The Ramsey Show - App - I Know For A Fact That Money Is Gone (Hour 2)

Episode Date: July 10, 2023

George Kamel & Jade Warshaw answer your questions and discuss:  "Should I declare bankruptcy to clear my debt?"  from the blog: Bankruptcy: What It Is and How It Works How student loan repayments will impact the economy,  from the website: Guide to Getting Rid of Your Student Loans What the next financial steps should be after graduating college debt free, "How should I prioritize my loans to get out of $140,000 of debt?" from the blog: How to Get Out of Debt with the Debt Snowball Plan How to navigate handling the finances when a spouse becomes sick and can't contribute financially. Have a question for the show? Call 888-825-5225 Weekdays from 2-5pm ET Here's an EveryDollar deal just for our listeners: get a 14-day free trial PLUS $15 off your first year of premium. Click the link below and start budgeting today! www.everydollar.com/jade Want a plan for your money? Find out where to start: https://bit.ly/3cEP4n6 Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts: https://bit.ly/3GxiXm6 Interested in advertising on The Ramsey Show? https://ter.li/s64ye3 Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

Девочка-пай Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Pods Moving and Storage Studio, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create amazing relationships. I'm George Campbell, joined this hour by Jade Warshaw and we are taking your calls at 888-825-5225. This is a show that is about you. It's for you. We want to see you win in every area of your life. And of course, money is a huge part of that. And Jade and I would be happy to walk you through your burning questions, celebrate your successes, and help you make that right next step financially. 888-825-5225. Gage kicks us off in Sacramento. Gage, welcome to the show. Hi, thank you. How are you guys doing today? We're doing great. How are you?

I'm doing well. So I had a quick question. I have about $20,000 worth of credit card debt right now. I just turned 25. I also still owe about $9,000 on my car. What I'm calling about is I'm currently in the process of getting into a flight school in San Diego that's going to be taking up about two years of my time, full-time schooling. So I'm curious, what's the best way to go about this debt? I've talked to some people who have recommended, like, a bankruptcy to just wipe the slate clean so once I get a career,

I'm not still drowning in that debt. I just kind of wanted to get your guys' opinion. Who are some people? Who did you talk to? Probably not the smartest people. I don't have a ton of financially uh literate friends oh these are your friends like you asked broke people for financial advice and they gave it to you and i said dude declare bankruptcy clean slate it's going to help your career yeah i didn't think it sounded that smart all that smart you knew you knew that was bad advice i mean you're here calling us so i'm glad you didn't make that move yet because it's absolutely not the move you should be making thank you what's

your income uh making about 48 per year will that change with flight school um so while i'm in flight school i don't believe I'll be making income. The school is going to be 100% accredited by the VA. Okay, so you're not paying a dime for the school. No. Wow, that's incredible. That's amazing. Because flight school is expensive.

Yeah, it is. It is not cheap. Okay, so school's covered. How are you going to pay for the bills? Do you have any bills at that point? Are they covering room and board? I have a few small bills that could be paid with Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, things like that. I was kind of figuring free time. Are you able to work full time? I'm not sure exactly what

the schedule will look like. I currently work full time. I've worked full time since I was 17. I just turned full-time. I've worked full-time since I was 17. I just turned 25, so. Okay. How long till flight school starts? I'm planning on starting in January, so about five months. Okay.

That's good. My question is, can we clean this debt up in five months? Do you think you could do that? I believe so. Like I said, I just, I've kind of, how I've grown up, I haven't grown up around a lot of financially literate people so I don't really know the steps to start taking I just found our Dave Ramsey a couple weeks ago I've been watching you know the baby steps and watching

