The Ramsey Show - App - It's Time to Give, Invest and Enjoy Your Money (Hour 3)
Episode Date: April 16, 2019Get Started on Your Debt-Free Journey We’ve made it even easier to get started taking control of your money. Learn How! How Fast Can You Be Debt-Free? You don’t have to be in debt for the res...t of your life! Answer 5 simple questions and our Debt Calculator will show you how quickly you could be out debt! Get the Complete Guide to Budgeting. Budgeting is often misunderstood and overcomplicated. It doesn't have to be! We made it simple. After 90 days of budgeting with EveryDollar, 9 out of 10 users feel more confident in their financial future. Get the Complete Guide to Budgeting. Get the Coverage You Need. How does your coverage stack up? This Coverage Checkup will show you what you need (and don’t need), which questions to ask, and where to get the best coverage. Find the Right Financial Advisor. Finding the right financial advisor doesn't have to be complicated. Our free guide makes it easy to know what questions to ask so you can make a confident choice. Get the guide! Listen and Watch Anytime, Anywhere. The Dave Ramsey Show app lets you download episodes for offline playback, customize your content, and see what’s coming up!
Transcript
Discussion (0)
🎵 Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios,
it's the Dave Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage
has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol
of choice.
I am Dave Ramsey, your host.
Thanks for joining us.
Open phones at 888-825-5225, 888-825-5225.
Chris is starting off this hour in Wilmington, Delaware.
Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show, Chris.
Hi, Dave.
Hey, what's up?
My question is, I'm 25, three years out of college.
I was extremely lucky to have a grandfather that paid for my college,
and I was extremely stupid by majoring in philosophy.
I want to go back to school for finance and actually start an actual career, but I don't want to go into debt.
I don't have much money to my name, and I'm just wondering what I should do.
Okay. What do you do for a living?
I'm a glorified paper scanner.
Okay. What do you make?
20 grand. Okay. Working 40 hours yes cool okay so you want to
study finance where did you graduate with your uh undergrad before uh university of delaware
okay cool so have you done any investigation as to how much of your BA. You've been out two years, you said, right?
About three.
Three, okay.
I'm wondering if some of your philosophy degree,
we can't just make this a double major,
and you go back and like your first two years are probably out of the way,
and you add a couple of years, 18 months of finance classes to it
and get a second major.
Have you investigated any of that?
A bit.
It seems like not a lot carries over, but a bit.
It would save me a couple grand.
A couple of, well, I'm talking about years.
Yeah, it saves me about maybe a year at most.
Wow, Okay.
Yeah.
I think I would get into the University of Delaware and sit down with someone in the administration there and tell them what you're trying to do and see if you can't figure out a way that you get a little better overlap than that.
That sounds ridiculous to me.
Yeah.
I mean, the first two years of most undergraduate degrees are cut and paste.
Right, yeah.
And so, you know, the idea that a lot of the core stuff you took a couple years back,
getting this other degree wouldn't apply to the second degree from the same exact university,
sounds kind of weird to me.
So I really want to dig into that.
Yeah, that changes the equation because it's the money you need.
So what's it cost to go to the University of Delaware in a year?
About $20,000.
Not tuition, is it?
The tuition's that much?
Actually, no, I'm sorry.
That's for room and board, too, so about $13,000.
Okay.
Are you living in that area now?
Yes.
Okay. And so room and board area now? Yes. Okay.
And so room and board would be you'd move back into a dorm?
No, no, I wouldn't do that.
So it would be about $13,000 for just tuition.
Gotcha.
Okay.
All right.
And so let's pretend we need two years of $13,000.
Okay.
That's a little over $1,000 a month.
Okay.
Okay, and you need two years of that, so you need $26,000, right?
Right.
Okay.
I'm thinking you can get this other part worked out.
I'm just going to go with that as our scenario.
So what you would need to do is to create a side hustle for the next six or eight or ten months
until you get ready to start back,
and then you're going to have to work your butt off while you're there
because you've got to make a living
and have $13,000, $1,000 a month, roughly, extra.
Okay.
So you have to eat, pay lights and water, and pay the rent.
