The Ramsey Show - App - If You Can't Cash Flow It, Don't Do It (Hour 2)

Episode Date: January 3, 2019

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🎵 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. Thank you for joining us. Open phones this hour as we talk about your life and your money. The phone number is 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Chris is with us in Dallas.

Hi, Chris. How are you? Hey, Dave. Better than I deserve. Good deal, man. How can I help? Well, hey, so I'm pretty new

to the baby steps, but we are on step two um we've paid off about fifteen thousand dollars worth of debt in the last four months which is pretty exciting that is exciting well done yeah um but you know we're in this process and i'm addicted to it you know i've paid off 11 out of 13 accounts. The only thing left is my car and student loans. Good. And that totals about, I guess, 82. But my question here is my wife is planning on going back to school to get her master's degree. She's a teacher.

And during that time, she doesn't plan on working and going to school at the same time or, you know, working part-time or something like that. Why? So with that, yeah. Well, teachers work 60 hours a week easy. And, I mean, going to school full-time, that's rough. So she's going to be working. Lots of teachers go and get their master's while they're teaching. Lots of them. Lots of teachers go and get their master's while they're teaching. Lots of them.

Most of them. Very few quit to go get their master's. Well, I'm not sure if she's going to quit or if she's just going to work somewhere with less of a workload. I'm not 100% sure. Okay. But the real question I have is with the change in income and her going back to school and not wanting to get back in debt, I'm really hesitant to have her apply for student loans, but I'm at the same time not sure if I can cash flow it. Yeah.

You got to cash flow it or you don't do it. Right. cash flow it yeah well you got you got to cash flow it or you don't do it right and one way that you cash flow it is more people work more what is your income i make 47 47 and a half yeah what she make she makes 44 so we bring about 91 okay. And you've got a car loan that is how much? Right now it's $11,000 remaining. I'm going to have it paid off here in the next four months. Okay. And then the rest of that student, you said you had $82,000 total? Yeah, I've got $62,000 in student loans myself.

Okay. That would be $72,000 then. All right. Unless there's another $10,000 on something else. What's the other $10,000? No, you're right. You're right. I just paid off a $10,000 debt.

I'm looking at the wrong thing on the spreadsheet. That's okay. Cool. All right, good. So $62,000, and we want to pay for her school. These are our two goals. These are our two goals. And obviously we get to those two goals by having the highest possible income.

And what can we do to create that income and having the lowest possible expenses? What will it cost for her to get her master's? I'm not sure. I think about two grand a semester, which isn't bad. No? I've got a $3,000 snowball right now. Well, that's okay. Let's just stop for a second.

Two grand a semester for how many semesters? Four? Two years total, so it's eight semesters. No, that's four semesters. There's just two semesters in a year. Right, right, right. So four, right? Yes.

Okay. Four times two is $8,000. Okay? You with me? Are you tracking with me? So I need to do $8,000, and I've got, because we're not adding any debt. No way. No way. You cash flow it, or you wait until you've knocked this out, and then you cash flow it, one of the two.

So you either slow down your debt snowball in order to cash flow it, or you just wait to do the master's until you've got this other 62 knocked out. One of the two. I don't care which, but do not add student loan debt. Right. And the function of where the $8,000 comes from and where the money comes from to get rid of the 62 is income versus outgo it's a pretty simple formula isn't it and so anything she does to reduce the income lowers your all's ability to

hit any of these goals and i'm not trying to crack the whip on on her but you guys got a mess and and you know we're 62 000 in debt and i want to go buy an eight thousand dollar whatever in this case an eight thousand dollar whatever is a master's degree so it's an actual good purchase because her income will go up as a result of doing that i'm sure it's a good thing to do but if you do a good thing a dumb way it ends up being dumb so we're gonna pay cash for it, and I'm sorry, but she's working a lot, and so are you, a lot. Extra jobs and clean these up. So you're already addicted to reducing debt.

The fastest way to mess that up is add debt. Don't do that. And the second thing we can do is to mess that up is to get rid of the incomes. So let's not do that. Get rid of the, you know, the incomes. So let's not do that. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Nicole is with us in Colorado Springs. Hi, Nicole.