a lot of his content and uh just trying to get ahead here well we can help you with the steps um just a quick question are you going to have a housing allowance once you start doing that flight school for the VA? So that's still in the process. I'm not 100% sure yet. If I'm not, then I'll 100% have to find a real steady source of income. But again, I'm not too worried about that. I don't have any problem finding a job or working. Do you have any money in the bank? I don't. I've been living paycheck to paycheck for the past few years now. And most of that is all my fault, just making dumb decisions. But I want to start getting ahead and getting things together. Self-awareness is the first step. So I'm proud of you for even owning that instead of just blaming everything and everyone else for the problems. That tells me you're going

to get out of this thing. So what is the car worth? Yeah, no, this was pretty much just me. You said, what is the car worth? Yeah. I believe they're blue books. I probably looked it up a couple months ago, somewhere around 10.5. Okay. So I'm just thinking if you really wanted to get out, I want you out of debt by flight school so that you have a life and you can work to pay the bills, but you're not trying to also tackle all this debt. And you've got some time. You've got five months to really go hard at this thing and work extra and do the Uber and Lyft on top of your full-time job. And if you threw, you know, $5,000 or $6,000 a month at this thing, it's gone.

So the question is, what is that gap to where we need to make to get $5,000 or $6,000 a month thrown at the debt? Yeah. Because right now, what's your take-home pay? My take-home pay? Right around $2,000 per check. Oh, yeah, we got you. And I get paid bi-weekly. Okay.

So we're bringing in about $4,000 a month. And obviously, you've got to make your debt payments. You have rent right now? Yes, but my rent is very cheap. How cheap? Currently paying about $600 a month. Okay, good. That is cheap for Sacramento.

I was like, cheap for Californians is very different. They're like, it's only $3,000 a month. That's cheap. No, good job. Yeah, that's great. Like I said, I have been kind of a fool with my money, so I need to start getting that. I mean, at the end of the day, when it comes to wanting to pay off debt, it's a pretty simple equation.

You know, we're trying to lower our expenses as much as possible while simultaneously increasing our income as much as possible in order to have as much money as possible to throw out this debt. So that's what you're looking to do. That should be the mindset that you filter all of your choices through for the next five months is, is this going to bring my expenses down or is this going to drive my income up? And so that's the idea here for the next five months. And then once you get into flight school, you're going to kind of have to reevaluate your situation, find out what your time is going to be like, find out if you're getting a home allowance, because if you are, that's great.

That frees up some money, find out how much you're going to be like. Find out if you're getting a home allowance, because if you are, that's great. That frees up some money. Find out how much you're going to be able to work. So you've kind of got two equations that you're looking at. One is the now and the current, and the next one is here in the future, what that's going to look like with your new obligations in flight school. What's your car payment? My car payment, $256 per month. Okay.

It may not be worth selling the car, because i think you can pay it off pretty quickly and you'd have to go around and buy something else anyways and you don't have any money to do that so i would attack that car payment first i mean i know you got the credit card debt are those multiple cards uh it's two cards yes so what's the lowest the majority of the amount is on one card and then about like a thousand is on the other card. Okay. And then it's making the choice also to say I'm not using credit cards anymore. So if you haven't yet cut up these credit cards,

make sure you've cut those up. Once they're paid off, close out. I haven't. Yeah, I haven't used a credit card in like some months now. Okay, great. So you've learned your lesson there. Never to go back again. Very good.

All right. So I'm going to lesson there, never to go back again. Very good. All right. So I'm going to gift you one year of Financial Peace University and one year of Every Dollar Premium to help you on this journey, making a plan for every one of those dollars, creating that margin, seeing the progress, learning the steps, because you said you're new to all this stuff. So that is my gift to you, not only as a veteran, but someone who's new to this program. And we're thankful for you, Gage. So hang on the line.

We'll gift that to you. And for all of the rest of you listening who might be jealous because Gage has got some free stuff, we have an awesome limited time deal right now. If you want to jump in on EveryDollar, you want the premium version, 15 bucks off, and a two-week free trial to check it out, you can go to EveryDollar.com slash George and get that deal. Tell them I sent you. Won't you? So that's it. The plan is that simple

and it's that hard. There's no magic tricks here. There's no secret sauce. You are the secret sauce. Spend less, make more, throw as much of the debt as possible, get some emergency savings in the bank. Then you can start building for the future. There is no other way. You cannot convince me. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Campbell, joined by Jade Warshaw this hour. 888-825-5225 is the number to call if you want to jump in and talk about your life and your money. Well, Jade, the news of the last week or two has been the student loan payments restarting. That's right.

