The Ramsey Show - App - Learn How to Manage Your Money the Smart Way (Hour 2)

Episode Date: May 30, 2018

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🎵 Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, 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'm Dave Ramsey, your host. This is your show. Thank you for joining us. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Thanks for being here. Brandon starts off this hour in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Hey, Brandon, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave. How are you doing today? Better than I deserve, sir. How can I help? Yes, sir. Me and my wife, we're in some serious debt, and we got a baby on the way towards the end of the year. And I used to get a lot over

time, but now that's slowing it down. So we're starting to see the real big picture now. I'm on everydollar.com, but it seems like we're hitting a roadblock every time we start getting towards the end of the month. And I'm just trying to see how you can help me out as far as getting those debt tackled. Okay. What's your household income now? Combined together, we're looking at about $60,000 this year. Very good. Okay.

And you said you've got $100,000 in debt on what? Break it down for me. Sure. So we've got two credit cards. Both of those equal combined about four thousand um got two car loans um both of those combined is about um i would say about sixty five thousand break those apart for me sure um we got a car loan fifty eight thousand another car loan, $58,000. Another car loan, which is about $12,000. Got a credit card for about $30,000. You have a $58,000 car loan and a $12,000 car loan?

Yes, sir. That is correct. All right. And the $58,000 is on what kind of car? It's a truck. Okay. All right. Your truck.

All right. And let's see. What else? We have a credit card, which is about $500. Another credit card, which is about $3,500. You already gave me $4,000 in credit cards. Yes, sir. Is this in addition to that?

No, no, I was breaking it down for you. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay, so $4,000 in credit cards, $58,000 on the truck, $12,000 on the car, and what else? That's So 4,000 in credit cards, 58,000 on the truck, 12,000 on the car. And what else? That's 64. That's 74. I got student loans, which is about 14,500. And then got a, um, a, another, um, I got a personal loan for about 8,000.

Um, and then got a store, um, like line of credit for about $300. I'm about to get that paid off. So you guys have been married eight years? No, we've actually only been married a bunch. How long? Two years. Two years. How old are you?

Yes, sir. 23. My Lord, you have made a mess fast. Okay. You haven't met a debt you didn't like. You've taken out debt on everything. Yes, sir, yeah. When I was young, you know, we all do stupid things,

but I'm trying to do the debt snowball effect on these things and just trying to get it paid out as much as possible. But, you know, she's going to be out of work for about three months, and, you know, I'm just trying to figure out, you know, what to do. I don't want to go past the due date on my bill, so I don't want to get back credit or anything. I hear you. I hear you.

Well, the problem is this. The most expensive thing that you and I buy that goes down in value is cars. You will not get ahead financially, i like cars i got a nice truck right now sitting out sitting out in the driveway um and but you will not get ahead if your cars are more than the value of your cars are more than half your annual income you really can't you really will struggle and yours are way your your car the total of your car debt is more than your annual income so the biggest problem the glaring thing that i see when i look at this is your truck's got to go it's insane absolutely insane in your own situation

now when you were getting overtime how much overtime were you getting to go with that $60,000? I was getting, on average, about 20 hours of overtime every week. And that would equate to how much a year in income extra above the $60,000? About $7,000 extra. Seven? Yes, sir. Yeah. So it still wasn't working then, even.

Yeah, you just bought a truck that's completely out of control dude it's it is it's the atom bomb in the middle of this mess as far as i'm concerned looking at it and again i'm not against you having nice things i'm against your nice things having you and this thing owns your butt man i mean you got a 700 truck payment don't you yeah 700 truck payment and you know i'm trying to me and my wife's trying to move out our apartment because that's just taking up our budget too and so we're trying to get something cheaper. Yeah, but your truck payment's more than your apartment rent. It's actually less. Apartment rent's about $890. Okay, close enough.

Yeah. Yeah, so, yeah, but the apartment's not the problem. The truck's the problem. I mean, if you want to move out of the apartment, that's fine. And if you want to sell her car, too, that's fine. Get you two beaters. I don't care. But these things are killing you.