How are you? Hi. Doing good, Dean Ramsey. How are you doing? Better than I deserve. What's up in your world? Well, I just want to say I'm glad to be listening to you. It's an honor to be talking to you.

You too. And I'm glad with everything you do. Thank you. How can I help? Yeah, I have a situation. I'm living here with my parents. Well, I'm 27 years old. Right now I'm not working. I'm looking for work right now.

And I have a six-month-old baby girl, and me and my husband are having a situation to get me out of my parents' house. They're very negative. And my mother just pretty much threatened me that I have a month to move out of here. Good. Get out. What does your husband make? Well, he's active in the military, so he makes about $110,000.

Why can't you afford to live on your own if you make $110,000? Well, we have a lot of debts right now. We have car loans, credit cards. How much do you owe on your cars? Cars, about $56,000. Sell them. Hey, Nicole, you live in your mother's house and you have $56,000 worth of cars. Does that not sound wicked weird to you?

Yes. It does to me. And your mother's a negative nanny and you need to get away from her. Amputate the Tahoe, kiddo. Go get you a life. You ain't got no life. These stinking cars own you guys. Sell them both. Get you a $1,000 car and a life. own you don't they hello yeah yeah you can't you can't breathe you moved in with your mother who is not fun to live with because of car payments no No. Sell the cars.

Quickly. Quickly. And move out and get you a little apartment, a little tiny one, and pay off the rest of this debt driving a $1,000 car. You can do this. Tell your husband thanks for his service. Hold on. I'm going to send you a total money makeover book to help you.

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chministries.org. Right here in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions, Mike and Dot from Chattanooga, Tennessee, drop by with a question. Hey, guys, how are you? I'm not hearing them. Try again. Hey, guys. Good. How are you? Better than I deserve.

What's up? I know you don't like whole life insurance policies, but I currently have one. We've had it for about eight years, and we have about just over $90,000 in cash value. And the plan was when I retire at 55 or turn 55 that it would self-sustain it, pay the principal for the insurance. I wouldn't have to pay into it. Should I keep doing what i'm doing with that policy or should i cash it out and put the money towards the mortgage we have no other debt besides mortgages okay um and what's the face value of it uh 750 000 okay are

you healthy yes okay um well were you to price some term life insurance, you would find that $10,000 a year would buy a lot of term life insurance, like millions and millions and millions and millions and millions. Okay. Right? Yeah, I did get a price for, it's probably a couple thousand a year more than what I'm currently paying. Yeah, but I mean, how much was the price? I think it was around $1,000 every six months. So $2,000 a year for how much insurance? That was, I think it was $700,000 or $800,000.

Oh, so for about the same amount of insurance. About the same amount. That's correct. Okay. Well, if you took $90,000 and invested it, let's just play with some round numbers because we're on the radio. Okay. If you made 10% on your money, that'd be $9,000, right? Yep.

But you didn't get any free insurance. Right. Oh, darn. You bought a $2,000 policy. That'd still leave you $7,000 to the good. So the fact that they're willing to give you some free insurance in return for paying you almost nothing on your 90 000 is not a good deal you following me so yeah i'm getting rid of that garbage yeah i'm gonna pull that out pay off my house uh if you want some term insurance get that in place first um you have other assets uh yeah we have uh two houses paid for uh no the combined mortgage is about um

350 000 okay cool and um you got money in 401ks and that kind of stuff yeah kids grown and gone yep okay good good okay so i'm without putting you on the spot because there's other people standing around here it's kind of weird but it's different than calling you on the spot, because there's other people standing around here, it's kind of weird, but it's different than calling in on the radio, right? But let's just look at it this way. You need to start asking yourself, are you self-insured? And the way you'd be self-insured is this. If you took this money out and you paid off the properties and you got completely debt free and there's no kids is there enough money

in savings to support her if something happened to you without any insurance um if if that is there if she's okay if you die without insurance that's what we're saying uh then then you're self-insured at that point i don't know if you are or not i can't tell quite with the numbers we've got in front of us but uh but two thousand dollars a year buy you a million dollars so you don't know if you are or not. I can't tell quite with the numbers we've got in front of us. But $2,000 a year will buy you a million dollars, so you don't have to worry about it. You know, jump on Zander Insurance's site and get you a quote for some term insurance. But, yeah, I would pull that money out. If you want some term insurance, put it in place before you pull it out, and let's use it to clean up the rest of these debts, or at least some of these debts.