I know that's right. Which has caused a lot of people to start panicking for good reason. They're freaking out because they have not been budgeting for this payment. They haven't been making payments. That's right. One stat showed 99% of people did not make payments. Which I don't know why, because we told people to make payments. We told people don't wait on the government.

1% of the people listened to us and they went, oh yeah, we've been debt free now for like years, Jade. Yeah, that's right. We got rid of that. We're not even worried about that. We don't care about the headlines. So here's the headline from Yahoo. The restart of student loan payments

is going to pressure the strong US consumer as 34% of borrowers say they'll be unable to make payments. I think that that is very conservative. That 34%. That's just the honest people. Yeah, because think about it, George. Before this, in 2019, before this pause ever even happened, 50% of people were either in default, forbearance.

They were not paying their loan. So I can't understand what has changed to bring that down to 34%. So I think that's being very conservative. Yeah, the average payment is between 300 and 400 bucks. And only 29% of consumers who have federal student loans are confident they'll have enough money to start making payments without adjusting spending in other areas, Morgan Stanley said. Meanwhile, 37% said they'll need to cut their spending in other areas to make the payments, while 34% said they won't be able to make them at all. And in this case, the restart of payments

will negatively impact low-income households the most, according to the survey. Well, yeah, let's be honest. Not a lot of shockers there. Well, no, because people said when this pause happened, they were like, ooh, I've got this money back in my budget. I mean, we've seen the stats that said most people, on average earned fifteen

thousand dollars back from not having to make their payments right and so that money george was not spent on paying down their loan it just went towards i'm guessing car notes it probably felt like they got a raise yeah they're like i'm living lifestyle creep yeah yeah well this says a segment of consumers start to feel the pressure heading into the fall. Discretionary spending categories could see the biggest decline if consumers need to tighten their belts. You think?

No, duh. We're going to need to stop spending money on crap we didn't need to buy. Basic. Yeah. This article is just brilliant. You know, yes, it's highlighting what I think is very obvious, which is people had this money to spend. Now they're not going to have this money anymore. We need to make a change.

We need to make a change. And the biggest thing is like, don't let this mess around and creep up on you. You know, you've got there's a little bit of leeway here for people to start looking at their budgets, start looking at their lifestyle and going, OK, I know this payment's coming back. I'm not going to bury my head in the sand. I'm going to start figuring out what this means for me., I know this payment's coming back. I'm not gonna bury my head in the sand. I'm gonna start figuring out what this means for me. Yep. Christmas is on December 25th every year.

Yeah. July 4th is on July 4th every year. Fun fact. That's right. Grandma's birthday. That's right. Don't act surprised. And here's the scary part, Jade. Here's another article that was very worrisome from MSN.

Student loan, quote, hack backfires after forgiveness fails. So here's what happened. The Department of Education suggests 9 million borrowers are eligible for refunds for the payments they made at any point during the student loan moratorium that's been in place since March of 2020. Borrowers have received refunds. How many borrowers have received refunds remains unclear, but many of those who did were banking on forgiveness, leading them to use the cash for other expenses. So TLDR, let me tell you what happened here. The student loan company said, hey, you've made all these payments. We can just refund you that money. And people thought, wow, that's amazing. Here's what they did. They reinstated your loan balance. So if they gave

Jade a $10,000 refund for $10,000 in in payments she made they give her the check but they also reinstate the loan balance so she owes ten thousand dollars then they said all right good luck the government will forgive them right you'll be fine and here they are so you would have had to hold on to that ten thousand dollars until biden's administration said go and i bet my bottom ten,000 that very few people did that. I know for a fact, George. That money is gone. I follow folks on social media. Number one, so many poo-poo influencers were telling people to do this, George.

