The Ramsey Show - App - If You Don’t Have Money You Can’t Help Anyone Else

Episode Date: October 16, 2024

From Ramsey Network, this is The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create amazing relationships. I'm George Camel, joined by the one and only Jade Warshaw, and we're taking your calls at 888-825-5225. You call in, and we'll do our best to help you take the right next step. That's all we can do. Our best. Let's do it. Tony joins us up first in Grand Rapids, Michigan. What's going on, Tony? How can we help? Hey, hello. First of all, thanks for taking my call. Absolutely. I've got myself in such a mess that I am just so stressed out and scared about where the future lies here.

I've been watching you guys' show for about a month now, and I'm getting with everything that I can as fast as I can to do what you guys are. Well, I'm proud of you for at least taking a step to go, I don't want to live like this anymore. What can I do about it? No, not at all. What's happening in your world? What's taking place? Well, I'm a truck driver. Last year, I made about $142,000, and the wife works, too. She probably makes $25,000 to $30,000, probably.

I've got some bad knees and had some surgeries done last summer on both of them. That put me out for about six months and I went back to work and oh about three months was good but then the next three was back to being bad again. So going up and down the ramp and delivering inside the... Yeah sounds like we needed a different career. Yeah so I ended up getting an easier job but I went from like I said 142 to about a 55 or 60,000 so now obviously since Memorial Day area it's just went downhill and I'm so far behind and how much do you have you know the way I had it up is about 110 so you got a hundred and ten thousand dollars of debt and now doing the job you're doing now, you guys are still making $90,000. If you're making $60,000 and she's making $30,000, that's still a great income between the two of you.

I think it's just that you're not used to it. Well, you probably picked up all these debt payments when you were making bank, thinking, well, it'll always be this way. Well, exactly. That's the American way, Tony. You're not alone. I picked up two newer uh well i bought one brand new truck but uh a couple years ago about a 2018 truck bought a ranger bass boat which i know dave really likes that huh well the good news the good news is you also have a lot you can sell when you've got two trucks and a boat and i've already got yeah i've already got my for sale sign on on the f-150 uh a sign is going on the boat

okay tell us the numbers what's the boat what do you owe on the boat and what's it worth well it's a ranger it's a 52.5 is what i still owe on it. 52,500? Yes. Okay. And I just called the dealer, and he's telling me that they're going for roughly 40 to 50. So you're upside down slightly? Yep. So I'm upside down a little bit on that. And then the truck, I owe 12,500 for, and Kelly Blue Book and edmunds is telling me it's right around

i think it was 10 to 14 000 so okay good i'm hoping to so you could break even on both of these on that one yeah and uh yeah and that i mean that clears that clears $64,000 of debt right there. Exactly. Does that make you feel better? Hey, don't glaze over that because that's a huge thing right there. What do those payments add up to? If you take the boat payment plus the truck payment, what's that every month? Well, the boat payment is $610 a month and the F-150 is $704. Wow. And my Silverado, I was going to say I owe $34,000 on that.

And Kelly Blue Book is saying that's about $20,000 to $23,000. So I'm really upset. We're under one on that one. But I mean, to know that you could get back a little over $1,300 in your pocket just by selling the boat and the truck, that's got to... Most definitely. You know? I'm so ready to do it. Are you behind on any of these payments?

Yes, I am. Which ones? The boat and the F-150, I'm about a month, month and a half behind. The Silverado is three months behind. Goodness gracious. Is anybody... So your phone's blowing up.

1-800-PAY-ME is going hard. Are they coming after you? Are they about to repo this thing? Where are you at? I talked to them. I made a payment about a week ago, and they said that'll take me out of the repo status for maybe a couple of weeks.

Okay, good. Now let's talk about your wife's income. What is she doing right now for work? She's a security guard. Is this part-time? No, it's full-time. Is she able to pick up extra hours? No, not at that job. Okay, so somebody, one of you guys is going to need to pick up some extra hours doing something ASAP. I don't care if you go over to Walmart and work night shifts. You do some security shifts. Yeah. She actually even called them yesterday.

Okay. And if she can even go to work a retail job making $20, well, she just got an $8,000 raise. Because the holidays are coming up. There's going to be so many options. Seasonal work. It's already started. So that's going to be your goal tonight.

One of my homeworks for you guys is when you get off the line, you and your wife sit down tonight and make a list of all the places that you're going to apply and make a number goal and say, okay, honey, I want you bringing in $500 extra a month. I'm going to bring in 500 extra, like sit down and put real numbers to this because when it, the realer it looks, the more motivating it is. But if it's very vague, you don't really know what you're going after. So make that very crystal clear. Is there anything else that's on fire debt-wise? Because I love that you can sell some things to clear it. Can you tell us about the other $60,000 of debt that you've got?

Well, I've got $3,500 on a visa. I've got like $8,000 for taxes for the last three years is my guess. Okay, we're going to move that. About $8,000. We're going to put that at the top of the list. That's your next priority is the IRS because they can screw up your life, Tony. So we get current, we do the taxes, and in the meanwhile, we're selling the boat and truck. That's the order of all of this happening. So keep telling us, what else do you have?

Well, I got medical and collections, but I don't know the amounts of those. I need to run my reports and actually write down everything. You know what I mean? Yeah, let's do some homework. You can go to annualcreditreport.com and pull your credit report from all three bureaus and have your wife do the same thing. It'll take you just a few minutes to do. And that's going to give you guys a true financial picture of where we're at, how much debt we

have, where do we owe money, and what's the status. And then we can develop a plan. We're going to help you with that plan, Tony. I'm going to gift you one year of every dollar premium so you can actually list out your income, list out the expenses. You and your wife spit shake. Here's the plan. We're going to stick to it. And by the way, those medical- I have a question about that.

Sure. I have a question about the dollar, the average dollar. I actually downloaded that. Good. How do you actually start it when you're behind? Okay. So that's a great question. The same way that you would start it if you weren't behind. You still go through and you add your income to the top because it gives you a space to add all the times you're paid and what those amounts are. And then you go through, Tony, and list everything you could actually spend money on. And George and I did a really great video. It's on YouTube. If you go over to the Ramsey Solutions, Ramsey Show page, you can find it there. You can do it in five minutes. But remember, your homework, get current on everything first. Number two, you're going to settle the tax bill. Number three, you're going to sell the boat and the truck. Number four, settle those medical bills that are in collections. Settle them for pennies on the dollar, okay? Don't pay full price. And sell everything until you're what's known as a minimalist. It's very trendy right now,

and you're going to be on the other side of this very soon, Tony. We're rooting for you. Thanks for calling in. This is The Ramsey Show. Statistics show that half of Americans don't have enough life insurance or they don't have any at all. I don't understand this, John. Why don't people want to take care of their family? They think they're not going to die or something? Well, I used to be one of those guys. I didn't even think about it. And one of my buddies said, hey, the only reason to not have life insurance is if you hate your wife and kids. And I immediately went and got term life insurance. That's a gut punch. For decades, Dave, I've sat across people who've lost a spouse.

They've lost somebody important to them. Me too. And they don't know what to do next. Terrifying. You're going to have a crisis here. You know, you got two options while you're sitting and talking to a young widow. She's concerned about how she's going to invest all this money properly and not mess this up, or she's concerned how she's going to eat tomorrow. That's exactly right. These are the two options. It's saying I love you to your family. Term life insurance.

Jeff Zander and the team at Zander Insurance makes it easy and affordable. I've used them personally for 25 years. They're the only people I trust. Go to Zander.com or call 800-356-4282. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Campbell, joined by Jade Warshaw. This hour, open phones at 888-825-5225. Well, Jade, we've got an exciting interview that released everywhere today, and you don't want to miss this. A few weeks ago, Dave and I sat down with Ben Shapiro to have a real-life conversation about work, family, building wealth, the American dream, and the interview is now available on YouTube,

podcast, the Ramsey Network app. Go check this out. This was a long-form interview. We went about 49 minutes, I believe, and it was a riveting conversation, and I accidentally ribbed Ben Shapiro pretty hard so it's worth listening just for that moment I'll take your word for it George there's an exclusive extra that you can only watch in the Ramsey Network app where Shapiro exposes major shifts in the media and family dynamics in the current culture go check it out Ramsey Network app YouTube podcast everywhere or you can click the link in the description. Let's get to the phones. Mary is in Charleston, South Carolina. Mary, how can we help? Good afternoon. Can you hear me well? Yes.

Hey, I was explaining that I inherited two houses. We got out of probate beginning of March. And the end of March, I got in a really crazy car accident. So one of the houses is total free and clear because he bought it cash. The other one, there's some money, there's a mortgage on it. I decided because I was using all my money to pay for everything, but I'm really good with my own funds now. And so I decided to try to sell the other house. I was going to use it as my warehouse if I'm paying for a warehouse every month. The paid-for house or the mortgaged house you were going to use as a warehouse?

The paid-for house. Okay. Because we got it in like 2018. He paid like $40,000 for it. It was like 10 houses for a $250,000 deal. Thankfully, he only bought this one, even though I didn't even want him to buy this one. Mary, Mary, who passed away? He was my partner.

We ran a nonprofit together, but I took care of him. Okay. And he passed away. He was my partner. We ran a nonprofit together, but I took care of him. Okay. And he passed away. He was 80. And so... How old are you? A lot of things happened. I just turned 52.

Okay. I'm sorry for your loss. That can't have been easy. No, it was a really bad situation. And it just got... It got really worse. And I was trying to take care of everything for him. And thinking that he would get better. Oh, this is long distance. Because you're in South Carolina.

How can we help today? I want to make sure we give you the right next step. What's going on with your finances that you're so desperate? When I have kids, which they're all adults, and I know I enable my children, I've been debt-free for a good while. Are you debt-free now? Myself, technically, yes. Right now, car insurance and my cell phone

deal i got i got myself all the way down to just that okay you don't have any loans no sir no sir i i hated debt before my girls went to college i had paid off my student loan and everything so why are you so desperate to sell this house well Well, because of the car accident, I haven't been working, and we were running a nonprofit, and I haven't been doing anything. So I've been using all of our reserves, all the money I have. So you've been living off of savings, and you have $0 coming in every month. How much savings did you start with, and how much do you have left? About between $80 and $90. um about um between 80 and 90 is what you started with okay and what do you have left uh truthfully yeah we're not judging you

no no reason to lie to us no no i don't I don't. Y'all don't know I'm crazy. You'll find that out. $200 maybe. Maybe two, maybe four. So we're about down to zero. $400, okay. Let's call it zero, and you have no income coming in every month, and you're unable to work?

Well, I'm not fit for duty. I know my brain works, and I can probably do things, but I can't stand really well. I can't take more than six steps without being out of breath. Have you filed for disability? No, sir. I didn't think about that. I'm trying to get my daughter to file for disability with MS.

You asked about what I spend my money on. I spend my money on my kids because she's no longer working. But you don't have any money to spend on the kids, so we need to either figure out something that you can do with the nature of your disability or we need to file for disability for now. Yeah, because here's the thing. If you go and sell one of these houses, even if you have the cash, if you're funding your lifestyle, which is bringing in zero income,

and if you're funding lifestyles and enabling, to use your words, your grown children, you're going to blow through that money lickety-split, and then you're going to have nothing left to liquidate. So to George's point, we got to find something that's work from home, that's call center, customer service, something where if you needed to sit in your swivel chair for eight hours a day and help people over the phone with your Stanley cup, you can do that. And I think that you can, like you said, your brain works perfectly fine. You're perfectly coherent. I think that in all of this, like your inside is what's wounded, like your emotions. You've been through a ride with losing your partner.

