The Ramsey Show - App - I'm Giving You Permission To Feed Your Kids (Hour 1)

Episode Date: October 10, 2023

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Jade Walsh, our Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us, America. We're glad you're here. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Travis starts us off this hour in Toledo. Hi, Travis. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi, thank you for taking my call. Sure. What's up? I have a negative

balance every month and I'm kind of trying to figure out how to, how to get positive again. Starting off kind of a little rough every single month after bills and everything. So your, your bank account is negative every month? Like you're overdrawn? Yep. I'm overdrawn. I actually almost on a weekly basis. You know, it's funny that you talk about this. I literally just got off a webinar about this very thing. And at the end of the day, it's probably boiling down to budgeting issues. Do you have a budget? I've been working on trying to do one. I recently got the EveryDollar app premium

because it was able to track my stuff better. But I'm struggling like weekly with groceries. It's just with a family of five, it's hard to keep it under a certain amount. Okay. So I want you to not try to do the budget. I want you to actually do it. I want you to go in there, put the numbers in there. That's step one. You and your wife. Yeah. Have you actually filled out a budget for the month? No, I have not. I haven't been able to figure it out. Okay. So that's step one. Matter of fact, I want you to go to everydollar.com slash budgeting when this call is over. And I want you to sign up for the next webinar because of the issue is I've got it.

Is it, you know, is it, I'm not, I don't have time to do it or I'm not prioritizing the time to do it. I really want you to prioritize the time. Sit down with your wife tonight. Start looking at it. What's your take home pay? Take home is about $3,600 a month. How much is your rent? The mortgage is $560 a month. What's your car payment? Car payment is a little high. It's $441 a month.

Okay. And five kids? Three kids, wife that is unable to work due to, yes, five people. Three kids, wife that is unable to work due to medical issues. What kind of medical issues? It's actually like a hereditary degenerative disease where it's just getting worse as time goes on, too. Okay. How old are your kiddos?

I got triplets, four and a half years old. Wow. Okay. So consumer debt's kind of got me, you know. How much debt do you have? Not including the car, it's about $26,000. Okay. Here's the thing.

We've got to start at the other end. Groceries don't catch the slack. Groceries are the thing. So we're going to start with this. $3,600 at the top of the page. You follow me? Yes. Minus the important things first.

The most important thing in your entire budget is food. You have the money to buy food. You may not have the money to do some other stuff, but you have the money to buy food, period. End of story. Okay? So $3,600 minus food. What are you all spending on food?

I try to keep it around $180 a week, but, I mean, it's usually $180 to $220. How often do you eat out? How often do you eat out? Maybe once a week, but it's just me for lunch when I'm unable to pack. I am going to a trade school at night. It's either lunch or dinner. I go three nights a week. So if we

take $800, $700 for your budget for food, right, for a month, for a month, that leaves us $2,900. So you can buy food. Food's first. You got me? Yes. I don't care if you pay anybody else until you feed's first. You got me? Yes.

I don't care if you pay anybody else until you feed your family. You follow me? Yes. All right. Second thing is we pay $550 for shelter. Done. Right?

Yep. And then we pay the light bill and the water bill. So we're warm, we're fed, and we're dry. Yes. This is survival first and we're dry. Yes. This is survival first. You following me? Yes. We may not keep this stupid car because it's freaking out of control.

If we can't come up with a way to get it paid off soon, it's got to go. But for now, we're going to pay the car payment too. Food, shelter, clothing, transportation, and utilities are basic necessities of life. We call those the four walls. You do the four walls before you do anything else. Everyone else, and let me tell you who's at the bottom of the freaking list. Student loan. How big's a student loan?

I don't have one. Good. You know who's right at the bottom next to them? Stupid credit card companies. Because you know what they can do if you don't pay them? Nothing except destroy your credit and sue you eventually eight years from now but we're going to take care of them before we get there okay they're at the bottom of the page so let me just tell you your emotional state and your sense of control over your destiny changes when your family is fed the lights and water are paid, and the mortgage is paid,

and you are in a different place emotionally and spiritually. The rest of it's just a stupid game I'm behind on. Okay. But right now it feels like life or death because you've got groceries as the last thing, not the first thing. Yes. By the time I pay groceries, I'm overdraft. No. By the time you pay MasterCard, oh, wait, we're not going to go into overdraft,

so we're not paying MasterCard. Screw them. Okay. For this month, and then we've got to adjust our income. Now, you've got to get your income up, dude. What are you going to do to get your income up? It goes up progressively every six months, as long as I keep up my apprenticeship and everything.