I mean, if you just had that $700 back a month, you would be able to get the thing in balance. That's what's getting you here. And then you don't have overtime available to you now. Can you pick up a second job then? Yeah. I could possibly do so, yeah. I mean, I work 11 to 8 right now, but, you know, I'll do anything where it takes time for my family. Yeah, yeah, okay.

Well, I want you to be there for your family, but your family right now is on the verge of bankruptcy because you guys have bought everything in sight and put it on credit cards. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to go through Financial Peace University, which is a one-year membership. And you go to nine lessons in a group in your area. And then the rest of it is it's all online, but you can take as much of an online as you want to take. But go to the group in the area with your wife because you've got so many different things you have to tear into here. There's so many different things that you have to turn around. And if you don't turn them around, you're going to spend a decade getting out from under this.

And the more radical you get in your changes, the more radical your results will be. And so that's what we want for you. We want you to turn this around so you don't have to have a new baby coming out of the world and you're so stressed out you can't breathe. And a truck's just not worth it. You can get you a truck later and pay cash for it after you get yourself back squared around. But if you had no car payments right now, just that one thing thing you could blow through the rest of this debt in no time because of the hundred seventy thousand is car debt and you're 23 years old i mean somebody at the car

dealership was smoking crack to give you this loan this loan should not even been made it's absurd so yeah it's got to go it's absolutely got to go and uh it's just out of control so anyway you hold on i'll have kelly pick up we will give you financial peace university includes every dollar subscription to the every dollar plus for a year um it's got all the bells and whistles everything is about three four hundred dollars worth of stuff i'm giving you to get yourself turned around here. But when I was 27 years old, 28 years old, I went broke with a brand-new baby and a toddler, and I remember how scared I was. And if you're not that scared, you should be.

I want you to get scared enough to do something about this. Not so scared you get frozen like a deer in the headlights, but I want you to get scared enough to do something about this. So you hold on, and we'll help you. We'll walk with you. You can get through this, but you're going to have to do the stuff we tell you to do. There's no negotiation on this, dude. That truck's gone.

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chministries.org. Ramsey personality and an expert on teenagers because he talks to them all the time. Anthony O'Neill will join us at the bottom of the hour. If you are a teenager or you have one or a college student and you've got questions around that age group, Anthony is the guy, and he'll be here to answer your questions at the bottom of the hour. The phone number is 888-825-5225. Jeff's in Chicago. Hi, Jeff. Welcome to The Dave Ramsey Show.

Hi, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. I've got kind of an interesting, different question for you. My wife and I have been able to get rid of all of our debt except for our mortgage. You know, we built a house back in 2007, right at the peak, put about $600,000 into it. And now, you know, we're trying to decide whether to sell it and just take our losses, you know, and go and rent for a while and continue to stock money in the bank, or to just continue with a mortgage that's barely over water.

The mortgage is about $325,000. We've been appraised for about $425,000 on the house. It's very, very unusual for a house that was worth $600,000 before the crash to not be worth $600,000 by now. Is there other problems in your area? It's a pretty rural community, and we were probably at the top of the market there at the time. Okay. So you really seriously dramatically overbuilt the market. Okay.

That would make some sense on how there is. So you've literally, you have $600,000 in the thing. You owe $300,000 on it. So you put $300,000 of your money in it, and you owe $300,000 on it, and it will only bring $4.25. Yeah. Okay. So here's a rule of thumb. That is aggravating as crud. That hurts your feelings. I get it. It hurts mine, too, just listening to it. Yeah. And so the way you ask yourself the question, it's a sunk cost analysis that's taught in Harvard Business School.

And the sunk cost analysis is a simple concept. You ask yourself, if I didn't own it, would I buy it for that today? And if the answer is no, because I don't think it has a positive future, then it's time to sell it regardless of what I have in it. So the way you would pose it in this situation is if I didn't own this house for $425,000 and I had $425,000 piled in the middle of the kitchen table, and would I go buy this house today? Well, you're not excited about that local economy going up at a reasonable rate like other areas have done. So you probably would not buy it again today for $425,000, would you?

Right. Which means you do need to take that for it and sell it. Just take your losses. Okay. If you're ready to move. If you're ready to move. Are you ready to move? I guess I didn't ask that.