Your personal residence, the mortgage is how much? $100,000. Okay, so you can pay it off. Yep. Okay, cool. Yeah, I'd be debt-free, man. But let's get the term insurance in place first before you cancel it, if you want term insurance.

I already have a smaller amount. Okay. Again, ask yourself, is Dot okay if something happens to you today? From my perspective, she would be. Okay. I was talking about financially.

We'll have to ask Dot about that later. Okay. But that's how you ask yourself. And then the other thing is you guys are in good enough shape financially you may just want some insurance because dot wants some uh i've got some life insurance on me and there's no reason whatsoever for me to have any insurance other than a couple of odd things i do around business but i mean that that goes to sharon but there's only one reason i have it it's swi sharon wants it. There is no real financial reason for me to have life insurance for my wife.

You know, she's in really, really good shape if I go away. I guess mine would be a DWI then. There you go. Oh, that could be dangerous. Better than a DUI. Oh, that's fun. That's great. So, yes, I would get term insurance in place.

If you want some or need some before I canceled it, then I would cancel it and I would use the money. Absolutely. Better investment of your money. Thanks for calling. Thank you. Stop and buy. You didn't call, but thanks for coming by.

Brittany's with us in Washington, D.C. Hey, Brittany, how are you? Hi, Dave. how are you? Happy New Year. Happy New Year to you. How can I help? I'm calling in because I just got your book in December. Thank God it must have came down from heaven because you are going to help me change my whole life. But my boyfriend wants to help me with my paying down the debt, and I kind of feel guilty for having him help me because he was really smart and decided at a young age he didn't ever want to have any debt, so he doesn't have any.

And I feel bad that his money is going towards my debt, and that he has to be on the budget and everything when he's not the one who has the issue. By helping you, you mean he's not the one who has the issue by helping you you mean he's giving you some of his money he basically just gives me all the money and he's like here you go use it for whatever we need to take care of okay no i would not do that under any circumstances and here's what here's why now as soon as you're married if you get married someday i would do that you know at that point you're married, if you get married someday, I would do that. You know, at that point, you're married, and you treat that as one.

And so you take care of each other. And, yes, you would accept whatever help from your husband, or he would accept whatever help from his wife that you need to. So when you're married, that's fine. But when you're boyfriend, girlfriend, that's really dangerous uh because i mean it could get really really messy if there was a breakup and if there's not a breakup it still changes the tenor the sense of the relationship doesn't it yes because i've always been the independent one so i've always you know i'm not the best as i found out after reading your book but i've always, you know, I'm not the best at that, as I found out after reading your book, but I've always taken care of myself and had my own kind of.

So accepting this help from him is really, really hard for me. Yeah, I would not. I would accept him being your cheerleader, your advisor, you know, giving you some guidance because he's good at handling money. But I would not suggest that he give you money or you accept money until you're married now if you set a date and you come home from the honeymoon then the whole thing changes then everything is combined everything is combined and it doesn't matter who brings what you could be he could be dirt poor and you could be really rich but you got married now we are really rich

right that's how it works. Okay. But not until we're married, because it just changes. You know this already, because just talking about it made you feel weird. Yeah. So you know it's going to change things, and he's being nice. He's not thinking about it creating weirdness, but it's going to create weirdness, kiddo. And I don't think it'll be good for your relationship. And he's not doing it to try to be manipulative that's not who this guy is not the way you described him anyway um and and you're not doing it to be you're not not accepting it to be weird or something it's just until you're married you should not share assets

you will get and or liabilities you will get yourself in a real mess real mess so just um if this leads to marriage later then we can have the discussion after the honeymoon yeah i'm going to combine everything everything at that point so a good question keith is on Twitter, at Dave Ramsey. Dave, is the TSP a good place to put my retirement savings of 15%? It's fine. It's fine. We recommend the C, the S, and the I fund. 80% in the C, 10% in the S, 10% in the I. And that's all.

