The Ramsey Show - App - I Feel Uninspired and Stuck (Hour 2)

Episode Date: December 9, 2022

George Kamel & Dr. John Delony discuss: Selling a car to pay off debt, Feel uninspired and "Dave-ish", How to bargain with collection companies. Have a question for the show? Call 888-825-5225 Weekdays from 2-5pm ET Want a plan for your money? Find out where to start: https://bit.ly/3nInETX Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts: https://bit.ly/3GxiXm6 Learn more about your ad choices. https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

Девочка-пай Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the pods, moving and storage studios. This is the Ramsey Show, where America hangs out to have a conversation about your life and your money. I'm George Camel, joined by Dr. John Deloney today, and we are excited, pumped even, to take your calls about life, money, relationships, marriage, boundaries, mental health, anxiety, you name it, we are here for you. The number to call. That's right. Thank you, John, for that. Poorly timed, but you know, we're working on it. This is a team effort. That's what my wife tells me. I'm the worst with timing. It's all right. You're doing a great job. Thanks, man. I don't know if this is therapy for you or you're going to actually help people today,

but either way, it's going to be a good show. 888-825-5225 is the number to call, and we will get you on the lines. Alex joins us up next in Los Angeles. Alex, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. How's it going? How are you? We're doing great. I'm doing well. Yeah, I just started listening not too long ago, but I heard a lot of folks with similar issues to mine, and so I thought I'd give it a call and get scolded by Dave.

Welcome to the club. We will be his proxy today. We have taken our share of scolding, so we're happy to pass them along. What's up? Right on. So, you know, recently I've always kind of been in control of my money and life and everything. But recently, I guess, you know, I got married a couple of years ago and the wife and I, we bid off maybe more than we can chew. We did buy a home for 590K. It's worth, you know, about eight now. I use the VA loan, so zero down. I rent two of the rooms out pretty much for the last two years. So house hacking, I believe it's called.

So it has made me money. I've only paid about half the mortgage. I tried to sell the house in June. I was on the market for like three, four months. You know, I stood, I was going to make about a quarter million in profit. And unfortunately, it didn't sell. The market, you know, did what it did during that time. And I also have a sports car. It's pretty expensive. I did refinance it once.

And I have $18,000 in credit card debt. I paid $2,000 last month. I expected it would go down. It was $16,000 last month. I thought it would go down to $14,000. And now I look at it, and it's $18,000, and I paid $2,000 last month. Well, the credit card interest is insane. What's the interest on that card?

They're like 24% or something like that. That'll climb real quick. And what's left on your car loan? The car loan has $25,000 left. What other debt do you have? And it's at 3%. What's that? What other debt do you have?

I have the house, the car, and the credit cards. That's it. Okay. So we'll leave the house alone for now. We are focused on our steps. Baby step one, $1,000 starter emergency fund. Baby step two, all consumer debt except for the house using the debt snowball. Have you heard about those Baby Steps? Yes, I'm somewhat familiar

with them just from like the last month or so I've been listening. Is that your one car, the sports car? We also have like an EV that we leased. It's very cheap, like $230 a month. Wait, so you have a lease as well? Yes, sorry. We do have the lease. That's my wife's car. So that's more debt. How much is that? That one is $230 a month, about $100 for insurance and like $40 to charge it. So relatively cheap. Okay. Well, we call leases fleeces because it is the most expensive way to operate a motor vehicle. So whatever the early buyout amount on that is, I want you to do your homework and figure that out. And we're going to throw that into the debt snowball if you want to keep it.

You know, it's $27,000, I believe, is the residual value. And I could actually sell it for about $34,000 right now. So that's what I would do. And I'd probably also get out of the sports car. What's the sports car worth? The sports car is worth about $55,000. I bought it for $60,000 like a year ago. And even with the mileage, it still held its value because of the market, but also because it's kind of rare. And I believe that they've only sold about 2,400 of them since 2017 in the U.S. So I do believe that it's going to retain its value pretty well over time

as they're going to stop making them here soon. Okay, Alex, these are not investments. Yeah, I'm going to hop in here and then – sorry, George. I'm doing some beautiful mind math trying to help our friend Alex out. Listen, Alex, here's what you've got to decide. You live in a fantasy world where money exists and it kind of doesn't. I was going to make a quarter of a million dollars. You just didn't happen to be there.