You're going through some things with your grown children. And like, honestly, it just sounds like your life has been turned upside down. And I think that is where the frustration and just kind of that feeling like you're stuck in the mud, right? So I would not turn this into a warehouse. I think we do need to liquidate these houses. What I would do is go to ramseysolutions.com, click on trusted services. You'll see SmartVestor Pro there. You need to connect with someone who can help you manage and invest this money wisely, because what could happen is you sell the houses, put all this money into an investment account

that then spins off enough to cover your expenses every month. So that's what I would be doing while filing for disability if you can truly do no work whatsoever, because we need something coming in. I don't want you on the streets. And you've got to cut off the, if you've got healthy adult children, you've got to cut off this supply. I thought I heard her say that somebody had MS or something like that, but whatever that means, you've got to figure out a way to help them become self-regulatory and that you can do your own finances on your side too. Because if you don't have any money, you can't help anybody else, George. That's what it boils down to. So sorry, Mary.

All right, let's talk to Mark in Greensboro, North Carolina. Up next, Mark, how can we help? Hey, how you doing? We're doing well. How are you? Awesome. Man, thank you guys for what you do. I've been listening to this show longer than you guys have been on it. Wow. That's not long. Not long. I thought you were going to say since it's been on the air, but that's cool. What's your question today, Mark? What's your riddle for us? Okay, so should be a pretty simple question. I've got a surface question and then a deeper question. The surface question I know the answer to, and that's should I close my credit card

account? Yes. So I think we all know the answer to that question, but here's why I'm asking it. Obviously, I know that the goal is to have a zero credit score. I look forward to that day, but I have a mortgage. So that's not going to happen until I get rid of the mortgage. And my concern is that we are probably going to be moving in the next few years, which means that I'm going to need that credit score and able to get a different mortgage. Is it going to hurt my credit? And the only reason I'm asking is because, and I probably spend more time on Credit Karma than I should, is it going to hurt it because I've had that one card for over,

it's the only card I have left and I've had it for 20 years. And is it going to hurt my credit score when I close that card? Not enough to keep you from buying a house at a good rate. It might initially ding it a little bit, but you paying your mortgage on time is it's going to climb right back up. You stay current on those mortgage payments. And then when you sell your house and buy another one, well, the score is not going to disappear instantly. And so in the meantime, that score is going to still sit there. And when you go get another mortgage,

they're going to use that score. And by the way, Credit Karma, let me tell you something. They try to play you because I remember George checking my Credit Karma score after we had paid off all of our debt thinking, oh, it's going to go to zero. It's going to go to zero. And I kept thinking, man, my score, it's kind of starting to be bad, but it's not rolling to zero. They play you because they want you to take out more credit to increase your score. Because guess what? That's how they make their money, Mark.

Their whole goal is to get you into more debt. They don't give you an your score. Because guess what? That's how they make their money, Mark. Their whole goal is to get you into more debt. They don't give you an accurate score. If you go and actually like to a real reputable source, you'll find your true score. Oh, yes. So beware of sites like Credit Karma because remember they want you to engage in more credit activity.

And they'll try to scare you with notifications and emails. Hey, your score is dipping. You got to take out more credit. It turned out my score was really to zero, but they weren't reporting it that way. So be careful with those sites. It's a terrible scoreboard. If you want a scoreboard, use a net worth calculator. Okay.

Not a credit score. That tells you nothing about your financial life other than how good you are at playing kissy face with the bank. And I don't know about you, but they got that old man moth breath. No, thank you. Gross. No, thank you. Gross. No, thank you. This is The Ramsey Show. There's a time in your life and in the baby steps for renting, but you don't want to do it forever

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That's churchhillmortgage.com. That's churchhillmortgage.com. This is a paid advertisement. NMLS ID 1591. NMLS consumeraccess.org. Equal housing lender. 1749 Mallory Lane, Suite 100. Brentwood, Tennessee 37027. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Camel, joined by Jade Warshaw. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Heather's up next, just down the road here in Nashville, Tennessee. Heather, how can we help you? Hi. Me and my husband have tried to do a pretty good job with budgeting so far, and now, just kind of budgeting and living within our means, now we're about to be parents in about a little over a month.

Woo-hoo! Congrats. Thank you. It's very exciting. So we're just kind of looking for some advice on, like, how to budget with a new baby, like how to care for this new child and still be able to live within our means, kind of with all the new expenses that come with a baby. Absolutely.

Well, George, you're closer to this than I am. I'm the newest dad. I've got an almost 14-month-old, Heather. So I've had, you know, some experience now budgeting with a baby. And the truth is there is an upfront cost that's like, it feels overwhelming because like we got to get the stroller and the car seat and maybe another car seat for the other car. And the beautiful thing is if you have some good people in your life, some family, friends, they throw the shower, you've got friends that just had babies, reduce, reuse, recycle. The amount of new crap we think we have to buy that you can just borrow or take from a friend as a hand-me-down, it's amazing how much money you can save.

Oh, I was going to say, hit that registry link and send it to everyone you know. And the registry link as well. So that covers a lot of the upfront to where it's not as actual as it's not as overwhelming. And then the, on the ongoing budgeting side, the things to think through, obviously are the basics. We're talking diapers and formula, a lot of diapers, a lot of formula, unless you're feeding. And so those are the things to add into the budget. The idea is to feed unless we can't. Are you guys in a good financial spot to where this is not going to be like a giant curveball? That's what we don't know.

We're right on that edge where we're fine right now, but we don't know how this baby is going to, if it's going to upset anything. Well, do you have savings? We're talking like, let's say a few hundred bucks is added to your budget. Now, if there's daycare expenses, that's going to be the biggest one in the budget if you go that route so what's the game plan for that yeah well thankfully my mom and his mom have agreed to take care of child care for the first few months wow they've made that commitment and they've made that promise to us yeah that's a blessing we have a wonderful support system yeah and you guys have the money set aside for any hospital costs and things like that savings yeah that's what,

that's the thing we've adjusted our budget for already. But we're just kind of like, okay, what else do we need to kind of prepare for? Yeah, if you have the out-of-pocket max, you know that number with your insurance, we know that's the max we're going to pay. Beyond that, it's what are the things that we need as we, you know, leave the hospital and come home. And truthfully, people think they need to have a good decked out nursery. No, you don't. My baby didn't even see that nursery for like six months. My baby initially slept in a pack and play that probably cost $30 that somebody got us. And they were in that for a long time before they even went into their crib.

And we borrowed a bassinet from a coworker for the first six months. And they don't really do much. So much of what we got didn't come into play until like three to six months later. That's right. And truthfully, Heather, we're in a good financial spot. I still went to Facebook Marketplace to get the like recliner and the crib

and all of these things because I did not want to pay retail price. And so there's a lot of ways you can make this. You can make a baby as expensive as you want. You can do it as affordably as you want. And so do you guys have any debt um just some college debt but we're kind of putting that on hold for the moment um my debt isn't gaining any interest right now his debt isn't because it's built by an administration and kind of the the weird things that have been going on there um so

we're just kind of like okay we can pause on that for now as we adjust to life with the new baby and then get back to that when we're comfortable yeah that's the move you're doing the right thing we call it stork mode where you pause the baby steps and just stack up cash so how much do you have in savings yeah um right now i think probably collectively with all of our accounts probably close to eight thousand great and that's going to continue for the next month yeah and so And so another, I guess kind of the other question I have is like, after the baby comes, kind of like how, is there like a good piece of advice for how long to kind of like stay home before going back to work? It's up to you and what you guys decide that you can afford and what your goals are.

And what your, you know, workplace policies are. Do you have a maternity leave? I work for myself. I just teach private music lessons. And then my husband just started a new job about a month ago. Thankfully, they're willing to work with him with the baby and everything. So it's been a little tricky trying to figure that out. But yeah, so we're kind of, his is more the kind of like, okay, how long is he able to take off before he has to go back? I mean, I'd say set a plan, sit down and set a plan, but also hold it loosely. Like I remember I said I was going to be back after I'm in music as well. I was back then. And I remember thinking, oh, I'll be back. You know, I just need a few weeks later weeks. And it ended up going from eight weeks to 12 weeks because you just don't you just don't know. So I'd say set a a c-section it's going to take longer to recover so exactly i'm hoping and praying that everything goes super

smoothly and that it's a very quick recovery but also we got a plan for if this takes a month or two or three or four we got to be prepared for that too yep yeah i've already told my students since my baby's be around thanksgiving i've told okay, from Thanksgiving on, I'm not going to be doing lessons until sometime in January, maybe February, depending on how long I need. have while you're gone but it doesn't require you being there so maybe it's a little webinar series that they can do or like just a little course that they can take while you're not there but it still brings in some money i don't know just a thought from a fellow music creative but it sounds like you guys have this dialed in you got eight grand in savings families there to support uh you've got a great system going on I assume you already did like the shower and stuff, right? Yeah, so we actually have probably 80 to 90% of what we need. Amazing. And probably 2,000 more items than you even will ever use or need.

That's kind of what happened. I know. We definitely have some things that we don't need, but will definitely be fun to use. Well, then you can return it, get gift cards, and use that toward the things that really matter, which is really just diapers. So many diapers. You know what, George? Nobody warned me.

I, okay. I think I have the opposite. I think that so many people talked about the cost of diapers so much. Well, it wasn't the cost. It was the amount you go through. The amount. Okay. Yeah.

I think in the end I was like, the diapers weren't the thing for me. It was everything else. Yeah. It was, yeah. Well, my wife is fairly crunchy. So she wants like the european brand formula that's like four thousand dollars an ounce it's like liquid gold and so we got a budget extra in the camel family for her crunchiness here's what you need to budget extra for mama oh

mama needs things that are going to make her comfortable during the most uncomfortable months of her life. A spa gift card for a massage. Postnatal massage. Yes. Get you some nice pajamas. Get you the best pump that money can buy that you like. Like, don't just, don't forget about mama during these times.

Splurge on mama. Splurge on mama. Yeah. My wife, she's, we got to pay for physical therapy now because her back is jacked up. Oh man. From carrying the baby. Yeah. It's a lot. Yeah. It's a lot. You got to pay for physical therapy now because her back is jacked up from carrying the baby. Yeah, it's a lot. So that's something you got to think about.

Yeah, get yourself a nice baby carrier, whatever you decide. Oh, man. Those days and months. Jade's missing it. She's like, ah, simpler times. A little bit. I am. Don't let Sam Warshaw see this. He's going to be like, uh-oh.

I love it. All right, let's move on to Wayne in Fort Worth. What's going on, Wayne? How are you doing today? Doing well. How can we help? Yeah, my wife and I are going to need to make a quick move, and our situation is that we have no debt and haven't had debt for many years. We have roughly $175,000 in savings, plus $500,000 in investment portfolio, $500,000 in

other assets that are liquidatable. Wow. And we have a paid-off home that's worth about $425,000. Incredible. Yeah, it's pretty cool. I mean, God's been good. And we've been listening to Ramsey's show for, I don't even know how long, 20-plus years. Way to go. And your baby steps millionaires. That's right. It's been great. My question is, and this is where my wife wanted the Ramsey advice,

and I know you guys are there for that. We need to make this move, and it's going to have to happen pretty quick. And so the house that we're looking at is $490,000. need to make this move and it's going to have to have to happen pretty quick and so i you know the house that we're looking at is 490 000 our house is worth you know we should even have liquidated we would get 400 back yeah um can i two questions one is can i borrow against myself against my own portfolio and use my cash to purchase this other house while I'm waiting for this one to sell, and then just pay myself back. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

And what's a reasonable percentage of net worth that you should have invested in a home, considering it's paid off? And I think I had heard Dave one time said... Wayne, I'm going to hold you over to this next segment because I love this question and love the way you're thinking. So hang on the line. We'll be right back with you. Sorry, I ran out of time, but I'm going to answer this as soon as we come back. This is the Ramsey Show. Hey, you guys, health insurance costs are only moving one way and that way isn't down. And if higher costs aren't enough, the wait times to see your doctor are longer, and it's harder than ever to get anything approved through the bureaucracy.

