are more likely to do that than credit cards. Credit cards are just, you know, they just yip, yip, yip, yip, yip. They're just like a barking feist dog. They just drive you nuts. And you're really not dealing with intelligent life there.

This is some of the dumbest humans on the planet when you're dealing with a credit card collector. Sure. And you've already discovered that at American Express, I'm sure. And several others. Yeah, yeah. And Discover. Discover is just, they're moronic. Yeah.

And so you just have to keep going. Listen, number one, we're not going to have an abusive conversation or you're going to listen to a dial tone. Number two, there's some basic tenets of the conversation. Here's what I've got. I don't have any more. You using a technique is not going to make me grow money. I don't have money. This is what I have.

Do you want it? Listen, one more time and then I'm going to hang up. Do you want the money? And then just hang up and call back, you you know five days later and do it again you know and it's just you just if you can do all that i think you can get out of this i don't think you're bankrupt um but it may drive you to the edge of insanity before you get it right right it's just uh you have to turn into a game because it's such a ludicrous series of conversations. I mean, the way they treat us and we're not we don't even know the money we're negotiating on behalf of the customer. We're calling up trying to settle something for some widow or something.

One of our coaches here, you know, and they're like trying to yell at us. We're like, listen, you're an idiot. I'm not talking to you if you're going to yell. We just hang up the phone on them, you know. Right. And they call to yell at our receptionist and stuff. I mean, you're an idiot. I'm not talking to you if you're going to yell. We just hang up the phone on them, you know? Right. And they call and yell at our receptionist and stuff. I mean, it's just crazy. So it's a weird little world that they all live in.

You're trying to do the right thing and give them some money. I think you can work your way through this if you've got enough gas left in your tank, okay? Okay, awesome. You need some help, you call me back. I'll be happy to. It's what I'm here for. I'll help you any way I can. I've been there myself.

I've had those exact same conversations on my own behalf. One of the reasons I hate American Express so bad. Unbelievable. Yeah, they told my wife one time, why would you stay with a man who won't pay his bills? She called me crying because she was kind of thinking the same thing. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Well, the kids are about to head back to school. Ha-ha! It means it's time for you to get your vacation mode off and get back on your money goals. You can save up to 69% on life-changing books right now at DaveRamsey.com

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The Ramsey Concierge team will help you out there. 888-227-3223. Rachel is next in California. Hi, Rachel. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hello, Dave. Thanks so much for taking my call. Sure.

What's up? I got married about a year ago. My husband and I are both in our 50s. We don't have any debt, which is great. We just paid off his car, so that's all there. And I know we need to have an emergency fund, so we're putting money aside for that. Great. I have a 401k that I contribute 10% to and the company kicks in six. So I think that's a good place to have money. My husband has a pension through the state, but we're just trying to figure out because we're both, well, he's been with the company a long time. So he's got the pension thing is a good thing.

I'm just behind on the savings and the retirement thing. I've probably been doing it five years now. So we're trying to figure out the best way to really augment our retirement because we do want to retire one day. And we're fortunate we don't have debt at our age. We also don't have a house. So that's, you know, neither here nor there. But I've heard you mention Roth IRAs. And because I already have a 401k, I'm curious about the advantage of that and then how do we how do we keep building that wealth because we have a fast track to 70 right very good good for you well you'll get there you're going to be fine uh good news is you're paying attention

and you're you're right on your way to doing this so um i would follow the baby steps that we teach uh number you know you're on baby step three building your emergency fund when you finish that uh what is your household income I would follow the baby steps that we teach. Number, you know, you're on baby step three, building your emergency fund. When you finish that, what is your household income? Our annual income is about $180,000. Okay, great. Okay. We recommend that you put in baby step four 15% of your income aside for retirement.

That would be close to $30,000 in your case. Okay? Okay. And so close to $2,500 a month. Now, where does it go? We call it rock, paper, scissors in a sense. The best place to put it is up to a match. And you said you have a match.