Don't do the L. It means lousy. Stay away from the other funds. I think you can probably get better returns with open market mutual funds than that. So I would consider that for your Roth IRAs and stuff and maybe not put it all in your TSP. I think you can beat those funds that are in the TSP, but they're certainly not

bad funds. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. One question I get asked all the time is, do I need life insurance? Listen, the whole point of life insurance is to replace your income for someone who counts on you. So if you have a spouse or you have kids, yes, you need term life insurance. It's the only way to protect them until you're out of debt and have built up your wealth. You're only digging a deeper hole if you waste money on cash value plans since it robs you of the ability to make real progress. And that's why I send you to Zander Insurance, and I have for 20 years. That's where I get all my insurance, and they only offer the plans I recommend. It is not expensive. It's not complicated.

And Zander will be there as your guide every step of the way. Visit Zander.com or call 800-356-4282. You need to get this taken care of. I can give you the advice and I can tell you where to go, but it's really up to you to take that important step to get your family protected. That's Zander.com or 800-356-4282. Thank you for joining us, America. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. We're glad you're here. Piper is with us in Helena, Montana.

Hi, Piper. How are you? Good. How are you, Dave? Better than I deserve. What's up? So, I'm a hunter, and this is my primary source of meat for my family because we have five kids at home. I'm wondering where in the monthly budget do I set aside the money

for the tags I have to buy every year? What is the cost of the tags you're buying every year? Anywhere from $100 to $140. And how many do you do uh that's for anywhere from four to six tags i'm sorry four to four to six times 150 i know but 100 animals oh okay so what is your total cost in a year for tags and license? Like I was saying, $100 to $140. For the whole year? Yes.

Oh, okay. That's just for the tags. Okay, but that's what you're asking about, right? Yes. Okay. And what's your household income? We make roughly $74. Okay.

And you're working to get out of debt, or where are you in there, Baby Steps? Okay. Baby Step 1 right now. We're just now getting into the point of signing up our monthly stuff. Well, this is a $140 expense that offsets some of your food budget, and it also is recreation for you. Okay? And so can somebody that's making $74,000 while they're working to get out of debt come up with $140 for something one time a year?

Or basically a total of that in a year? Yeah, you can put that in the budget. I mean, you can just make up a line that says, you know, tags, right, in your budget. And you and your wife just agree to that and look at it. Do you need to spend $4,000 a year doing this? No, you can't cost justify that. It doesn't make sense. You can't spend that kind of money on recreation.

Your family can't take your family on a cruise while you're getting out of debt, you know. And you can't be spending money like that on yourself and calling that meat in the fridge and getting by with it. That doesn't work. But if you spend $140 and, you know, you're harvesting some animals and you're using them for meat, then that's a wonderful use of the process, and you have the recreation of hunting as well, right? Correct. hunting as well right correct but it ultimately i'm wondering because it saves me close to twelve hundred dollars a year just from not having to buy the meat it's for maybe by the time you process it and everything else maybe but um well i self-process oh you do i don't pay anybody to do

it okay uh and that's your time is invested in that. So, you know, it's okay. I'll go along with part of the rationalization of it or part of the actual use of it, but it's $140. Either way, if it was completely wasted,

you know, it's $140. It does not break the bank here. So just put it in the budget. You know, it's that simple. We don't have to justify it.

It's $140. If it was $1,400, we've got to have a long discussion about this in your budget. But it's just not that much there. Blake is with us in Oklahoma City. Hey, Blake, how are you?

Doing good, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. How can I help? I wanted to know the difference in investing up to the match on a company 401K, or investing past the match, and then just investing in the match and then putting the rest in an IRA. Well, you have a 401K Roth? I have a Roth company 401K that matches up to 4%.

Okay. Well, up to the match is a no-brainer. The best math is a 401k with a match that's a Roth. That's number one on the list. Okay? Correct. Number two on the list would be Roth anything. Right? Roth 401k or regular Roth that you do on your own as an IRA.

