The Ramsey Show - App - It's Not Your Job To Be Your Customer's Mommy! (Hour 2)

Episode Date: May 11, 2021

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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, 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. Thank you for joining us. Christy Wright, Ramsey personality, number one best bestselling author of the book Business Boutique, is my co-host today as we take your questions about your life and about your money. We are open for business at Ramsey. We're here. And we're going to be there, too. And we're not going at yes.

And we're getting there. Yeah, I'm so excited to get back out on the road. We're launching Christy's Business Boutique event, which happens every fall here in Nashville. It goes on sale today. October 14th through the 16th. Mark your calendar. Go ahead and get your tickets. It does sell out every single year. But here's the great news.

You can join us here in Nashville in room, which I highly recommend because the energy in that room is unlike anything else that we do. A room full of 3,000 women. We are excited. We are chasing our dreams together. And then we're also going to do a live stream option. So you can join us either way. But we are going to have another incredible lineup of rock star speakers. We love giving you experts on the topics that you need help with the most. So sales, money management, marketing, social media, we want to give you everything you need to start or grow your business. So whether it's a side business, a small business, it's just you as a solopreneur or freelance worker, a home-based business, whatever that looks like for you, we want to give you the information and the inspiration that you need to win.

And Dave, you've spoken at this several years. This is one of those things that what happens in the room, what happens throughout those three days is more than just people getting the tactics and the plan. We give them that, but there's something that shifts in their belief about themselves. And I think that might be the most powerful part of it hope deferred makes the heart sick but when desire

comes it is the tree of life when you you see people come in questioning their hope yep and and the question gets answered yes it gets confirmed on these ladies that where they're going it's equipping women to make money doing what they love. The Business Boutique event, October 14th through 16th. Christy Wright, Anthony O'Neill, me. Jasmine Starr is a force of nature. Yes, she's spoken before. Yes, she's incredible.

Nona Jones, Bianca Oltoff. Oltoff, yep. What does Bianca do? She's a faith-based speaker. So in the Bible world, we love to have some sessions on faith and inspiration, and she's a brilliant Bible teacher. And so we love to wrap up Friday with that, and we're so excited. We haven't had her before. Nona Jones, she really leads the whole church division of Facebook.

She created it. And so she knows Facebook really well, knows social media. And then Jasmine Starr, she spoke, I think it was two years ago, but she brought the house down. And she's an expert on social media as well. And then, of course, we'll be hitting all those other topics between you, me, Anthony, and our other speakers. So it's a very well-rounded event. Three days, and it's only $119. Come to Nashville.

Make it a getaway. Make it a retreat for you. If you can't do that and you have to do live stream, it's $89 to do that. Text boutique to 33789. The other big event, boutique to 33789. The other big event is next week. Man, we're going to be May 16th through 19th. The Entree Leadership Summit is sold out.

But you can watch it as a live stream, and you're going to want to, because George W. Bush will be with us. Yes. That's going to be incredible. Jocko Willink, a retired U.S. Navy SEAL officer, will be with us, an incredible speaker, teacher on leadership. John Maxwell, one of the best-known leadership speakers, teachers, authors in America today. Craig Groeschel, founder and pastor of Life.Church, one of America's largest churches and a world-class leader in his own right.

All of these guys are good friends. They're all the people that I listen to, the people I listen to their podcasts, I read their books. Patrick Lencioni, we've been friends for years. This guy, the ideal team player is a game changer. The Advantage is a game changer. His new book, The Motive, is a game changer. Marcus Buckingham, Strength Finders, is a game changer. Dr. Adrienne Sternberg spoke here the other day at our offices and brought the

house down. She's a leadership expert and speaker. Be with us. Our Ramsey personalities, me, of course, Ken Coleman, Christy will be doing a session. Dr. John Deloney will be doing a session. It is going to be sold out. It is sold out. It's going to be a blown up deal i've got a room reserved here we've got 200 our 200 top leaders in our company are going to be spending all three days watching the live stream yeah and if you want to get the live stream for your team to watch you can do that. It's $1,350, and you can register. Text SUMMIT to 44222. This is one of the top three to five, maybe the top, experiential leadership events in the nation today. It is unbelievably powerful. Incredible way to invest in your team.