You've got six months of hell ahead of you. What are we going to do in the short term to get it up? You're going to trade school three nights a week. What are we doing on those other nights? Because you're about to do some more work, dude. Your family's hungry. I'm going to do homework and doing whatever I can around the house, housework and everything.

Yeah, you're going to probably not be doing as much of that. The laundry may pile up a little bit because you got to go make some money because 3600 bucks is tough so the way you the way you get this straight side up is you first take care of necessities and then two you get over the top of it and we're going to cut expenses and add income and that creates margin and that will get you under control, Travis. So you do have a very tight, tight, tough situation. So something's got to go out of the expense lines, and something's got to come up quickly in the income side.

Because, you know, it's not easy. You've got a really nice low house payment. It's the best thing in this whole story right now so you got you got a fixable situation but the faster you get the income up and the out go down the faster the pain is going to leave okay does that make sense to you yeah absolutely i was just nervous about missing credit card payments i want to give you permission to feed your children before you pay MasterCard. Yeah, I understand. Okay.

When you get that straight in your head, all of a sudden it changes everything. Because if everybody's fed and the lights are done and the water's paid and the house payment's paid, I mean, we live to fight another day. But if we pay MasterCard and then we don't have enough money to feed the triplets, dadgum, that's not fun. Been there, done that. That terrorizes your butt, doesn it yes it does been there done that everydollar.com budgeting sign up for one of Jade's webinars she'll walk you through what we just did 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

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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 budgets at chministries.org slash budgets. Jade Walshall, Ramsey personality is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Andy is in Bismarck, North Dakota. Hi, Andy. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave and Jane. How are y'all doing?

Better than we deserve. What's up? Well, my question today is where do thinking funds land in the baby steps? I guess I'm currently on baby step two. And so I have my emergency fund of $1,000. And, you know, I have a house and it's in need of, you know, a new washer, a new toilet. I mean, I'm able to make by. When you say you need it. Okay. Here's what, here's the way I think of it. In baby step two, I want all the money I can possibly to go towards my debt snowball, right? And so if I'm kind of packing it all away and sinking funds, it puts less to my snowball, so I'm moving slower.

In my mind, and then don't forget, you've still got the $1,000 saved. So washer, dryer, what was the other thing you said? Toilet. Toilet. Toilet. If there's any way that you can kind of cash flow a quick repair on the toilet or just kind of keep things running, I would do that as opposed to packing away more money to replace the washer that hasn't even broken down yet. Does that make sense? That's what I would do.

I would do no home repair sinking funds while you're in Baby Step 2. Okay. I would just no home repair sinking funds while you're in baby step two. Okay. I would just cash flow emergencies. So if the washer goes out, repair it or buy a different one used, right? If the toilet goes out, fix the toilet. Obviously, you've got to have that thing running. But, I mean, you cash flow those emergencies only.

Everything else waits until after. And you might be surprised how long. That doesn't get me to work or yeah yeah flat tire you can cash flow that or take that out of a thousand then refund the thousand either one but yeah we're not we're not doing a big car repair sinking fund you don't need three thousand dollars in your car repair sinking fund well you got ten thousand dollars in credit card debt. Exactly. And you might be surprised. The washer could go on for far longer than you thought. The toilet could be working. Maybe it runs or maybe

it doesn't do what you want it to, but if it's getting the job done... I found a hack on YouTube of all things that makes it run but it's not super efficient. That's okay. I put a little uh a little black tar stuff on my roof where it was leaking when i was in baby step two oh yeah because

it was running down through the light fixture and dripping on the kitchen table and you know the electricity water thing doesn't mix so yeah didn't think i wanted to keep doing that so i just smeared some stuff up there that was about eight dollars and then i put the six thousand dollar roof on the house which it desperately needed after we were done with baby step two oh cool yeah but yeah i know i discovered you guys back in april and i really needed you all the most and uh um got signed up for fpu and got the premium version of every dollar. Good. And that has helped me so much. I'm glad. That's great. For money for the month, right?