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They'll also help meet spiritual needs. Members become part of a family who will pray with them and for them when they experience a medical event. So listen, y'all, there's no better way to take care of health care costs. CHM programs start as low as $98 a month. So learn more today and join at chministries.org slash budget at chministries.org slash budgets. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show. Right before the break, we were talking with Wayne in Fort Worth, Texas. Let me recap what's going on in Wayne's life. He's crushing it. They're baby steps millionaires, $175,000 in liquid savings, $500,000 in an investment account,

$500,000 in other accounts, other things, $425,000 in the house. And they're wondering, should they purchase a $490,000 house? And if so, how are they going to do this? So, Wayne, is that a fair and accurate summary? Yes, it is. Okay, great. So you had two questions. One was, should I sort of borrow against my own investment account?

The word borrow scares me. What you're really doing is saying, I'm going to use a portion of my investments to purchase this home with cash, correct? Plus the equity in your home? Well, I would rather, I could use equity in my home with a bridge loan and cash to do this, or I could use my, you know, truly borrow against my own accounts, you know, my own brokerage account just for the short time. So I'm not actually selling assets and taking the tax hit. I would be borrowing against the brokerage account and then utilizing the sale of the home to pay it back in a matter of a month or two. Why do all the gymnastics when you can just pay cash so easily with the equity in your home plus a little bit of money? I mean, just even from your savings, you could do this.

You don't have to touch the investments or borrow against it. Yeah, but then I would have to do a bridge loan. Do you feel good about that? You said it's $490 for the house. You said you'll get probably $400 in net profit from the sale of yours. So you need an extra $90. There's going to be a gap of time between making this purchase and the sale of mine. So would you, would you feel comfortable?

So you're going to purchase it first, you're saying? Before you sell yours, you need to make this purchase? Yeah, that's right. Do you feel comfortable just taking the almost $500,000 and paying cash and then when your other house sells, replenishing it? Not, I mean, not really, because I don't want to take, you know, we would be taking a pretty big hit on pulling out money out of the investment portfolio, you know. What are the other assets you said you had? When you said you had $500,000 invested, you said you had another $500,000 in liquid investments.

I'm assuming, when you say liquid, I'm assuming, hey, I can get to this and it's not really going to cause a problem. Yeah, I can move it, but it's probably a three-month window on that stuff. Sports cards, that kind of thing. So it's, you know, collectibles. Oh, okay, I see.

Okay. I know that market very well, and I know that that really is, you know, the funds. But if you have to liquidate it in a quick turnaround, it might be $420. Why is there a gap between buying this new home and selling yours? Well, when we put this home up for sale, you know, it's going to be a matter of anywhere from three weeks to three months. You know, you just don't know for sure how long it'll take to move it. And, and I have to, and the place I'm moving to is in another portion of the country. So I need to make that move soon. Uh, and then, so I'm kind of like left

in this kind of a, and I don't really want to do a short term rental. And I did find a place that I feel really good about that was 490. And just for clarity, just for clarity, the reason that you're wanting to borrow against your brokerage versus just take out a conventional mortgage is interest rate, I'm guessing. Yes. We just, we, you know what, we got that thing where we haven't had any debt really in five or six years now, and it's pretty great. And I just don't even want to pay the points or anything. I don't want to pay that. What were you saving up and what was the investing for? Because I like to have a goal when I invest money versus just having a pile sitting out there.

So are you investing in retirement on top of all this? Everything. The 500, basically the 500 that's in the brokerage account. a pile sitting out there. So are you investing in retirement on top of all this? Everything, whether it's the 500, basically the 500 that's in the brokerage account and the 500 that's in the, you know, collectibles and whatnot. I see all of that as future retirement. And not to mention, we still have income. We're still around 280 a year in regular income now. So I mean, the truth, the truth of this is just because you've paid off a house doesn't mean you can never have a mortgage again. Cause plenty of people upgrade in house. They, they buy a starter house, they pay it off. And then when they want to upgrade,

they take a small mortgage out. Well, you know, and that the small part of that is relative to their income and net worth, obviously. So there's, you're not evil if you say, I have a paid off house and I'm going to buy another house knowing that I'm selling this one and I have a mortgage for it. That's your choice. Looking at your numbers, I don't think it'd be the worst thing in the world. But if it were me, I'd want to find a way to take some of the hard earned cash that I have. And I'd want to pay for it in cash because to your own point, you don't like having payments. And I get that. And even though in this case, it'd be pretty arbitrary. I don't know how quickly your current home will sell, but probably relatively quickly if it's priced right. And you can make it contingent.

A lot of times you can even rent back from the new owner for a month or two until you get into the new house. So there's a lot of things you can do to avoid all of the hoopla. But if you wanted to get a mortgage and then as soon as your house is paid off and as soon as your house sells, just knock out the mortgage, we're talking like a few months. So the interest is not going to be detrimental here. I agree with that. And the second part of my question was the percentage of net worth because at my moderate level of net worth, it's my understanding that assuming I don't have debt, that you could be up to 50% of net worth value. Yeah, there's no rule there.

In our millionaire study, we found that it just happened to be this way, that these Baby Steps millionaires, about a third of their net worth was tied up in their house. Right. But there's no rule that says if it's more than 50, be careful because here's an example, Wayne. I have a paid-for home. It's a very large portion of my net worth right now in my early 30s. Over time, my investment accounts are going to far outweigh the value of my home. But right now, because we were so focused on home and payoff and investments haven't caught up yet, right now I feel it feels lopsided. But it really doesn't matter. The point of that equation is not having too much tied up in the

home is that you want to make sure that you have income producing assets and your investments are going to produce income versus your primary home, which produces nothing. It just costs you money. So that's really the thought process. Yeah, this would be roughly a third. So we would be in line. How old are you? 55. Yeah. And to George's point, that will change. So 10 years from now, your investments have doubled. Your home may not have doubled. It may have gone up $100,000. Right.

And so I wouldn't worry too much about that. I would just focus on staying debt-free, investing as much as you can. You could do maxing out all accounts. I would focus on the tax advantage accounts. It sounds like you guys have focused on the non-retirement accounts. Do you have any 401ks or IRAs? Yeah, we have a lot. You have 401ks, IRAs. It's difficult because the income level's too high for Roth, but we can do backdoor Roths. Yeah, there's mega backdoor for the 401k. And then beyond that, HSA, if you have one of those, you can invest there as well.

Then there's taxable brokerage. We're doing maximum allotment on every one of those things for the last many years. Oh my goodness. Those are great. Wayne, you are the poster child. We also do 20% to charity. Excellent. We're in good position. I'm proud of you. Well, thanks for the call, man. I want to be Wayne when I grow up. That was really good stuff. These are good problems to have. All right. Let's get to our question of the day here. Student loan debt is an epidemic. We know that. Defaulting on debt makes you feel even worse. And our question of the day sponsor, WhyRefi, refinances defaulted private student loans and builds a custom loan based on your ability to pay. So you'll have a payment you can afford with a low fixed interest rate you couldn't get anywhere else. So go to

whyrefi.com slash Ramsey. That's letter Y, R-E-F-Y.com slash Ramsey. Might not be available in all states. All right. Today's question comes from Diana in Georgia. She says, my husband and I make $230,000 a year and we have $237,000 in debt, not including our house. Our current house is valued at $600,000 and we owe about $450,000 on our mortgage. mortgage. Our problem is we have outgrown this house and I'm ready to move now. Our living spaces are filled with toys, so we desperately need a playroom or you could just get some organization. My husband and I would like to have an adult space after the kids go to master bedroom and we don't have that either. I found a home that I love, which is listed for $750,000. I ran the numbers and it would double our mortgage payment to $5,000 a month.

This is over 25% of our take-home pay, which I know is not what you teach. But it could make a huge difference in our day-to-day life by stressing you with debt. What do you think, Jade? Well, you heard my commentary within the read. And so I think that you are on that stuff and that this is a bad bad bad bad choice i think you're probably really emotional truly i think that you've got a lot of kids going around i think that you're stressed and i get that but i think this house is not going to solve your problem the house is going to make it worse

you got 240 grand consumer debt you got a barely any equity comparatively to what you're broke. The house is going to make it worse. You got 240 grand consumer debt. You got barely any equity comparatively to what you're about to jump into. And then you're about to stress yourself over 25% of your take-home pay. This is not... You need to invest in some nice storage for these toys. You need to make your master bedroom a no-kid zone. Y'all are not allowed to come in here when the door is closed

or when it's open. And I think if you set some boundaries and get your space under control, your mind will get under control. We need to downsize and declutter our money and our house, not upsize. That's the short answer here. This is The Ramsey Show. From Ramsey Network, this is The Ramsey Show,

where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create amazing relationships. I'm Ramsey personality, George Camel, and joined by bestselling author Jade Warshaw. And we're taking your calls at 888-825-5225. Call us up and we will do our best to help you with whatever life has thrown at you, good, bad, ugly.

We want to know about it to help you take the right next step. Bree's going to kick us off here in Sacramento, California. Bree, welcome to The Ramsey Show. Hi, thanks so much. I'm so excited. You guys are the perfect duo for my question. Wow. I'll let Ken Coleman know. Thank you so much for that. It means a lot. What's going on? Okay. So I will exercise brevity here. I have extremely generous and thoughtful in-laws. They do very well, though they are not, you know, Ramsey principal people. And with that being said, a couple of years ago, they opened a whole life policies for all four of their children that they pay for and technically own. But when they gifted

it at Christmas, they said, you know, we opened these policies, but they're yours. If you want to cash it out, if you want to add to it, if you want to just let it sit, that's totally up to you. Flash forward three years later, now that we're married because they gifted the policy when we were dating. I would like to cash out the policy because my husband and I both have term insurance. So we're covered there on our own. I would like to cash it out and put it in a high yield, which the interest would probably cover what they're contributing every month anyway, which is $65. But my husband doesn't want to be ungrateful or have a difficult conversation. And I don't know if my mindset should be like, you know what, technically,

brass tacks, they own the policy, it's their money, should it be out of sight, out of mind, or should I push for this because it's what we follow in our marriage? I mean, they said you could cash it out, right? They did. Who are the policies for right now? You said there's four of them? They have four children, and they opened whole life policies on all four children. But they own, the parents still own all the policies and they're listed

as the beneficiaries, not the wives. Oh, that's interesting. So the policy's on him? Like it's his. So we're talking about one policy and how much do they pay per month for this policy? $65. Okay. And what's the, like, what's the cash value? After the surrender charge, it would be about $11,400 at this point. Okay. And you're saying, hey, we put that in a high yield, we're going to make the $65,000 back, and we don't need this policy. And it would be something, if it wasn't a high yield, that I would contribute to, where I'm not going to throw money into a whole life policy. Into a terrible product with a terrible return. Absolutely. Well, what is their intent at this point, paying for a grown man's

whole life policy? Well, I think I was trying to wrap my brain about that, too, and the only thing that crossed my mind is, are they trying to just set this up as a savings plan so all of their kids have money to pay inheritance tax when they go? You know, like, so if there are expenses based on their inheritance, they already know that they've helped put aside money to cover that. How wealthy are these people? Because inheritance tax is not going to kick in unless we're talking like $20 million. Yeah, they're very wealthy. Okay. I don't know if I'd touch this. I don't know that $65 a month is going to also pay for any meaningful taxes, if we're going

to be honest. Right, right, right. There's part of me just listening to you talk. I don't know if I touched this because this was in kind of, it was in place A before you guys were married. It's their money that they're spending that. And the fact that you are not the beneficiary kind of lets me know that this is just something that they're doing. It doesn't really make sense to me, but who cares? It's not, I would tend to not try to control this. It's almost like my mother-in-law has a 529 set up for the kids. And that was something she did. I'm happy she did it.