This is why you can't, you got to be so careful where you take your financial advice. So many influencers were saying influencers were saying yeah go get your refund get your money just hang on to it it wasn't a stimulus check it wasn't and i know these people i've seen them now posting going holy crap there's not going to be forgiveness i spent that money and now i'm back in debt to the tune of 10 and 20 yeah you paid off your debt and they gave you another loan essentially is what happened yes and nobody hung on to that money it's like it was like radioactive in your account you know you've got this ten thousand dollars back and ten thousand i mean that's a trip george that is that's a down payment on a house you know or towards it people used this money because it was just sitting there

like a hot potato in their account and now they're're up a creek because- They're back to where they were. Yeah. Because that forgiveness did not come through and it's not coming through. And I hate that for them. Y'all, stop listening to politicians. Stop believing in their false promises. Stop listening to influencers who are telling you to do stupid stuff. It's common sense. Get out of debt. Stay out of debt. Have money in stupid stuff. It's common sense. Get out of debt, stay out of debt, have money in the bank, invest for the future. And when you do that, whenever that carrot tries to dangle in front of your face, you'll just slap it out of the way. You won't even care about it.

You need to be on a budget if you're not today and figure out where you're going to cut spending. Because this article is telling us people are going to have to make some changes in their... Yeah. You you got to figure out how you're not only you're going to make the 400 minimum payment but how you're going to be able to put 400 bucks on top of that that's right on top of that to get rid of this debt once and for all so you know we got some flack for our posts we did jade about the social the student loan forgiveness like they're happy and they're gloating no i'm not happy here's why i'm happy the ball's back in your court. That's right. You're not wishing and hoping and watching the carrot dangle in front of you. You're like, crap, I'm in control now. It's my responsibility. What am I going to do next? If I'm you, I am. And I have been you,

by the way. I have had student loans and I had student loans back in 08, 09 during the Great Recession, the worst time ever economically in my lifetime. And if I'm you, I'm getting on every dollar tonight. I'm downloading it. If I never had it before, if you're not sure what every dollar is, it is our budgeting software here at Ramsey. It's the best software out there. And I'm going to start looking at my budget. I'm going to put, it's easy to load the numbers in. I'm going to start looking at what am I making? I'm going to list all my expenses in there. And I'm going to look to see, okay, what is it going to look like for me? Because if you don't have money saved, yeah, you might need to put a little money aside.

If you've got other debt besides your student loans, you might have to start on those first while you're making minimum payments on student loans. But every dollar is going to help you see all that listed out, guys. And you're going to see how quickly, get this, because I know I'm about to blow your mind, you could actually pay off your student loans and not just make boo-boo minimum payments. That's what got us into this mess. People have been paying on this stuff for 20 years. Yeah. And they're mad because their balance has increased because they're not making enough payments. If your interest is high enough or you went to forbearance or one of these shortcuts or

these income-based repayment plans, which are the worst because you never pay off the debt, the balance just skyrockets. You got to get out of this thing by making extra payments. That's the debt snowball. Smalls to largest, minimum payments on everything except for that first one, the smallest one we attack. And how would it feel, George? I know you've been there.

I've been there. We've all been in the situation where economically everything's going crazy and you're in it. You're right in the middle of the tornado, getting caught up in all the economic, political stuff. How good does it feel to fly above that, to finally get that out of your life to where you're not part of it? Guys, this stuff goes in cycles. This is not the last we're ever gonna hear about forgiveness. This is not the last time we're ever gonna have a weird economy, okay?