And this car is going to probably hold its value, but it's, you can live in that world and it's going to be chaotic and you're going to stumble through. You're going to be married and having roommates in your house with some sort of house hacking scam, whatever. Here's the deal.

You can play that game, brother. The game that we play over here is I sleep really deeply at night. And when I laugh, I laugh from my guts because I don't owe anybody a freaking thing. Nobody. And I drive not a cool car that's not holding its value because I seriously don't care. So you see what I'm saying? So we're playing different games. If you want to play the game you're playing,

we're not the right gang for you, dude. If you want to have your life back, we're all in. See what I'm saying? Gotcha. I'm listening. Yeah. Okay? This is like a radical way to live, man. And what happens is you create a halo around you your buddies are gonna want to know dude why are you laughing all the

time why are you able to pick up the check why'd you tip double the cost to that waitress and you just can smile and say because i can right it's a totally different way of living man now when you called in you said i want to be scolded like d would scold, which tells me that you don't feel like you've made wise decisions. You know, yeah, in this last month, really, since I started listening to the show and getting really serious, you know, I'm looking at my credit card debt and I'm like, hey, this is not good. I've never had this much. You know, I'm having trouble paying it down. You know, I want to build wealth. I don't want to lose wealth. You know, so that was kind of the plan with selling the house. How much do you make?

I know it's not. I make about $140 with my income and the rental income and stuff. Okay. I'm going to walk you through this plan real quick. If I was in your shoes today and I was fired up and I was sick of not feeling like I was making enough progress with my money. Because you called in, you said, hey, I feel like I'm in control of my money. Brother, you're not in control when you owe seven lenders money when you put your head on that pillow every night. So here's what I'm doing. And it's radical, but we're a radical group over here. So here's

what I'm going to do. We are selling the sports car. You said you could sell for 55. You owe 25. That's 30K in your pocket. You said you could sell the other car. That's not the least. $34,000 and you owe $27,000. That's $7,000 profit. You tracking? Yep. You now have $37,000 in your bank account. With that, we're going to pay off the $18,000 in credit card debt. That leaves us with $19,000, right? Yep. We have no car. So we're going to go buy a reasonable car and the rest is going to go into our emergency fund. Do you have savings right now? Not really. Okay. Well, now you will. And now you become your own bank because you don't need

to turn to credit cards in case of emergency. And you're driving a reasonable car, and while it's depreciating in value, you're not paying interest on it. And you don't need a credit card. We're cutting it up. We're going to switch to a debit card and use our own money so that we make different decisions. But do you feel the freedom there? You could get out of this stuff tomorrow. But the question is, are you actually sick and tired of living the way you've been living? Of trying to play the game over here and move this card around to the 0%

and now we're sitting here paying 24% interest on these cards and still feeling like we're winning. Yeah. So are you going to commit to this? Are you in? Yeah, I definitely think so. I mean, I've been seriously considering selling the car even before. We're not considering anymore. You're talking to your wife going, hey, honey, hope you like these cars because they're gone tomorrow.

Hey, stay on the line, brother. Listen, stay on the line. We're going to give you Ramsey Financial Peace University and the EveryDollar app. You guys have to watch the video, so I'm not going to give this and just have it sit in your inbox. You got to get it, watch these videos, and change your life. If you don't watch it, you're going to Venmo me and John 20 bucks each. All right? That's the deal. You got to have some skin in the game here. John's in. Hey, thanks for the call, brother. Can't wait for you to call back and tell us you're debt-free.

This is The Ramsey Show. I'm George Campbell, joined by Dr. John Deloney, and we are taking your calls, 888-825-5225. Matt joins us up next in Sioux City. Matt, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks, guys. How are you both doing today? We are doing great. How can we help? Hey, real quick, just intro. I am 27. My wife's 27. We have a year and two months old little girl. And my question for the day is I just feel really Davish as of today. I don't know why it hit me so hard today. But like my baby steps are kind of all over the place. I got $15,000 left in my student loans.