And she put some in it and we put some in it too. I could try to be like, oh no, I want to do this state's 529 and I want to change it. But I'm like, this is something nice she's doing. And she did it for the state of Florida because that's the state you're in and that's fine um I'm just grateful for it and it's still some money that I wouldn't have had before so I'm like okay great and I'm not going to touch it because if I think that it's going to stir up a hornet's nest which in this case for me it probably wouldn't but if you sense that at all or seriously it sounds like your husband maybe does i'd be like okay great thank you for the thank you and just

probably move on so most more so the first like out of sight out of mind like pretend it's not even a thing i mean that's me i don't know george would you be different it's not it's not hurting you right now obviously there's you feel like there's a better use of this money. And your husband is going, hey, they're just doing a generous thing. We're not having to pay for this. They're not taking debt out in our name. This is just one way they want to give to the kids. They are free to do that. And so I don't think this is on fire. If you never see this money, you're going to be okay. So whether they put it here, I mean, you could talk to your husband and say, hey, what if they put that 65 in a investment account that one day we then get to use as an inheritance to pay the taxes, whatever. Are there better ways to go about this from a wealth strategy perspective? Yes. Yes. It's hard to tell people

how to give to you. Especially with this relationship where it's like, it's in your husband's name and it's a thing his parents did and now you're trying to get in the middle of it. I feel like there's more harm than good. I think the only reason it crossed my mind is because of in the way it was given. You guys can do what you want with this. You know, so I was like well, do we want to do what we want with it? Are they the type of people to get upset

if you did cash it out? I don't think so. I think that they may not agree, but I don't think that they're going to be upset. Listen, I would not want to not agree, but I don't think that they're going to be upset. Listen, I would not want to be the one. It'd be different if you're. Yeah. Listen, there's a lady in the audience right now. She's going, don't do it. Don't mess with the in-laws over 65 bucks a month. It would be one thing if your husband was like, dude, I was just looking at this whole life policy or my parents have on me like this is whack. I'm going to go tell them, you know, da da da da. And then you could be like, yes, honey'm gonna go tell him you know and then you could be like yes honey you go do that but the fact that even he is like i don't want to come across ungrateful that for me tells

an underlying dynamic that even maybe you don't fully know is there yeah which is yeah don't touch it i get it though yeah and thanksgiving dinner is coming up we don't want that yes ma'am oh my gosh yeah it's like don't mess with the whole life policy. Don't mess with the macro-19. But I am proud of you guys for getting term life in place and having a much better policy in place there. I think that was the move to do. And if you were in a different situation, I'd say, hey, get term life and then go ahead and cancel the whole life.

Pay the surrender charge and cash it out. All right. Well, I'll stop stressing about this. Thanks, guys. Yeah, I think it's not worth your peace of mind over $65 a month that you're not paying. As long as they have the right insurance in place for them, this is just something that someone did. Especially at their level of wealth. Their in-laws clearly aren't broke. They're not spending money they don't have to fund this thing.

Sure, sure. It's like my in-laws buying me a biscuit, even though I'm gluten-free. And I go, hey, thanks for the biscuit. I actually don't eat gluten. And they go, no, we want to buy you a biscuit. And then when you're not looking, they're not looking, you kind of put it, you give it to the dog. Feed it to the dogs. My little French bulldog is very overweight. She doesn't need that. Oh yeah. That trying to slumber down. Sorry. That's a good message though, for all of you out there who don't have term life in place, let this be your wake up call. You need it 10 to 12 times your annual income

on the policy, and you can get a 15-year term, 20-year term, 25-year term. Here's why you don't need insurance for your whole life. Once you follow the Ramsey plan for 15 or 20 years, you're going to be what's called self-insured. You have a paid-for home, you have sizable nest egg that will cover your family in case something happened to you to replace your income. Not to mention you don't need an insurance policy that's going to, quote, invest for you. You can do your own investing. Yes. Combining investing and insurance is a terrible, terrible idea with terrible returns. And all it does is line the pockets of these whole life insurance salesmen that they pose as wealth strategists because they go, well, this is actually an investment strategy. The wealthy use don't buy it. So if you want to get term life in place, the only one we've ever recommended to Ramsey, go to Xander.com. Our

friends there would take care of you. They've taken care of my family for years. You can also go call 800-356-4282 to get that plan in place. And man, the peace of mind is worth it. The policy is a fraction of the cost of whole life and you'll sleep better for it. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Campbell joined by Jade Warshaw. It's a free call at 888-825-5225.

And some say the advice is worth what you paid for it. And if you ever wonder what george and i talk about in between segments this last time we talked about a t-shirt idea with george's face on it we have some visitors out here in the lobby and she said i was i was hoping i would find a t-shirt with your face on it and i went you were the only person who would ever buy that so it would not be worth making you do better off getting the walmart like iron on and just doing it yourself you gotta put the two frenchies on either side and then it's and then it's still not valuable to anyone but hey whatever floats your boat i'm i'm honored charlotte is in nashville tennessee up next just down the road what's going on charlotte hi how can we help

having me i have a quick couple quick questions for you. I had some medical debt from being in the hospital, at a hospital that was out of state, a couple states away. It turned out I was out of town for something and got sick and had to go to the hospital. They kept me in ICU for two weeks. It became an astronomical bill. Oh, my goodness.

Yeah, I had a very strange, rare type of pneumonia and sepsis. Are you okay now? I am. Okay. On the top of the deck that I'm still fighting with cancer, yes. Oh, goodness. I'm so sorry. I have a wonderful God who looks out for me. But my question, my concern is this. Okay, so this bill obviously was very large. They did work with us some to take it down, but it's still a $30,000 bill. I haven't worked since my cancer diagnosis. I've not been able to work. So we have only my husband's income.

It's not a large amount of money, but we make it. Thank God we don't have a lot of debt other than our house. Okay. This is the problem. They want, this is a non-for-profit hospital, but they want their full $30,000. I said, I can make payment arrangements. My payment arrangement was not acceptable to them. They wanted $800 a month.

I said, I can't do that. So to make a long story short, I went ahead and paid the money on the account through their automated system. The following month, I called them back to see, can we do some type of payment arrangement that's affordable for us that I can commit to and do? Then they dropped it down to $600. I'm like, I still can't do $600. I'm thinking maybe $300 a month. They weren't willing to do that. They said that wasn't enough it down to 600. I'm like, I still can't do 600. I'm thinking maybe 300 of us. They weren't willing to do that. They said that wasn't enough for them to mess with. And so that was probably going to go to collections.

I went ahead and paid some money to the automated system again. And then a few days ago, I contacted them saying, hey, you know, we got to do something here. Basically, my husband and I discussed this, and we are willing to pay them $10,000 of the $30,000 if they'll consider the bill paid in full. The sad point is we have to take this out of his retirement fund because there's no other way we can do this. They have, in the meantime, sent this to a collection agency. And I said, I don't want to deal with the collection agency. I didn't run my debt with them. I ran it with you people. I'm willing to pay you.

I just can't pay you the $600 a month you want. Well, the good news is there is some good news here. If it's with collections, you have a better chance of settling it. Because they bought this for pennies on the dollar from the hospital. The hospital is already free and clear from this. They've already written it off. The hospital said we'll take some money over not getting paid. So we'll sell it to collections. They'll deal with it.

I spoke with the hospital a couple of days ago to offer them can we do $10,000 and consider this paid in full and the collection agency's out of the picture. And so they're sending it back to their review board to decide if they'll accept this. In the

meantime, I'm getting text messages and letters from this collection agency. So I'm at a point where I don't know what to do. I'm willing to pay this hospital $10,000 and call it a deal. I would think my $10,000 is probably more than the collection agency gave them. It might be. It might be. Here's the thing. If this just happened, there might still be some confusion over who's holding the debt. That's very possible. But if it's in collections, collections owns the debt. Now, I will say when you're settling something, you could talk to a lot of bozos before you talk to the person who's going to actually help you with this. So this is kind of, as much as I hate to say this, this is going to be your full-time job

for the next couple of weeks until this gets settled. And they might not take 10. They might say it's got to be, you know, half or whatever, whatever deal that you can strike. And you're going to have to beat them over the head with this and say, this is the only thing I have. This is my, this is my financial situation. This is my health situation. If you want a dime from me, this is all you're getting. And I could care less. You can call me a million times. You can email my phone. Do not rob your retirement for this. No. Please. Okay. Don't take a dime out of retirement. Don't take a dime out of retirement for this. We have no way out to pay them. That's okay. We have no way out. Listen, that's part of it. That's okay. We're not going to rob our future

over this. Then they're going to go try to They can't come after your retirement accounts. No, no, no, no. I'm saying he's still working. He's not retired yet. This is in his investment fund for his retirement later, and he'll be here when he retires. But what I'm saying is, if we don't give them some

money, then they're going to take this to court to get a garnishment of his wages. We can't afford, with my health and things going on, we can't afford for his income to be any less than it is. So if they get a garnishment, we're really screwed. So this is why we thought offering them $10,000 is the best we can do because we're not going to take all of his retirement. But if you have that in writing that, hey, we offered them $10,000 to settle

and they wouldn't take it and they want to continue on and sue and go through all the paperwork and legality and spending all the money with lawyers. I mean, I would cross that bridge when and if we get there. And the chances of getting there is so slim on something like this. This happens every day, literally every day. And the purpose of them selling it off to the credit, the debt collection agency, is because they've gone,

okay, we're just writing, we're charging this off, we're writing this off, we've washed our hands of it. And they've already, you know, accepted a smaller amount. So the debt collection company, if they, you know, if they can clear a little bit more than they were already paid for it, then great. So here's what I want you to do, Charlotte. Here's your homework. Document every single time you reach out. Record the call, screenshot the emails, and I want you to call them more than they call you. I want them to be tired of you calling.

Oh my gosh, Charlotte again? Screen her calls. She keeps calling, trying to settle the debt. I want you to be the squeaky wheel to get the grease. And by that, I mean this thing is paid in full. So don't give them access to your checking account and make sure that you have in writing every time you contact them and get everything in writing from them. When they say, hey, we're willing to settle for paid in full on this debt, make sure you get that in writing

because these people are, they can be smart. And this is the gentleman on the, who's the coordinator for their financial hardships, that's whatever I'm speaking with, I told him I would want this in writing before we give you a job. Well, we don't normally put that in writing, but I can give you something from my email. No, it takes you five minutes to give me a letter. I bet your bill is in writing, isn't it? That $30,000 you owe. It sure is.

Did you get an itemized bill from them? I did. Did you look through it and go, yep, that's right, that's right, that's right? Oh, yeah. It was 14 days in ICU. There wasn't anything they didn't cover in there. And you've tried to appeal with your insurance. Is there any coverage through your insurance that would help pay this?

We don't have insurance. My husband lost our insurance when the whole COVID thing happened. And now our insurance that they want through his job he has now is $1,400 a month. We can't do that. I'm not working. We can't do it. How are you covering your cancer treatments? Everything we've done so far, he has had to pull from his retirement. Charles, there's not going to be anything in that retirement account when you guys get there.

