The Ramsey Show - App - Is a Career Change a Good Idea?

Episode Date: May 4, 2022

Dave Ramsey & Ken Coleman discuss: How to know if a career change is a good idea, What to do next when when you're on baby step 7 at age 22, How to help a grandkid in college. Want a plan for your money? Find out where to start: https://bit.ly/3nInETX Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts: https://bit.ly/3GxiXm6

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Ken Coleman, Ramsey Personality, host of The Ken Coleman Show and author of the number one bestseller, From Paycheck to Purpose. He is my co-host today as we answer your questions and help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships.

Garrett is going to start us off this hour. He is in Sioux us off this hour. He is in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Hi, Garrett. What's up? Mr. Ramsey, it's an honor to ask you how you are. Better than I deserve, sir. What's up?

Good to be here. Well, the company I work for, I think, might be in trouble. For the last 5 to 10 years, we've've done 10 to 12 million dollars in revenue made five to ten percent every year this year we're showing negative 1.6 million dollars bottom line cash flow is good um i just i don't know what to do uh you own the company You said you work for them. I work for them. I work pretty closely with the owner. Okay. What do you do? So I'm a project estimator, project manager.

I'm trying to help with the financials. I've followed your principles. I'm debt-free. I'm trying to bring them into the company. I'm in talks with NetSuite right now to get them set up with our company. And we're just trying to understand how we're showing $1.6 million in loss right now. Our basic expenses are payroll, fuel, and repairs. Well, let's start with a simple equation that profit is created by revenue minus expenses, right? Yes, sir. So what's down or what's up expenses up and revenues down what's the deal i think for the revenue for this

time of year is down quite a bit um i think expenses for hourly rates have gone up. We do hourly jobs and we do bid jobs. For the bid jobs, we show positive revenue or positive profit for that job. You're an estimator. If your hourly has gone up on individual jobs, that's a variable expense

that should be built into the job cost. Correct. Have you not added it to the job cost and added profit on top of it? Hourly that can be costed out, job costed to a job, you as an estimator know that that should not have sunk you. It should have just raised the cost to the customer. Right. right and there are several divisions in our company and i've i will spend a few times or a few days analyzing our hours for last year and marking that against our um our overhead for the

year and those rates seem pretty high and sometimes they're just not used and they go with their gut feeling um because if we charge you know four hundred dollars for a dozer they're just going to tell us no so we have to try and no no it's good if you're losing a hundred dollars when you charge 400 you'd have been better off to park it so you don't lose money when it's parked okay i mean i don't if if the rate if the cost of the dozer operator now makes the rate for a dozer 500 and you're only charging 400 that's why you're losing money you haven't raised your prices after your labor cost went up okay am i missing something no sir so better off not to work for those companies if they won't accept our rates exactly because guess what everybody's got the same problem you got

you didn't just pay your dozer operators way more than everybody else the cost of a dozer operator went up i got the same thing internally except i don't have dozer operators i've got developers i got programmers the tech world uh and you know the only thing they're dozens ones and zeros but they're dozing them and so uh but the uh you know the cost of a developer has gone up dramatically in 24 months and guess what that's going to be reflected in what you guys pay to go to a remse whatever you know because i you know i'm going to pass the business owners pass those costs along corporations don't lose money they raise their prices companies don't have any rates we need to project how much overhead we think we're going to have for the year and then project how many hours we're going to use that dozer for and then divide that

and then add 10% to that, and then that's what we should charge. Yeah, what most companies do, and you're an estimator, so you probably already know all this, but what most companies do is they say, okay, here's the cost of goods sold. Here's the materials, the equipment usage, and the labor associated with the job. Okay, and that's the dozer, the dozer operator, the fuel, the truck cost to move the dozer to the site. Okay, all of that is job-costed. You know what I'm saying, right, Garrett? Yep. Okay, then most companies, in addition to that, will allocate an overhead percentage to that job.