Next time, make it like, put it in stone. Next time you're flying above this. By the time this circles back around again, your life financially is going to be in order and you are gonna just sit back and watch everybody else be weird and get you know be worried about this stuff and your your loans are going to be gone make that your choice today don't get caught up again that's right on average it takes folks following these baby steps 18 to

24 months to get out of all consumer debt come on 20 years uh-uh two years dropping the bucket for a plan i remember paying off my 36 grand in student loans, and I was Ubering. I was lifting. I was living on lean cuisines, Jay, and I got lean. I'll tell you, I was lean, and I was doing everything I could to get rid of that debt as fast as possible. And it was so freeing to not have to wait on someone else to do it for me. And so make a plan. Get on a budget.

Do what it takes. Come celebrate with us when you're debt-free, and we'll celebrate the fact that you're not waiting on no man, no woman, no politician to change your life. It's all on you. You are the secret sauce, America. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Campbell, joined by Jade Warshaw this hour. And we want to help you.

We want to take your calls at 888-825-5225. If you've got a question about your life, your money, we want to give you that right next step and be somewhat of an unbiased third party. I can't say completely unbiased because we have bias towards you winning and getting out of debt. And that's technically a bias. So I'll give you that. But if you need a third party opinion, that's not your broke brother-in-law, the in-laws that don't have boundary issues. There's a lot of pressure and a lot of noise and a lot of inputs in our life. Social media, you saw a video and you're like, is that true? Is this a tax hack? I'm like, no, that's called fraud. Please don't do that.

Yeah. We don't have a dog in the hunt. We just want you to win. We just tell you the truth, even if it hurts a little bit. Ashley's up next in Wichita. Ashley, welcome to the show. You with us, Ashley? I am, yes. Good, good. How can we help today?

Hey, how are y'all doing? Great. Awesome. Thanks so much for answering my question. My situation is I will be graduating college debt-free. I own my car and I've built up some savings and I've opened up retirement accounts. So I'm wondering what should my next steps be in my financial journey? What goals do I need to achieve? Were you raised by a unicorn? How did you get here, Ashley? You're in such great shape. My parents talked about money in front of us

it was a normal dinner conversation so I've always grown up with an awareness of responsible savings and realistic expenses that's so awesome and there's a lesson for you parents out there don't be scared to talk about money do it in a healthy way

when exactly do you graduate? my expected graduation is in 2026. Okay. And it's already all paid for? I have a 529 with more than enough to cover all of my college expenses. Great. Fantastic.

Okay. And you're saying, hey, what should my next steps be? Now, you've got, obviously, education for the next three years that you're focused on. Are you able to work part-time while you're in school? I'm working a couple hours a week on campus, so my take-home is about $2,000 a year. $2,000 a year. Okay. But we're just kind of covering, you don't have many bills right now. Correct.

Since room and board's covered all that, your meals. Okay. So your next steps obviously is to actually graduate by 2026 or earlier if you can. And leave college with as much money as possible to start your adult life. That's right. Stack it up. And that might mean, all right, we need a car. We need first and last month's deposit for rent. We need some money for a down payment on a house eventually. So you've got some big financial goals ahead of you, but the next one that's right in front of you is investing in Ashley.

Good to know. So would you recommend investing what I'm earning? I have built up enough savings where I'd feel comfortable with rent and transitioning out of school. Would you recommend investing what I'm taking home from my on-campus job or putting that into savings? How much do you have in savings so far? I have around $11,000 in savings. Oh, yeah. Look, if I were you, I would continue to save money simply because by the time you and 11k, don't get me wrong, especially for where you are in your age, it feels like a lot of money.