And the only difference in those two would be if you can find mutual funds. If your 401k has mediocre to poor funds in it, then you'd want to step outside after you took the match and do regular Roth IRAs where you can pick some premium, high-quality mutual funds. But if your 401k has good funds in it, like mine does, I picked them out, hello, you know, then there's no difference because the funds i have at home are similar to the funds i have in my 401k then uh you can just continue with the 401k it's easy right exactly yeah exactly and that that was kind of my question

is you know i i do have good funds within my raw 401k and i just didn't know if it was a big deal or not no just take it on out the 15 yeah just take it on out. Go ahead and do the 15%. Yeah, just take it on out. Put 15% in there. Get the 4%. You've got an easy thing to manage. It's all coming out of your check. It's all happening right there.

You own it. If you ever leave, you can roll it to an IRA, and you should, a Roth IRA, and pick some mutual funds that are similar and keep control of it and move it. But as long as you're there, it's an easy way to do it. There's no upside to having an individual Roth IRA unless you are getting superior mutual funds. Great. Okay. That's all I needed to know, sir.

Hey, man. Thanks for calling in. All right. Amanda's with us in Sacramento, California. Hey, Amanda. How are you? Hi, Dave. How are you?

Better than I deserve. What's up? All right. So I just started the baby steps a couple days ago. We'll have the first step done within the next two weeks. Me and my husband earned $116,000 worth of debt. Yeah. We're only 25 and 26.

So it's a little overwhelming. My question is, currently with his job, we are maxing out his deferred comp and retirement contributions. Stop. Should we stop and should we pull out all of his deferred comp because there isn't a penalty if we did? And it's about $8,000 to $10,000 in there. It wouldn't hurt. What's the $116,000 on? Student loans, I have 40 of it.

We have $40,000 in cars. And then we put him through Police Academy last year and lost his income. So we have another personal loans of $33,000 and credit cards of $7,000. Okay. And what's your household income? $130,000. And that's not including his overtime or my commission. That's just what we can really count on every month as our base.'s driving the thirty thousand dollar car uh one of them's 18 and one of them's 20 22 those are killing you they're not so much that you have you know my rule of thumb on cars is if they're more than half your annual income total you have too much they're not but can you be debtfree not counting your house in two years and keep them? You can't.

Well, we don't have a house either, so we are trying to work up to get a house. No, you're not trying to buy a house right now. You're broke. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, no. We're broken and broke. Yeah. You need to be getting out of debt right now. The house waits until after baby step three.

Right. But, yeah, I'm thinking I'm selling these cars. Okay. So, and stop the 401K. Yeah, I probably would pull that out if there's no penalty on your – it's a 457 then is what you're saying. But stop adding to retirement. Yes, I would pull that out. Yes, I would sell the cars.

And let's get a couple cheap cars and then just continue to tear into this and let's see how fast we can clear it up. I bet you could clear it up in two and a half years if you do all that. Yeah, we're able just from this month using every dollar the last three days. I mean, I could scrape out $1,600 easy from our budget if we just pay attention. Yeah, that's not enough. Oh, I know, but it's at least a start. It's a start. The $130 doesn't count commissions that I always get, and then his overtime.

But since they're variable, I didn't want to put them in the budget. Now, the way I start, I look at big numbers on this, and you're doing it in the budget, which is a great place to start, and you're making good progress. You're new in the game. But I just say, all right, you've got $116,000 in debt. I just sold $40,000 worth of cars, so that gets me down to $75,000. And now I make $130,000. Can I pay off $37,000 a year, which gets me debt-free in two years?

Yeah. Yeah, and that means that's $3,000 a month, see? That's doable. Yeah, that's how I start looking at it. And I think $37,000 out of $130,000 is doable. That should work. Even with taxes and everything else, you ought to be able to do that. And so that clears everything really, really fast.

And if you want to keep one of the cars, you might even pull that off, depending on how deeply you're willing to cut your lifestyle to make this all happen. But, yeah, I'd pull that 10 out. I would. And no taxes on it. I mean, there'll be taxes on it, but no penalties. And stop adding to any kind of retirement temporarily while you clean this mess up. And I'm selling one, maybe two cars here. Hey, thanks for the call.