I do. Okay. Up to the match. How much is your match? 6%. Okay. So take 6% of your income, and that's going to come off that $30,000 we're trying to get to. Okay, so that's the first thing we do. Does he have a 401k available at the state?

He probably does. He doesn't, actually. He has this pension thing. Well, I know the pension's there, but he's not putting anything in the pension. No, they do. They take his money, and they put it aside, and then he gets it for anything. the pension. No, they do. They take his money and they put it aside. Okay. What percentage are they taking?

I don't know. When I looked at his paycheck, I think that he's contributing 7%. That's probably right. When I looked at it. That might be right. But just look at it and find out. Read about it. You can probably find some of the stuff in the state of California. I is who he works for i'll be fine easy enough to find it and find

out what the deal is okay so we're going to set aside 15 of our income is our goal so we're going to take 15 times 180 uh so it's going to be close to 30 000 bucks and we're going to be working our way towards that so we're going to take your match whatever portion he is taking out of his that's going to be a portion of it add that together and, and we're still not to $30,000. Then what are we going to do? We're going to do a couple of Roth IRAs here. And you can do $7,000 each. That's $14,000 more towards our $30,000 that we're trying to get to.

But that's still not going to get you all the way up to what you need to be doing. So then you're going to put some more above the match in your 401k to get there. Okay. You see what I'm doing? Yep, I do. Now, your 401k, do they have a Roth option on the 401k? That's a good question. I'm not sure.

I'm not going to be staying with the company very much longer, so this will be something for you to think about as I move to a new company, but I will pay attention to that in the next company. Okay, cool. Good. move to a new company but i will pay attention to that in the next company okay cool good well then then yeah if you have a roth available do roth take the match first then do all the roth you can do and then do traditional and traditional would be a regular 401k or 403b that does not have a roth okay that does not have a match beyond the match. So that's your order of rock, paper, scissors is match to Roth to traditional.

Okay. Okay. Keep going up that ladder until you get to 30,000 bucks and you save 30,000 bucks. Then above the 30,000 out of your wonderful income, that's you still got 150 left to live on and start saving to pay cash for a house because I want you to pay cash for a house as you move into retirement sometime yeah and that's that's one thing we talked about too was i i i want a house and when i heard your your um show a little bit earlier about getting you know house excited and stuff i thought oh that's me these days and i need to cool my jets and do these other

things first because well you don't have to save up you don't have to save up and pay cash for a house but if you want to save up a down payment and you know do the 15 year fixed and all that that i was talking about when you were hearing me do all that then that's okay too but we still you want to have a point that say okay 65 years old this house gotta be paid for i got 15 years to pay it off or less okay so if you bought a house that's what you got to do and the faster you get that paid off the fat more you can build wealth but if you save 30 000 a year in good growth stock mutual funds for 20 years you'll have two million dollars okay if you do that for 20 years that's why i say you're okay okay i i

thought we were but like i just i wanted to check because I'm not using it as financial advisor. I'm just using, you know, I've been reading a lot, and obviously I read a lot of stuff that you have. I haven't done your total money makeover, but I was thinking of just getting the book for me and my husband to sit down and read. Well, I'll send you a copy. Hold on. I'll have Kelly pick up, and I'll send you a copy of it as a gift. We appreciate you being a listener. Check in with one of the SmartVestor pros.

They can help you organize this stuff. We're not in the investment business, but those are the people, as you know from listening, that we endorse. And so, you know, you just click SmartVestor. It drops down a list of them that we have approved, and then you choose from among them, and, you you know you'll be moving in the right direction so hey thanks for the call we appreciate you joining us linda's on instagram my sister's fighting in-stage alcoholism i'm trusting god but realistically i know this can very well take her life and soon she's aware but there's so much damage they're saying she can't recover how can i help her prepare financially for the end of her life?