You're not going to have money to party, and you're going to school and working all the time,
so you ain't got time to party.
And so you're going to work your tail end off for approximately two and a half years,
and you'll come out with a finance degree at 27 or 28 years old.
If that's the direction you want to go i think that's a
wonderful thing to do but that's going to involve a side hustle of some kind um i don't care if
it's delivering pizzas or driving uber or what but you're going to be making 1500 to 2000 a month on
the side and going to school and making enough to live in addition to that, right?
Right.
So that's how you lay it out.
So you need to gather up more pieces of information around this decision
in order to lay out a reasonable projection that this is going to work out for you.
And the pieces are we've got to go have a physical meeting with someone in the administration
at the University of Delaware and lay out exactly to the letter what I have to do.
It's an exact number of classes.
They have an exact cost to them over an exact period of time.
Then you lay that down on a timeline and you say, okay, that's my expenses.
Now, and so what is my revenue needs?
Well, what's my minimum budget to eat, keep the lights on, have rent with a roommate or
whatever I got to do?
Or can I move back in with my parents for a short period of time?
Whatever you can do to have the minimum existence, and then I need the tuition and the books above that during that exact period of time that it takes to execute this plan.
And that will tell you, but roughly, I think we've laid it out here.
I mean, we know it's $13,000 a year, and you've got to lay out your existence, what that takes.
But you don't need much of an existence.
You just need to exist.
Because we're paying a price so that the 37-year-old you really likes the decision that the 25-year-old made.
And, you know, you want the 40-year-old you to like the 25-year-old you and the decisions that you made.
Because right now the 25-year-old you doesn't like the 18-year-old you and the decisions that you made. Because right now, the 25-year-old you doesn't like the 18-year-old you
and the decisions he made on his education.
That's what you said.
And so we want to reverse that trend.
And the way we do that is we lay out a very detailed game plan
because no one wins at anything by accident.
And the more detail that you lay out here,
the better you're going to be at finance for one thing.
But the higher the likelihood is that you graduate successfully with no debt and that you graduate and that you eat and you don't get evicted during that time.
So you lay out the exact plan and then you execute the plan.
Let's put a bow on this thing.
Jim is in Duluth, Minnesota.
We're going to come back to Jim after the commercial break here.
In the meantime, I want to remind you that your income is your greatest wealth-building tool,
and that is what we found in our millionaire study.
It revealed that 96% of millionaires love their careers.
And just like that young man I'm talking to there, he's going to change careers.
He didn't like his field of study.
Our brand new book, The Proximity Principle by Ramsey Personality, Ken Coleman,
the proven strategy that will lead you to the career you love,
will show you exactly how to do that to find your dream job.
Never been a better time to find the perfect job
because there's more jobs available than people who are unemployed right now.
Pre-order The Proximity Principle today, $19.99, and get $20 in free bonus items.
It comes out in just a couple of weeks in May.
Go on online store at kincolman.com, davramsey.com, or call 8, helps Christian families, churches, and ministries join together as the body of Christ to share their major health care costs.
Christian Health Care Ministries is the original health cost-sharing ministry.
A Better Business Bureau-accredited organization, CHM members share
to pay each other's medical bills. It's not insurance. It's Christians financially and
spiritually supporting each other. It's what Christian Healthcare Ministries has done for
over 35 years, and our members have shared over $2.5 billion in medical bills. To learn more, visit chministries.org. That's chministries.org.
Christian Healthcare Ministries is a proud sponsor of Dave Ramsey Live Events. chministries.org. Now Jim is with us from Duluth, Minnesota.
Hi, Jim. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show.
Hi, Dave. It's an honor to speak to you.
You too, sir. How can I help?
So I just wanted to say also I had the pleasure of attending your smart money
conference in lionel lakes minnesota with uh mr hogan and miss cruz uh last fall and appreciated
you adding the frozen tundra to your uh route that you guys did well thank you thank you they
enjoyed being there it was a great crowd they said how can i help so um i have a lump sum of
money coming in uh sometime mid-summer.
I didn't even know about an accident at work.
They basically sent out a crane that had failed inspection.
I used it, and it went down, and I broke my shoulder and had some injuries.