This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Thank you for joining us, America. We're glad you're here. Orange County is on the line. Mary Jo is calling. Hey, Mary Jo, how are you? I'm great, Dave. How are you today? Better than I deserve. What's up? Well, I have a question about Grace.

My little dog was attacked back in September by a neighbor's dog that was off-leash out with one of the family members. And it was a pretty bad attack and cost us about $2,500. And going back to that dog's owner, asking them to repay what we had to spend from this attack, they said, yeah, we'll pay, we'll pay, we'll pay the vet bills, no problem, no problem, just send us the bills. So we've done that, gave a very specific timeline, and offered to say, hey, if you'd rather we deal with your insurance company, we're happy to do that, just let us know. After that timeline passed, we didn't hear anything, so we eventually called, and, oh, I'm really busy, can't deal with this right now, it's actually my

daughter's dog, and, you know, she's finally got a job, so she's going to pay me, and then I'm going to pay you. Anyway, months have gone by, and now we've heard nothing. At this point, we met you back in fall of 2012, and had emergency fund in place, so this was barely a blip on our radar to deal with the finances. But it sounds like she's had a history of making bad choices and hasn't even asked how our dog is. And, you know, so I just, there's part of me that says, give her the grace. I don't have the bandwidth to, you know, pick the fight of getting paid back. But there's part of me that doesn't want to reward a history of bad decision making. Okay. Well, in business on collections, what I do, and this is a collections issue so it's similar is the best paradigm i can think of is

um am i going to spend more than the amount to get the amount with an attorney um before i talk about hiring an attorney um number one number two is if you sue someone who is broke, it doesn't make them have money. Right. And so if they're not paying because legitimately, regardless of why they're broke, but legitimately they have no money, the bottom line is you're not going to get paid. It's not grace. It's just a practical fact. You can't get blood out of a rock. Right. it's just a practical fact you can't get blood out of a rock right you know and so if that's the case but it you're in which county so i suspect the parents have the money to pay this $2,500 bill

they're just being what we in the south would call trifling right they're not taking care of business and so yeah um what i might do is maybe you and your husband swing over there sit down have a cup of coffee and go guys we really want to be kind to you. We want to be good neighbors. But we've made the decision that you are going to pay this bill. Now, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. And the easy way is you write me a check. And the hard way is anything less than i leave here with twenty five

hundred dollars from this conversation because from that point we've already talked to you about this from that point we're going to go ahead and turn this over to our attorney and he's going to sue you and that seems kind of ridiculous because you're going to lose when we sue you and you're going to lose the 2500 plus attorney's fees and that going to lose the $2,500 plus attorney's fees. And that's just kind of silly. And so that's why I wanted to just come over here and be a real person and have a cup of coffee with you and just say, we're going to do this. Are we going to do it easy, or are we going to do it hard? If you want to do that, that's one way to play it.

But then follow through. Hire an attorney and sue them. Right. And based on the last conversation that we had, she informed me that her husband had been jailed within the last year and was not in a good position in her life. The kid or the parents? The husband of the adult dog owner. Oh, OK. All right. So I don't know. If you think they don't have any money, you probably just forget it. But it's not really grace. It's just practical.

Yeah. It's just like I couldn't get it no matter what I did. And so, you know, it sounds like that's what the conclusion you're coming to. But yeah, and I just wasn't sure if i should just let it lay out grace is grace is somebody has had something you know that's out of their control happened to them and they really want to do the right thing but they just don't they can't and you're just like well i'm gonna let you go as an as a spiritual act i'm gonna release you this isn't a spiritual act this is just you're too dead gum broke to pay the bill okay and so to me that's different i i have let people off the hook uh that that you know just as an act of grace i just said you know you're trying i had one guy paying an eleven