Yeah. You know, if you live stream this for your whole team, what we've seen in years past when business leaders and business owners do this is this event becomes a catalyst for transformative conversations. You begin to have different dialogue based on the sessions and what you learn. And it can really change your business because you all watch it and you're playing from the same playbook from the best of the best together. So it's so powerful to see the whole team get on the same page this way well it's what happens to us we it happens to us and we just and we put on the event but i mean we get pat lynch and he's ideal team player that construct on hiring the right kind of people you know hungry humble and smart and pat and i've talked about it here on the air and it's you know it just became part of the dialogue inside ramsey after that yes on, it's integrated into what we do.

How to lead and how to properly run, how to build culture inside your organization. I'm just finishing up Jocko's new book, and Jocko, man, he's on fire right now. His step-by-step cookies on a shelf where everybody can reach him, leadership ideas, are just like, I get it. I get it. Yeah. And it becomes part of your, leadership ideas are just like, I get it. I get it. Yeah. And it becomes part of your vernacular because you learn it, you adopt it, and before you know it, you forgot where you got it, but it just becomes part of who you are. Yeah. And that's what we want to do with you here.

And George W. was with us in Dallas a couple of years ago when we did this event. I did the interview. Ken Coleman will be doing the interview this year because it's bucket list for him, and i couldn't take it away from him so i've already done one so he gets to do this one but uh president bush is uh in a setting like that it will blow your mind yeah it just it will blow your mind so be sure you check it out you can uh text the word SUMMIT to 44222 if you want to participate in this live stream May 16 through 19 for your company, for your leadership team. SUMMIT to 44222. And, of course, if you want to come to Nashville, ladies, and be part of the Business Boutique, you text the word Boutique, the conference, Business Boutique Conference, you text the word boutique to 33789. 33789.

And, of course, you can just go to RamseySolutions.com and click on shows, and it'll drop down. It'll have the Business Boutique page on there. It'll have the Entree Leadership Summit page on there. The Master Series for Entree Leadership will be next fall. It's on there any of the events we're doing are always on there and available under the shows tab at ramsey solutions.com because when we do these things we go big we have a blast and i gotta tell y'all after 2020 we're ready to get back on some stages we are ready to get back out there with you guys we We miss you guys. And we're excited to do this. This is The Ramsey Show. Our famous $10 sale is back.

This time last year, a lot of folks got behind with their money. But this spring, there's hope. Our famous $10 sale can help you get control of your money and feel good about your future. Save big on over 40 best-selling books and budgeting tools that will help you stay in control of your money. Save up to 60% on our proven life-changing books such as The Total Money Makeover and Everyday Millionaires. These books will help you make a plan today to hit your money goals faster. So shop our $10 sale at our online store at RamseySolutions.com. That's not all. We've got a gift for you, too.

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Open phones at 888-825-5225. Sherry is in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Hi, Sherry. How are you? Hi there, Dave, Christy. Thank you so much for taking my phone call. How are you? Better than I deserve. How can we help?

Yes, I was calling because my husband and I, we make $152,000 a year. We're in baby step two, so we have $13,000 left for our car note. And then I have a $42,000 IRS bill that I pay $532 a month towards. For 2020, we get our taxes, and I got another $16,000 added to that bill. But I did take the reset. I attended that, and you set to identify the big bad wolf. And for me, that was the IRS, so I did share the estimated tax payments to them, so I won't have that issue anymore after 2020. So you have a hundred thousand

dollars in irs debt no no it is uh 42 plus 60 42 plus 16 16 okay i feel a little better i'm still can't breathe but i feel better okay yes okay yeah so So 58 on the IRS and 13 on a car. All right. I'm with you. Okay. And I have $7,000 in the emergency fund, which I know it should only be $1,000. So the reason why we have that is because we're down to one car, but I've been able to work with that because I see my clients' tele or Zoom, and if I need to see them when

I have the car Thursdays and Fridays, I'll use the card. So that's $6,000 extra. I want to know, should I leave it there, or should I put it towards that $13,000 to bring it down to $7,000, which is a number I like a lot better, or should I put it towards that new $16,000 IRS bill to bring that down to $10,000 because I wasn't sure if the IRS bill should be in a category by itself in the sense of urgency to get rid of it.