And didn't know the rest of this was something they went through,
but I'm going to end up with about $70,000.
Whoa.
Yeah.
Are you okay now?
I am.
Have all the medical bills been paid?
They took care of all that, and there was an 8- or 12-week recovery process, and I'm good.
So you're back to work, and all the bills are paid, so this is found money.
It's extra money.
Yes.
Wow. What's extra money. Yes. Wow.
What's your household income?
Well, normally my standard is about $105,000, my wife and I.
And when we were in step two, we wrapped up to about $160,000.
And I've dialed down the gazelle a little bit.
We're probably about $130,000 right now.
Cool.
Okay.
So what baby step are you on?
Four, five, and six. Excellent. Well done. So this is nice. What a little bit. Sure. We're probably about 130 right now. Yeah, cool. Okay, so what baby step are you on? Four, five, and six.
Excellent.
Well done.
So this is nice.
Well, actually, four and six, we have one kid left, and that's already taken care of.
Okay.
So we are doing the 15%.
My three scenarios I wanted to throw out.
So I have a house that's worth about $375.
We owe about $200,000 on it.
And we're beating up on that pretty bad.
I have two rentals.
One was original.
You know, they both originally had, but now one's paid for.
One we have about $50,000 left.
They're both worth about $100,000.
And then the last thing, I want to get a 57 chevy oh cool so that's kind of where we're
at is i have this lump sum coming in and my wife and i discussed and said we've always talked about
getting this car but is a smart thing to you know we throw 70 at the house now we're at 130 if we
pay off the rental that's paid for and we have 20 left or
we get to 57 which if real nice the one we're kind of looking at would be you know 40 45 and
we'd have another 30 to decide to do something with but with this phone money what's the smart
thing to do uh okay we have about uh we're about, besides the equity and all the stuff I said,
just with our 401s and our Roths and stuff is around a half a million right now,
and we're both 48.
So heading towards, we're almost millionaires with, you know,
if you add all that equity and stuff.
And your other two cars are worth what?
Yeah, $10,000 or $15,000.
I got a 2012 Silverado.
She's got a 2012 SUV paid for.
Okay.
If I were you, I would buy it.
Perfect.
And I'd probably throw the rest of it at the rental and then finish the rental off in about 12 months.
And then you're debt-free except your house.
And that increases cash flow going everywhere,
and then let's just knock the house out probably another three years.
Perfect.
That's kind of what we were hoping you'd say, but, yeah.
Otherwise, the car was seven years down the road.
No, I'm not.
I think you're okay because you're not.
I mean, if it was $100,000, we'd have to give pause.
I'm a little shocked it's that high, but it can be.
It depends on what you're buying.
But I've got a 60 Corvette 1960 that's a frame-up restoration and an engine and transmission replace and rebuild.
And I've got more than that in it.
But, you know, so it just depends.
You know, you get into those cars, there's all kinds of levels of condition and redo,
and whether you're after original or whether you're after a hot rod or whatever.
But the 57 is a classic.
I mean, that's the American pie car, right?
I mean, it's just a beast.
And you're not old enough to even know what that car is.
So you're just looking at the iconic stuff, huh?
Yeah.
Well, I've wanted one since I think my uncle had one when I was in high school.
And I used to bounce around in the backseat with no seatbelt on, and I fell in love with it.
And I always wanted one.
You could play football in the backseat of that car.
It's a football field back there.
Office of Lineman Road in the trunk.
Yeah, really?
For real? Yeah. Jim, you've done a great field back there. Offensive lineman rode in the trunk. Yeah, really, for real.
Yeah, Jim, you've done a great job with money.
And reminder to our audience, there's three things you do with money.
You give it, you invest it, and you enjoy it.
And the rule on enjoying it that Jim and I are applying to his situation is
we're looking at his income, how he's doing towards his goals,
and his net worth, and
what his trend line is
like five and ten years out.
And this car is a
small potato
on the plate.
If it takes up the whole plate,
then it's a little
boy misbehaving.
But since it's not, it's just making a grown man smile.
Fair enough?
Yes, sir.
Thank you, Jim.
Appreciate the call.