thousand dollar bill he owed me he was paying like a hundred dollars here and a hundred dollars there and finally i had him come in i said dude look god just told me to let you go just forget it just forget it you were trying and he's like no no i really want to pay it but that's the one you want to let go you know and it was easy to let him go so i just set him free and in jesus name and you know let him go that's grace but this is just somebody that's broke and you know you're not going to teach them any lessons by trying to get money out of a broke people by broke people with a lawyer that's not they're not going to teach them any lessons by trying to get money out of a broke people by broke people with lawyer that's not they're not going to suddenly wake up and grow a grow character as a result so i i'd probably just forget it and walk away sounds like that's what

you're dealing with unless you can somehow impugn the parents where she was visiting as being liable in this uh having the dog in the neighborhood or something. You might ask an attorney if you really want to know the answer to these questions. But otherwise, you could just go, like you said, all I have the emotional bandwidth to deal with is $2,500. I'm moving on with my life. If you want to do that, I wouldn't be mad at you for doing that. I completely understand.

Thanks for the call. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Ramon is in Sacramento. Hi, Ramon. How are you? Hello, Dave. I'm well. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Hey, my last call was about grace. My call is about hope and whether or not I have any. I'm going to be 57 in a couple of months, March, and I have no, aside from a small 3,000 traditional IRA that I had gotten from a bank that I used to work for, I have no, aside from a small $3,000 traditional IRA that I had gotten from a bank I used to work for, I have no investments, no retirement set up of any kind.

Okay. And I'm working the baby steps. I got my $1,000 put away. Good. Into my third class of FPU. Good. I got a little under, just a little under $10,000 to pay off. My goal is to have it paid off by November, if not sooner.

Good. So when you're 57, you'll be starting Baby Step 4. Okay. And if you work for 20 years, you'll be 77, and you will have a million dollars. Wow. Okay. But you're going to work until you're 77. It's that easy, huh?

You're going to work until you're 77. That's not easy. I present myself to the fact that I'm not going to be retiring at the traditional age. No, and you're not going to be retiring in a traditional way. But that's okay. So what? I'll probably be working when I'm 77. I like doing what I'm doing.

You and I are the same age. You and I are the same age. The more I listen to you and some of the people that you talk with and some of the people that I deal with on a daily basis, a lot of people aren't retiring at the traditional age anymore. Yeah. Not out of having to, but out of just they go home and they're bored and they go back to work. Yeah, there's dignity in work.

It's good for people, including me. Yeah. So anyway, it's not like I have to work all the time. I don't have to work at all, money-wise, but it's good for my soul to get up and accomplish things, you know, so other than just hitting a white ball or something, you know, so nothing wrong with that morally, but it's just a matter of a spiritual access. Anyway, what do you make a year? Let me see. In 2017, my gross was $40. I brought home roughly $31 and change. All right. So what I want to do is, over

the next 10 years, I do want to increase your income. Right. And so I want to be studying and thinking about my career, which sounds weird when you're 57 to think about your career, but you really need to. Well, it's funny you say that because I'm kind of at the point where I'm thinking, you know, I'm always telling the kids I work with, this place here, just don't get stuck here. And I feel like I've kind of gotten stuck here myself. Oddly enough, I landed this job when I was – I used to work for a bank, as I said earlier, and I was in debt at that time. I've probably been in debt since I had my first

credit card at 18. And I wanted to get out of debt, and I said, I'm not going to take out a loan. That's just moving money from one drawer to the next. So I went and took a part-time job. Long story short, I ended up in this position where I'm at now. It's the thing, then. Let's just start thinking about what do you want to be doing when you're a part-time job. Long story short, I ended up in this position where I'm at now and this place where I'm working. It's the thing then. Let's just start thinking about what do you want to be doing when you're 67 and what are the steps to get there? That's 10 years. I mean, you could double, triple your income during that time and that

would change this equation. So that's part of the fun. Hey man, I think you're in a really cool place. I think you're going places. I'm real proud of you. Thanks for calling in. That puts this hour of the Dave Ramsey Show in the books. Hey guys, it's Blake Thompson, Chief Production Officer for the Dave Ramsey Show. This hour's

up, but you'll find more on our YouTube channel, where we have over 6 million YouTube views each month. You can find debt-free screens, millionaire hour clips, Dave Brant's, and so much more. Go check it out.