And you can determine the overhead percentage however you want. You can do it based on gross revs and say, okay, we got a $10 million gross rev. This is a million-dollar job. So this job gets 10% of our overhead. You see how I did that? Yep. A pro rata allocation of overhead to each job and you need to be job costing out your overhead and then adding profit to both the actual cost of the job the job cost overhead together then put a profit on top of that and bang you're back profitable again but i think

two things have happened one is you guys were pretty disorganized on some of these smaller jobs. The bigger jobs you were doing a good job of running the job cost on, and your accounting on these smaller jobs sucks, and you're guessing. I think you're correct on that. Yeah. You would be a normal $10 million company. That's what we were doing when we were $10 million. Our accounting sucked when we were $10 million.

And I'm the money guy, and our accounting was horrible. horrible and but today man it's so freaking dialed in it's unbelievable and so you're really doing a good job a good thing here so your uh leadership team needs to get into entree leadership yesterday and our guys can coach you guys through this but this is a uh first you got to know where you are and get this get these numbers dialed in to each job and get and get the overhead dialed in and then start an allocation of overhead formula of some kind and then add profits to the top of that. Then that will tell you how to raise your prices. And this is going to go away. But what happened was you were out earning your stupidity. Yeah, you were making you're making enough money that you your sloppiness, you're getting away with it.

There's also one other thing going on here, Garrett, and I heard it when you said it. Well, we have to say no then. We have to walk away from a company that doesn't want to pay it. You don't get to exclude yourself from the marketplace. Inflation is a function of all of this, and so your hourly wages have gone up, the cost of fuel, which makes that dozer more expensive. So you guys are worried about them going, well, we don't like that. Well, tough, because you've just got to stand your ground

and explain basic economics to these folks. The dozer company across town has the same fuel cost, and they have the same labor cost. That's right. And so if they're not going to go up on their price, you're going to be buying their machines at a nickel on the dollar when they go broke. So this is why the cost of bread has gone up, because the cost of fuel to deliver the bread has gone up.

The $10 guy that used to put the bread on the shelf is now a $20 guy. Those numbers are all built into the cost of bread. And so if you want a universal wage, guess who's going to pay for it? You are, because it's going to be absorbed into the cost of that loaf of bread. You do not get to pass on this stuff like you're a magic fairy wand. Oh, my gosh. People all over the country are discovering a faith-based and budget-friendly way of meeting health care costs through Christian Health Care Ministries.

Christian Health Care Ministries, or CHM, is a nonprofit organization that helps members carry one another's burdens with health care expenses. And they have successfully shared each other's medical bills for nearly 40 years. See if CHM is right for you by visiting chministries.org. CHM is a proud sponsor of Dave Ramsey Live Events. so ken um what is the worst gift you have ever been given uh i think for christmas one year i got uh i got uh got some socks from somebody who was very excited about the Christmas gift being socks. That's like something out of a movie. Yeah. I don't have anything sensational, but that made me laugh.

Well, we like giving things away, Ramsey. So don't worry, we aren't going to re-gift you a tacky white elephant gift that your aunt gave you. We're not going to give you Ken's socks. That's a blessing. We are going to give you the best gift ever, cash. We're giving away $500 every week and a grand prize of $3,000 at the end of May with our Ramsey Cash Giveaway. Think about what you could do with $3,000. To enter the giveaway, go to ramseySolutions.com slash giveaway.

You can enter every day. That way you've got more chances to win. No purchase is necessary. You've got to be 18. As great as the Ramsey Cash Giveaway is, we're not stopping there to help you crush your financial, personal, and professional goals. We're putting our number one best-selling books and tools in the Ramsey.

Well, we'll put them in the Ramsey store up for the $10 sale, $10 each. That's 67% off. Now, if you need a proven plan for getting out of debt, that's the total money makeover, $10. Ken Coleman's Getting Hired digital course, an addition to the Ramsey, $10 sale. Just added that. These books and tools will help you make a plan today to crush your goals. 67% off the Ramsey $10 sale at RamseySolutions.com or RamseySolutions.com slash giveaway to sign up for the free giveaway. Our question of the day comes from Blinds.com.