Open phones at 888-825-5225.
Mary Ann is in Fort Myers, Florida.
Hi, Mary Ann.
Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show.
Hi, Dave.
Thank you for taking my call today.
Sure.
What's up?
Okay.
My husband and I recently read
the Total Money Makeover,
and we're trying to figure out
how to apply it to our situation.
So currently my husband,
through his job,
we are on year six out of ten
of public student loans forgiveness.
We have $115,000 left of student loans. At one point, we didn't know whether we would be
staying in the PSLF position. So over three years,
we paid off about $270,000.
Who's the doctor?
My husband. Okay. So what's your household income?
It's $190.
And you have student loans left of how much?
Of $115.
Okay.
So you weren't on the 10-year student loan forgiveness, were you?
We were, yeah.
Really?
I'm shocked.
Yeah.
Because most of the docs have the ability to serve in an underserved area and get pretty substantial relief in three and five years.
And so you didn't do that one.
Okay.
So you said how much is left in student loans?
There's $115,000.
With a $190,000 income.
All right.
And your question's what?
So now that our situation has changed, because at one point we didn't know whether we would stay in the PSL position,
now we feel like maybe there's a chance we could complete the other four years of PSLF.
However, we kind of just want to get debt-free.
I would.
We want it behind us.
I would.
I'd just clean it up.
It's not worth sitting around and waiting on somebody to fix it.
You guys have the income.
I'm with you.
I would just fix it. You guys have the income. I'm with you. I would just fix it.
One thing, though, one of the things that we're considering is we live in a place where the rent is kind of high.
We don't have any other debt.
We don't own a home.
We don't have any car debt.
We don't have any credit card debt.
But the rent is kind of high, so we were wanting to buy a home.
I wouldn't until I got the student loan cleared.
Okay.
But you make enough to clear it in two years.
Easy.
Easy.
That's $50,000.
Right.
Out of $190,000.
You have to live on $140,000?
You're killing me here.
Yeah.
If you need to rent something cheaper for two years in order to be debt-free in order to buy,
that might be a move to make.
I don't know what you're spending on rent, but let's clean up this debt.
Let's get the emergency fund in place, and then let's save and buy a house,
and let's live our lives.
You make a wonderful income.
You're almost there.
Finish it up, and do it with great focused intensity.
Really move the needle here, and you can do this stuff.
You can do it.
Very well done.
Thanks for the call.
Kelly is in the Ramsey Baby Steps community.
It is a private Facebook community that you're allowed to join, the Ramsey Baby Steps community. It is a private Facebook community that you're allowed to join,
the Ramsey Baby Steps community.
Should I make multiple smaller payments
throughout the month
or one big payment
on the debt I'm working on?
One big payment.
There's no benefit
to smaller payments at all.
Almost all debt,
the interest is calculated
only once a month.
It is not calculated daily.
It's not compounded daily.
It's compounded monthly.
And so just clear it one time as fast as you can every single month,
as big as you can on your smallest debt to your largest. The last thing I want you to feel is buyer's remorse,
especially when you offered thousands more on a new home to win a bidding war.
If I've taught you anything, it's that blindly throwing money at a problem is a stupid plan
and something you'll regret for years.
The key to avoiding this rookie mistake is to call Churchill Mortgage and get certified.
This easy program puts you miles ahead of your competition because you are pre-underwritten.
Your interest rate is secured, and yes, you can close within 14 days.
Don't fall into the trap of offering more money just to compensate for a poor plan.
Call Churchill Mortgage today and get certified.
Call 888-LOAN-200 or visit churchillmortgage.com.
This is a paid advertisement.
NMLS ID 1591.
NMLS ConsumerAccess.org.
Equal housing lender.
761 Old Hickory Boulevard, Brentwood, Tennessee, 37027.
Thanks for joining us, America.
We're glad you are here.
Savannah is in Baltimore, Maryland.
Hey, Savannah, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show.
Hey, Dave, thank you so much for taking my call.
Sure, what's up?
So my fiance and I are both active duty military.
We are both going through your baby steps individually
and plan on being debt-free at the end of the year.
So we're really excited about that.