Now, I'll add one other thing because of the season that we're in. If you have family, you are going to do something for Christmas. You need to go ahead and decide what that is and put that aside because that one will sneak up on you and bite you. That's a good point, Dave. Okay. That's something we're going to do. We have a plan for him, and he's happy.

I'm happy. Okay. We made a good deal. Yeah, we'll take care of the kiddos and especially the little ones. And, you know, a little something for each other is fine. That's not the end of the world. But we're not doing $3,000 Christmases when we're broke, people. So we're going to cut this down.

We're going to have a plan. And we set that aside so it doesn't sneak up on you and bite you. Because Christmas is much more fun if you do it with a plan. Absolutely. Somehow people think chaos helps your generosity. Oh, because they think that they want to just be able to go out and spend on a whim. It's just like, it's not like coming from the heart if I'm doing it from a plan. What?

It's like, no, you're being a child, not a grown-up. It is coming from the heart. Yeah, and you're probably going to get better gifts if you sit down and plan for it. Hello. Because you're going to have a plan. You're not going to just go, oh, that's on sale. That looks good. I'll get that get that seldom do you get the best price on impulse that's a truth you know so there you go i mean you make these dollars a stretch and

we start laying out a christmas budget and i talked to my old friend santa claus and he said the way to do a christmas budget is make a list and check it twice then put a dollar amount beside each person so what you're saying you know this is what i'm spending on this is this and and george george camel and i were talking about this the other day and he said so what's beside my name i said five dollars he said so i'm a five dollar friend five dollars nothing actually is beside george's name technically i pay him a paycheck he needs to just smile but anyway but the uh but but seriously but i mean you know he goes

okay so i can i can decide you're a five dollar friend or you're a 25 mother or you're a whatever right you just yeah i'm sorry but you are putting a value on which who's going to get what because you're going to spend more on certain family members than you're on others yeah you should spend more on the little kids than on you know the the uh uncle that's generally drunk and not there anyway, and so on, right? So, I mean, it should be off, right? I think so.

Well, that's your take on it. Do you want to know my take on it? Yeah, let's hear your take. Everybody has that person or those people that every year they feel obligation, like, oh, I've got to get so-and-so a gift, or, oh, if I don't get it, she gets me something. If I don't get it, I something if i don't get i just say permission to say no yeah and you know a preemptive no is a good idea a preemptive

no is a good idea you know what i'm on a budget i won't let you know please don't get me anything because i'm not getting you yes just tell people changed it changed everything mic drop or do that thing where it's like uh if you have a big family we used to do this you put everybody's name and everybody draws one name instead of getting you know gifts for 12 people and the cousins we did that we were in bankruptcy we went to Sharon's family she's got five brothers and sisters all married all with kids 13 grandkids on that side what eight adults 10 adults right and then mom and dad and they're all great people yeah but we went in at Thanksgiving. We went, hey, guys, announcement.

We're broke. Yep. We're not buying everybody gifts this year. We are opting to draw names. Hope you'll draw one with us. Yep. And they went, yes. We all hate it.

Let's change it. Oh, that's good. And it was like waiting on somebody to first say it. Now, we did take the little kids, all the little grandkids that were under a certain age. They could just stay in the general gift pool. But the adults, you know, you buy your brother-in-law a tie. I mean, come on.

Well, that worked out good for you because I had some family members who will remain nameless who were like, oh, you're ruining it. You're ruining it for everybody. You're ruining Christmas. You're messing up Christmas. And I was like, no, I'm not. You don't look like the Grinch. No. You just don't look like it, I'm not. You don't look like the Grinch. No.