But when you actually get out into the world and you graduate, you're going to find that by the time you're getting an apartment, maybe by then it's time to upgrade a vehicle. Once you really get into there, that money, although great now, you're going to want as much as possible by the time you graduate. So I probably would not invest anything. Plus, you got three years to go before you graduate. If you were saying, oh, I'm going to invest as a savings vehicle, it still doesn't make sense because it's too short of a timeframe. Yeah. And when you said you're earning about $2,000 a year, truthfully, once you get out in the real world and you're making $40,000, $50,000, $60,000, that's when you should be investing because the numbers change drastically. And so if you put that $11,000 in a high yield savings account, you could get four or 5% right now. We'll call it 500 bucks a year. And that's, I'm going to call that good. And it's not about the interest in the investing

portion. It's about protecting Ashley's financial world portion. And so you're going to make 40, 50 bucks a month on that savings account. And that's totally fine. If you invested it, you might make a hundred bucks a month. You might lose a hundred bucks a month. And I don't want you worrying about that while you're trying to graduate debt-free and kind of start this adult life. You're going to have plenty of time. How old are you? I'm 19. 19 years old. You are so far ahead of the game. You are going to be a multimillionaire. If you just follow this path, graduate debt-free, begin investing as soon as you get your first full-time job, you're going to do so well. What I love is that you're eager to

start exercising that muscle. I think that's so great. Keep that fire, but do it at the right time and focus on one thing at a time. Yeah. Thank you so much for the call, Ashley. Love hearing that. Inspiring. Sam is up next in Chicago. Sam, welcome to The Ramsey Show. Hey guys, good afternoon. How are you? Doing great. How can we help? So I'm calling because I've just created budget, just kind of actually a new job, and just trying to figure out how to pay down some debt. Big fan of you guys, watched you guys, and understand baby steps. But I got $140,000 in student loans and trying to figure out my highest priority to take care of first.

Well, you've got the expert here, Jade Warshaw, who paid off close to half a million in consumer debt. And so she can definitely walk you through exactly what this is going to look like. So tell us about the debt. What is this breakdown? Sure. So I've got $29,913 in Navient private student loans, which is the highest priority. Two loans, one is at a variable 14.75%, and then that's only $6,500 left, which is my top priority, I think, to pay off, especially because it's the highest interest rate. And then the rest, $25,000 is the difference in the private loan. Coming due, like you said, is NOMET, which is the public loan. That's the big chunk of things, $97,180. One big loan?

Yes, public loans. And then I do have a lease that's coming due to finance in January, which is about $13,000. So I think just financially, it makes more sense to just pay that off, the rest residual value, rather than having to get another used car, something cheaper, either a brand new car. So what do you guys think? Okay. So let me just make sure I understand this. So we've got the loans, you've got private and you've got federal. The federal ones that were $97,000, even though they're all federal, sometimes they're broken down, honestly, like by the semester you took it. So it's like, is it broken down in any other way? Or is it, it wasn't just one loan for $97,000, was it? No, no, yeah, you're right. It is broken down by semester. They're like $6,500

chunks, some are $2,000, some are $1,000. Yes, okay. but it all equates to that so you probably have like 13 or 15 different loans that make that up the reason i'm asking is because when we attack this debt not just the student loan debt but all of your debt we're we're doing the debt snowball okay so what that means is we're listing all of the debt no matter where it's from what type of debt it doesn't matter all of it smallest to largest by balance not by interest rate and don't get me wrong when it comes to student loans sometimes the first thought is like dude i gotta pay off this other one first because the interest rate is 14 and it's a private loan i really want to um push you to not go that direction. I want you to go by balance. And the reason I'm telling you that my husband and I, we had 280,000. Okay, a lot of most of them were private. So I feel you wholeheartedly right now. But something happens in your motivation when you do it smallest to largest, because it's like, okay, there comes a time where you start looking at it by number of debts, as opposed to amount of debts, right? And when you are able to go from, I don't know, 16 or 18 debts

down to 12 debts, it just feels great. Even if the balance, do you see what I'm saying? Even if the balance was only 6,000, you feel great because you're like, wow, I had this list of 18 and now I only have a list of 16. So I want to challenge you to start looking at it in that way. Do the Stetsnowball and just start working that thing out. You're going to be surprised at how quickly this goes. What's your income? 105. All right. Look, now's the time. We're busting that income up. We're doing whatever it takes to get more money, side hustle, sell stuff, work on the side, whatever it is. But just remember, keep going on that debt snowball. It is going to work.