Yeah, we're ready. You don't like the house? You don't like the house? You want to be living in a different community you're you're leaving and so forth yeah well we love the house but unfortunately um you know it's just one of those things where i'm going to turn 58 this year i'd like to be able to retire at 62 and uh you know just don't see continue to put um you know 36600 a month away in a mortgage. That leads to the next question is do we go and rent somewhere or should we buy? No, I would definitely buy.

I would just move way down because your goal here is to get the mortgage paid off in four years. That's what you just told me, right? Yep. And so you've got $100,000 or so in equity, and we're going to take that and plow it into the next property. And whatever mortgage you take, you're going to be really aggressive, and you might have $4,000 payments, but at least they're going to, you know, a five-year plan or whatever it is to pay the house off very, very, very quickly

because that meets with your goals of being debt-free. And that's going to limit the property you buy, the neighborhood you buy in, and so forth. But it hits your goals because you can't have both. You can't live high on the hog and not pay the bill. You've got to pay the bill to live there. So you just decide which of those ways you want to go. I'm with you that we get out of debt as we move into retirement.

If you wanted to retire in a nicer property you might end up working a couple more years just to cause that to happen i don't know but because of this problem that you've run into but if that's not the house for you going forward then today's as good a day as any to sell it valerie is in san francisco hi valerie. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. It's such a pleasure to be speaking with you. You too. What's up? So just to start off with, I am a single mom. I make about $72,000 a year. I have about, I want to say, $45,000 in assets. I want to say about $24,000 in cash. Now, my liabilities, it's $44,000, I'm sorry, $90,000, and that includes a big chunk of

student loans. Okay. How much student loan debt do you have? I'm sorry? How much student loan debt do you have? It's $58,228.17. And what's the rest of your debt? And the rest of my debt is I just bought a new car,

and I had to give my car to my mother, and I had a small loan on that for $5,000, and the new car is $20,000. Now, and I only have about $2,400 in credit card, which if I stay within budget and I follow your plan, I should be able to pay off both car loans. Okay, tell me about the $24,000 in savings, but you said you had $40,000-something in assets. What's the other assets? The other $22,000, it's for retirement. In a retirement account?

Correct. What, a 401k? It's a 403b. I work for a hospital. Gotcha. Okay. Which I haven't been consistent in putting any money in. Gotcha.

And since I started, I've been listening to you since, I want to say, March. Okay. What I would do if I woke up in your shoes is I would write a check today and pay off the car, and I would pay off your credit cards. Right. And, in fact, like I said, if I stay in your plan, I'll be done in September. And the only thing I have left is the $50,000 debt that I have with us. No, you didn't listen.

I'm sorry, go ahead. What we teach folks to do is take everything that is not in retirement down to $1,000, and I would pay off your car today out of your savings account, and I would pay off your credit cards today out of your savings account and i would pay off your credit cards today out of your savings account then you have 58 000 today left to attack with a 70 000 income and you get rid of that within a little over a year and then you rebuild your emergency fund that's baby steps one two and three and get some scissors and cut up those stupid credit cards. That's the program that we teach.

It's called the Baby Steps. That's what we tell people to do. If you're listening to this show, you knew that, but you're holding on to that $24,000 because it's your little security blanket, and there's nothing wrong with having a security blanket. I want you to have one, but I don't want you to have one that is delusional, and it's delusional when you have a $20,000 car that you bought so that you could give your mom a $5,000 car, neither of which you could afford to do because you're broke.

And yet you feel okay because you've got $24,000 sitting in a savings account. See how this is screwed up? You're in denial. And so I would either sell your car or I would pay it off today. If you're unwilling to use this money to pay it off today, you should sell it today. I suspect that's going to be troublesome for you. And I want it to be. I want you to feel the pain of this.

Because what you're doing right now is normal stuff, and you're broke. And you can't do normal and be anything but broke. It doesn't work. Our question of the day comes from blinds.com. Find out for yourself why blinds.com is the number one online retailer of custom window coverings. Use the promo code Ramsey and get the best deal at blinds.com. Stacy's in Indiana. Am I qualified to enroll in my – I am qualified to enroll in my company's 401K plan. Use the promo code Ramsey and get the best deal at Blinds.com. Stacy's in Indiana.