You just don't look like it. I'm not a real Grinch, but when it's time to get debt free and when it's time to lay out those boundaries, then I will be. Listen, adulthood is different from Grinching. That's right. Grinching is you're just tight-fisted for no apparent reason. And you end up buying, let's be honest, when you don't have the money to spend and you feel like you have to stretch and buy everybody something you

end up giving crappy gifts that's true let's be honest about that i'd rather give one or two really nice gifts for the people who should be on the list than stretching myself thin and getting everybody a five dollar gift that i got at i don't know so you can go ahead i mean this is it's early to talk about this but you need to plan it so let's make a list check it twice put a dollar amount beside a total up the dollar amount that's your christmas budget if you don't like your christmas budget go back and lower the dollar amounts or take some people off the list yep and then just give them the old uh list notification removal thing or yeah or you could i love this this is me i do the cheapest i will go in the kitchen and i will bake cookies you a cookie and

i will put them in a nice little tin and it's about so you're not even a five dollar friend you're just a cookie friend i'm a cookie friend that's right people love that people love things that you can eat i don't know that's all i'm saying the five dollars i'm just saying look no one wants another bad smelling candle no one wants another soap with a ribbon on it that you're never going to use oh that's the guest soap nobody wants that they don't want a candle i can't tell you how when we moved how many i got in one cabinet and i opened it up and i'm like sharon and she said they're all gifts and i'm like this is the number of scented candles that were in the

ramsey house that had never been lit. It was like we had a collection of every brand and every scent. We could have opened our own little store. Yep. And I was just disgusted. I should have sold them or something, but I just tossed them. Yeah. It was just like, God, this is just disgusting.

It's like, whew. Yes. No more. No more. My friends, the minimalists, would have been happy with me i just chunked the candles i just tossed them out too many things that don't bring what's the other lady don't bring me joy right that's right marie marie marie condo yeah this is the ramsey show jade washall ramsey personality is my co-host today our question of the day is sponsored by

neighborly your hub for home services once the kids are back in school it's hard to find time for home maintenance but neighborly is your source for home repair experts like precision door service dryer vent wizard download the neighborly app today to be ready for all seasons all right today's question comes from tim in louisiana he says i have about fifty six thousand dollars in credit card debt i'm being sued by one of my creditors for two credit cards totaling thirty thousand dollars the other credit card is one month late and another two months late i lost my full-time job in january of 2022 due to medical issues. My income at the moment is $1,800 per month. I'm currently interviewing for a full-time job. I do not have

the funds to afford a lawyer to litigate the cases, neither do I have the money for a lump sum. The lawyers I've contacted recommended Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Do you have any suggestions? Man, oh man, you know, you've got a tough situation. You've got the $56,000 in credit card debt and to make it worse, you already knew it was bad, but now they're suing you and you feel like you're under the gun and, you know, you're feeling forced to make a lot of changes right now in the moment. I'm not in your shoes, but if I were, I would really just take your time and just take a deep breath for a moment because yeah, you're being sued, but nothing is happening today. Like in this moment, they're not coming to get you. They're not throwing you in jail. So you've got a couple

of things hopeful that are taking place. You've got a full-time job interview that's around the corner. That's good. I want you to keep applying to other places because I want you to have a couple of job interviews coming up in case one of them doesn't pan out. So right now, thing one is let's get money coming in. Keep applying for jobs, keep interviewing, because once you get money coming in, suddenly you're going to be able to go, okay, I have options. I can start to see a light at the end of the tunnel. I would not pay a lawyer yet. I would A one Get income in get your job coming up. It says you had a medical issue, but it sounds like it was kind of a one-off thing Considering that you're interviewing for full-time jobs again. So yeah, i'm not going to hire a lawyer just yet I am not going to fire file for bankruptcy just yet

Uh, you didn't say what you were making before and what you plan on making in the future. Let's pretend that it's somewhere around the median income. Let's pretend it's somewhere between 50 and 67,000. If that's the boat, if that's where you're going to be, you're going to be just fine. And it's going to take you around average, like the folks that we talk to every day, it's probably going to take you around two, two and a half years to pay this off. And then this is going to be something that was in your rear view. You got in a really scary situation. You climbed your way out. You were patient. You didn't freak out just because you're getting letters and notices and they're supposed, they're trying to freak you out. They want you freaked out. Jade's exactly right um okay they've sued you