You're going to start feeling the difference. Yeah, start to do the math and go, hey, I want to get this thing out of my life in two or three years. What do I got to do to get there? It might mean you got to go get a second job, a third job, sell some stuff, not do the lease, drive a beater car.

Those are all the sacrifices that are worth it short term so that you can have long-term freedom. You can do it. You got this, Sam. This is The Ramsey Show. This is The Ramsey Show. I'm George Campbell, joined by Jade Warshaw. The number to call is 888-825-5225. If you're listening to this show, which you've got to be if you're hearing this, I would ask you to do one thing. The show is free. What I'm asking you to do is free, and that is if you like the show, please share it, subscribe wherever you're hanging out with us, hit the follow button, leave a review, tell a friend. All of that stuff matters so much. We have a very slim marketing budget around here because you guys are the marketing budget.

And really, that's the way life change happens. That's right. Jade tells me, oh, you got to go check out this podcast. It's not a promoted ad on Twitter. It's not the Instagram story ad. It's a friend telling a friend, hey, this stuff affected my life.

It changed my life. It got me motivated to get out of debt, invest the right way. You've got to check this out. So tell them about the show. That's good. We appreciate that. All right, let's get to the phones. Anna awaits in St. Louis. Anna, welcome to the show. Hi. Hey, what's going on? I just got a little stage fright. Oh, you're fine with us. It's just me. Thank you for taking my call. I'm really excited to talk to you guys.

I just am a new listener. And so far, you've given me quite a bit of helpful advice. So I will just kind of jump into it. My situation has quite a few layers. I think it's important to understand that my husband and I were both 39 years old. We have two small kids, three years old and five years old. My husband has been recently diagnosed with a rare liver condition called Wilson's disease, and he's essentially disabled. So now he receives SSDI. He's been

disabled for quite a while, but diagnosing this condition has been very difficult and he's only received that diagnosis in the past year. And he has a pretty strong background in finance. He worked for the Federal Reserve of New York for quite a time. He began his career at PWC. So he's always been kind of the financial person in the household and was making the big decisions for us when we first met. We had good plans for our future. And then things started to kind of go haywire. He started getting sick. And essentially the symptoms of this condition, they progress over time.

And if you don't identify it soon enough, the symptoms get worse. And the way it presents itself is it looks like he has Parkinson's and it looks like he has cognitive impairments as well. So I've essentially become his legal guardian and conservator. So the last several years have been essentially kind of survival mode and, you know, essentially us living or me living on a prayer every day trying to figure out just survival mode. Yeah, really what to figure out what to do for our family. And, you know, we've at this point where we are, I'll just kind of jump to where we are at this point. I've already paid down about $15,000 in debt that we've had. I still have about 12 more thousand to pay off. Our growth, no, our income at the end of the month is about $10,000. So theoretically, we should be doing okay. But because we've had so much going on in the past few years, I really just my head hasn't been clear. Making so many really scary decisions have been difficult. plan for those unknown things, planning for his medical care, planning for our kids' future,

planning for our retirement. I mean, we don't have any assets. We really just don't have anything right now, truthfully. We have a small 401k in his name that You have $12,000 in debt left. You're making $10,000 a month. You're trying to budget for the future. What kind of debt is this and how quickly can we get it out of the way so that we can budget for the future with some more margin? I think that, you know, since I started educating myself and looking at kind of the advice you guys have been giving, I think that it would be reasonable to pay it off in the next three months or so and start fresh. So I think we could get there pretty quickly. I'm trying to be conservative with our spending and only, you know, buy what we need at this point. I just know that things come