I went to pharmacy school, graduated a couple years ago, been putting $5,000 towards it, um, ever since I graduated each month. Um, but we have the 15,000 in, uh, a savings account. And we kind of did that baby step, obviously backwards where we saved three to six months. And that's just been a comfortable thing to do. We said, first, we're going to do it when we were having our daughter, but we've kind of kept with that. Um, another thing too, is like with our, um, way that we do checking our savings or just seeing how we do our payments, we kind of do it retrospective instead of actually doing like how you guys have every dollar out. Like we know what's going out, but after a month has happened, we're not really, you know, fine tuning and figuring out each, you know, each day kind of what we've been spending and how we can improve on that,

I guess. So I was just looking for some inspiration. If you guys had some, I heard the last call, there was some, a little bit of not, like he wanted to get yelled at and I kind of don't know if I'm at that stage too. I don't know where to'm at that stage too. Actually, can I tell you, can I tell you what it sounds like? Um, yeah.

You sound exhausted. Yeah, a little bit. Today was a little bit of a, a little bit of an exhausting day, which kind of got to this point. I feel like how much the student, most of the pharmacy students I know graduate with a lot of debt.

How much did you graduate with? 80 to 85. Okay, that's actually not bad. That's about a quarter of what it usually is. Yeah. You sound tired, man. I am. Here's the, I want to free you.

If you don't want to follow this plan, you still be a good guy, still be a good dad, still be a good husband. Go about your life, man. If you want to do this, go all in. Because you're torturing yourself in the middle. Yeah. Millions and millions. Yeah, I think that's what's hard.

It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not hard. You just got to make a choice. You could be debt-free today. Is that what you're saying? You'd wipe yourself out, but you could be debt-free today. Is that what you're saying? You'd wipe out your, you'd wipe yourself out, but you could be debt-free today. Yeah, I could. Yeah. Why? What is the security blanket? Um, yeah, that I, that I can't explain. Well, the way, the way I explained it the first time was we had a kid coming and I remember hearing a few times from, you know, just listening to you guys that that was one where it was okay to save. We have some older vehicles, but they're

working great. I love them. I got an 04 Grand Am that I've drove since high school and that thing's still amazing. Got an 03 Ford Taurus. I don't know. They're running great. So that's kind of something where if we need to upgrade another kid potentially my wife and i are trying to um have another kid i don't know i guess the unknown um and i know that it's going to be paid off like i said i've been doing 5 000 each month just be done man three months from now just be done now just be done you are choosing to hang on to a variable and as a scientist you know the goal is to reduce the variables, get it out of the picture and then be really uncomfortable. What's your take-home salary

household wise? So my wife and I, this is another problem too. So I'm just being straight up with you guys. It's, we get about a hundred thousand dollars after we get retirement out of there. So we're taking out retirement too at this time too. Oh, you're investing. Yeah, correct. Well, you can continue doing that if you pay off the debt today. And also you need to get your emergency fund back in order. So you probably need to pause for a few months.

But one of the reasons you're exhausted is because you're running 14 different directions and wondering why you're not getting anywhere. And then you hate yourself every time you take another step. You're like, ah, I shouldn't have taken that step. I'll run over here, and then I hate that guy. We can't sit here and inspire you to greatness and motivate you. What we can do is help you build a habit and build discipline to where you're just the kind of guy who budgets and pays cash for things

and who has a vision for his future. And that vision doesn't include paying a lender every month. So that's what we can help you do is create a vision and help you get those values in place versus inspiring you with an amazing sentence like you've never heard it before where you go, all right, I'm all in, man. We can't do that in seven minutes. No. But we can pull the rubber band back and cause you to feel that pain that you're in. What's been inspiring about... Go ahead, Jordan. I'm sorry. No, it's all good.

What's been inspiring? I was just going to say, what's been inspiring is like listening to George, like George hearing you paying off your house. That's been one that's stuck with me for a long time. And that's what I'm excited. I want to get this debt done. And next up to that is...

There's a vision. Hold on. You don't want to. You want to want to. No, I want to. You don't. Because if you did, you'd be debt free.

You'd be debt free already. Yeah. Something is keeping you from doing it. So make the choice, man. Yeah. Here's the thing. Yeah, you're right. Most people don't realize

that they are already in the ring they think they can avoid the fight that is being an adult and what happens is you are just saying like I don't want to fight and the world just starts throwing punches at you at some point you either tap out which is fine

I quit cool or you have to swing back and you're trying to pretend like you're not in a fight and you are fine, I quit. Cool. Or you have to swing back. And you're trying to pretend like you're not in a fight, and you are. You could be debt-free today. The wants you have, the inspiration, and George inspired me, dude, by the way. So

I get that. I get where your heart's at. He's got to choose. One of the best things we did is to decide that our plan wasn't working. And that's a really hard pill to swallow because you've got to swallow your pride and go, dang it, I thought I could outsmart the system. And so when we decided to do this plan, we just decided, we pre-decided that we were going to go all in on this plan, that Dave-ish wasn't going to get us to where we wanted to go fast enough.