And now we're at a point, we know this. It's like, what do we do now? I don't have anything more left. I'm not even doing any treatments right now. We can't do anything because we don't have any more money to give anybody without having anything to live on. So this is, I mean, I'm at a point now where I don't even know what to do with this. Have you not looked into the marketplace health insurance? I mean, with your income in Tennessee through ACA,

you should be able to get a very affordable plan, if not free. We did look into that, and what they explained to us was it was going to be like $300 and something a month for the basic coverage. What she told us was for what I need, like for my cancer treatments and my heart issues and my COPD and everything I deal with, that it wouldn't cover any of that. So we're like, what is that going to do with any good then? I can pay $100 to walk in my doctor's office myself. Well, we need to find out all of the programs available to us and take advantage of them. Jump on to RamseySolutions.com, click on Trusted Services,

and Health Trust Financial can help you navigate what the best option is for you. I'm so sorry you're going through this. I hope this medical debt is behind you. I hope they throw it out and go, she's got cancer, she's broke. Guys, let's just call it a day and get rid of this debt and stop going after her. This is scum behavior. This is The Ramsey Show. This is The Ramsey Show. I'm George Campbell, joined by Jade Warshaw. Open phones at 888-825-5225. We just launched a brand new tour. This is a live event with Dave Ramsey and Dr. John Deloney.

They're hitting the road, coming to a city near you on the Money and Relationships Tour. And there's a new twist on this. You shape the conversation each night to choose your own adventure. You select the topics that matter most to you, whether it's budgeting, relationship dynamics, achieving your financial goals, your voice drives the night. So Louisville, they're coming to you April 21st of 2025. Durham, April 23rd. Atlanta, April 25th. Phoenix, May 5th. Fort Worth, Texas on May 7th. And finally, Kansas City on May 9th. So join Dave and Dr. John live and in person. You're going to laugh. You're going to learn. You might even just change your life. So get your tickets for this tour at ramsaysolutions.com

slash tour, T-O-U-R. And if you're tuning in on YouTube or podcast, there's a link in the show notes. There you go. That'll be a good time. Sad, I kind of want to go travel to see one of these events, you know? Yeah. Sad, we won't see it here in our hometown. Oh, that's true.

I'll have to get tickets. Not a bad idea, a little road trip. All right, Josh is in Seattle, Washington. What's going on, Josh? Hello, good afternoon, George and Jake. Can you hear me okay? Yeah. Long time listener, first time caller, so a little nervous, but- We got you.

My main question here is, how do I know if I'm on the right career path? And if I'm not on the right career path, how do I find something that I know I can do long term? And for context, I'm 24. I'm active in the military. I work in the medical field. I work full time and I also go to school full time on the side. It's online. And I have had the ultimate goal of applying to either med school or PA school, but right now going to school part-time, my grades aren't doing so hot. So I am starting to just, you know, have some doubts and wondering if I'm on the right path right now.

Why are your grades down? Is it you're too scattered or you're not, you know, capable of handling the material? What is it? No, I don't, I definitely don't think it's that. I think it's, um, the full-time job and I've had a few life things come at me, um, some sickness in the family and some death, recent death to family. And it's just been, um, consecutive, consecutive events like that come and the grades aren't doing so well now. So I'm not too sure if I should stick with it or I don't, and I'm not sure either if this is my ultimate dream. So I'm

just having some doubts and just looking for some advisor guidance. Well, I wouldn't let the, I mean, you've had some life, some tough life stuff happen to you and that would be distracting, I think, for anybody. So I wouldn't want that to be the thing that that takes me off course. This is if that's the case, it's a season and you'll come out of it and you'll be able to refocus in a later season. But as to whether or not this is ultimately what you want to do. I mean, a lot of times I kind of like to just take a moment and clear my head and just think, OK, in 10 years from now, where do I see myself? What do

I see myself doing? How do I feel? What's going on around me? Are there children around? Is there a different scenery around? And really get an idea of where do you see yourself? And if you look up and say, okay, 10 years from now, do I see myself working in a hospital environment? Do I see myself in a private practice? Do I see myself in a private practice? Do I not want to be in the medical field at all? And so if you did that just for the moment, what do you see? I'd say for the moment, I'm really pretty much in limbo. I've always had the notion.

We didn't grow up rich, and I always had that notion of just finding a career with some stability, with good pay, good job security. And I never really thought past that, and I had a lot of my family members in the medical field. And the medical field has given me that stability, but I am kind of in limbo right now and still don't know. So you've been looking at it. I never got deeper than just, I want a stable job with good benefits. Like, that's no way to filter this by. Exactly right.

Your parents needed that because it was a different time, right? The generations that came before us, it was survival. And now we're in a position where we can thrive. Even in the world today where everyone's going, you can't do it. You can. And we have some great resources from our friend Ken Coleman that we're going to send you. Namely his new book, Find the Work You're Wired to Do. It comes with a get clear career assessment. And here's what you're looking for. I'm going to give you the spark notes. You're looking for your top talents.

This is what you do best. Clearly, you're good at what you do. Otherwise, you wouldn't be doing this, right? Military, medical, we kind of know the things we're good at, the skills. Then there's your top passions. This is what you enjoy doing. So that's not what you're good at. This is the stuff you love to do, how you perform your passion. And then there's mission, the results you want to produce, the impact you want to have. And so once you can dial all those in, you get kind of this purpose statement when you take the Get Clear Career Assessment that will then help you go, yep, I'm going to med school. I want to be a nurse practitioner. I want to be a MD. Whatever that is, it'll get you a lot closer to figuring that out. And then it becomes,

okay, how are we going to do this debt-free? How far into this are you? Have you started, are you pre-med? Where are you in your schooling right now? Yeah, I am a senior. I'm going to school for laboratory science, and I'm a senior right now. I've been to all online. And, like, I've been doing a lot of my prereqs, and the prereqs to get into those, I just have not been having good grades from, I had a recent family death, and now I ended up with a C in this prerequisite. And with the prerequisites, I'm starting to worry that I might not have like a good enough prerequisite grade to get into like a grad school. But yes, I am in my senior year. I'm pretty close to finishing. Were you doing good before the life stuff happened? Like were your grades good before that?

I'd say I've only been going to school consistently for the last two years because the two years before that, the first two years of college basically um i got all that all the credits covered through the military i'm not gonna lie you sound there's a lot of doubt in your voice you sound like you're not sold on your own dream and it should be the opposite you should be convincing me why this is it it sounds like you're trying to talk yourself out of it and i can't give you that permission. I will not sleep well at night knowing I told Josh, this doesn't sound like it's it for you, bud. I think I'm trying to talk myself into it. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. And it's like, it should feel the opposite. It should feel like, yeah, like no one, how do I make it to where

nothing stops me from doing this? Right. And I don't hear that. So I think George is right. Getting connected with Ken's career assessment is going to help you because it sounds like there's probably something in that skill set that you want to do, but just not in that specific format. So that's going to be the key here. And it may not be, I want to be an MD. There's a lot of paths. I've got a lot of family members that are in the medical field, pretty much all of them. I'm the black sheep. And so my brother's a nurse practitioner. My cousin just became a doctor. So there's a lot of paths you can take that have different levels of schooling and cost. Can you tell me if the military will continue to cover your schooling?

So right now, that's another issue too. Like right now, they only pay for half of my credits per year. So I've been paying out of pocket for the rest of it. But once I'm out of the military, yes, they do cover school because I have the GI Bill. So if you got into med school, it's 100% covered? I'm out next year. Okay. Yes, sir. That's right.

Wow. That's a blessing. As long as it's a public university. Sure. Okay. This is interesting. This has got layers to it. Yeah.

I would definitely, I would keep running this down. It sounds like the fact that you're stirring about this tells me that there's something here. And again, like Jade said, I wouldn't let this phase of life that you're in sway you because you got a C on a prereq. Okay. You don't need, you're not trying to go to, you know, Harvard for your, for med school here. And so I don't look at the frame frame on my doctor's office i just go well if he was good enough to get hired at this hospital i guess he's good enough for me and maybe try to you know what you're talking about whether it's being a pa or a medical doctor or

maybe you're a lab technician if you're going in for lab signs i don't know but maybe try to spend some time in those environments for real and see what it makes you feel like what is it igniting you talk to them about the good the bad the ugly in every single one of these career paths because you know a lot of people they get into it and they leave the field because it wasn't what they thought it would be or they got burnt out because they weren't prepared for what was ahead and so i think having a full picture and doing your homework is going to give you the clarity you need and ken's book will get you started on that path. I probably go in there, George, and really make a pros and cons list of each thing, because there is part of this that I wouldn't want fear to be the driver.

I'm afraid I won't pass the prerequisites. I'm afraid I won't. I've always had I've had people tell me, like, it could be just the season of going to school and working full time. Like if I was if I was going to school full time, it would be better. Yeah, you've got a lot going on. You're tired. I'm just kind of in limbo, yeah. Yeah, man.

I am pretty tired. I'm starting to get burned out. I take a good nap and then read Ken's book. We're going to send it to you, so hang on the line. And thank you so much for your service to our country. This is The Ramsey Show. Hey, you guys. I'm not a fan of the big banks, and you probably already know which

ones I mean. But I do like credit unions because they're non-profit organizations that focus on their members. And I'm proud to endorse Fairwinds Credit Union because they share the Ramsey mission of helping people get out of debt and live generously. In fact, they design products to help keep you from going into debt in the first place. Fairwinds has been in business for over 75 years and they serve hundreds of thousands of members worldwide. You can feel secure because your deposits are federally insured by the NCUA up to $250,000. It's easy to join and Fairwinds partners with more than 5,000 credit union locations around the country so you can bank in person wherever you live. But if you prefer the online experience, you can log on to Fairwinds and do anything you could do at a physical location.

So go to fairwinds.org slash Ramsey to learn more. And while you're there, look at the combined checking and savings account bundle they created just for Ramsey fans to help you take control of your finances. That's Fairwinds, F-A-I-R-W-I-N-D-S dot org slash Ramsey. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show. I'm George Campbell, joined by Jade Warshaw. If you didn't know, we've got a Ramsey Network app that's free in the App Store, and if you choose to download it, there's a place to ask your questions. And so from time to time, we answer one of those questions.

This one comes from Haley. She says, my boyfriend and I have been dating for almost five years. We have had a joint bank account and shared all expenses since we started living together at age 18. Should I be concerned that he has not proposed? Yes. And if so, how should i move forward considering we financially share everything that's funny if i could turn back time yes yes uh you should be concerned um i feel like we just had this conversation last week we did because you

made the cow reference i did i said uh if you can get the milk for free why buy the cow which is a very old lady saying but still very true the hard part is he's not motivated to change course he's playing house he's already playing the game and so i mean in his mind he's probably like what's to gain like we're already combining our money we've been going along this this long so it's going to be hard to make that um kind of make that case but here's the thing if you say to him we've been together five years our finances are combined let's get married like let's make this thing legal let's protect both of ourselves if we say that we're really committed let's prove it if he's like no i don't want to to the left to the left It's time to go. Everything you own.

And if I'm in your shoes, I'm going to decouple everything financially. Yeah. Until the day we are actually married. Because number one, there's a piece of this that you already feel. Of this like, this doesn't feel right. It feels weird that we're just like roommates sharing all these expenses with joint bank accounts. It's funny because there's married couples that don't feel comfortable combining their financial life and then everyone playing house is like let's just combine everything yeah it'll be better i'm like all y'all are doing it

wrong but even if she decouples it and he's like i i don't want to get married then i'm like what are we doing what are we doing i still would have very deep now don't get me wrong every i guess everybody doesn't want to get married but i would still have deep questions as to why you don't want to solidify the covenant um that we've kind of said for five years yeah we want to do this one aside from that there's financial protections that you have when you're married and right now you're putting yourself at risk by combining everything yeah with basically a buddy i'm hoping they're renting and didn't buy a house together oh yikes yikes. You know? Wow. Sorry, Haley.

Not the answer you wanted to hear, but it's the one you needed to hear. That's right. All right. Let's get to the phones. Paul is in Syracuse, New York up next. What's going on, Paul? Hi. Can you hear me?

