The Ramsey Show - App - How to Get Your Resume to the Top of the Pile (Hour 2)

Episode Date: January 25, 2019

The show about you

🎵 Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, 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. Thanks for joining us, America. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Starting off this hour is Alfred in Corpus Christi, Texas. Hey, Alfred, how are you? I'm doing great.

Thank you for taking my call. Sure. Are you on a speaker? Your phone sounds funny. Yeah, I'm on great. Thank you for taking my call. Sure. Are you on a speaker? Your phone sounds funny. Yeah, I'm on speakerphone. You're going to have to get it off a speaker, and I'll come back to you when you get that figured out. Kelly already told you that once.

Brandon is in Memphis. Hey, Brandon, how are you? Hey, I'm doing great. How are you, Dave? Better than I deserve. What's up? So I have about $150,000 left on my mortgage, and that's the only debt that I have. And after I budget everything and pay all my bills and everything, I have about $1,800 left over.

And so I was wondering, would it be a good idea to start investing $1,000 a month now or just use that extra money to pay on my mortgage? Okay, you're debt-free except your mortgage. You have your emergency fund in place of three to six months of expenses? I have about $10,000 in savings. All right. Then the next step would be baby steps four, five, and six. Fifteen percent of your income should be going into retirement savings.

Are you doing anything towards retirement investing at this point? No, sir, not yet. Okay. And what is your household income? About $50,000. Okay, cool. So $7,500 a year would be 15% of your household income. And so, you know, you just set that up.

Do you have a 401K at work? No, sir. Okay. And you set that up as a Roth IRA, and you can do that. I mean, you basically knock it out with one Roth IRA. It's $7,000 a year or $6,000 a year you can put in it. And so you can do a little bit in your name. Are you married?

Yes, sir. Okay, a little bit in your name, a little bit in your wife's name. You can put $4,000 in each if you want, something like that. Once you're doing that and you set that up as a monthly hit on your checking account, going straight into mutual funds, into a Roth IRA, any money you have above that, baby step five is start to think about kids' college. Do you have kids? No, sir.

Okay, then we skip that one. And baby step six is we pay everything else on the mortgage. So what that does is it gets you started with a real serious investment. Now, how old are you? 22. Okay. If you invest 15% of your income for the rest of your life, you'll have $10 million. Mm-hmm.

Okay. Or more. Yes, sir. And my wife isn't working yet. She's actually going to start working full-time once she gets out of school. Yeah. And we pay cash for her school up until now. Perfect.

And that will increase, then, the 15% going into retirement. And on top of that, then you'll have more money to throw on at that mortgage and knock that mortgage out. I suspect you're probably going to be millionaires around 30 to 32 years old. That's pretty cool. So let me ask you this question real fast. If I could do more than 15%, should I? No. Once I'm debt-free?

No, everything else goes to the house. I'm talking about once I pay off the house. Oh, once you pay off the house, that's maybe step seven then, and there's nothing left to do then but become very, very wealthy and be very, very generous. So, yeah, you max out everything in your retirement and you do more investing but you also do some living there's only three things you can do with money give it live it and invest it right and you ought to be doing some of all three all the time and you're doing a really good job man i mean you're you're a studly 22-year-old.

You got this going, man. I'm proud of you. Very, very well done. Ali is in Louisville, Kentucky. Hi, Ali. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Thanks very much for taking my call.

Sure. What's up? So I bought a property in Canada in 2008 for $470,000. Why? Well, because I was stupid. Were you living there? Yeah, I lived in Canada for 10 years and I moved to the U.S. a couple of years ago. Okay, why didn't you sell it when you left?

Because it was much lower than what I owed ago. Okay. Why didn't you sell it when you left? Because it was much lower than what I owe to. Okay. Yeah. So it's worth $230,000 now, and I've been renting it out. The rent is less. It doesn't cover the mortgage. Yeah, $230,000. It's worth $230,000.

What do you owe on it? $470,000? $370,000 I owe, and I bought it for $470,000. Okay, so you owe $370,000, and it's worth $230,000. So you're $140,000 in the hole. That's right. Wow. And, yeah.