And when you go all in and your wife is on the plan too, which means we got to get to the root of maybe that security gland that was going, hey, we really need an emergency fund before we start paying off this debt. And we really should be investing because that's a wise thing to do. Those things are all great. But the problem is when you do them all at once, you don't feel the progress. And so the great news is you can make a different decision today. Right now. Yep. And it's scary.

You're right. But you have to choose. Do you want to be comfortable? Because that's what you mentioned. Well, just more comfortable to have the emergency fund while we owe a lender $15,000. Comfort to me is freedom. And the way you do that is by not owing anyone anything. And you have a great income.

We can pause investing. You're going to get the emergency fund way faster in place if we stop the investing and stop messing around, which is going to create a real sense of security. Because right now you have a false sense of it. And you're 27. And for whatever it's worth, George and I always say, sometimes the best advice we can give you is, this is what we did in our house. There's been several times in my adult life, my wife and I have paused investing to meet

a financial goal for a short period of time, a couple of years here, six months here. And so I'm just telling you what I do in my own house to get ahead. And you're, you're way younger than me, man. Yeah. I mean, I, like I said, that, that was enough though, what you guys said too. I, sometimes you just got to need to hear from people that have done it. And I know, I know you guys have done it. I've listened enough to you guys said too i sometimes you just got to hear from people that have done it and i know i know you guys have done it i've listened enough to you guys but you know it's it's something that i don't know what it is it's maybe something for you john to talk about more further if you guys want to but davishness just regarding even money and stuff too like my faith i'm sometimes davish i just feel like maybe i'm hard on myself for being davish in many aspects

of life but that shouldn't stop me from actually doing what I need to do. Well, at some point, if you start to see some recurring patterns in your life that are disruptive, do the most, the boldest, bravest thing you can do and go talk to somebody. Yeah. I've done that. When the color in the world starts to turn down on me and, um, I reach out and I either have a group of friends, a group of men in my life that I trust. I'm like, dude, I, I'm starting to slide and they'll say, Hey, we'll come over. We're grabbing dinner. We're going out tonight to hang out. Or I can see a therapist, man. I've got a coach that I work with once a

week. Like I have to surround myself with other people that say, hey, it feels like the color's draining out of your life. It's not. Look how bright that is. There's beauty over here. There's joy over here. And by the way, go work out. Go exercise. Get this crap paid off.

And so it's both and, right? But go call somebody, man. You know what to do, Matt. Now the decision is yours. Are you going to do it? Or do you want to continue living the way you've been living? Either way, we're cheering you on. This is The Ramsey Show. Blinds.com's 100% satisfaction guarantee means even if you mismeasure or pick the wrong color,

they'll remake your blinds for free. You get free samples, free shipping, and with the new promo codes they run every month, you'll save even more. Use promo code RAMSEY to get the best deal. Today's question comes from Lauren in New Mexico. She says, My husband claims to be a, air quotes, Dave Ramsey to get the best deal. Today's question comes from Lauren in New Mexico. She says, my husband claims to be a, air quotes, Dave Ramsey guy. To his credit, we are now debt-free with no mortgage, but we are not on the same page financially. I do not know how much money is in our accounts, nor do I know what accounts we have or how much money he makes. He is self-employed

with a few business ventures. I currently do not have a job as I oversee care for my 85-year-old father and homeschool our special needs daughter. I can figure it all out by force, but want him to share and include me voluntarily. Do I keep waiting for a calm and peaceful inclusion in our finances, or do I just gather the information against his will and move on? Lauren, that will never come. There will never be a moment he's driving down the road and thinks to himself whoa i'm an arrogant jerk who uses um wields i know something you don't know as a form of power in my marriage or you know what I treat my wife like a seven-year-old daughter. That's never going to happen. It's not going to happen.

You're going to have to sit down and say, not knowing our financial position, not knowing where the money is, what you owe, what businesses you have, scares me to death. I can't breathe when I think about our money because I don't know where it is. I don't know anything. And if you die, I don't know what to do next.