Yes. Oh, man. Super excited. Thank you so much for answering my call. Absolutely. I'm actually a new fan starting this month. My cousin introduced me to the show. So I love you, Nancy and Mark. Oh, shout out. We're honored to have ago, and now I'm ready to start kicking debt's butt. So we have $315,000 in debt, and it's between two homes, a home equity loan, a 401k loan, and more.

About $110,000 of that doesn't include the mortgages. Okay. We have a household income of 192,000 a year. Awesome. So, um, yeah, it's great. And you're probably thinking, well, well, how am I in that spot with debt? And what it came down to is a lack of accountability, um, gambling, and I just wasn't budgeting. Okay.

So, um, as of three weeks ago weeks ago, now I have a budgeting app. I use it every single day. And just from the two weeks of watching the show and listening, I was able to answer a lot of my questions, but I cut out unnecessary expenses. I stopped contributing to my 401k. I had 10% contribution. Now it's zero. I can get that extra money for my debt. Liquidated the stocks and I have a CD that matures in December. I'm going to put that to debt. So I'm feeling good. I'm motivated. Can you tell us more about the houses? Just so we know what that means. Is one of them being rented yeah yep so um the the first house i have a 90 000 on the mortgage valued at 250 okay um and it's being rented out and i'm making about

600 of profit on that and then um i used the heloc to buy the second house, and I got a mortgage of $120 on that. And that's where we're currently living. And what's that one worth? And so that one's worth about $170. Okay. So you have $50,000 in equity there. Yep. And so where my question lies is I'm using the debt snowball method and the home equity loan I have is got $63,000 with a variable rate of 5.5%.

And the payments are killer. It's like $356 for a payment and over 75% of my payments go straight to interest. Most recently, it was like $60 went to principal. So it barely moves that. And I have a 401k loan of 20,000 with a fixed rate of 8.5% comes right out of my paycheck and the interest gets paid back to myself. And so my question is, if I go after the 401k loan first, should I take another 401k loans because if something goes south and you were to lose your job, you're on the hook to pay this off within the next 12 months or it gets worse and worse. On top of unplugging all the growth. And so the key here is, Paul, the principle is we never use debt to pay off other debt. And so the key is to change our habits, use our future income, use our savings. That's

exactly what you're doing. So you're on the right path. The only caveat is no more debt, no more borrowing money. If you just say that's off the table, what am I going to do instead? Well, you're going to attack that HELOC with a vengeance because you're angry at this thing. You're angry seeing it all go to interest. You're angry at the interest rate. You're angry at your own choices. And that's what actually causes people to get out of debt is that fire. It's not finding another loophole, another shortcut to use one debt to pay off the other, playing a shell game. So just to clarify, the first property that you said you had that you owed $90,000 on, that was the one you took out the HELOC on, correct? Yes. Okay. So you said it's worth $250,000. So if you were to sell it that heloc would go

with the property right and you'd still net what do you think you'd net at the end of it um if i was to sell that property you said you owe 90 plus the 63 plus fees, probably talking 80, maybe 75. Yeah. Yeah. After, after closing costs and everything. Which is not bad. There's part of me that I would simplify this very quickly and I, this $600 a month, fine, whatever.

It's, it's. You could make that with a side hustle. Exactly. It's not worth what you're experiencing right now. And so if I were you, I'd sell that. I'd get rid of the house. I'd get rid of the HELOC right along with it. And I'd have $75,000 to say, okay, what do I want to do here? Do I want to... What's your next smallest debt? Is it the 401k loan? I'm thinking yes. The next smallest debt is... So my credit cards is three grand. My truck payment is 11.

Okay, so you'd knock both of those out with the extra 75 plus the 401k loan. So how far would that get you? What would be left if you did all of this? Plus all the stuff you said you're already doing. It should get you everything cleared, but 35,000 of debt based off of what I feel like the numbers you gave me were.

Because you said you got the CD, you're liquidating the stocks, you've paused the 401k. Let's say you sell the house, use the numbers you gave me were. Because you said you got the CD, you're liquidating the stocks, you've paused the 401k. Let's say you sell the house, use the 75 to pay off debt. Would that knock it all out? It would be pretty, yeah. It'd be pretty close. You had 110, you take 75 out because of the home sale that leaves you with 35.

And then you've got whatever savings you have laying around that you clear down to a thousand to knock out the rest. Paul, you're about to leapfrog into debt freedom and release so much stress that's been building up. And you're on some thin ice here with all this rental thing going on, all these loans you've been taking out. I think we're done paying interest and we're about to start earning it, my friend. And we'll get back into real estate investing later on. But right now we're building a foundation. Yeah. I'm proud of you, man. Good. Hey, for all of you listening on the show, to the show on YouTube or podcast, it's about to end. So go join us on the Ramsey Network app to finish the show completely free. Go to your app store, download the Ramsey Network app, and we'll see you over there. You don't want to miss what's

coming up next. You can also click the link in the show notes to go watch the rest of the show in the app for free as well. Thanks for listening. From Ramsey Network, this is The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create amazing relationships. I'm Ramsey personality George Campbell, joined by Jade Warshaw this hour. The phone number to call is 888-825-5225. Nate is going to kick us off this hour in Anchorage, Alaska. Nate, welcome to The Ramsey Show. Hey, thank you for having me.

$100,000 in education debt, and I'm just trying to figure out how to tackle it. Yowie. Welcome to the party, my man. What was your education in? I got a master's in public administration, which felt like a complete trap. of figured out how to tackle it. Yowie. Welcome to the party, my man. What was your education in? I got a master's in public administration, which felt like a complete trap. Was it? What are you doing for work?

Nothing completely related. I am a truck driver for a fuel distribution company right now, and I also dispatch for them. That feels like not public administration. What was your goal with the master's degree? Honestly, I had no idea. I think I kind of fell for the trap that education was liberation, and the more degrees you got, the more money you were going to get, and that just didn't turn out to be true.

Are they federal loans or private loans? They're federal. Okay. Do you have any other debt? No debt besides that. Actually, I got $ ten thousand dollars in a car that i'm finishing paying off but i think i'm gonna have that done here in about three or four months what's the income looking like uh around six thousand dollars a month i can give or take

depending how much overtime i i uh take on well that's good um how much could it give like how much overtime could you get let's say you really just went crazy. Yeah. Some days, some weeks I can get around 80 hours a week and do that two weeks in a row. And I'm looking at like around $7,000 a month. Sweet. Okay. Is it just you or is there a family to speak of in your household? No, just me. Okay. Well, I mean, right now. Okay. So tell me more about the student loans. Tell me how many chunks it's broken into and kind of what that looks like. Or did you consolidate it into one big one? I hope not. No, I didn't. I have them all still in their original loans.

OK, good. Over six years worth. I think there's about nine or ten of them now. OK. The good news with that is you can debt snowball them and you can feel some some wins when you pay one off but you're gonna have to pay the minimum payment to satisfy that and then put the extra money on the principal and if you can't do it on the site like if you can't clarify hey i want this on the principle of this specific loan then you'll have to call it in are they on any sort of payment plan or government government plan at this point are they on the save plan yeah i'm on the I'm on the government plan right now. Okay. So what's the

payment? Right now, the payment is, it was only like $125 during that pause payment, but I think it's about to jump direct around $450. Okay, $450. Okay. So if you can, you know, I say to people if they do do something that lowers the payment, that's a great thing because you can pay the low minimum and really focus in on one of the debts at one time. So take advantage of this time where it's very low for you to satisfy the minimum. And I mean, you're chucking thousands of dollars at this every single month. What's the smallest loan? The smallest loan is like $1,500. Nice.

So that's gone. I mean, essentially that's gone this month, right? Yeah, I could do that. Do you have any money in savings? I have around $10,000 in crypto and $5,000 in cash. Nice. I've got a plan for that money. I know that's right. That's some debt payoff money.

Okay, right. We're clearing that crypto out immediately and we're keeping $1,000 aside. Anything above $1,000 we're throwing towards this debt. What's the smallest debt after the $1,500 debt? It just increments

$2,000, $4,000 and then a couple like $13,000 $14,000. That is the perfect scenario. Three-story loans today is what you,000, $14,000. Listen, that is the perfect scenario. So you can knock out three street loans today is what you're telling me. Yeah, basically. Really, you can knock out the car today plus the first one or two loans. Yeah.

That's amazing. I love it. And then after that, you know, the next step is just, I mean, we didn't ask you, are you on a budget? Yeah, I definitely have a budget around $3,000 in expenditures and $3,000 in surplus is what I'm averaging. Okay, great. So essentially, if you do a $7,000 a month where you're doing the overtime,

you could throw $4,000 a month. George is going to do that math for you. That's $48,000 a year, and you're about to owe $100,000. Do you see the math here? In less than two years, you're debt-free because you're going to free up more payments. You're going to even hustle harder. You're going to make more money. You're going to get your expenses even lower because you're the kind of guy who does that. Yeah. And the income is just going to keep increasing as I work hard.

That's right. And you're not scared of hard work. How old are you? Not at all. Forty. So I know how to work. So a 42-year-old Nate is going to be a completely different person. Copy that. I didn't even think about it this morning. Copy that. Yes. I was like 10 years down the road like I'm screwed. No, dude.

No, think about it. So that's 42. You're debt-free. By 42 and a half, you have a fully funded emergency fund, and you're investing 15% of your income. By 52, you've been investing for a decade. By 62, two decades as your income goes up. Do you see the trajectory that you could be on if we just start thinking about

what can I do today and what's going to make 42, 50-year-old Nate proud? Yeah, definitely. I mean, I love that for you. You're still going to have 20 plus years to invest and gain compound interest. Your life is looking pretty good. where you're still going to have 20 plus years to invest and gain compound interest, your life is looking pretty good. And Nate, there's going to be a day where you have $5,000 extra and you're going to go, I might throw $500 in crypto for fun this month. Sure.

And you're not even going to bat an eyelash. Sure. Not even a single eyelash. I'm happy for you, Nate. The cherry on the top is that I've been working towards getting my Merchant Mariner's card so I can get on fueling barges, and they're making like $120. Okay, I know. That's right.

That's a path, my friend. I love it. And guess what? You're probably going to live some life along the way, maybe meet a nice young lady, start a family. I believe in a bright future for Nate, and I feel like you do too. The fact that you called into the show tells me you're ready for a change. I needed to hear it and I needed to see it on paper.

Yeah. Oh, it's real. When we started talking about your numbers, I got excited. And it's not even my life because I just see it happening for you. So way to go. Good job. I'm proud of you. I'm happy for you.

You're a success already. Nate, do you have friends in the area in Alaska? Is it an isolating life and job out there? What's it like? Well, you guys introduced me as Anchorage, but I live in Juneau, Alaska. That's a plane ride or a boat ride away. There's no driving, but not really. Honestly, all my school buddies moved on, went to different places and kind of just by myself, got my church friends, and that's about it. That's awesome, man. Yeah.

I think community is key as you're on this plan. So you get them in on it and say, hey, I'm trying to pay off debt. Anyone with me? I think they all might raise their hand, and then you keep each other accountable. That's a huge part of this story. And I'm going to send you a copy. I think we can get the book all the way to Juno of Breaking Free from Broke. With that includes three months of every dollar premium. And I think that will be the thing that motivates you along the way. You'll hear my voice in your

head telling you that it can be done. And here's why you should never go into debt again. And here is a simple path for building wealth. And it's possible whether you're 22 or 40. So thank you, Nate, for inspiring many others who might be starting at 40, Jade, with $100,000 in debt. I mean, you and Sam, we're talking hundreds of thousands in debt. Much of that student loans. Yes, it's never too late.

It's never too late to make major progress, whatever your situation is. And I'm a testament to that. You're a testament to that. And our buddy, Nate in Anchorage, or Juno, I should say, is a testament to that. And as you saw right there, there was no shortcuts. There's no life hacks. It's live on less than you make. How much can I make? How little of that can I live on? What can I do with the difference?