up and especially, I don't know when, you know, when we're, sometimes we'll have doctor visits and it's not like regular. I can't always plan ahead for what kind of doctor visits he's going to have. We've been to hospital visits multiple times in the last year. We've had so many things going on. Then he has medications and all of these things. Do you guys have good healthcare? Where is that provided through? We do. So he, being a federal employee, he retained his federal reserve benefits and continues to have that. And is there like an out-of-pocket max? You know what? I don't think so. his coverage is pretty good but he also recently just got medicare since he's been disabled for at least two years so he has that and and that's

very helpful but things um you know there are still uncertainties um given his rare condition a lot of times doctors don't really know what to do with it. So since we're fairly close to Chicago, I found a clinic out there that specifically treats Wilson's disease. So I'm going to be making the trips to go there regularly. So that's, you know, that's a drive, that's a hotel, that's a whole other expense because I need him to get the best care I can get him. And then thinking about our kids, I want to make sure that they are financially safe and that we can plan for our retirement. And we are also, you know. Anna, you're doing an amazing job. I just want to give you some credit here because what you've been going through is so, so unimaginably difficult. And you're going to have to give

yourself grace that your financial future might look different than what you guys had planned. And like Dr. Deloney might say, you got to grieve what happened and then make a plan for what's next and look at the actual reality of the situation. And that might mean it's going to take us a little longer to get out of debt. It's going to take us a little longer to save up for the kids college. And we just have to learn what this new normal looks like. Yeah, I think, you know, I think that you've been in survival mode for so long and you're a great manager of your household. You've done such a good job and you've looked at every detail and now you're continuing to do that. It's like, what about this? What about that? What about that? And I honestly think walking through this plan,

you've got a good income and that's the blessing in all of this is you have the money, I think, to do what it is that you need to do. I think for somebody like you, having a nice savings cushion is going to be something that gives you a lot of peace of mind. Because like you said, you don't always know what these doctor's visits are going to be. You don't always know what's at the end of the line here. But just rest in knowing that you're doing such an excellent job. I mean, the fact that you could have come in here and said that you had hundreds and thousands of dollars of debt and you had 12K, you know, so I think, or I'm sorry, 10K.

12K? Yes. So I think that you're doing such a good job. I just want to tell you that, you know, from my own mouth, great job. You know, that's all I can say. And I want to say one more thing. The big thing for you is making sure that you've got your defense and having good insurance in place. So I want you to go take our coverage checkup. You can do that at ramseysolutions.com slash checkup. And I want you to check on all of your coverage with these pros to go, hey, do I have enough

coverage? Am I getting the best rate? Some people might find they save 600 bucks on home and auto, just like that. Some people might find, hey, we're actually underinsured on this side. We need to be in better coverage here because that's going to protect what you have in place and protect your future and give you that peace of mind. But the faster we can get out of debt and the faster we get this emergency fund in place, which I would lean to six months for you guys because of your financial situation and health situation, that's going to give you that peace of mind. And I think you're going to get there fast. Are you going to stay making 10 grand a month? Is that consistent? There is potentially I could get more. So I've been able to, I am a speech therapist. I've been able to open up a private practice clinic that

have kind of grown fairly quickly and I have a business partner. And this is kind of our second year in, and we've expanded fairly quickly. And that is, for now, the income that we've agreed upon, but there is potential for bonuses and growth and more. Awesome. And so that was one of my, I guess this is kind of my retirement plan in a sense, essentially was trying to protect our, this is the only way in your house. So this is what we did. You guys are so young. And I feel very confident that, you know, at 39 years old, you still got plenty of life to invest and to build that wealth, to get that nest egg and get

that cushion. And you'll get there. I'm going to give you one year of every dollar premium to help you as you guys navigate this budget and plan for the future. So hang on the line and Christian will hook you up with one year of every dollar. Very thankful for the call. This is The Ramsey Show. Hey, what's up guys? It's Jade. If you love the show and want a deeper dive on your money journey, we have a weekly newsletter that gives you trending and helpful articles and tips on following the Ramsey way. Just go to ramsesolutions.com today to sign up for our newsletter. Again, that's ramsesolutions.com to sign up for our weekly newsletter.