They have a 100% satisfaction guarantee. That means even if you mismeasure or you pick the wrong color, they'll remake your blinds.com they have a 100 satisfaction guarantee that means even if you mismeasure you pick the wrong color they'll remake your blinds for free you get free samples free shipping and with the new promos they run every month you'll save even more use the promo code ramsey to get the best possible deal today's question comes from nick in california i have an mba and work as a mechanical engineer for a construction company i'm not happy with my job because the construction industry is incredibly repetitive. I would love to work in research and development with a focus on robotics and nanotechnology for the military. How do I know if making a career change is a good idea and where do I start?

Okay, so you're very, very clear on where you want to go. And so we're going to start with a three-part formula to get clear that, yes, in fact, this is a good idea. So we start with, Nick, do you have the talent and skills necessary to win in robotics and nanotechnology, meaning basic talent that with the proper training can be honed into skills? Then you ask yourself, would I love actually working in robotics and nanotechnology? How do you figure that out? You talk to people who are in robotics and nanotechnology. You get a good idea, and your heart's going to indicate whether or not you would enjoy the work.

And then does it create a result that matters to you? I think the answer on this one is yes. You've chosen the military. There's a protectiveness, something that you believe is honorable in doing this kind of've chosen the military there's a uh a protectiveness something that you believe is honorable in doing this kind of work for the military so i think the answer is yes on the mission does it create a result that that i value now where do i start if we find out that yes i've got the chops and i've got the juice for the work where do i start if it's for the military this question doesn't make it completely clear but this is either obviously in the military serving directly for our country or

for a defense contractor that would do this work for the military so in either way we now say okay this is the mountaintop i want to do robotics and nanotechnology who's doing this what companies are specifically providing this work for the military and so we begin to target them and we ask ourselves all right what qualifications do i need what do i need to learn and what do i need to do this is going to inform where i start and starts the key here think of this nick uh as getting on the right ladder and now i'm going to climb the ladder to where i'm doing that work that's very good so um if i'm making a career change is this a good idea assuming the pay is equal or more and it's in the field that you're generally trained in and you already have this dialed in, it scratches the itch.

So if you're making the same or more, it's a no-brainer to do it. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, is it a good idea? Yes, it's a good idea. Then where do you start? Ken just laid all of that out in great detail for you. So, yeah, you need to – but don't get yourself caught up in, oh, I've got to go get a master's degree before I can do it,

because I don't think you do. I think you've got to get in there. You've got to meet some people, the proximity principle, in the industry that you want to be in. And, you know, right now you hang around with construction people, and you need to be hanging around with robotics and nanotechnology people. That's right. By the way, the four questions you ask them, these are four qualifying questions. Number one, what do I need to learn? That is, is it an actual degree or some type of certification or training? Number two, what experience do I need? That's what I need to do. Three, how much is that going to cost me,

time and money? And then once I know that, how long will this take is the fourth question, Dave. Those four questions, simple questions, by the way. And when we get those answers, here's what comes out of that. A plan. Oh, I need to learn this. I need to do this. It's going to cost me this. And as a result of my financial reality and my time budget. In order to not just jump off the bridge and hope there's water, we're going to actually, you know, plot this out and then take a step and then take another step and then take another step incrementally to where when you make the move

it's instantaneously a smart idea. That's correct. It's the gradual incremental step by step process that matters. Braden is with us. Braden's in Memphis. Hi Braden. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hey Dave. How's it going?

Better than I deserve. What's up? So I just got a quick question for you. So me and my wife, we're both 22, and we're debt-free like it was a month and a half ago. Way to go. So we've kind of just been chilling, you know, relaxing. And now I'm kind of just, I'm so used to being gazelle intense. Now I'm kind of feeling like I don't know what to do.

I'm honestly kind of getting a little bored because I don't have like an object to achieve. Good for you. So I'm invested in retirement and everything, but I'm just wondering kind of like what's next? You know, what should I, what kind of goals should I set? So you have a paid-for house? Yes, sir. What's it worth? About $215,000.