And if you live, I don't know what to do next. And I'm watching my 85-year-old dad pass away in front of me. I'm homeschooling our special needs daughter. I am already exhausted, both psychologically and spiritually and physically. I need you to be on the same page with me. That's where you start.

And here's the scary thing about being vulnerable. The idea of vulnerability is an animal rolling over and showing its belly. It can get hurt. You put that on the table and he looks at you and says, I'm not talking to you about this, which could happen. It's a risk. Then you have bigger issues.

And my gut tells me, you know you have bigger issues. This is not indicative of a healthy marriage. And usually people are not unhealthy in one place. Usually if you get the flu, your whole body hurts, and you throw up, and you got the rockets, and you feel your head hurts.

All of you hurt. My guess is this is just a small piece of a larger relationship issue that you need to deal with. Okay? George, what do you think? I just don't know what to believe about this guy. He's saying they're debt-free with no mortgage.

She has no idea because she's not involved in any of the finances. She doesn't even know what kind of business ventures he's into. And so this all seems like it's built on a house of lies. And while she may be in a great place financially, maritally, this is a terrible situation. And I'm going to go with maybe. Maybe. He tells you you're out of debt.

You don't know. He tells you that you have no maybe. Maybe. He tells you you're out of debt. You don't know. He tells you that you have no mortgage. We've just seen so much of this where something happens and you go, I had no idea. He had four different credit cards in a different account

that I had no idea. And he racked up all this debt and now he's disappeared or he's passed away. And then you're left, while grieving, with this whole financial picture to deal with,

going, I don't know the login to the bank account. Right. And let's make no mistake. You are not a Dave Ramsey guy. If your wife does not have a sequel, I mean an equal, if not more powerful seat at the table. It was a bonus chapter of Total Money Makeover where Dave said,

don't talk about money with your spouse. Make sure to keep all accounts separate. And secret, yeah. No, this is not part of the plan. We don't even know if her name is on the bank account. That's right. Or on the mortgage. If you have ever had the opportunity to sit at a table with Dave and Sharon,

you would know that, Lauren, your husband is not a Dave Ramsey guy because Sharon knows everything. And please tell him to stop self-proclaiming that because it's embarrassing to all of us. Yeah, he paid off his credit cards. Great. Good job, man. Paid his credit cards. Great. Good job, man. Paid off his mortgage. Maybe. Good. Do the next hard thing, which is sit down with

your wife and explain where all the money is, how it works, and stop using, I know something you don't know, as a tool of power. That's the weakest form of leadership is, I know something you don't know. It's the worst. All right, let's go to Linda in Orlando, Florida. What's up, Linda? Hi. How are you? I'm great. Excellent. I wanted to know, okay, I'm jumping in.

I don't know if you want to ask me something. No, come on in. What's up? Okay. Is it okay to bargain with a debt collector on a hospital bill when the hospital refused to provide an itemized bill? Well, yes, it's always okay to bargain with collection companies. I'm concerned that they wouldn't give you a bill.

Why wouldn't they give you an itemized bill? So we went through, I have no idea. I asked them twice to mail me that and they didn't. And they just sent it to collections. It was through the ER. We went to the ER with my husband last year. And they had done an x-ray and a COVID test and said it was COVID and sent us home saying that they couldn't treat

us. And then they send a $1,500 bill and I said, well, I need an itemized bill. And they said, okay, we'll get back to you. They sent the same bill, nothing itemized. And I asked them again for an itemized bill and then they sent it to collections. Okay. So here's my guess. Well, actually I don't even want to guess. Have you driven up to the hospital and say, I need a bill because now I'm being sued by collections on something that I've never gotten itemized bill for? No, I haven't done that. Okay. This is $1,000. If thousand if i told you hey there's one thousand five hundred dollars over at the hospital and envelope and you go pick it up you would stop

what you're doing and go pick that up and often i've been there too i just wait for emails or i just make phone calls and i don't actually get in there and not disrespectfully, not ugly, but cause a ruckus and say, hey, you're billing me $1,500. Maybe I do owe that money and I'll pay it, but I need to know what I'm paying. That's not unreasonable. But you need to look somebody in the eye and say, please, while I'm here, print me off a bill because I asked for it twice and now another company is suing me for it and it's not fair because I'm just waiting on you guys okay and it's best if you could even take in um take in the dates that you made the phone calls um I called on this day I called on this day here's a copy of my phone records I've been waiting for this really not cool that y'all rolled