She doesn't want her kids inheriting all of her debt. Your children do not inherit your debt. Debt is not passed generationally. If your children did not sign for the debt, they're not liable for the debt. Now, the estate is liable. And your estate, basically, when you pass away is your net worth it's what you own minus what you owe if she is a typical person that has battled alcoholism for many years she probably doesn't have any assets she probably only has debt and so if you live in an apartment

with $200 worth of furniture and you have $80,000 worth of credit card debt and you die the credit card companies get nothing because there's nothing for them to get and that's not passed to your children okay they have to collect it from the estate but now if mom owns a $30,000 cd that's going to go to settle her debts if she owns a piece of ground that the value of that ground has to be offset against her debts. If she owns a piece of ground, the value of that ground has to be offset against those debts, or you have to sell the ground and use it to offset the debts. Anything she owns at her death will stand good for any debts she has.

Now, personal items, nobody messes with. Tiny stuff, okay? But she's got $100,000 worth of antiques. That's not going to pass to her children if she's got $80,000 in credit card debt. Unless they pay the credit card debt. Okay? So it's the only way the estate has to stand for itself. So anything you own

will stand good for what you owe. And that's how that works. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Thank you. Our scripture of the day, 1 John 1 and 9, If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. James Joyce said, Mistakes are the portals of discovery. There you go.

Love that. Open phones this hour as we talk about your life and your money. That's what this show's about. The number here is 888-825-5225. Maureen is with us in Florida. Hi, Maureen. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave.

Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? I have two quick questions. First question is, last year my husband and I were fortunate enough to be debt-free, including our home as well, so thanks to you. And we had a whole life policy, unfortunately, that we paid into.

Now, considering now that we're totally debt-free, we wanted to know if we should cash it in to use the money toward savings and toward investing, or should we just leave it? Because I know you had said before, if you couldn't get a policy, that we should hold on to it. My husband is not qualified to get the other policy that we should hold on to it. My husband is not qualified to get the other policy. Okay.

So if you cash it in, you'll have no insurance? Right. Like, no life insurance. Correct. And what's the face value of the policy? The face value, I believe, is $125,000. Okay. And how old are you guys?

I'm 48. My husband's going to be 50. Okay. 60 or 50? He you guys? I'm 48. My husband's going to be 50. Okay. 60 or 50? He's 50. I'm sorry. 5-0. Okay, and so why is he uninsurable?

Due to high blood pressure. He's had some issues with the VA. I think when he tried to apply for the life insurance, they must have looked into that. He has a VA disability check that he gets as well. So I think that might have contributed to it. Yes, it would. Okay. All right.

Okay. And so how much money do you all have in savings and in nest egg? Right now in savings, we have about $20,000. Okay. You don't have a nest egg at all? No. No 401Ks or retirement of any kind? No. Okay. All right. You keep the life insurance in place then? Okay. Yeah. Because you need the life insurance. If something happened to him, you're not okay financially. Right. And if something happened to you, if he's counting

on your income, he's not okay financially. Now, if we fast forward and you keep doing as wise as you've been doing, you said you even got the house paid off, is that right? We did, yes, we did. And what's your household income? It varies. My husband's a truck driver. I'm a teacher, so it could be anywhere between $70,000, $80,000, sometimes a little bit more than that.

Okay. All right. Well, yeah, I think if you keep doing what you've been doing and you say, you know, five years from now, 10 years from now and you look up and your 401ks are loaded up and, you know, you've gotten some serious money in there because you've got no house payment now. I mean, you're just game on on investing, right? Yes. You've got no house payment now. I mean, you're just game on on investing, right? Yes, of course. So sit down with a smart investor pro and make sure you're taking advantage of Roth IRAs and 401ks

and that you've got all this investing going because you're on baby step seven is where you are, which you ought to be able to kick your wealth building into high gear at that point because with no payments, it's easy to build wealth. So a lot easier anyway. So I think you look up and you know if you got a half a million dollars set aside and you're 55 and you have no house payment and he dies you're okay right for sure but if you you know so like keep it keep it you're gonna keep it another four or five years i think okay okay okay i have another really quick question if you have time. I do.