What do you guys do for a living? I work for my dad as a herbiculturist. Mm-hmm. Is that your long-term dream, take over the business, or do you want to do something else? Yeah, I'm going to take it over. Good. Okay. What's your wife do? take over the business or do you want to do something else yeah i'm gonna take it over good okay what's your wife do she actually just does a little bit of photography on the side but

what do you make i make around 80 okay okay cool so you have a 215 000 house you make 80 you're 22 years old you have zero debt of any kind she makes about 30 so 110 total okay 110 household income okay cool yeah all right well i i think you start laying out you know what are some of our goals there are three things you can do with money and you should always do these three things you can be generous with it giving it uh you can enjoy it and you should And you can invest it. And you should. And you do need to set some very clear, high-definition, very uber-clear goals of where you want to be. And it can be a random thing. I want to have a million-dollar net worth. I want to move to a house that's $600,000.

From my house, it's $200,000. I want to pay cash for that difference. That's $400,000. Now, how long am I going to do that? Well, it's going to take me six years or whatever. I don't know, right? And you start laying your numbers out, and then you've got something to plop that money towards each time it comes in.

Because right now the money is just kind of wandering. It doesn't have an assignment when it comes in, and you're bored, and you feel disjointed a little bit. But you need to have it. One of my goals was to give away a million dollars in a year one time and then once i did that one of my other goals was to give away a million dollars in one day and i've been able to hit both those so i had to have a new goal on my generosity goals and so um pretty cool it's been fun so you got to you

know you start but i'm i'm like three times older than. So you got to, you know, you start. But I'm like three times older than you. So you got plenty of time to pull this off. I'm wondering if you want to give a million dollars to me, Dave. I don't know. Maybe add that to your list. Well, I'm just going to give you a tiger. That's all.

You get a tiger. That's great. You get a tiger. It's a million dollar tiger. Well, it's one way of looking at it. You're going to be well known when this is over. You're going to be known for Ken Coleman, the Tiger King. This is The Ramsey personality is my co-host today as we answer your questions about your life and your money.

In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage, Alex and Courtney are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? Good. Good, thank you. Welcome. Good to have you guys. Where do you all live? St. Louis, Missouri.

All right. Good to have you. Fun. And how much debt have you paid? $150,800. Good for you. Welcome. Good to have you guys. Where do you all live? St. Louis, Missouri. All right. Good to have you. Fun. And how much debt have you paid? $150,800. Good for you. And how long did this take? Four years and three months.

All right. Good. And your range of income during that time? When we got married in April of 2018, we started at $140,000. And this past year, we're at just over $205,000. Cool. What do youall do for a living? I'm a senior recruiter for a technology company based in St. Louis. I worked for a said technology company in St. Louis as an IT project manager.

Were you recruited? By me. That's what I was asking, yeah. Wow. Yeah, definitely. Before or after you got married? Right before. He started like six months before he got married

oh wow okay so you recruited your own fiancee i know and now we have great jobs so we're very happy awesome that is cool very good move i'm just saying did you get any pushback from the company uh because he was your fiancee um if anything they liked him more because i feel like they really like me it was the team i was recruiting for um so she kind of greased the skids for him yeah she made it easy for him so welcome to the deal it's like having the older sister older brother in elementary school that actually got good grades then when you come in they expect you to get good grades so there you go all my friends are just my friends because of stacy So I get it. I mean, it's just the deal. You outmarried yourself.

That's a good look. Well done. Well done. I love it, you guys. So what kind of debt was this $151,000? We paid off our house. Woo! Love it.

Wow, you guys are killing it. So you get married in 2018, and the first order of business is knock out the house yeah actually um we were on a vacation shortly after we got um engaged which we could afford we've never really been bad at merit uh at money we just didn't really have a plan and so we were in park city with some friends and they mentioned they were reading your book um so we ordered it and then just kind of took off from there just like that we were already pretty good but this just tweaked a few things and boom, three years after marriage, our house was paid for. What's this house worth? $280,000

to $300,000, roughly. How old are you two? I just turned 32. 35. 32 and 35 with a paid-for house. That was our last debt-free screamer in the other hour. I know. There's a pattern. We're 32 and 34 with a paid-for house.