a hundred percent of the time you're going to lose the lawsuit because it's not based on whether you're a good person it's based on you had a bill to pay and you didn't pay it you lose you can hire a lawyer if you want to hire a lawyer but it's a waste of money you still lose you're going to lose the lawsuit. Then you're going to have what's called a judgment. And then if they decide to execute on the judgment, that will be anywhere from two months from now to never. It typically is never with credit card companies. But if they decide to execute on it, that is when they would garnish your wages,

and that's a minimum of two months from the date of the court date when you lose the lawsuit. Okay, so the judgment is final on the court date, or it's final 30 days later, depending on the state that you're in. And then after that, they can sit another 30 days and wait. And if you don't do anything, the fact that you've gotten a judgment against you, then they can execute on the judgment, which would they be able to scarf a bank account. They would be able to put a lien on your home. In some states, they would be able to garnish your wages.

And that's executing on a judgment. Again, nine out of ten times, credit card companies don't do that ever they just take the judgment lien and it's sitting there and then someday you wake up and you're able to pay and you call them back and you work out a deal which is actually what's going to happen here my point is this is going to drag out um long enough that you should get your income back up you should have already done that by now you're late well yeah i and so let's get with it let's get that income back up and as jade said now when the income comes up call the attorney that took the judgment lien and negotiate a settlement plan a lump sum i owe you thirty thousand dollars or i owe you 15 and 15 um i can pay you 20 cents on

the dollar for that in a lump sum. And if you saved up 5,000 bucks, you can probably settle that $30,000 judgment lien with them on a credit card debt. So you save up the money and you settle the debt and then you move on with your life. But you got to get your income up to be able to do all this. 1,800 bucks a year after you lost the job due to medical. If you're medical, if your health is recovered, you need to get back to work. Hardcore. Like six jobs by the end of the week and 16 more places to apply for full-time work.

Well, he's only working part-time. He's only making $1,800 a month. That means before, like, it doesn't matter what happens with these interviews. You need to be getting something else tomorrow. You can work at McDonald's. You need to be working 80 hours a week. you can work at mcdonald's and make more than that working full-time you work at ups is hiring uh fedex is hiring for the for the christmas rush yes everybody's hiring it's 20 an hour it's a lot more than 1800 bucks 22 and so you go to work there's a great place to go when you're broke to work and that's where you're

that's your deal you're going to have to create some income and then when you create that income you'll be able to settle this judgment in a lump sum settlement with the attorney in writing long before they get around to executing on the judgment that is going to occur you're going to have a judgment you're going to lose the lawsuit yeah it's not even worth hiring don't hire a lawyer don't hire a lawyer it's a waste of money and you're not bankrupt you just don't have an income because you can solve all of this for 10 or 15 000 bucks and so go get a lot of income stack some cash and clean this up you're not bankrupt you don't have an income bankruptcy court does not create income people it doesn't take 1800 and make it livable it's not livable that's not a living. And that's what I want to camp out just for a little bit longer.

Something tells me, I assumed before that maybe he was making somewhere around median income. But I don't think so, because if you're racking up $56,000 in credit card debt, it's because you're most likely, I'm not saying he is, but you might be using credit cards to float a low core income it could be it could be and it could be just straight up what a lot of people did like i did it was just irresponsible yeah that's true so i mean i don't know but either way stacking cash solves it that's fine and so go make the most money you've ever made in your life by working the most hours you've ever worked in your life consecutively don't worry you won't die from overwork right before you die you'll pass out don't worry about it go to work go work your tail end off and create some money and i've done it jade's done it uh we're neither one of us afraid to do anything that is legal and moral to go make money we've both done it and it's what it takes to get your family and your situation

out of a ditch man rebecca's's in Philadelphia. Hi, Rebecca. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi. Thanks for having me. Sure. What's up? So I have a little bit of a, it's not an issue. It's more of a blessing, I guess.

I started the business in 2020, and I have about $2 million in the bank. I hate it when that happens. Single mom my whole life. it's great to buy and this is all new to me did you sell the business no i'm still it's still going you're just making bank wow what kind of business is it well i hate to no don't say it but it's no no no no but it's not that way. It's just due to COVID. The COVID vaccines, I do billing for doctor's offices. So all these vaccines, what we do is we do the medical billing and we take a percentage of their revenue. Yeah, of course you do. So with the pandemic, we blew up.