And we're going to cash flow our wedding at the end of the year as well.
Cool.
My question is, I currently live in an RV.
It's paid for.
But I'm wondering if we planned on, when I move down, when we're able to actually co-locate and live together,
us either live in that RV for about six months to a year,
and that way we can save up and build our emergency fund
and then money for a down payment.
Or should we just sell the RV
and put that toward our emergency fund to kind of kick-start it?
Well, there's not a wrong answer in terms of, like,
one of them's not stupid and one is smart or something like that.
It's a matter of personal taste is what it amounts to.
The, you know, it could be looked at as an adventure in your first year of marriage to be living in an RV and something fun that you all love doing.
And it's just, you know, you see this as a fun thing.
If you see it as, or he sees it as drudgery,
then I wouldn't put that strain on a young marriage.
It's not my thing, so I wouldn't do it.
But I think that's just a matter of taste.
That doesn't mean you're tasteless and I have taste.
It's just I'm not an RV guy, you know, and that would not be an adventure to me, you know.
But if you all say, hey, we want to travel a little bit.
We're going to use this thing.
We're going to, you know, use our first year of marriage as an adventure,
and we're going to live in this, save some money and move the thing around and so forth.
But if you look back on it as cold and dreary and hateful and all that, then no, I wouldn't do that.
I would just sell it, use it to jumpstart your emergence.
Unless there's a real sense of adventure in both of you that you see this as something like when you talk about it,
it makes you smile kind of thing.
Then I would, if it's not that, then I would sell it.
It's kind of like I want to go backpacking in Europe for three months or something.
You know, it's kind of that kind of thing, right?
That's people say.
I wouldn't do that either, but, you know, but I'm 60, so almost.
So that doesn't make any sense at all.
But so you see what I'm saying, though.
If you want to take like your first year of marriage and do some adventurous things and that's the type of
thing it falls in that category that bucket yeah i might uh i wouldn't do it just because of the
saved money it's not going to make that much difference i think it's more important that
the two of you have a wonderful first year of marriage and quality time together
than it is that you save a couple nickels in that process.
The difference in that, so I would sell it, put the money in the emergency fund,
rent something inexpensive where you're focusing on each other in your first year of marriage,
not on your housing issues.
And so that's how I would look at it.
If it's going to be a big deal, problem, child,
stay away from it. Daniel is in San Diego. Hi, Daniel. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show.
Hey, thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up?
My wife and I were recently approached by a couple whom we met at church. They told us about
Amway and the Worldwide Group, which is in the
business to train and educate independent business owners to be successful in their Amway business.
Now, I know Amway is not a scam, so to speak, but I do have major concerns based on the fact that
there's just so much negative press on Amway on the internet. So, I mean, I can totally meet someone
for the first time, tell them about Amway,
and they'll probably do a Google search on Amway and find a bunch of negative press on it.
So, although Amway might be a good opportunity, do you feel it's a bad idea based on the fact that there's so many people against it?
No, there's so many people against everything.
It is multi-level marketing in general is very polarizing.
And so any multi-level marketing group that you got involved in, you would find very, very negative things.
And then the people that are involved are almost cult-like in their enthusiasm for it.
So there's nobody kind of in the middle that's just kind of like, eh, nobody does that.
Everybody's got a negative opinion or a positive opinion, and that's what you're going to run into.
And so the thing is, what you've got to decide is what you want to do with your life.
The mistake sometimes people make getting into multi-level
is that they're sold the dream so to speak and they get into multi-level just for the money
and um and you don't want to do that you always want to pick your career based on is it a fit
for you and then go live your life appropriately now i have friends that have been in probably have
five friends or more that make a million dollars a year or more or have made that in the past in
multi-level uh but they are very uh promotional uh individuals they're um uh very driven they are um they have evolved into
excellent recruiters and managers of large numbers of people that turn over frequently
the the nature of the multi-level is to make money to make real money like six figures and beyond you have
to be a master recruiter motivator trainer of salespeople you are constantly adding because
they turn over like underwear i mean it's got a huge turnover ratio and so you've got to be really
really good at recruiting and training salespeople in mass, ongoing.