Well, right now I'm going to pay off debt. Then I'm going to save an emergency fund. Then I'm going to invest it. Then I can live a better life. I can spend money without owing people at the end of the month. I can retire with dignity when I want to instead of work because I have to. That is the only path to the American dream. It doesn't involve payments to lenders. I'm telling you, they've tried it. Listen to this show and you'll see why it's the American nightmare these days. It's land of the free, home of the broke out there, and I think you can break free. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Campbell, joined by Jade Warshaw. We've been talking about it on this show, but your best path, maybe your only path to winning with money,

is to pay attention to it and to make a plan. And we developed a tool called EveryDollar to help you do just that, to make EveryDollar have a job, to give it a name, to plan your spending, track your expenses, to save what matters most to you. And you can download EveryDollar for free in the App Store or Google Play, or you can click the link in the description if you're listening on YouTube or podcast. It's that simple and it's that hard. It's that simple and it is that hard. I was talking to George during the break, but George, I was telling you about the podcast I was on and I was debating a guy who's kind of a borrow, leverage money. That's the quickest way to wealth. And that's if you're in America today,

you got to leverage, leverage, leverage. And of course, we're the opposite, right? We're like anybody in any profession can take control of their money by doing something as simple as getting on a budget and deciding, okay, with my margin, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to pay off my debt. I'm going to get three to six months of savings. I'm going to invest 15%. And if I can do that over the long haul, I don't have to leverage anything except my own habits to say, I'm going to get on this budget. I'm going to follow it. That's all you have to leverage. And if you can do that, you can retire with dignity. You can change your family tree. You can have wealth for your children's children. And you can do that being a teacher, an engineer,

an accountant, a lawyer, a doctor. It really doesn't matter. But it all starts with the foundation of that budget. That's right. And I stand by that. Yeah. We've tried leveraging our way into this nightmare. And we have consumer debt levels that are hitting records every single day america's stressed out worrying about the price of eggs and you're still telling me that debt is the path yeah it's the wealth it's the proof is in the pudding you don't buy it especially not from some like red face leathery dude who works out too much like i'm sorry but like there's a piece of that where you sell snake oil in that world.

When you're telling people the path to making money is to leverage debt. And when it all implodes, call the Ramsey show. I can't help you. Yeah. Good luck. I mean, it's like if debt is sugar, right? It's like saying you can eat Oreos,

but don't eat the chips ahoy. It's like, well, that's kind of difficult because now you've created this appetite for cookies. And don't eat the chips ahoy it's like well that's kind of difficult because now you've created this appetite for cookies don't make me choose yeah and I'm like I'm just the type of person I mean if I see cookies on the table I want to eat them so let me just understand my personality traits and just remove it just remove it and for most of us debt is tempting right it's it's tempting to want to take out a credit card it it's like, oh, it's a $10,000 limit. 11 years ago now, I cut up my credit card and it added friction back into my life.

Because now if I wanted something and didn't have the money, I couldn't be a toddler and be like, well, I want it now. I'm going to swipe my card. I had to actually save up and pay for the dang thing and feel the full weight of that purchase. That's right. And that is what actually caused me to build wealth and stay out of debt. If I didn't have the money, I didn't purchase it.

Yeah. So add some friction back in your life. Don't leverage your way to peace. It's not possible. All right. We said what we needed to say. Yes, I feel better now. Rant over.

Off the soapbox. Destiny is in Eugene, Oregon up next. What's going on, Destiny? Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. How can we help? So my husband and I probably a few days ago realized, you know what, we got to get a grip on our debt. We have to get

back on track. So we started like new time listeners start really listening in probably like three days ago. And, um, yeah, so we did, we did try the ramsey plus when we first got married but we didn't budget for the budgeting gap we overdrafted that kind of sets the tone of how it's like you got a gym membership but they never went into the gym yes you just go oh pretty much yeah a little bit better okay so what's the question today okay we are in like 240 000 in debt okay um my husband has a really good job he makes 140 000 he's on track to be early promoted to manager so that should be about 160 when would that happen that in june and he also is job hunting. So he does have other things potentially lined up. We don't know.

Should he stay at this company that he's worked so hard and given him so many opportunities? Or should he, you know, jump ship? Because then we'll get that money quicker, sooner. What do you do? And then that was my next question. What about you do? And then that was my next question. What about my job? So I was a preschool teacher for a few years, which was really nice because my kids, my two little kids were able to go with me. Um, and the tuition would get taken out of my, my check. Um, but the, you know,

they started cutting back hours and by the end of it, I started actually, it was like only $20 a check. So it was like spending more on gas to get to work than to be there. So it made more sense for me to be home. How old are the kids now? So one is in kindergarten now. He's five. And then we have our youngest just turned two. Okay.

So are you thinking of going back to work, doing something? I did. I actually did go back to work. I got my life insurance license and it takes a while to build up your momentum. I only have about six clients, but the nice part about it is I'm able to work remote, still kind of balance, you know, juggling all the kids, not have to pay for daycare. And what are you earning on that? It just, it depends. Sometimes, some months it's like a couple grand, some months it's nothing.

Okay. You know, so. You're getting it started. Okay. What kind of debt is the 240? So there is $32,000 in credit card debt, almost 33. And then we have loans. A majority of them are student loans. How much? So we have $126,000 in loans. Okay. And they're all student or some of them are personal loans? So we have two in student, one and then two personal.

So after we overdrafted the Ramsey Plus, we got like this ad and it said, consolidate your debt. And we're like, okay, great. I know we fell for the trap. And then when I lost my job, we just started. We had the credit cards. We should have cut them up, but we had them locked away in the safe. Have you cut them up now?

Okay, I'm going to do that right after this call. Can we do it right now? As your accountability partners, do you have them nearby? Actually, I do. Does that scare you? Are you getting some, like, sweat happening right now on the brow? I hear nervous laughter. No, this is a good thing.

We've been putting it off for a while. So, all right, I have them, and that's it. I'm cutting them off right now. Can you read them out to us? Yeah, read them out and put it right up to the phone so we can hear the scissors cut for validity. Okay, I don't have scissors. I'm just going to bend them.

Now, you've got to slash those bad boys. You can still swipe it if it's bent. Oh, no. Okay. Yeah, that's how they get you. Let me get my scissors. Oh, this is exciting, Destiny. Oh, man.

And just to clarify, she didn't get those offers to consolidate from us. No, she was like, oh, I did Ramsey Plus and I got ads to consolidate. Yeah, that was not from us. No, not from you guys. No, I wish we would have stuck with you the whole time. So you got the scissors? Almost. I hear you rooting around in the in the junk drawer for him

everybody's got that drawer right we hit the credit card okay what's the first card we're cutting up okay we are going to do the venture one capital one credit yes let's hear it okay all right boom i heard it what What's next? Done. Okay. We have a, oh, that's my son's debit card. Don't cut that one. Don't cut the debit card. That's your money. She's cutting everything. Another Capital One credit card.

Oh, good. Okay. Now they can't sponsor the next Taylor Swift tour. This is great news. Okay. What's next? Those are great sound effects, by the way. It sounds like a haircut.

Okay, we have another. I can't believe we have another Capital One credit card. Goodness gracious. How much money are you giving these people? What's in your wallet? They trusted us. How many cards do you have, Destiny? We might need to hold you over the break.

This is amazing. Oh, man. Yeah, there's just a few more. We also have a Nordstrom, a AAA. Oh, baby. Cut them all up. This is a big day for Destiny. Because you know what this means, Destiny?

It means you're actually done. We're burning the boats. We're drawing the line in the sand. And we're saying no more. We make $160,000. What are we doing still going into debt? So you know what to do. We just got to go do it.

Cut the expenses down. Crack open that Ramsey Plus. Make as much as we can. Crack open Ramsey Plus, and let's enter the gym. We are rooting for you. Call us back if we can help, Destiny. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show.

I'm George Campbell, joined by Jade Warshaw. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Jed is in Lafayette, Louisiana. What's going on, Jed? Hey, how y'all doing? Thank you for answering my call. Sure. How can we help?

I just got a couple questions on some things. So I'm 24 years old. I'll be 25 this month. I've been married for two years now, and we just had our fourth kid. Wow. Nice. How is that possible, man?

Well, it's a lifelong high school sweetheart. Wow. So had some kids before marriage, had some after? Yes, sir. Okay. I'm just doing basic math. I'm like, this guy's a savant. How did he do this?

Defied the laws of science. Okay. Maybe some triplets. Who knows? No, sir. No, hopefully no, sir. Okay. That's rough.

Hopefully no. Not that's rough hopefully no not that's rough that's funny so 25 two years married four kids how can we help yes sir so um i make a pretty good living i started work very early especially with you know supporting family very early so i make decent money for what i am for what my age is uh we bought a house in the beginning of 2019. It was when we had just two children, so it worked for us. It was a two-bed, two-house. We didn't get anything fancy or anything like that. We spent $160,000 on this house.

It was just very simple. And the plan was into five years, hopefully have enough money saved up to eventually move on to something bigger because we knew our family was going to grow. We just didn't know it was going to grow this fast. So now it's coming to the point where it's stressful to be in our home. Like, it's very stressful. There's not enough room. You know, me and my wife want our kids to have our own space.

We want to be able to have our own space. and we take the baby steps to progress to save money but it seems like every time we do that and we get something saved up ready for the next step something always happens it's like we take two steps forward and three steps back what type of things happen um so uh my wife had a we bought her a newer car nothing crazy just a newer car and i was driving an old beater car to work because i don't really care what i drive to work it's just going to work well uh i ended up my motor blew up on the interstate one day and it was just like catastrophic like there was no fixing it and we really wasn't in the time to buy something new so I had to go find an older truck and I ended up buying that in cash and man it's just been like a money trap just thing after thing after thing have you spent

more on it than what you have you spent more fixing it than what you bought it for? No, but it's getting close. It might be time to change streams. Are you doing your research on these vehicles before you buy them? Yes, ma'am. I'm very kind of in tune with the vehicles and stuff like that. It was a good vehicle. It's supposed to be a good vehicle. I don't know if it was just a plug from the beginning.

I have no idea. Okay. So how much debt do you guys have um so i think i owe like 145 left on my house uh i owe 20 000 on my wife's car and then i got 1500 in credit credit card. Okay. And what's your take-home pay? What do you get every month? Well, it kind of all varies because I work a lot of overtime. Like, I'm not on a salary. What's a bad month and what's a good month? A bad month is clearing $5,000. A good month, I'm pulling in $12,000 to $13,000.

Wow. Clear. Amazing. Do you have a lot of good months? That's what I'm saying. Do12,000 to $13,000. Wow. Clear. Amazing. Do you have a lot of good months? That's what I'm saying. Do you have more good months or more bad months? I have more good months than anything. Okay, great.

Tell me what you do when $12,000 hits your bank account. What do you do with that $12,000? Mainly bills. It's probably like- You don't have $10,000 in bills, my man. Yeah, what's the car payment? What are your bills actually add up to that you have to pay? My bills are around $2,900 a month.

That's what I thought. So where's all this money going to? Do you guys have a budget? $9,000 to go. Where is that going? I guess just in normal day expenses. Like I'm not saying we're not frugal with our money. No, you're not.

Not if you're spending $9,000 on normal everyday expenses. But no, we're not also like, we don't just go out and like buy random things. Like we don't. I bet you do. We don't have toys or boats or boilers. Yeah, but it doesn't have to look like that. It can look like, I mean, how quick,

you can spend so much money just being like, oh, I'm going to get that extra coffee or let's just order this extra thing. Or I was at Target and I picked up blah, blah, blah. And when I was out the other day, I saw this thing and I picked it up. It doesn't have to look like boats all the time. Yes, that is a downfall of me. It's normally an energy drink in the morning before work. It's that unintentionality. So we're going to help you with a plan, Jed,. It's normally an energy drink in the morning before work. It's that unintentionality. So we're going to help you with a plan, Jed, and that's by making a budget. And every single month, you and your wife are going to sit down before the month begins and go, all right, what are we estimating is going to come in this month?