Golly, man. we're changing this nation oh yeah quick question on that do you guys worry much about inflation there's a direct correlation to that dave yeah not you know not having a house payment i'm not worried about inflation who knew who knew there you go you go. I'm not worried about the price of cars. I've got one. You know, it's just you guys. So cool. So cool. Well done, man. All right. So you read the book.

You're engaged. And you say, okay, when we get married, we're actually doing this. Did one of you already own this house? So we did not have a house at that point. Alex was debt free. I had like $7,000 on my car left. So after we finished the book, I just wrote a check. And then that pretty much put us in baby step B or three B. So we were planning the wedding, a honeymoon and saving for a house. Did all that early 2018, moved into the house, welcomed our first child in 2019.

And during that time, we paused everything, saved up cash for a mini whip, and then we welcomed our daughter. And then we had another daughter in 2021. And so when the youngest, Paige, turned seven months, we thought, why not pay off the house? There we go. Wrote our last mortgage payment. Just knock it out.

Now that we got this out of the way, let's get that out of the way. Wow. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. This is awesome. Way to go, you guys. Thank you. How's it feel to not have a payment in the world? It was great.

You don't owe anybody at the end of the day. So it's a great day. Yeah. Pretty fun. Yeah. And Dave, I just want to tell you, like, having a paid-for house is awesome, but I think you always try and capitalize on this during conversations with people, is take care of your family, life insurance, put together a trust. Like, that at the end of the day for us is so important.

We love knowing that if anything were to ever happen to us, that our kids are taken care of. So thank you for that direction. Oh, you're welcome. That's awesome. You're welcome. Did you all experience that with one of the parents or something or uh i did yeah yeah i'm sorry i saw the emotion so i knew i knew that wasn't my voice gave me away that's okay i knew i knew your heart did your heart i knew it was in an academic discussion

so good well that's that makes it real i I mean, and yeah, you've got to have the whole package together, and then you really are in the third pig house, the third little pig, the one that's in the brick house. And then when inflation comes, I was just being interviewed earlier today by a journalist who was asking me how people can survive inflation. And I said, well, you know, we've got to get out of the straw house now, the house of sticks, and move into the brick house, and that involves getting out of said, well, you know, we've got to get out of the straw house. Now the house of sticks and move into the brick house. And that involves getting out of debt, being on a budget.

And, uh, you're not bulletproof, but you're a lot closer, a lot closer. And the big bad wolf comes in pandemic, inflation, whatever world destabilization, whatever it is, all these things we worry about out there. Brick house is you guys are in a paid for house. You're 30 years old. You have two babies, great career. I mean, you really have got yourself set up. And then you do the wills and the trusts and the life insurance,

and then we know everybody's okay. Yeah, that's amazing. So, you know, Dave said this for so many years, decades. You know, if you live and give like no one else later, you can live and give like no one else. So we're looking at two people who've done that and now here you sit looking at the future to live and give like no one else i just i want to know what what is it what are you thinking about dreaming about yeah what's the first next big purchase you gotta have something what's the celebration

thing we're doing uh well we left the kids with grandma so we're celebrating in nashville good start yeah the refrigerator already has the next goal for us, which is save up and pay cash for the next house. There you go. Yeah, it's beautiful. I like it. I like it. The dream house.

I like it. I like it. Well done. So the house is worth, you said, $300? $280 to $300. $280 to $300. And how much is in your 401ks and IRAs? About $350.

Okay. All right. So, $37,000. Before you're 40, you're going to be baby steps millionaires then. That's the plan. And, you know, one of the reasons why we wanted to start all of this is because we didn't want to be 50 and look back and wonder, like, where did all of our money go? And so, you know, we feel so fortunate to know that we have this plan together and and we're moving up, and we are able to impact people's lives with giving, talking to people, and just being hopefully an inspiration to people who are listening as well. You guys are incredible.

We're so proud of you. Thank you. Very, very, very well done. Who's your biggest cheerleaders? We had Brian and Leslie, who were on the stage a few years ago, who paid off their house, two of our best friends, my mom, his sister, a lot of people cheering us on. Yeah, very good. Good for you guys.