this thing over already on me please give me an opportunity to see what you're even charging me. And then yes, when a collection company calls, absolutely you can negotiate with them. And never give them any personal information. Never give them access to your bank account. You can do a cashier's check, money order when the time comes. If they do choose to settle, they say, we'll take $1,000. And I mean, you can hassle the collections company and say, listen, you show me the itemized bill and I'll be happy to pay. But until then, I don't know what this is and what I'm even paying for. And it could turn out to be a bad debt and they just clear it. And it could turn out that you paid $118 for a piece of tape and you can sit down with the hospital and protest that but 90 tylenol right

they've never given you the opportunity to do that or a 750 covid whatever the thing and who knows um but yeah and get it in writing whatever they say you make sure to get it in writing so that you don't call back and say whoa i paid in full and they go i don't know where you got that from that's exactly right so just some good steps to protect yourself i i was stunned i didn't ever think this through i shouldn't say i'm stunned i was surprised i didn't know this this sort of practice would be legal but um our friend anthony o'neill used to work for collection agency for a season um and the gold standard was to get like i'll cut a deal with you right now i'll take a thousand dollars off but i'm going to direct deposit it i mean i'm

going to direct withdrawal from your checking account you gotta if you give me your checking account number i'm going to get this thing done right now. And I'll do $500 over the next seven months. And people were so desperate. They'd say, okay, great. I got a plain payment plan. And man, that money would start draining out of that account. That's right. So don't ever give your checking account number, your credit card number, anything like that. Always get it in writing and get a cashier's check from your bank. It's worth three or five bucks or whatever it costs to get that done. Thank you so much for the call, Linda. 888-825-5225. This is The Ramsey Show. Give us a shout.

We'll be right back. Yn ystod y ddew, mae'r ffwrdd yn cael ei ddod yn ystod y ddew. Mae'r ffwrdd yn cael ei ddod yn ystod y ddew. Mae'r ffwrdd yn cael ei ddod yn ystod y ddew. Mae'r ffwrdd yn cael ei ddod yn ystod y ddew. Mae'r ffwrdd yn cael ei ddod yn ystod y ddew. Mae'r ffwrdd yn cael ei ddod yn ystod y ddew. Mae'r ffwrdd yn cael ei ddod yn ystod y ddew. 888-825-5225. This is the Ramsey Show. Let's go out to Alan in Rhinelander, Wisconsin.

What's up, Alan? How we doing, man? I'm doing the best I can. And my wife and I are 36 years old. We are a family of five, a blended family. And our oldest is 12. We split 50-50 custody and we have two other kids of seven and four. And like I said, we are dealing with our oldest 12-year-old. About six weeks ago, threatened to take his life

and thankfully told my wife and I on the phone to, and we've been taking him to therapy once a week and I've just kind of seeking your advice, what else we should do in our situation. Thank you. Um, I'm so sorry, man. Was that out of the blue? Has he, uh, 12 yearold been struggling for a while? Because we are 50-50 split with his father and coming to our house,

that's a good chunk of it besides at school, he said, of bullying. And it just puts a lot of stress with that. What's the relationship like with BioDad? It's, for the most part, good. Okay. Or let me ask it this way. I'm assuming after your 12-year-old said he's thinking about dying by suicide, you got him into the mental health care that he needed.

That's a moment. And if it hasn't happened yet, this, this is step number one that all the adults get in a room. I don't care what happened in the past. I don't care any of that stuff. If everybody is going to act like an adult, they need to get in a room because now this is,

this is different than i get this and i get that stuff's got to be put on the back burner because we got a young a young kid here who's crying out for help yes they're just thankful that we're my wife and him are a little bit closer than his dad and uh always communicate regularly whether he's especially with us at home, but when he's with his dad, make sure everything's okay. And we're just thankful that he didn't hold something in, taking his life a little bit too much longer, so we could help the best that we could.

How's counseling going? So far, it's so good. It's helped him to speak out with the therapist. You sound like you're struggling. As a stepfather, trying to make sure that he's okay. And, and we're trying to co-parent with his father. And let me go back to what I said. Have you and that and his father and your wife and his father's wife or

girlfriend, whoever, have y'all gotten in a room and said, we have to work together on what comes next. My wife and his father, yes. The three of us communicating on the phone together, yes. Okay. All right, good. The next step here, so you got your kid in counseling, which is great.