And, you know, this is probably the most stupid decision that I made, but I did more of, you know, purchasing houses because I think it's, you know, I moved a lot and every place that I went, the first thing I was in rush to buy the house. And thank God I came across your show a couple of months ago, and we were going to buy another house to be in a school district until I listened to your show. And now I'm clear, and I know all the decisions that I made. Now, I'm wondering, you know, the good thing is I had, you know, some other debt that I paid off just recently, and I have my $24,000 emergency fund. Now, I'm not sure, should I pay the $500 extra that I need to cover the mortgage and then

take care of other baby steps, or I'm not sure how. $500 a month you're in the hole versus the payment on the bad rental. Are the values recovering on the bad Canada rental? Is it going to come up eventually? This is very special. This is oil and gas field, and it's been on the low downhill for a while, and I think they're saying it might be another two or three years before it hits the bottom. Okay, so here's the deal.

Here's the deal. You're $140,000 in the hole, and you're burning at $6,000 a year. Correct. Which is $500 a month. And so if you burn for two years, that's $24,000. That's nothing like $140,000. So you just sit there and burn it. You just cover the deficit until the thing comes back in value to sell it.

In the meantime, use any other monies that you have. We're going to let this thing recover enough to get you out of it. That's what I wanted to do when the oil and gas comes back. And you bought in a very volatile geographic area in terms of the microeconomy in that area is all about whether we're drilling for oil or not, it sounds like. So, ouch, ouch. Yeah, so just cover the deficit. Any other monies that you have, use them in your other baby steps or use them for investing or paying off your current residence, that kind of stuff. But I wouldn't pay extra on this rental.

I'm just going to feed it the least I can possibly feed it. And be sure and raise the rents as often as you can, too. Maybe you're not going to end up the next year. Maybe it won't be $500 in a hole. Maybe it'll be $400 in a hole or something. Anything you can do like that to minimize the damage this has done and get you there. Bottom of the hour, Ken Coleman will join us from the

Ken Coleman Show. You've got questions for Ken, call in right now. The phone number is 888-825-5225. I'm going to go on a little rant here for a minute. I took a call from a father who wanted to know how to plan for the care of his special needs daughter after he dies. Why is it that parents of special needs children are so deliberate in their planning while other parents have a tendency to be sloppy? Do the needs of your family matter less if something happens to you? Oh, I'm sorry, did I just guilt trip you into getting some term life insurance?

Well, then good. Your family needs you to step up. Having the right amount of term life insurance is a matter of personal responsibility. If you want to use the new year as a reason for doing the right thing, then do it. Term life insurance is something every family needs, which is why I talk about it every day. It's not complicated, it's not expensive,

and you need to do this now. Zander Insurance is the only place I recommend. Visit zander.com or call them at 800-356-4282. Please learn from other people's mistakes and get this taken care of. That's 800-356-4282 or Zander.com. Last day of the Everyday Millionaire book tour underway. Chris Hogan, two-time number one best-selling author on the line. Hello, Mr. Hogan. How's life? Oh, Dave, it is fantastic.

I'm out here in beautiful Seattle and just taking in all the sights. Good stuff, man. And you guys had an absolute blowout book signing in Sacramento last night. I think they've won the prize, haven't they? Oh, they definitely won the prize, Dave. We had over 500 people at the signing. The Barnes & Noble was absolutely packed. Met some incredible people.

Met a young man. He was 21 years old. He lost his mom last year. But she had started teaching him about being financially responsible with financial peace. And this young man has a net worth, Dave, of $200,000 at age 21. Wow. That's impressive. He's going to be so wealthy.

That's very cool. Very cool. And you're meeting everyday millionaires, I assume, everywhere you go, right? Oh, Dave, I'm telling them when they come up and I talk to them at the signing, I say, listen, if you're an everyday millionaire, just give me a little shoulder bump and an eye wink. And I met about 12 of them there last night. And they're excited.

Very cool. Well, we ought to put them all 12 up there on a panel and interview them. That's great. Very cool. The book is Everyday Millionaires, How Ordinary People Built Extraordinary Wealth and How You Can Too. It's the stories of the millionaires, the conclusions that we gathered from the study that Chris and our team did here, the largest study of millionaires ever done, over 10,000 millionaires studied.