No pun intended. Wow. Yeah, no pun intended. Okay, so number one, this is probably not going to be the rest of your life. No. Okay, so you need to be looking at your business model on what I can do to diversify my sources of income because this one's not forever. Agreed?

Agreed. And I'm not old. I'm not anywhere near retirement age. Yeah, but I'm just saying if you're going to run a business, let's run it with a model that accepts that this is not the future. Then the second thing is what to do with the 2.1 million. Way to go! Hey, we want to give you a financial piece, University. We'll show you with the baby steps exactly what to do with it. We're going to pay off your house. We're going to pay off all your debt. We're going to enjoy some of it. We're going to be generous with some of it. We're going to pay off your house. We're going to pay off all your debt. We're going to enjoy some of it.

We're going to be generous with some of it. We're going to invest some of it for the future. And we'll show you how to do every bit of that for free. Our gift to you to say, way to go! Thank you for joining us, America. We appreciate you joining us. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Kaylin is with us in Las Vegas. Hi, Kaylin. How are you? I'm good. Thank you. How are you guys? Better than we deserve. What's up? So I'm trying to decide if I should go back to school for my

bachelor's degree. I have an associate currently, or if I should pay down a home renovation loan that my husband and I took out. What's making you decide to go back to school? Like what's the purpose in that? So to give you guys a little bit of background, we followed the baby steps, skipping number five because we didn't have children at the time and we were able to get to number six and pay off our home. So we decided to basically put our entire life of having kids on hold until then. Once we paid off our home, timing worked out kind of perfectly because we're both obsessive planners. We had our daughter and that was last year. So it was a total of $127,000 in 30 months total that we paid off. We had her and I quit my job. Um,

I have an associate's degree, but I wasn't using it. I was just working dead end at admin jobs. And I've been looking for my calling for some time and I feel like I've been looking for my calling for some time, and I feel like I've found it in front-end developing. But I want to have that degree and be able to make more money for my family. You don't need a four-year degree to be a front-end developer. Fair enough. But through talking through my community of people that I know who do work in this field, they said it gives you the option to be picky, basically. Whereas if you go to, you don't buy it? Okay. No, I got 400 folks working in our tech team. I got front-end developers, back-end developers, platform architect people all over this building. Almost none of them have a four-year degree. And believe me getting on at Ramsey's hard yeah I bet so the I guess in that case you guys don't

think I should go to school at all for this because it's going to cost 16 to 18 thousand dollars for my degree to be finished I think you should get now I think you should get the certification you need to do the job you want to do but to echo what Dave said it's not necessarily a four-year degree maybe it's another program specifically designed for that work. You may need to get some of your Microsoft search. You may need to do some code school, and code school could be as much as $10,000, but if you're not up on your skills. And that's kind of what I'm, obviously that is a path I definitely can pursue.

I just, I'm concerned that by going- You have to do that anyway, because a four-year degree doesn't teach you to write code. And you can't be a front-end developer if you can't write code. And whatever you learn in your four-year degree is going to be, it's going to be changed. You know, that field is constantly changing, and you're constantly having to update your education. Yeah, if your goal is to write code, you've got to learn to write code. My biggest concern that I'm having, though, is I'm working part-time from home remote and taking care of our daughter. I'm not able to produce the full salary right now, and we do have our house paid off.

We don't have any debt, literally none, other than the renovation loan. How much is the renovation loan? I don't know if I should. $80,000, and we do have the ability to pay it over time obviously we don't want to do that what does your husband make being higher uh eighty thousand okay i would just put that at your baby i would you know that's the only debt you have it's a mortgage on your house i would call that your baby step six and so yeah i'm going to school i'm gonna pay cash for school um because that's what you want to do but i am challenging strongly your presuppositions i think you're wrong i agree

okay i got a bunch of what you're talking about working here and i hired them i mean i didn't personally hire them but i the leadership team that that i lead hired them and i you know i've got a whole building full of tech people half our dadgum product line three-quarters of our product lines digital so um you know it's just it's part of what we do every day here i mean think about what it takes just to support every dollar if nothing else the number of front end back end creatives everything else on that is incredible so um the uh but you know and you know we support Bethel Tech on because for 10 grand you can learn to write code you can come out there you're a dev one or dev two coming out the door of that place