When is the $16,000 due? Is it from the filing you're getting ready to do? From 2020? Yes, because I filed, and I owe $16,000 for 2020. You've already filed? Yes. Before you had to? and I owe $16,000 for 2020. You've already filed? Yes. Before you had to?

Yes, because I knew I was going to owe because my husband, when we looked at his W-2, they only took out $380 for the whole year, so we knew we were going to be kind of messed up. I wanted to see how messed up I was going to be and start planning to pay them. Yeah, you could have done it all and not filed it, though, because you made the taxes due when you filed it. They weren't due until, it would be next week anyway. But, oh, geez. Well, your penalties and interest on that 16 are going to be mammoth.

I generally put the IRS at the top of the list. In this case, I'd put the 16 IRS at the top of your debt snowball, and i would attack it with a vengeance and let's get rid of it before it starts getting if you can get that cleared up within uh 90 days and you should be able to by putting this six towards it or seven towards it then then uh you get that out of your life then we'll go and knock out the car then we'll go and knock out the last irs one because you've got it on a payment plan but you're getting hammered by these people with penalties and with taxes so we generally put the irs at the top in this case i would put the 16 at the top because as you said

the urgency yes okay i will do that now you have corrected all of this there's no more tax problems no i got my time back and he told me exactly how much i need to be putting away you know so toy them i did my first one in april so they got paid i did my state and my city all the time estimated they were small but i don't know that one scripture i love the scriptures but when it said give fees or what do fees i felt they were getting too much but then i don't want to have to pay at the end of the year like I'm doing now. Well, you don't want to be penalized. You're going to be penalized if you don't pay the proper amount of,

and you're going to get hit with interest on these as well when you don't pay the proper amount of quarterly estimates, and you haven't been doing it for a while. Yes. Yeah, so you're paying, yeah, this is not about, this is more like if you want a scripture, be diligent to know the state of your flocks and herds, which means get your act together. That means get your act together. You know, you need to start paying the proper taxes at the proper time.

No more, but no less. Yes. And that would be your scripture to lean on. How does the payment plan work, Dave? Like for the 40, for example, you said there's interest on that? Oh, yeah. If someone gets on a payment plan because they don't have the taxes, the amount that's due, they can get on a payment plan, but there's going to be fees.

Yeah, there's going to be penalties and interest. And that 42 is just horrendous. I mean, it's horrible. If you could get a credit card and pay it off on a credit card, you'd be better off. Really? Wow. It's that bad. Wow. And you don't want the IRS, the kgb in your life right they just have unlimited power man to screw you up

and so yeah you really can't you know you're not going to have peace in your finances as long as you're monkeying with those people yeah so not only getting rid of the debt but also getting the right amount of taxes done at the right time in the right way and not depending on them to be competent or kind because they generally are neither. And I mean, there's people that work there that are occasionally, but in general, the agency is not. It is not their purpose in life to minister to your little heart. So our question today comes from blinds.com. They have a 100% satisfaction guarantee. That means even if you mismeasure, you pick the wrong color, they'll remake your window

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 Jennifer in Pennsylvania. I have a side hustle and charge a fair price for my product. Some of my customers are not financially secure and I feel bad taking their money. If I lower my prices, it wouldn't be worth my time to do it. How can I stop

feeling guilty for selling to them? So this is an interesting question. I hear that same phrasing, Dave. When I hear people talking about any type of sales, they say, I don't want to take people's money. Well, first of all, you're not taking people's money. They're giving it to you because of the value of the product or service you provide. But the other thing I would add to this is, if you're getting the wrong customer, you might need to look at your branding and your marketing to get a customer that can afford what you're doing. Because you can't do it at a lower price, you're already charging a fair price. Maybe there's something mixed up in your messaging that you are attracting customers that cannot pay what you're charging and they're not a good fit for you then. So you change your messaging to get a different customer that can afford the price that you're charging, which is fair to you.