And Chris has been all over america the book is a number one bestseller national bestseller in all the categories very very well done and uh the last signing of the book tour is tonight in seattle and uh chris you guys will be exactly where tonight uh we will be at the barnes and noble Northgate, Dave, right there on Northgate Way. And it will be at 6 o'clock tonight. So I'm excited to see the people of Seattle come out and hear this message. Absolutely. $1,000 will be given away by our SmartVestor pros.

They're sponsoring this tour and giving away $1,000. You have given away $1,000 at each one of the book signings. No purchase necessary. Must be present to win. Got to be 18 to meet all the legal guidelines so there you go friday today january the 25th the last day of the everyday millionaire book tour all right chris you've been in major cities for the past three weeks all over America, meeting people from the north, the south, the east, and the west. What's your conclusion about America right now? Oh, the conclusion is, is, Dave, is that the American dream is alive and well. I'm meeting these everyday people, and they're focused.

I'm having them come up and tell me my tagline. They say they're focused and not finished. They believe this message, and they know what's possible, and they're following the principles that we talk about. So I'm excited to see what happens here in the next few years, how many more everyday millionaires that are created because they started to take control of their finances. Very cool, man.

Very cool. Well, we're Americans, not Americains. So it can be done. That's exactly right. It can absolutely be, we're Americans, not Americains. So it can be done. That's exactly right. It can absolutely be done. It's very, very possible. And these 10,000 millionaires that we studied, we found that 79% of them inherited zero.

Eight out of 10 inherited zero. And 62% did not, went to state schools. 8% went to community colleges. Another 8% didn't go to college. And so the vast majority of them did not go to an expensive prestigious school. So these are all lies that people believe that you have to have a high GPA. You have to have a 4.0 to be a millionaire. Most of them don't have 4.0s.

Now, they didn't have 1.0s. They're not stupid, but they did have that 3% or that.3 or so GPA as we talked to them, and so good stuff. Chris, congratulations on another number one and all the hard work. We'll get you home tomorrow and let you get some rest.

Well, Dave, thank you, and again, I'm so proud of the team, everybody at the office and out here on the road. We're taking this message strong, and we're going to finish up tough today. Absolutely. That's how it works. Hey, thanks. Travel careful, and we'll see you when you get back home, brother. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Thank you for joining us.

We're glad you're here, America. At the bottom of the hour, Ken Coleman will be with us talking about how to live your passion in your career, how to find that sweet spot, as he does on the Ken Coleman Show every day. If you've got questions about career, this is a good time for you to jump in. 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Chad is with us in Billings, Montana. Hi, Chad. How are you?

I'm doing all right. How are you, Dave? Better than I deserve. What's up? Well, I was calling. I wanted to get your opinion. We moved here to Billings in June of 2017. We purchased a home.

We currently owe about $280,000 on the home. We started, we had a few rooms painted when we moved in. We started noticing some large cracks and some doors that wouldn't shut. So we had an engineer come out, come back out. When we bought the home, we had an engineer check the foundation. He said everything was okay. It's about a 10-year-old home. This engineer that came out, it was this last November. He's estimating that there's between $40,000 to $80,000 of foundational repair that the home requires. And I am just kind of baffled as to what to do at this point. The home was near the top of our price range. And I certainly don't have $40,000 to $80,000 to sink into a home that we just bought a year and a half ago. Okay, so which of these guys is wrong?

Because a foundation did not cave in in 14 months since you've owned this house. Yeah, so the one that came out, he he believes and there's some pieces to this but he believes that the original um engineer that came out missed some things and that the prior homeowners may have um covered up some cracks but he couldn't say for sure there wasn't any reports that were done um on the actual home at the time besides our engineer just telling our realtor that everything was okay. So he was functioning as a home inspector. Yeah, well, yeah, we had a separate home inspection as well. So we had the home inspection and the engineer.