and it's 10 grand if you want to write code now if you want to be a CTO you may want to be a four year degree if you want to specialize in web security and you want to learn all the different nuances of that that's not code that's not a front-end developer. Then you might want a four-year degree. Information systems is not a bad degree, but it is not necessary to write front-end, back-end code or to be proficient in Ruby on Rails or whatever it is the people you're working with are writing in. And so, you know, that's what matters you can you write the code that makes the thing

dance and and that's syntax that's all that is and it's a process to learn like learning another language and um so now you know everything i know about it which is almost nothing but but i i do write the checks for these people's pay and and i do know that we don't require them to have a four-year degree and we went oh we're going to select you you're not real good at code but you have a four-year degree over the guy who can write code so fast it makes your eyes cross no yeah we're going with the you know the dev three over your dadgum four-year degree every stinking time with proven code scales yeah our career coach ken coleman talks about that all the time, and he'd probably suggest you go to Betheltech.com slash Ken Coleman and see what they offer.

It's not your typical four-year degree program. And it's probably just what she's looking for. Again, if your goal is what you said, to be front-end, you do not – I'm just 100% sure. I'm an employer of a bunch of them. Again, you don't need that. But if you've got a different goal that's nuanced in i want to enter through the front end developer then you know okay you might need to have that information systems for your degree it it gives you it doesn't

it doesn't even give you the permission to play it's not table stakes it's just um knowledge base it gives you it gives you because knowledge is the currency you're after and you know what that's a good jumping off point let's just do a dave jade rant here uh the student whole student loan debacle don't get me started and it's not her she's not doing this at all but this one of the things we've discovered in fighting against these student loans and they're restarting and everything else is the core issue is that americans got lied to for the last 50 years we told our every generation that you had to get a college degree to be successful that was born in of course that's bullcrap absolutely that was born and any college degree will make you successful you can get a

degree in left-handed puppetry german polka history and then america owes you a living no they don't you're going to be a barista yeah okay that's dumb so don't go get a stupid useless degree well shame shame on shame on parents and shame on guidance counselors for making things like community college yeah and the in the trades seem like a lower option, right? Because when I was in school, if you said you were, back then it was called Vol State. If you said you were going to Vol State, people looked at you and went, oh. You just didn't make the big team. You're on the junior pro.

Look at that. And a lot of that, parents, a lot of that is parents wanting to be able to say, my kid goes to Berklee College of Music. My kid goes to Fkeley college of music my kid goes to fsu my kid go like we get a lot of pride out of that and at what cost a lot so the thing that that was the problem was the lie like so many good lies was based in 98 truth get a college degree and you'll be more successful so that's a lie but the 98 truth that's inside of that is get more knowledge that's right yeah knowledge is the currency of the culture

and in her case knowledge is her currency it's not the degree yeah it's not permission to play it's not you can be more picky it's knowledge and knowledge doesn't end always getting knowledge the rest of your life is mandatory exactly but we have this thing of i get my four-year degree and i'm done and i'll watch netflix the rest of my life yeah no it doesn't work like that and you know everything about tiger king and nothing else so now you continuous learning the continually gap the continuous gathering of knowledge knowledge is the currency of successful people you can spend knowledge and become successful more knowledge in the proper way that has use to the society creates more financial and societal success yeah relational success

so gather knowledge don't gather degrees some people gather more degrees than a thermometer and they have no knowledge worse than that they have no wisdom and then they're useless to the culture yeah and 260 000 and 280 million dollars in credit card student loan debt yeah so and try to get the knowledge that people care about in her case get the knowledge that causes you to get the job you want. Right. And make sure you're getting the right thing because that's another one

of those pieces of the lie. This is The Ramsey Show. Hey, what's up, guys? It's Jade. If you love the show and want a deeper dive on your money journey, we have a weekly newsletter that gives you trending and helpful articles and tips on following the Ramsey way. Just go to ramseysolutions.com today to sign up for our newsletter. Again, that's ramseysolutions.com to sign up for our weekly newsletter.