Am I qualified to enroll in my, I am qualified to enroll in my company's 401k plan. Do I just do the automatic enrollment or do I pick each investment myself? You never do anything with money automatic. You always control your money. You pick the investments. Pick good mutual funds. We say to spread your mutual fund investing across four things. Growth, growth and income, aggressive growth and international coming up at the bottom ramsey personality anthony o'neill Hey, business leaders, are you hiring, posting your position to job sites,

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slash Dave. Ramsey Personality, Anthony O'Neill joins us this half hour answering your questions. He speaks to teens and colleges and churches all across America. He's been on the road recently doing all kinds of fun stuff. Are you allowed to tell publicly where you were this week? Yes, sir. Where were you, tell us. I was in Baltimore, Maryland, speaking to the Baltimore Ravens, all their rookies.

It was 30 rookies that they just signed. Lamar Jackson is one of them, and just a great group of young guys and spent the day yesterday just really depositing and sowing into their lives. These guys are coming into a lot of money straight out of college, and we just really spent time just talking about money, avoiding ladies, and just saving and investing into your future. I'm not saying avoiding ladies like that is're too late you just said that but you know i mean just be wise and in all your decisions but it was a good time dave you know they asked me to come in and

speak for about 45 minutes to an hour and uh justin doris our booking agent here and myself we were there for about two and a half hours because when I got done, they just had a lot of questions. And it just, it just reminded me, Dave, of what we do here at Ramsey Solutions is so important for all people. And especially that younger generation, because the questions they were asking me were basic questions, Dave, how do I budget? What do I do? How should I invest? What is a Roth IRA? You know, these basic questions, I'm like, wait a minute. And so because we went over so much, they've already booked me to come back in September just to spend some follow-up time with them and just really investing into them.

I'm glad you're doing that. The rookies particularly need the help. Some of them really wander off and make some serious messes with their money. Chris Hogan's done a bunch of that over the years. I've done a bunch of it over the years. You're continuing the tradition. That's cool. And you've been in a bunch of high schools lately? Yes, sir. I just finished. I did my last high school the week before last, before the summer. But tomorrow, not tomorrow,

but next week, I'll be at three big youth conferences. One with 10,000 kids, another one with like 5,000 and 2,000. The summer months, when we tend to slow down, Anthony O'Neill stays busy with these young people in camps and youth conferences. But I love it. You know, we're out here making a difference in these young people's lives. That's fun.

That's fun. Well, the good news is they're hearing this message. Yes, sir. And this generation is ripe for this message. They look at the student loan mess. They say, I don't want that. They look at the mess their parents have made with their car loans. I don't want that. Their grandparents are They say, I don't want that. They look at the mess their parents have made with their car loans. I don't want that.

Their grandparents are retiring broke. They don't want that. And so, you know, what have I got to do to do something different? And they're hungry. It's good. Very hungry, David. That was one of the questions that for the Ravens kids have. They have kids of their own.

They're like, hey, how do I avoid? Because I was stressed in college trying to pay for college. How do I avoid that for my kids so we talked about you know an ESA or 529 for their situation and so you're right Dave these young people are seeing what their parents are going through what we've gone through and saying I want to avoid that how can I do that and just what we're teaching here between our ed solutions curriculum what we're teaching on stage it's just it's just amazing so what's always shocked me in those rookie camps the first two or three times i did it is i think of those guys as

and most of us that are football fans are we think of those big stars i mean lamar jackson's big star huge he's a 22 year old he's sharp very sharp 22 year old yeah yeah and when you look in his eyes and you sit and talk to him you realize realize his football acumen is at one place, obviously, the world class, right? But he's a 22-year-old young man. Yeah. And to have a guy like you there to put your arm around him and walk with him a little bit, or other guys, whether they're a name or not. But somehow in our minds, we take a country music star or a rock star or a rap star or something. And, you know, because their star gets real big, we forget that that's a 23-year-old, 21-year-old, you know.

And in the rest of their life, that's who they are. When they get on stage, they may be a big deal. But they still have the same issues, maybe with a few more zeros on it. But that doesn't solve all of the things you face when you're 21. Not at all. Not at all. And Lamar Jackson is a bright young man, had great questions yesterday, and his future is amazing.