What we tell people all the time, David, the price that you charge should be fair to you as a business owner and fair to the customer. It needs to be fair both ways. But this idea that you're responsible for their money management, you're not. But you may want to look at your marketing if you're getting a lot of pushback that, you know, these are not the right customers. There's not a right fit. What would you add? Yeah. Or what are you reading into that? I can't tell all that's going on here. Honestly, I'm just sitting here. But, you know, some of my customers are not financially secure,

and I feel bad taking their money. The grocery store where they buy food does not feel bad taking their money for the food. And they didn't rip them off. Now, if you're ripping them off, that's another thing. Right. Okay, you're not oppressing the poor. I mean, if you're a payday lender, you're screwing the poor. Right. off, that's another thing. You're not oppressing the poor. I mean, if you're a payday lender, you're screwing the poor. That's not good.

That's a horrible business. If that's what you're doing, then don't do that. And don't overcharge them. Don't oppress the poor. I don't know what you mean by not financially secure. Most Americans aren't financially secure. Just about everybody. And so I own a pizza place.

I don't. But, I mean, if you own a pizza place and you only sell to financially secure people, you may not sell many pizzas. Right, right. But it's not your job to be their mommy and their daddy and their nanny. That's right. And so your job is to sell pizzas. Right. And your job is to sell groceries right and your job sell groceries and

whatever it is you do uh but again now the other thing you can do is out of your profits when you set your price at a good fair price you can turn back around and say i'm going to donate a certain percentage of our goods or our services to someone that is truly in need. Right. And that generous heart is fine, but to adopt your whole business, or to build your whole business model around other people's decisions, you can't do that. Yeah. It's impossible to anticipate that.

Yeah. You're not responsible for it. This is The Ramsey Show. We'll see you next time. Christy Wright, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Matt is with us in Chicago. Hey, Matt, welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Thanks for having me on.

I appreciate you having me on. I'm able to ask these questions in part thanks to you, so I appreciate it. Sure. How can we help? Yeah. So to give you some context, I'm two years out of college, and I finally snowballed all my debt away as you know, as of the last six months. Way to go, dude.

How much did you pay off? Thank you. About $35,000, and $20,000 of that was my student loans, you know, the other half of my college. My parents picked up the buck on the first half, and the rest of it was just between you know moving expenses for you and uh paying off some car repairs and things like that congratulations well done so where does that bring us to today how can we help yeah so i mean today you know for me it was always you know discipline equals freedom i learned that from this great book i read and that's what got me to this point. And now that I have, you know, no debts, you know, now that I have that freedom, I'm looking at all the goals I want, you know,

the ring that, you know, my girlfriend soon to be, you know, wife in the next couple of years deserves and, you know, a new car on the horizon and, you know, a house, you know, down the road, being able to have money, you know, to share in my marriage to, you know, put on the table and contribute to that. And it's crazy because, you know, I almost feel like with the debt, it was easier because you could see it. And, you know, I climbed the mountain and I feel like a buffoon because there's just another huge mountain in front of me. And I don't know how to manage my money for myself

instead of managing it for my debt now. And I'm really just kind of lost, and I don't know how I start managing that money for myself with these kind of invisible goals. Well, they're not invisible. They're very tangible. This mountain is too big. You're acting like it's unattainable or something,

or it's invisible. They're not invisible. They're right in front of you. It's a ring. They're just not holding you hostage like the debt was. Yeah, whoa. You're acting like it's unattainable or something or it's invisible. They're not invisible. They're right in front of you. It's a ring. They're just not holding you hostage like the debt was. Yeah, that's the only difference. Nobody got a gun to your head anymore. Christy's right.

So, yeah, I mean, you're going to prioritize house, ring, car. In what order are we going to do this? And what are we going to spend on each and put a dollar amount beside it? Just as if you were paying off a debt. And then you just build up that savings and knock out that item. Build up that savings, knock out that item. Build up that savings, knock out that item. While you're working the baby steps, which you're at baby step four,

you're putting 15% of your income into retirement, and you have your emergency fund in place. And so, you know, if you've got a timeline on this ring or a timeline on this car, I'm guessing one of those two is the first of the three, and the other one is the second of the three, and the house is the last one. And you don't have to be in that big a hurry on the house, but everything above 15% we can find in the budget, we just pile in there. And you don't have to be as intense as you are getting out of debt, but you do need to

be intentional. And you also need to budget some money to enjoy your life while you're at these stages. And generosity. You know, it's interesting because I think when you're in debt, the debtors are, you know, all the people that have your debts are telling you when to pay, where to pay, and what the amount's going to be, right? Like, they hold you hostage. They tell you all the rules.