So we thought we did everything we needed to to make sure we were, you know, in good shape. Okay, there's one of two things going on, and I don't know which it is, and you're going to have to get to the bottom of it and figure it out. Okay, one is the new engineer is, and you're going to have to get to the bottom of it and figure it out. Okay. One is the new engineer is right, and you completely got screwed, in which case the other engineer, the realtor, and the homeowner are about to get sued. Okay. Okay. Because they covered this up. If it's so dramatic that there's $80,000 worth of foundation repair 14 months after you own it, unless it just was over the top of a dad-blame sinkhole,

that's somebody hid something, like a lot of people hid something, with their incompetence or just straight out hid it, okay, which makes them liable in your state. And so you'd need to seek an attorney's advice if that's the case. Or the second possibility is that the new engineer is a drama queen and is playing this up to be a whole lot bigger mess than it really is. And so what we need is a third opinion, for sure, on what is really going on here. Because I'll tell you, man, I own a bunch of real estate.

I've owned 2,000 properties in my life. I have seen some bad foundations, lots of them, and it's like termite damage. You know, most of the time there's hyperbole and drama around it in excess of what it really takes to fix it. And people just, there's something about it that they just go bananas. And, I mean, I would be shocked if you really have $80,000 worth of problems that you wouldn't have visually seen that yourself walking through the house before you bought it. And that's part of the trick. And this is where I do have some faith in the newer engineer. The neighborhood that we're in, unfortunately, there's a number of homes experiencing similar issues.

Part of the trick with ours was we thought these are newer homes that are having issues. We thought ours being a 10-year-old home and that we had an engineer come out, we thought, okay, if it's going to move, it's done. It's moving. Yeah. Okay. For real. Well, what you need then is you need a third opinion and you need to get some legal counsel. You need to talk to an attorney uh because if you've got a thing that's been hidden from you

then seller disclosure laws are going to get them this is the dave ramsey show There's nothing smart about smartphones if your wireless plan is blowing your budget each month. Pure Talk USA offers smarter wireless with unlimited plans starting as low as $20 per month. You never pay data overage fees and we never turn off your data. No contracts, no hidden fees. And if you're thinking our low cost means less coverage, think again. Our voice and data service covers 99% of Americans, and our 4G LTE network provides the fastest internet speeds

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That's puretalkusa.com. Joining me this half hour, Ken Coleman of the Ken Coleman Show, broadcast on Sirius XM and as a podcast daily, helping people find their sweet spot, learning to work in something that you love and that you can develop your talent in to be good at it. Welcome back, Ken. Always good to be here, Dave. Thanks for having me. Good to have you. So if you're looking for a career change,

Ken's Get Hired Guides include two free resources to help you fix your resume and nail the interview. Which one do you want to talk about? Well, I like talking about both of them because we're getting great feedback from people, Dave. They're saying, hey, Ken, we're doing this. We got an email the other day, Dave, I know you appreciate. Guy said, hey, I submitted my resume with your template as the guide. And he said, I got an email back and the hiring manager said, I got to tell you, I've never seen anything that looks like this. It was really weird, but I liked it. I'd like to have you for an interview. And you know, that's the whole point of it. Get something to stand out. That's right. Stand out

from the crowd. That's right. You know, your resumes are being submitted in the form of, you know, some type of automated situation. And then if they're printed out, it's almost like there's this just big pile. And if you're going to stand out, you have to have a relationship attached to it. And that's what we're really preaching on the show and in this guide, that you need to do the work to find some type of connection with somebody at that company who will walk your resume in or essentially say, hey, so-and-so just applied, and I know them through this person. I think they're very, very sharp, could be a really good culture fit. I think you ought to give them a shot.

And that's what you're looking for. Then when they look at that resume, you want to stand out. They remember you. And so we lead with who you know. We have these big, bold headings. We walk through this in these guides, the Get Hired guides. We're talking specifically about how to write the perfect resume guide, and it's working because we know that HR managers, hiring managers,

are spending six to 60 seconds scanning your resume. It needs to be like a brochure that you might look at for a vacation that you're considering. What is intriguing about them to make them want to call you so you get a chance to do the interview? And then the interview guide itself is really practical, Dave. We're preparing people on how to prepare and then how to perform. Those are the two parts of an interview. How do you prepare ahead of time and then how do you perform when you get that chance?

Because that's a nerve-wracking moment. You think for most people, they're not like you and I that stand on stages or like to do live broadcast. It's a high-pressure moment when you're sitting across from somebody who may or may not hire you. And, you know, this hiring guide, the How to Win the Interview Guide, five strategies on standing out in the hiring process. This is – when I read through it, I have those moments where I go, well, no kidding. But it always takes me back to most people, they invest more time in memorizing song titles or sports statistics than they do learning about the company they're going to interview with.