Okay, I've worked at a job for over 20 years, making about close to $18 an hour. Right now, I just recently went on a job interview for a bigger position, which would be closer to my house. Travel time would be cut in half. Also, as far as tolls and gas and things like that a better position but unfortunately starting off it does start off at a little bit less money and i don't know i don't know i mean i kind of know what to do i don't want to take the less money but i think the opportunity would be great plus travel time is cut in half, so what would you be making a year? Starting off, well, let me see. Right now, I'm about, like I said, almost at $18 an hour starting off.

I'd only be maybe about $15, $16 an hour. Okay, and how fast are you going to get back up to your old, if this is a great opportunity, your income ought to be coming up. How fast are you going to be back up? Well, they said in three months they could give me a review to see. But I think it would take over a year in order to get back to where I'm at. Okay. And five years from today, where are you making the most money?

Probably where I'm at right now, where I'm staying at. Really? I think possibly. So the upside potential is better where you are now i think possibly because the thing of it is my at my job where i'm at now they consistently do give raises so i feel the other place doesn't well it could be possibly three in three months and then you figure from three months from there then it has been another year yeah another another maybe like 50 cents and then another 50 cents so it's going to

take me some time to get back to where i feel where i'm at now okay is the environment that much better i mean obviously the commute's better the commute is better it'd be pretty much almost about the same kind of stress level if that makes any sense um actually probably a little bit more stress for less money i guess in the beginning if that yeah so but i just feel like i think we look for i think we look for a third option and that is one that's close that pays more than you're making now and then it becomes a no-brainer right yeah so either these people come up to 18 with promises of raising the future or you need to look for a third option because what you're telling me is you don't mind the place you are but you do hate the commute and

the cost of the tolls and if you didn't have the commute and the cost of tolls you'd probably be okay right so if you could pick up that job and move it over closer to your house, you'd probably just have been happy. Right. Like if this new job, since it's so close to my home, if they would have offered me what I'm even starting at or where I'm at right now, if they would have started me at that price, I would have taken the job.

Yeah, well, just tell them that. Right. Because you're not going to take it otherwise. I mean, you know, and you're looking for somebody that will match what you've got but is closer to home. And, you know, you just got to work that through and decide. So hold on. I'll send you a copy of our best career book at the moment that we got here. It's called The Proximity Principle by Ken Coleman.

And it's called the proximity principle by ken coleman and uh it's absolutely incredible and it'll help you get through some of these decisions that you're looking at good question all right amelia is up or amelia uh is up in uh texas hi amelia how are you good how are you doing better than i deserve. What's up? So I have a question for you. I'm sorry. I'm so nervous. That's okay. I'm on baby step two right now, and I have my debts listed,

but I got a letter in the mail from the IRS saying that I owe, and I guess you could say from back taxes, I had a couple trouble with the IRS in the previous year, but I was wondering if I should use my emergency fund for whenever I get the letter of how much I should be paying. Are you sure that the amount that they say you owe is correct? I'm looking more into detail with that just because um yeah once you establish that it's correct you do whatever you need to do and put it at the top of your debt snowball and pay it as fast as you can how much money is owed to the irs approximately um i'm i'm assuming it's

going to be around 1700 just because that's what i've always paid my previous year. So you're consistently $1,700 off? Just around. So in Georgia, I was paying the state and federal taxes, and because I was making too much over there, I was either paying $1,700 to $2,000. Okay, but you need to adjust your withholding then to where you're not having enough withheld is what you're telling me. Right?

No. Yeah, you need to get your withholding adjusted so that you don't get in trouble there. But yeah, you put the IRS at the top of a debt snowball. It's the first thing you do. You want to get the KGB, I mean the IRS, out of your life as soon as possible. You don't want to hang with those guys. They've got unlimited power, their interest rates are ridiculous, and their penalties are worse. It's just people you don't want to mess with.

So, hey, thank you for the call. That puts us out of the Dave Ramsey Show and the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily. With the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus. Hey guys, it's Blake Thompson, Senior Executive Producer for The Dave Ramsey Show. This hour's over, but you can find more great content

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