You have to play by their rules. Well, to Matt's point, now he's free and he has these goals and he gets to decide the amount and the timeline. And that's exciting, but it can also be intimidating. So, Dave, I'm curious when it comes to buying a ring, buying a car, do you have guidelines on percentage of income or a certain amount or that type of thing in terms of to give Matt some guidance of like, here's what I would recommend, or is it just kind of whatever, you know, he could obviously cash flow and what he's comfortable with. Number one, where we pay cash, or we don't do it. Right. On a ring, one time your salary, one month, one month's of salary is plenty.

One month's of income is plenty. That's plenty big enough ring. There is, you know, there is no correlation statistically in any piece of research between the size of the ring and the quality of the marriage. As a matter of fact, at a certain point, the size of the ring might have an inverse correlation. The opposite. But the, you know, we got married on a.23. It's in the safe now. She's got a headlight on her hands now.

But we got married on a.23 carat. I mean, it's a tiny little speck of a diamond. $1,166. And big dollars. And it's a tiny little speck of a diamond 1166 bucks and uh big dollars and there's a lot of money back then uh and i probably paid too much for it but anyway i did and so you can do whatever you want to do there but that's a good guideline and as we all know on the show we talk about don't buy cars that are worth more than half your annual income uh things with motors wheels and uh whatever they go zoom zoom you just not not more than half your annual income tied up because they go down in value and don't get caught up in

a ring of diamonds or investments they're not i bought a bunch of them for miss sharon over the years and they just don't go up in value it's just a bunch of crap the only thing i bought them for is for her i didn't they're not investments it's not like a dude's getting rich on diamonds not even not even close quite the opposite as a matter of fact so not not the deal so yeah and you know certainly on a house the more you can save the better yeah because the quicker we get it paid off yeah it's an interesting question though because it's like oh man i'm so used to following everybody else's rules now i get to make my own rules set my amount my timeline my goals this is where the budget comes into play because you budget for

entertainment you budget for fun you budget for entertainment. You budget for fun. You budget for generosity. And you budget for savings towards these individual goals. Yeah. And so you still have a game plan. Yeah. And, you know, we used to laugh and say, you know, we're planning our impulses. Yeah, yeah.

You know, because, you know, we're going to set some money aside for random acts of generosity and just catch somebody and, you know, buy their coffee, buy their groceries, pay their meal, you know, whatever, just do something, just have some pocket money for that. And so budget for that, put that stuff in there. Yeah, that's the discipline he was talking about, right? Like the budget is the discipline that gives you the freedom to spend what you want to spend where you want to spend it. It really is.

And it's not like some kind of constrictive discipline because you get to set the rules. Yeah. You get to decide how much you're going to put in generosity, how much you're going to save towards the ring. You get to decide this. So the difference is you're not being held hostage, like you said, by the debt. Garland is in Baltimore. Hi, Garland.

How are you? I'm good, Dave. Hi, Christy. Hi. You're one of my faves because I'm a woman business owner. Awesome. I live in a different world than my brother. My father died in January due to COVID.

Sorry. Yeah. He was 97, so he had a long, wonderful life. My question is, he left me an inheritance and I'm living on disability right now and just got approved. I've been living on basically nothing for the last two years because, you know, I was waiting on the disability and that whole process. My question is, he told me that I should put my money, my inheritance into an investment and receive a monthly stipend and get a mortgage because the mortgage rates are so low.