Or than they do thinking about how they're going to look when they walk in the door. That's exactly right. And how they're going to dress when they walk in the door, and what signals does that send off? That's right. And, you know, there's just some basic preparation before you get there that's a big deal. Yeah, this is not an event in your life that you want to ad lib. It's just not.

There are very few people that can go in without any kind of preparation at all and do well in an interview. And you have to think like you're competing against 20 people. You have to have the mindset, this is a competition for this position, certainly in today's environment. Right now, Dave, we have a job market that's never been hotter in the history of this country. There are more jobs that are available than there are people that are unemployed. So companies are looking for people, and there's a lot of demand. And so you've got to understand that there's a competition here because people are going after, hey, we need you, we want you. And they're putting out really good job offers and things of that nature.

And so it's a competitive market, too. Just because it's hot doesn't mean they're going to give it to you because you're a warm body. You've got to think like you're competing, and that's where the preparation comes in. You and I love watching sports. There's no champion that I've ever watched or maybe had a chance to interview that wasn't a preparation freak.

And so when the time came in the game, you were friends with Peyton Manning. I think of him. Of all the athletes in our modern era, there was a guy who prepared like a maniac. And as a result, he performed great for a long period of time. But he's a legendary preparation guy. So not because it's ego, but if you were going to interview here, you know, maybe you should have read one or two of the books that this place puts out. Maybe you should have read through the blogs.

Maybe you should have looked at the Instagram posts. What are the baby steps? Listening to the show. And maybe, you know, maybe even gone through Financial Peace University. It's not because you're trying to brown-nose us, but because it tells us that you know what we actually do here. That's right. Oh, and by the way, you would self-select out if you didn't like that. That's right.

Well, this is a good example. I like that you bring up our company, Ramsey Solutions, because one of the things we put out in this How to Win the Interview is you need to know the backstory of the company. So you just talked about you ought to know what Ramsey Solutions does, but you even ought to know why we do it. Yeah. Why do we do it the way we do it? We're very intentional at this company to every once in a while share your story all the way back to the story you share on stage all the time. So people understand, what was it like? Card table in the living room.

That's not just a line that we made up because it's romantic. You really did start this place on a card table in your living room. And when you know the back story of an, and you understand the why behind the what they do. Then all of a sudden, if you can somehow connect to that, and it really means something to you, and then you share that in the interview, they go like this. Okay, I don't know if they're qualified yet. I don't know if they're the right candidate, but I tell you this. They get what we do, and I like that.

Well, and they bothered to care to prepare. That's it. They bothered to care to prepare. That's it. They bothered to care to comb their hair and wear a belt. Dave Ramsey just said you ought to bother to care to prepare. That's pretty good. Yeah. I don't even know how you say it. I'm not sure.

Care to prepare. Oh, yeah. I mixed it up. I'm not sure if I made sense or not. One of us didn't make sense. I didn't throw it back the way I heard it. Thank you. But that's a good thought.

You've got to care to prepare. And, you know, people care about the fact that you care. They go, now listen, this is somebody who really wants to be here. There's an alignment with our mission. There's an alignment with our values. And here's what we're hearing. We're seeing that more and more companies are willing to train good people. You don't have to necessarily have all the skills.

But if they feel like you're a good person and you match the mission, you fit the culture, they'll bring you in and train you. The training is not the thing. It's the do you have the ability to show up and act like you own the place

with that level of caring. Because people that do that are valuable. They add value to an organization. All right, George is in Atlanta. George, your question for Ken Coleman. Hello, guys. It's nice to talk to you. I'm watching you on YouTube.

Okay, so here's my situation. I am 54 years old, been a software developer for the better part of that, 25 years or more. For the first time in my life, I was laid off in October, and I walked out giving people high fives because I had done freelance work on the side for a while, a year and a half or so, and I thought I would pursue it full time when I got laid off, and I have, and it's paying the bills. We are talking about moving this summer down to the south part of Georgia.