Well, we got a copy of Baby Steps Millionaires for you. So you complete that journey. That's the next chapter in your story for sure. And you got a great story because you've chosen to make it a great story. You controlled the controllables, and that's what it's about. Very, very well done. Also, a copy of Total Money Makeover for you to give away on a ski trip where somebody has just started talking about this, and you never know. You may make them into a millionaire by doing that.

That's good stuff. I like it. All right, good stuff. Alex and Courtney from St. Louis. $151,000 paid off in four years and three months. House and everything. $32,000 and $35,000 making 32 and 35 making 140 to 205 they're a hundred percent debt-free you're rocking it count it down let's hear a debt-free scream three two

one we're dead free I love it. About as good as life gets right there. About as good as life gets. What a great young couple and a great start. Yeah. And here's the thing. It doesn't matter how old you are. You're listening to this, watching this right now.

You can do it. If you're 55, you can do it. If you're 45, you can do it. If you're 25, you can do it uh if you're 55 you can do it if you're 45 you can do it if you're 25 you can do it and if you're 32 and 35 four years and three months ago you can do it and they did it it's pretty incredible and it's one of the reasons we continue to do the debt-free screams even though there's literally thousands of them now on our youtube channel. You can just sit and watch Debt-Free Screams for days. Yeah, that's true.

Literally, days. Our YouTube channels, our podcasts are just exploding, you guys. Thank you so much. We now have over 1 billion downloads on the podcast with a B. That's just kind of bizarre to think about. This is The Ramsey personality, host of The Ken Coleman Show, author of the book From Paycheck to Purpose, is my co-host this hour as we talk to you about building wealth,

doing work you love, and creating actual amazing relationships. Andrew is with us. Andrew is in Durham, North Carolina. Hi, Andrew. How are you? Hey, hello. It's great to speak with you two gentlemen. Thank you very much. Our honor, sir. Yes. I'm a grandfather, mid-80s. My wife and I are well off financially. Actually, we've been debt-free for 30 years, and we visited your studio two years ago. Wonderful, wonderful experience. Here's my question. We have five young adult grandchildren.

One is 26, graduated college two years ago, summa cum laude, great Christian girl. She took a Christian internship that provided her a part-time job with some lawyers, and she finished the internship and went on to take the full-time position as a paralegal. So she's making, like in the mid-30s, she really dislikes the job. She loves writing, seems to have talent in that field. She wants to be in,, broadcasting. She has an opportunity to attend a one-year master's program at a well-regarded northern university. The cost is about $75,000. She'll get a $25,000 scholarship. She needs an additional $50,000 plus living costs. My concerns are this, she's never worked in the field that she's interested in, and I just wonder how important that would be in her career. We're thinking of helping, but maybe having some strings attached, maybe a loan from our family trust.

And I'm just wondering how you would guide her and my wife and myself to help her at the maximum ability. Wow. Fantastic question. So I think she needs to spend some time with people that are in broadcasting or journalism in the specific area that she's interested in. There might be two or three different lanes. And my advice would be to have her spend some time with them to learn the ins and outs. And what does a day look like? What does the financial path look like?

What does growth look like? Not just in position, but also in income. And then I would also challenge her to reconsider the prestigious university in the Northeast because nobody cares where a broadcaster went to school. They just don't. In fact, we don't even care where our doctors went to school by evidence of the fact that few of us ever ask where our doctors went to med school. And so the scholarship of $25,000 at a very prestigious school could probably be a full scholarship potentially, or certainly less money for you to give to her to further her education and get that experience. I will say in broadcasting, a degree is not required.