What are we estimating we're going to spend? All right, spit shake. We're going to stick to that. And that's going to free up thousands of dollars toward your debt. And you said life happened to you, but I don't think they, like, hold a gun to your head at the car dealership to make you go $20,000 into debt. You chose to get a car you couldn't afford, right? So we have to own, yes, life happened, but also we made decisions that got us into this place. And you guys have the margin.

If you had called and said, man, our margin is low. We've got $1,000 or we've got $700. Yeah, you're going to be up against it, but your margin is so high. The only issue here is a lack of intentionality. And I promise you, if you get on every dollar and you see this and you plan for it and you put a line item for all the things that you can think of, and energy drinks might take a sidebar for a while, although that's in and of itself is not the issue, but it's all of that stuff stacked up. You're going to see, okay, we can, most people get $1,000 saved in 30 days.

And so you already have that just a part of your margin. So that's no problem. And after that, it's about getting after this debt. Yeah, I'm putting like over a thousand a week. So what's the problem? Because you're saying we can't seem to save. I think what happened is i kind of snowballed so when we had our third children my my third child my wife had a truck and it was a nice truck but then we had a fourth she was paying for the fourth

so we needed a third row vehicle okay um so we went and found not the cheapest but definitely not the most expensive we found a 2024 jeep grand Cherokee. It was like $42,000 out the door. I had like $28,000 in savings maybe. Well, I didn't want to pay a high note, so I took $20,000 out and put it down on it right there. Okay. And is that what you now owe the $20,000 on? Yes, ma'am. We got $20,000 left on it.

And it seems like after I took that money out of the bank and being it it's like i i can't get back to that point it's because now you still have the car loan you got something robbing from your income slightly and we're not paying attention to the money so jed if i asked you hey man in 2019 you said five years from now we're going to upgrade the house what will you what would you say you have done to put yourself in a position to upgrade in-house over those last five years? I can't really say that I've done anything. I can say that I feel like I've tried, but then I feel like I just, like I said, two steps forward, three steps back. But that's what I'm saying. We can't just want a

future and then do nothing to get there. And you work really hard. And so you are a very hard worker. You make really good money. And i'm frustrated for you because you got nothing to show mathematically something's still missing because even on a bad month you still should have two thousand extra dollars on a bad month and so you're totally right that's that's what gets me that's what but the problem what i'm getting at jed is the problem is the problem is not i take two steps forward i take two steps back the problem and the problem is not that you put $28,000 on the vehicle although I would not have gone into debt for a vehicle I would have just paid cash for a $28,000 one the problem is month to month you guys don't know what you're spending money on and that's the good news because you can get a

handle on that very quickly so I don't want you to blame it on like this cycle of life don't blame it on the kids don't blame it it truly is I like this cycle of life. Don't blame it on the kids. Don't blame it. It truly is. I think you and your wife, you've just got a lot going on with four kids and you're living in a small house and it's chaotic. And I can understand that. But I promise you, if you get on EveryDollar tonight, you and your wife together, and you start putting this income in and you start putting those all the line items in there you guys can look and see oh holy moly we spend so much money on takeout we spend so much money on uber eats she does instacart all of these things and you're going to go here is where our money is and here's where we can get it back in our pocket so that you can save back up

that money but honestly the first thing you need to do is pay off the debt and once once you pick up your jaw off the floor, seeing how much money you guys spent and how much money you made, you're going to go, we got to do something about this. And the good news is you have the income to do it. That is your greatest wealth building tool. And you're about to take control of it, Jed. So we're rooting for you, my man. Thanks for the call. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Campbell, joined by Jade Warshaw, our Scripture of the Day, Luke 16, 10, and 11. Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much.

And whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? That hits. That hits. So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? That hits. That hits. Warren Buffett once said, it takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently. Wow.

I like that. Listen, during the break, I was working on notes for the money and marriage event coming up because you and I are both speaking at it. And that was literally the scripture from Luke is literally the scripture that I was putting into my you and I are both speaking at it. And that was literally, the scripture from Luke is literally the scripture that I was putting into my notes because I'm speaking on that scripture. On like lies we tell with our money and marriage and trust. Yes. Wow, that's strong. That's a sign from the Lord.

And how quickly you can ruin trust. Yes. You know, Warren's talking about reputation, but you can build trust for 20 years. It takes five minutes to ruin that and break the trust that you worked so hard to build. That's right. Ooh, good. Act accordingly. Yes, indeed. All right. Let's get to Will in Knoxville. That's how you say it. I'm told, Will. Knoxville? Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hey, guys. How are y'all? Doing well. How are you?

I'm good, buddy. I'm doing good. Thanks for calling. What can we help with today? So I have, thank the Lord, I'm really not as bad off as a lot of people, and I'm glad, but I don't really know what to do. So I have a $5,000 debt with the bank. That's a loan, a truck loan. And then I also have $3,000 debt with my future father and mother-in-law. Oh, that one scares me more than anything. Well, it's not that bad, actually. They're very, very, they're good about it. They want me to pay the truck off before I get them paid off, but I want to... What did you borrow the money for? I don't know what would get me to the point where I'd be okay borrowing money from my

future in-laws. That would scare the heck out of me. Would you use that $3,000 on? So I didn't, so the beginning of it was the truck was $13,000 and they owner financed it to me. So they bought it for me and I got the money from the bank, but the bank would only loan me 10,000. So I got that and I paid the loan down to five so far. So technically all of it's owed to them. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Is it in your name, the debt, the title and the loan? Oh yes. Well,

I don't have the truck anymore actually. And all this is stupid on my part. I shouldn't have done any of it. I should have kept the truck. What happened to the truck? So I sold the truck and I paid off other debts that I had. I went ahead and somebody told me, I hadn't started listening to y'all, but about two or three months ago, but somebody told me to pay off my littlest debt first, so that's what I did. I paid that littlest debt off with the truck, and I bought a little car that saves gas, and it was only $8,000.

What did the in-laws think of that when they saw you, that you did that? That's what they suggested me do. Oh, they suggested it. Okay. I feel like they're an accomplice to a lot of these bad decisions, my friend. You're living on the edge, it. Okay. Yes, ma'am. I feel like they're an accomplice to a lot of these bad decisions, my friend. You're living on the edge, dude.

Okay. So we got $5,000 in the truck loan, $3,000 to the future in-laws. What else? So that is it. That's all I owe. You know you got to marry this girl now, right? Like, you're in it, man. You're better.

Okay. Yeah. Well, we got engaged in September. So I'm trying to get everything worked out. Are you working? Yes, ma'am, I am. What are you earning? I earn $625 a week. I make $2,500 a month.

Okay, good. And when's the wedding? We have it planned for next September. Okay, and who's paying for that? That's what we're working on. We're trying to pay everything ourselves, but we don't know how much we can do with it. Okay. Did you, I would say set the budget first and then don't work backwards. So that's one piece of homework coming away from this call. This is the wedding we can afford based on our income and where we're at

financially. And here's my goal for you. I don't know if this is even your question. We didn't even get there. It was so juicy. But I would love for you to be debt free with an emergency fund and a paid for cash wedding by next September. And I think that's very much possible. Is she working? Yes, sir. What does she make? Do you know? She, I don't really know exactly what she makes. Okay. So we got some homework here. A, we're going to find out what each other makes.

We're going to disclose our finances because if you guys are engaged and you're getting married, you should know what she makes. You should know and know each other's debt, know each other's philosophy on money. So I want you to take her on a date and have all those conversations.

And the good food will lighten the conversation and then after that then you can start discussing okay then based on what we've just learned about each other what's a good amount that we can spend on this wedding that's feasible that's not going to stress us the heck out all of that and um i i am curious what your living situation is on $2,500 a month. So I have my own apartment. I had a roommate, but he left. He paid all his part all the way up for the year lease. So I'm paying $500 a month right now until the end of my lease,

which is going to be at the beginning of 2025. Okay. And I'm sorry, I didn't ask. How old are you? Say it again. 23 okay and i'm just curious uh what your plan is after that like after the lease is up so i'm going to be moving into another apartment that is 800 a month okay right now if I live in the one I'm in by myself, it's $1,000 a month. And I just can't, I can't do that. $800 is a little more reasonable. And I think I can do that. Is there a way to get your income up? What are you doing for work right

now? What does the path look like? So right now I work at a cabinet shop. I'm a painter at a cabinet shop. Can you, are you a pretty handy guy? I'm okay. I'm a painter at a cabinet shop. Are you a pretty handy guy? I'm okay. I'm not the greatest at everything, but I can do a little bit of everything. Yes, sir. Could you do painting on the side? Yeah, like interiors and... And basic handyman work and charge $50 an hour in your area? I might be able to.

See, I'm not from Knoxville. He asked me the biggest city. Sure. I'm really from Crossville. Okay. So I'm trying my... But people live in Crossville, right? Yes, sir. People have houses there. And so I would jump in the local neighborhood Facebook group, wherever you can put your name out there and say, hey, I do handyman work. Here's my number. Here's what I charge. And you show up and do good work. I think you can triple your income. And I'm not trying to grill you here. I know George and I are hitting you hard, but what's your ultimate goal? Like if I said, hey, Will, in five to 10 years, what are you going to be doing? What would you tell me? I really don't know. I'm also a preacher

and I'm trying to do what the Lord allows me to do, what he wants me to do. So I don't really know right now. If you had to take a guess, what do you think he'd say? Based on what you enjoy doing. I'd be at the cabinet shop probably still. Okay. Are you getting paid to be a preacher? I am, but I don't like that.

I like doing the Lord's work, and if that means they pay me, they pay me. Wasn't Jesus a carpenter? Was he doing that for free? There's nothing wrong with getting paid. No, you're right, exactly, and I don't mean it like that. I just don't want anybody to think that that's the reason I'm doing it. No, I wasn't insinuating that. I'm saying is this extra money that we can account for to help you get out of debt?

When the Lord allows me to preach, yes, sir, it does. Yes, sir. Good. They take a love offering. Yes, I love to hear that. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, I'm like, if we're doing this just for fun right now, I'd rather you use that extra time to get out of debt. I think the Lord would respect that because the proverb says the borrower is slave to the lender. And right now you're a slave to the future in-laws. And so I want to get you

out of this debt, get you some financial foundation, let you have a great wedding. And then beyond that, have a marriage that is awesome because money stress is not a part of it. Yes, sir. Does that answer any of your questions that you never asked? Yes, sir, kind of. I just, do I, how do I, how do I get rid of the debt? That's what I'm wanting to know. Do I just, do I just get, so I need to get an extra job? The only way to get out of debt, the only way to get out of debt is with money. And so that's...

Debt snowball, smallest to largest balance. The in-laws said they want you to pay off the truck loan first. Whatever. Let's knock out the truck loan with as much extra as we can every month. So what's your payment? I have an interest rate of 16%. What's the actual payment per month? It is $298.

I always round it up to $300. Let's round it up to like $700, $800, $900. That's how you're going to get a debt fast. And so that's the plan. I'm going to send you every dollar premium, Will, to help you with this, along with Financial Peace University as a wedding gift from Jade and I. So thank you so much for the call. You were a lot of fun to talk to. Sweet guy. Thank you for that. That puts this hour of The Ramsey Show in the books. Thanks to Jade, everyone in the booth keeping the show afloat, and you, America. Until next time, spend wisely, save intentionally, and give generously. you