The next thing I want you to look at is the environment of your home. Where are other things on fire in your house? Stress wise? How's your marriage? How are your other kids? Are D are you struggling financially? Um, do you have addiction issue? Like where is other tension? Here's what I always want to look at with kids. Kids absorb tension. They absorb the... People always say, like, my parents got divorced when I was seven, and my first thought is, yeah,

but you lived through their relationship from age four to seven, right? So that trauma is two, three, four, five years old, if not more. Where are other tension points in your home right now? Well, the paycheck to paycheck, I worked overnight and my wife was a stay at home mother to try to save on daycare. And now she recently right here four weeks ago began back to work to help me out. And I have since got a day shift job to be at home at night to help with

getting all the kids at home taken care of and with the oldest situation to be there as well. So is that hurting you financially? Is that helping you financially? What's the what is the status there? Is paycheck to paychecks a lot of stress in your home. We're about the same, if not a little bit further behind since then. She's kind of replaced my second job income. So here's what I want you to do. What do you do for a living? I work in a meat processing plant. Okay.

Here's what I want you to do. That was a great move on her Okay. Here's what I want. I want you to, that was a great move on her part. She can get a discount. I want you to think about what life looks like, Alan, in 24 months, two years, 36 months, 48 months. And I want you to be honest with yourself about your financial reality with which you have found yourself. And I rely exclusively on a great butcher who helps me and my family out. And you might have found yourself in a profession that you love that simply is not tenable anymore

because you can't eat or Or you can't breathe. Because it doesn't make enough money. And you can't keep working 20 hour days. With multiple kids. I mean you did the right thing coming home. But I want you to begin thinking long term now. Paycheck to paycheck causes us. Poverty causes us.

Fear about money causes us to get laser focused on the next minute and the next minute we start to lose the bigger picture and you blink and you're 49 years old working the same job with the same problems see what I'm saying yes and so I want you to

give yourself some space whether that's I'm going to take an afternoon off and I know I can't afford it. We're going to figure it out. And either you go talk to somebody or you get one or two people in your life that are 10 years ahead of you that you trust and you say, okay, I'm going to have to make an adjustment because I'm just trying to do the same thing over and over and over again. And I'm getting further and further behind. And I would say this is a work conversation, and I'm going to send you a copy of Ken Coleman's book, Paycheck to Purpose, and I'm going to send you a copy of his Get Clear Assessment on other jobs you might have,

but I don't know that this is a work issue right now. This is a, I'm exhausted, I'm married into this. This is not the picture of my life I drew up. I'm just worn out. That's what this sounds like. Am I right? Uh, not fully. It's just, I know sometimes the Lord tests the strong and everything kind of just hit us all at once. And since February with my mother-in-law going to the hospital and then I missed a week of work and then we fell behind, taking out a little bit more loans and trying to just stay afloat. And then with that. And Alan, you're not listening to me, brother.

You've got no margin, right? No. And as hard as this is to say, she will go back to the hospital at some point. My mom and dad will too. I was at a funeral for a family member two days ago. It happens suddenly. There will be challenges. And so your goal,

the reason we tell people this idea of peace, this idea of being able to go to sleep is not going to keep mom from getting cancer. Financial peace is not going to keep kids from getting bullied at school, but it's going to give us some margin to deal with those things when they happen. That's what we're talking about. You are in desperate need of peace, of margin, so that you can take a week off to be with your mother-in-law in the hospital and your family doesn't have to decide, do we eat or keep the heater on? That's what we're talking about.

And that's going to require you to get back and say, whoa, what comes next? Hang on the line. I'm also going to require you to get back and say, whoa, what comes next? Hang on the line. I'm also going to send you a copy of Total Money Makeover and Own Your Past, Change Your Future. It's three books that I want you to read. Spend some time and start thinking, how do we survive this right now?

You're doing a great job. Got your kid in counseling. You and your wife probably need to go see somebody. Not probably, they do. And then you have to start asking yourself, what are we going to do in two years? In three years? And you've got to reverse engineer it and start planning. Now, you, my brother, are worth a life of peace. It's another hour in the books here on The Ramsey Show. We'll be back shortly. Stay with us.

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