And I already know what you're going to say, probably. How much is your inheritance? It's $200,000. How old are you? I am 56. What's the nature of your disability? It's both mental and physical. I have fibromyalgia and ptsd and major depressive disorder

i'm sorry so i have good days and i have not so good days so i can do like some things at home i do handspun wool i make sweaters hats so two hundred thousand dollars invested at ten percent is twenty thousand dollars a year it's fifteen sixteen hundred,500, $1,600 a month. Right. And you're not buying a house in Baltimore on that. No, no, no, no. I live in the country, really. That's the closest city. Oh. Down on the Delmarva Peninsula.

I mean, if you can get a very inexpensive home, you can pull that off. But this nest egg, you cannot take anything off of the $200,000 unless it earns it. Right. And I don't think you're going to qualify for a mortgage. Right. So my whole thing was, I'm debt-free. I know how to live on a budget. How cheap a house could you buy?

I was thinking about getting some land and putting, like, one of those barn dominiums on it. No, I don't think you need to build anything. You're disabled and got all these other things going on. You need to just buy something. If you're going to buy something, if you can buy something for $100, pay cash, put the other $100 in investments. If you can pull that off, that's what I would look at doing. Wow. You got a lot going on, kiddo.

Hope that gives you a start. Christy Wright, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Mary's in Chattanooga. Hi, Mary. How are you? Hi, Dave and Chrissy. I'm a nervous wreck. How are you?

Oh, I'm glad you're here. You're okay. No trouble. We've never lost a patient. You'll be okay. I love it when you say that. I've been to watch podcasts like this. Yeah, there's actually a app called Podcast Addict, which is a reason it's called Podcast Addict.

It's quite addictive. Well, thank you. How can we help today, hon? Well, crisis mode. I guess we call that storm mode. And I just got my top-end credit report. It is 30 years of wreckage. Student loans, student loans, student loans, credit cards, credit cards, credit cards, et cetera, to the tune of about $42,000.

And $42,000 to me is like a bazillion grand right now because I'm in a budget where I'm like in a budget freeze, if you will. There's not enough money to go around at all. What do you make? Well, I'm on disability. I get $794 a month to cover everything. My rent takes $620, so the math is not good right now. Sean, I'm sorry.

You have how much coming in on disability? $794 a month, about $9,000 a year, $8,000 to $9,000 a year. And rent right now where I'm paying is $620 a month, which is about $6,000 plus a year. So how are you eating? Yeah, how are you living on that? Well, I'm eating a lot and minimal very much um and shopping in my pantry when i have one um uh food banks once a month we get a food bank delivery once a month um yeah i don't

have transportation and job i'm trying to just try and address what i can i'm you know i'm just trying to figure this whole how do i get a job how do i get on my feet how do i get myself this book has like i got this book and read the total money makeover an eight hour straight with party breaks ensued. And, um, that was a humor still, but, um, yeah, I'm just really stressed out. Um, this has separated my marriage. It's just caused it's just been a disaster this past 12 months. I've been, I've lost four relatives, a friend, and my spouse is separated from me right now. So it's not a good year.

That was even, I didn't even, so it's not a good year. I'm sorry. COVID never even came on the radar. I was done with everything else and trying to do this. How old are you? Yeah, I don't. 51. What's the nature of your disability? Mental and physical.

PTSD, chronic back pain. So I'm trying to find something I can do, cope with, and survive. Yeah, when did you hurt your back? Well, I've got four grown kids. I've had a set of twins. I did a lot of inappropriate, I guess we call, posture issues with lifting and bending. I've been a factory worker. I've just done everything from retail to fast food to just work really hard um understand within the last four years in 2016 i went into treatment i've had four years penis over now so that's changed my life and apparently woke up my

wake-up call to my budget congratulations my butt my butt my budget was out of shape, too. Hey, wait a minute. Stop a minute. You've been dry how long? 8, 29, 16. Way to go. I'm proud of you. That's a big deal. It was that story in the big book, page 289, Fear of Fear, when I thought it was my husband and it was an alcoholic and it was me, and it was the thing I never wanted to be because I grew up around that all over the place.

It's all over my family. I'm proud of you. So that's a win. Let's mark that down in the win column because you've got a bunch of stuff in the lose column right now. We need a few things in the win column. That was all my higher power. I had very little to do with it except for I celebrated the birthday. I didn't create myself, but I'm celebrating.