At the age of 33, I made a pivot to move into broadcasting, and I had to earn my way and figure out how to do it on the side and eventually got Dave Ramsey's attention. But there was no school or degree involved. It was just good old-fashioned learning how to do broadcasting, doing small things while having a day job. So I would say that in broadcasting, if she were to get a full ride or you were to pay a lot less money for a less prestigious school, but that one-year program got her some real-life

broadcasting experience in the form of internships and some premium placement, that could certainly help, but it's not necessary. So, yeah, Jay, I really appreciate your heart, Andrew. And the way you asked the question, the way you poised it is very loving, but it's also very wise and very practical, as would be expected from a man like you. The thing is this, okay, I have been in broadcasting for 30 years. I work with just about every major network that you see or hear on television or radio anywhere. I do interviews almost every week with someone outside of here, whether they be in New York or California or Atlanta or Durham, North Carolina even. And I got to tell you, I don't think that, as a matter of fact, I'm 100% positive that a master's degree is not necessary to be a writer and to be a journalist.

It's simply not. And it's certainly not worth $75,000 for a one-year program. There's no return on investment on that. The goal that your granddaughter has is a valid goal, and she has discovered or has been told a mistaken method to get to her goal. The ladder that she wants to use to get to her goal is the wrong ladder. It's not a necessary ladder, and it's super expensive. And so I don't know that as a grandpa you'll be able to talk her down off this thing.

She's probably all hyped up about going to this particular school. The prestige of it's got her all jazzed, and she's jonesed up with it. And she's got this idea that being a master's is you know having a master's is going to open all these doors and the truth is it just doesn't uh it doesn't you can either write and you get in there and you start writing and you write you learn to write copy and you learn to communicate uh verbally and you learn to work a stage or a camera or a microphone depending on which side of the thing you're going to be on and what part of broadcasting and journalism you're going to be involved in. But, you know, here's the other thing.

They don't make any money. It's not a big lucrative career. And so, I mean, if you're a writer for a major network in New York City, you make 50 or 60 grand, and you're 25, 26 years old, and they work you 80 hours a week. And so you can't justify a $75,000 additional expense to go do that. She's already got the skills to do it. And we work with those young people every day, and most of them are young people in these roles.

And they're writing the teleprompter for the script we're getting ready to do in the interview and most people don't follow it after they write it but it's done you know and so i don't know how you're going to talk her out of it but boy if you could you should because she's barking up the wrong tree she's getting ready to spend a whole bunch of money she doesn't need to spend to go do something she doesn't need to do to get to be who she wants to be yeah that and and i actually do know something about that you know we're actually right we're in the middle of it you know right well neither you or i have formal broadcasting training we just started doing it you stink at first you know i mean the number of people that we talk to that are behind the

scenes that are writers oh they're they're print reporters in journalism or they're script writers for shows uh and they're script writers for shows, and they're trying to build what we call produce a segment. That's correct. Meaning that we're working with Fox and Friends, and we're getting ready to go on Fox and Friends, and the producer that's producing the segment normally is 26 years old. Oh, yeah.

No masters. Well, I don't know if she or he's got a master's, but I have no indication that they do, and I have no care if they do. Neither does Steve Doocy when he stands in front of the camera. All he wants to know is, did we produce a segment where it makes it logical, it's cogent, the narrative is there, the story arc is there? Are we delivering in a concise manner and basic journalism rules? And, I mean, you can get that in a community college taking three writing labs outside of that dave the very first broadcasting and only broadcasting class i ever

took was 699 with a local tv and radio producer he was legit in atlanta and i was with a bunch of 20 somethings and i learned things in that six week course one night a week six weeks i learned things in that course that i still use today with you. And it's the basic fundamentals. So who can teach me what I actually need to learn is the question we ask. and the culture have misled about the last three generations and told them that where you go to school matters and that you always have to have more school no matter what and that ridiculous levels of education are necessary to pull off some of these basic jobs,

and they're not. She has a four-year degree. She's been a paralegal. She's already doing writing all day long. It's just boring, bad writing in the law office, you know? And so she's fine. Uh, I would tell her to go to work, go to work in the journalism field. She didn't like her job, change jobs and, and, and take, you know, take some night classes on writing. And, uh, that's what I would do. And I would not loan her money. Um, and I would not loan her money and I would not give her money

to do something that is a path that I don't believe is the correct path this is the Ramsey Show Dave here. You can find all of our shows with the Ramsey Network app on your smartphone. It's the only place to listen to the entire back catalog of episodes. Download the Ramsey Network app in your favorite app store today.