And as you know, as a self-employed person, it's very difficult to get a mortgage if you're recently self-employed. I get a lot of pressure from my wife about getting back to the real world of real work, and it's it's very difficult i don't know how to weigh between my passion i love what i'm doing i absolutely love it so what were you making at the other place uh 125 what have you made as a as a freelancer uh just paying the bills about six a month. So you took a pay cut of almost in half.

At this time, yes. I think we just defined your wife's real problem. True. I agree with that. Okay. And that's the issue. I mean, if you were making $300 as a freelancer, I don't think she'd be calling this not a real job. Okay. Not a real job because it's hurting there.

And so hold on a minute. When we come back from this break, we'll hear the rest of your story and see how Ken can speak into this. I jumped the gun there a little bit, but I do that. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. We'll be right back. Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality of the Ken Coleman Show, joins me this half hour answering your questions about career, about jobs. And we were talking earlier about the How to Win the Interview Guide and How to Write the Perfect Resume Guide. You can get those at KenColeman.com.

KenColeman.com. Both the guides are completely free, downloadable PDFs, and they're really well done. I mean, we should just print that out into a little book and sell it probably, but really nice pieces and so forth. If you want to ask Ken questions other than when he's here on the air, you can join him on his show, Sirius XM, as a podcast as well. The phone number there is 844-747-2577 or email at askkencolman.com. We're talking with George in Atlanta.

He left a full-time job making $125,000. Thought he would freelance through as a software developer and ended up making about $75,000 instead of $125,000. And his wife wants him to get a real job. They're talking about moving to southern Georgia from Atlanta. And that's about how far we got in the conversation. Okay, George, I'm going to turn this back over to Ken. All right, George. So what is the side business that you've been pursuing?

Development. Same thing I'm doing. Same exact thing. Freelancing, independent. Gotcha. And why moving to South Georgia? We have more friends down there, just real close friends we've known for years and would like to. I've actually lived in the town of Woodstock.

I've been here 29 years, and it's just time for a change. Yeah, sure. Well, I think Dave is absolutely right. The big tension that your wife has is things are a lot tighter. You just slashed everything almost in half, and you got laid off, so you had a reality given to you. You were kicked out of the nest. The good news is that you're able enough, and you've got enough of that freelance side business going where you've been able to pay the bills. But you might be in a situation where you need to go back to work for somebody for another shorter season where you can, A, get stabilized financially and plan for this so that the next time, if there is a next time, we hope there isn't, I hope you leave on your own terms and you can move out on to your own terms and start your own thing. So that's what I'd like to see you do. You guys have got to be on the same page. This is a marriage issue as much as it is a money issue, and you've got to be listening to this. And the good news is this, you're in great shape. You know what you love to do. You're doing it, and you do it well enough that you are

paying the bills. But you got kicked out of the nest, and you do it well enough that you are paying the bills but you got kicked out of the nest and you didn't have enough money maybe set aside you weren't ready to fully develop it so i'm fine what would keep you from getting your income to 200 as a freelancer dave i think part of it and i'm thinking about doing this i think part of it, and I'm thinking about doing this, I think part of it is I'm disorganized. I don't even think I'm billing for all my time, to be honest with you. When I sit down and look how many hours I'm working and what my rate is, I'm like, you know, where is it going? I have a couple of developers that I'm making $20 and $30 an hour off of. And, you know, it's just I think part of the disorganized and what i'm thinking let me tell you what i just heard yes let me play that back at you and see if you're i'm right

i just heard you are really good at us being a software developer and so far you suck at running a business uh sad but true i think you're probably right i mean that's not it's not a bad thing because this is a business is a learned skill. When you go to the hospital, they don't go, it's a boy, it's a girl, it's a businessman. Okay? It's a learned skill. So you can learn this stuff. You've identified you need to get organized.

You've identified you need to get your billing right. And I'm going to guess and say you might be spending too much time working on the actual development, not enough on marketing to get new customers. So I'm going to say instead of going back to work in the salt mines, which is how that feels to you, I can tell from talking to you, I would spend six months of really going bananas and say, I'm going to get really, really, really good at business. I'm going to learn how to run a business.

We've got a thing in Entree Leadership called All Access, and I'm going to give you a couple months of that. It's $250 a month to get plugged into. It's coaching and content and everything. I'm going to give you two months free to get you started and get in there with some other guys and learn how to market yourself, learn how to bill yourself, learn how to bill yourself, learn how to get organized, because the price you're going to pay if you don't is you have to go back to the salt mines, which was where Ken was sending you.