So here's what you've got to do. You need to start laying out small goals, very, very small goals that you can do, like the one-day-at-a-time idea, okay? And we're going to just do that with the money side of things and with the career side of things. So what we've got to do is we have to move you towards an income. So we're going to send you a copy of Christie's book, Business Boutique, because I think that probably the best way to work around a bad back

and all the things you've had coming at you is to come up with an idea that you do as a small business that you can do with these limitations. But a lot of people, their very limitations lead them to their best career ever. Yes, yeah. And while we're at it, Dave, let's send her a live stream ticket to Business Boutique. I think that might just be the injection of hope that she needs right now in this season of life. Yeah, it'll come up in October, and you'll be able to watch that we can do both of those things and then mary the other thing i want you to do is um it it just listening to your voice and all the things that have come at you in the last couple

of years while you've remained sober congratulations again yes but i mean you've got a marriage issue you've lost family and friends you've definitely got an income issue. You're definitely struggling on the whole money piece. But there's not a magic pill for $700 income. So we've got to do something that changes that for you to have a prosperous future. Because the 620 rent is not out of line until you tell me you only have 700 coming in. So we've got to buy lights and food and water. And we take care of food and lights and water before we take care of anything else and rent

before we take care of anything else. So I think you're going to need more community in your life than you have had and a higher quality community. And if you haven't searched out and plugged into a good church in your area um i think a great church in your area would consider it an honor to walk alongside you and help you with some of these transitions and some of these uh things that you've got to get started but you got to have somebody with their arm around you a little bit saying you can do it on a daily basis and And I'm not going to be able to do that every day from the radio other than just continue to put the podcast out.

But you're going to have to change something that creates an income. And in order to do that, you're going to have to have healed more from a lot of these blows you've taken. And you've taken some serious blows so uh and it is normal to be hurting when you go through all the things you've been through yeah the other thing i would say dave is as she does this as she starts to create more income i believe it's going to inject hope and confidence into how she approaches everything because you can just hear it in her voice she's just just down. She's just down and discouraged and defeated and this is wrong and this is wrong.

I mean, she just breezed past being sober that long. And so just continue to build on the wins, add to the wins column. I love the way, even the visual of that. And then when you start getting some income, whatever that is, whether it's a home, you know, a work from home situation, a part-time job, a side business from home,

whatever that looks like for you, I think that's going to do a world not only for your finances, but for your confidence. Like, okay, I can do this. I can get myself back. I can get my life back. I can get it together. And that's going to help how you give you the momentum to attack the next goal, the next step, the next thing, and propel you forward.

Yeah, I've got several friends. I've got two good friends that have unbelievably, three, that have unbelievably painful chronic back pain. 24-7 they hurt, 24-7. And it's very real. But even they find something they can do through the fog of the pain. And, you know, we had a young couple on here earlier that was making $3,000 a month doing Uber Eats 20 hours a week. Right.

And so just get in the car and go deliver food. Right. I mean, it's not a big mental strain. But $3,000, it changed your freaking world, girl. Right, right. It changed your world. And so that's the kind of stuff I want you to be thinking about. Anything like that to just get yourself, get your back up against the wall and get yourself away from that wall a little bit, get the wolf pushback. And so we'll send you Christy's book.

I'm also going to send you her devotional, 40 Days Back to You, because as you said, your higher power, God carried you through this process on being sober, and that's just so vital. And, honey, you call us back if you need help as you go through this, but what your biggest crisis is is your income crisis, and all of the blows that you've taken are affecting your ability because you're human. You're hurting to see your potential income out there. And it's not Pollyanna. And in the meantime, get some community around you.

Get a church to help you. They'll help you. There's great churches in Chattanooga, Tennessee, lots of great churches. So you hold on. Kelly will pick up and we'll send you the devotional and the business boutique book and a ticket to the live stream as well. But that's not till October. So she's got to do something before October for sure. So good question, Mary. Thank you for calling, honey. And you call again if you need some phone screener for The Ramsey Show.

If you would like to do your debt-free scream live on the show, make sure you visit theramseyshow.com and register. We would love for you to come to Nashville and tell Dave your story.