And if you can do that, you can make good money in multi-level.
And if you get in one that the product line is actually solid, then there's no shame in it.
But all of us have been approached by someone who would not take no for an answer,
and they damage their relationship with you.
So you've got to have a little class about it if you're going to be in it.
Because, for instance, I'm not in multilevel,
and I'm highly successful, and I'm not getting in multilevel.
And so, you know, for you to treat me like I'm some kind of an idiot
because I won't join your thing is going to damage our relationship.
Agreed?
Are you there?
Yes, I'm here.
Okay.
And so that, you know, you've got to think about how you're going to approach it.
And then the second thing is, are you looking to be a sales manager?
Is that what you want to do with your life?
And there's nothing wrong with that i mean i i if
if that's if that's motivating to you and you think that's going to be fun and you you're a
real people person and you get energy from people then you're going to enjoy that uh right but but
if you you know if you're a an accountant and a high detail person and a highly introverted um you're going to really
struggle with this got it so that's what you're looking for and uh i am not an endorser of
multi-level uh and i sure don't think they're for everyone They're for a select few people who choose to go that route and will do very, very well
that way.
Most of them are pretty crummy part-time jobs, and they're often pitched as a part-time job.
But in general of the concept, I'm not a fan, but there are parts of it that are legitimate, and I will admit that and say that, you know,
again, I have friends that are legitimate in those businesses and have done very, very
well.
So, hope that helps you.
Open phones at 888-825-5225.
By the way, Amway folks pretty much invented that. So the legal version of, you know, they're always the detractors, always the trolls, always call it a pyramid scheme.
It's not a pyramid scheme by definition.
It's network marketing.
And but to equate that to my business or to a traditional business model is absurd.
And that's, you know, you people that have drunk the Kool-Aid and you get all pissed
off if anybody questions the veracity of your little endeavor.
And so just calm down and be a normal human and treat other people with respect and you'll
be all right.
This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Thank you. our question of the day
2 Corinthians 9, 6 and 7
remember this whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly.
And whoever sows generously will also reap generously.
Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give.
Not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
Billy Graham said,
God has given us two hands,
one to receive with and the other to give with.
We are not cisterns made for hoarding.
We are channels made for sharing.
Wow.
If you've not seen the Billy Graham documentary on Netflix,
I highly suggest you watch it.
Absolutely amazing.
This is an interesting statistic, if you hadn't thought about it.
And from a speaker's perspective, someone who speaks to large crowds and have for decades,
Billy Graham spoke to more human beings live in person than anyone in the history of man.
Wow.
Think about that.
Stadium after stadium,
after stadium country,
after country,
after country,
decade after decade,
after decade.
No one has done that.
In the history of the human race.
That's pretty amazing if you think about it.
And we communicate over the airwaves.
I'm speaking to more people right now than your mind can grasp.
You know, there's about 16 million of you under the sound of this microphone at this moment between podcasts and regular radio stations.
And, you know, that's mind-blowing.
But in person, you know, across the stage, across a microphone with a set of speakers, more people than anyone else in the human race.
Billy Graham's an amazing, amazing icon and was an amazing man, obviously.
So it's worth watching that documentary.
It's kind of obvious when they said that.
When you think about it, you can kind of think through it and go, well, yeah, that's true.
But I never thought about it before.
And it's just, and what was his message?
We are all sinners.
We all need a Savior.
And Jesus is that man.
And he did that over and over and over and over for decades.
As an evangelist.
It's just, it's amazing.
Hey, by the way, this month our team is celebrating National Financial Literacy Month
by honoring teachers with our Teacher Appreciation Giveaway.
The response to this giveaway has been so overwhelming
that we are adding a second grand prize vacation.
You heard me, a second one that means two teachers are each going on a five
thousand dollar vacation getaway now teachers you do not want to miss this go to Dave Ramsey
dot com slash teacher to enter if you're a classroom teacher enter at Dave Ramsey dot
com slash teacher for your chance to win some incredible prizes. The giveaway, which is sponsored by friends at Jackson Charitable Foundation, ends shortly
here on April the 30th.
So enter to win today.
Teachers, we love you.