Not necessarily. You know what? That's one good piece of advice, but I also believe in strengths, and I believe in weaknesses. And you can learn how to run a business, yes, but if you're that disorganized, maybe it's just hiring somebody who can do that for you. Maybe it's a part-time. Well, that might be.

You know, you get a part-time person. I want you to take care of my billing, be an office manager. Let's see if this solves part of the problem. But that's still running a business. You hired someone and delegated to it. That's exactly right. But you've got to decide to, hey, I'm going to do what it takes to fix this because you've kind of been limping along. Or pick up the job.

Kudos to you. I mean, the real problem sounds like to me is we're not even sure if he's actually making what he should be making. So now that's a different problem. Wow, I dug in, yeah. That's good. I always love that phrase, though, wants me to get a real job. My grandmother, I mean, we were running several million dollars a year gross revenues here, and my sweet little granny kept asking me

when i was going to get a real job when we first started this thing you know several years ago and we you know it was a small company then but we were making pretty good money when you're gonna get a real job i hate that all right caroline's with us in mccallan uh texas Allen, Texas. Caroline, your question for Ken Coleman. Hi, Dave. Hi, Ken. Hi. Hey. I'm 17, and I'm four months away from graduating high school. I took Dave's Foundations in Personal Finance for high school a couple years ago in my homeschool group. And this is my situation. Okay. There's a lot of peer pressure from all

sides and adult pressure from, well, you know, parents and aunts and everyone. They're like, well, you need to go to college in order to succeed. And I have not really been thinking of a college degree as something that I wanted to do. I actually have a passion for photography, and my dad's actually a photographer, so I got that from him. But I just was wondering if you think that it would be a good idea to go into business with my dad and kind of be mentored by him for a couple years instead of going to college and learning that way.

Well, let me ask you this. Is dad one of the people that's pressuring you to go to college? No, he's not. Is he open to this idea of you joining his business and he mentors you? Yes, he's actually the one who's been pushing for it the most. Yeah. Well, I've got to tell you, I would be fine with that. I think that you are young enough at 17 that if you try it for a year or two,

I think there's two scenarios. One, you go work for somebody else, or you do it yourself, and you do two or three jobs and start your own photography business. You can work for your dad. That's another great option if you two get along and he's on board. I love this idea because I think that you going to school for four years is not going to teach you how to be a better photographer. The only way to learn how to be a really good photographer is two things. Watch how other people do it that are really good. Learn from them. You go to school on them and you study the greats and you learn everything you can about

them. And the other way is you actually start doing it yourself. So I have no problem with this at all. Okay. I was also thinking like I already have my $500 emergency fund that Dave talked about in a foundations class that I took and I've always been like a natural saver so I didn't think that it'd be super hard for me to save up and move out as soon as possible um because I I don't like the idea of staying around and lingering in my parents house for too long um yeah so I mean that's that's another thing that I was thinking about is just saving up enough and maybe even splitting off my section of the business when I move out.

Yeah, when you're 27, you're lingering. When you're 17, you're not lingering. Hey, relax. You're an all-star. You're okay. I mean, if you live there for a year and pile you up some cash and get in much better shape, start to earn an income consistently in the photography world with your dad, get your income stabilized and get your other stuff stabilized so let's take a year and do that and then make the move uh out

but i think sprinting out of the back door as soon as you graduate from high school uh where where the family's not toxic and all that kind of stuff is you're you're not lingering kiddo there's nothing about you that's ever going to linger i don't think so you're going to be just fine well done ken coleman the ken coleman don't think so. You're going to be just fine. Well done. Ken Coleman, The Ken Coleman Show. Thanks for stopping by, Ken. Always good to be here, Dave. Thanks. Ramsey personality.

Be sure and check out the Get Hired Guides at KenColeman.com. They are a free download. And also be sure and join him on SiriusXM and on his podcast as well. Vastly popular. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, it's Kelly, associate producer and phone screener for The Dave Ramsey Show. This episode is over, but if you heard about a product or service and didn't have a chance to write it down, don't worry.

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