Nobody tells you often enough how great you are.
You do wonderful, wonderful, life-changing things every day.
Dylan is in Bowling Green.
Hi, Dylan. Welcome to the Dave Bowling Green. Hi, Dylan.
Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show.
Hello, Dave.
How are you today?
Better than I deserve, sir.
What's up?
Yes, sir.
I was wanting to know the quickest steps of how to get out of debt.
Okay.
Well, what we suggest folks do, how much debt have you got?
Roughly around $13,000.
Okay. And what is your income around $13,000. Okay.
And what is your income?
$23,000 a year.
Okay.
How old are you?
19.
Oh, wow.
What do you do?
I work at a car wash.
Okay.
What are your career plans?
For so far, I was taking college, but after my first semester, I actually wanted to go into
real estate. Okay, so you're getting your real estate license? Yes, sir. Okay, cool. Very cool.
All right. Well, I mean, there's kind of two numbers, Dylan, that we look at, and we call it the shovel-to-hole ratio.
And the shovel is your income versus the hole is your outgo,
what you're spending to eat and then how much debt you have.
Okay, so you have a $13,000 hole that you're in.
What do you owe that money on um 10 000 of it is for um auto loans and uh 1600 of it is for um a credit
line um loan and then the other uh 1500 to 2000 for another auto loan okay all right So why do you have two car loans? I had a car loan that was in 25.9% interest, and they were charging me too much,
so I let it go back, and then I ended up getting another car loan here recently.
Okay.
Why?
Did you not have a car at all?
Yes, I didn't have a car at all.
And they was trying to charge me, they was charging me like three times as much as what the car was worth, and I couldn't afford it.
Gotcha. Okay. And so you said you're making how much money?
Roughly, I make around $450 a week.
Okay. That's $23, 000 a year okay all right and um
and you think you're and you're you said you're 19 yes sir okay all right cool uh well what i would suggest you do is um let's just increase your income by increasing your hours doing something
and get these debts cleaned up as fast as possible.
As you already know, real estate is straight commission, and at your age, it's going to be a little tougher
because it's going to be tough to talking some 45-year-old into buying a house from a 19-year-old.
It can be done.
I did it.
I had a real estate license when I turned 18, and I sold my first house when I was 18 years old.
So you can do that.
It can happen, but it's harder to have credibility with folks on a purchase of that size when you're younger.
Again, I'm not saying don't do it, but I'm saying that is a challenge you're going to
have to overcome.
Do you agree?
Yes, sir.
Okay.
And so it's going to be your level of maturity, how you dress, how you carry yourself, the
words you use, the habits you avoid.
You know, you don't smoke in front of clients.
You don't go in there, you know, don't smoke in front of clients you don't go in there you know dress crazy
you know you dress conservatively the type of car you drive all of that is it's going to you're
going to have to be mature beyond your years to have credibility and i i did do that when i was
your age selling real estate so it can be done. And so you're choosing that instead of college.
What were you studying in college?
I was going to do sociology, being like a social worker and things like that.
Okay.
And what was drawing you to that?
I just, I really like kids, and I've been through a lot myself as a child,
and I know what it's like for young ones to, like, go through those kind of things.
Gotcha. Okay.
And I just want to change the world, you know, and just do better things for the world.
Good for you. Good for you.
Well, I think that might be a good ministry for you at your local church to work with kids,
maybe in foster programs and stuff like that.
There would be a lot of ways you could be a big brother, in a sense, to those guys as a ministry.
As far as your career goes, I like what you're doing.
I want to help you out with that.
I'm going to send you through our class on how to handle money, Financial Peace University.
Have you heard us talk about that?
Yes, sir.
Okay.
Would you like to go through for free?
Yes, sir.
All right.
You hold on.
We'll get you signed up for that.
And that can give you a framework for making some of these decisions.
So very, very well done.
Good job.
That puts this hour of the Dave Ramsey Show in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there is ultimately
only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus. This is James Childs, producer of The Dave Ramsey Show.
Did you know you can now listen to The Dave Ramsey Show on Pandora and Spotify?
For all the ways to watch and listen, check out our show page at daveramsey.com slash show