He's going to do amazing in the NFL, especially with all the other NFL players that have just signed with the Baltimore Ravens. But, you know, Dave, I really want to commend Coach John and the Baltimore Ravens team for doing that because they're one of the only few that really require for a whole month all their rookies have to spend every single

day for a whole month with them for at least an hour just sowing into them from a financial perspective on abuse on making good decisions when it does come with ladies with you know all the fame and stuff and just really teaching them how to become young men and grow into that grown man status.

So this is a great, great, great time. I love what they're doing out there. That's very cool stuff. Very cool. Well, I'm glad we got you there doing it. And our brand-new teen entrepreneur toolbox has, well, it's exploded. I mean, it's gone nuts. We thought this thing was going to sell,

but it has sold beyond our wildest expectations. I mean, we figured we'd sell a couple thousand in the first couple months, and we've sold over 4,000 kits already of these things. It's $49, and if you don't know what it is, when I was a kid, I asked my dad for money to go to the market. He said, get a job, you know, and you need to be cutting some grass or something like that. And your dad did the same kind of thing. I mean, our dad's taught us to work and to go start a business. And lots of teens today want to start a business. So we've got the Teen Entrepreneur Toolbox for $49.99.

You get $24 in free bonus items, including a free audio book and e-book. And in the teen, well, just tell them, what's in the box? The very first thing that's in the box, Dave, is going to be a portfolio for the teenager and then also a parent guide for the parent because our thing is we want to make sure that we're strengthening parents to help them make their young person a teen entrepreneur. So the portfolio, the first half of it is going to be pretty much a guideline. Hey, here's what you need to do. Here's how you need to go about doing it.

And then in the back of their portfolio is we literally give them a calendar, a schedule, contact forms, thank you cards inside of this portfolio. And then a parent guide is just literally everything that we're teaching the teenagers. But we're telling the parents, hey, this is how you can help. Then beside those two things, Dave, you have thank you. Cue cards to help kids remember their elevator pitch. Like how are you going to approach someone? What are you going to say? And what should you not say? But one thing I do love, which we teach here, is just gratitude, being grateful.

So once a teenager earns someone's business, we're going to teach them how to say thank you. So we give them thank you cards. And we encourage them to write something on the back of it and say, hey, thank you so much for me allowing uh for you allowing me to earn your business and then you got an app the app now dave is just amazing i've been playing around with it and i'm like man i really needed this when i was younger because when i opened up my sour sucker business i needed to know how much money i could make but also how much money am I spending on getting my supplies? And so this is a lot of great stuff inside this app. And then another good thing is just you have a, I think it's a pretty cool DVD of myself in there, just really encouraging young people that you can be an entrepreneur and you can

start taking ownership of your life right now. Well, the book that the kids have and then the DVD walks them through the eight steps, the eight things they need to do to start their business, run their business properly. Yes, sir. And, you know, this could be a little bit nerdy, teen entrepreneur stuff, but Anthony puts the cool on it. So it's got cool all over it. And here's what's interesting, folks.

Seventy-six percent of parents want their kids to learn entrepreneurial skills because we all know, all of us that are walking around out here know that the side hustle is here to stay yeah the small business entrepreneur start something up run your own thing even if it's a side hustle if it grows into a big deal fine if it doesn't find but that's kind of a way of life people are doing that more than at any time in history right now yeah and and here's what's interesting 50% of teens say they want to learn about starting and running a business. And when you talk to them, you find that when you're in the high schools, don't you? Absolutely, Dave.

I mean, these young people, they want to make money. But also at the same time, you know, our good friend Chris Hogan says business skills are life skills. And these young people want to know how do I have a better life. And opening up a business is one of the key things that we're seeing that that is really teaching them how to do it so young people saying you know what i like shoes so i want to sell shoes i had just picked up my picture of myself this young lady painted a picture of me dave it cost me 350 dollars just for a professional painting from a 15-year-old that took her maybe about, she said it took her about 20 hours to do it.

So in one day, she made $350 just from doing a professional painting. Is that the girl on the DVDs? Yes, sir. And you bought a painting from her? I bought a painting from her. All right. Yes, sir. Good for you. Young people, I mean, these young people want to know how to make money.

Yeah. Especially working from home. I'm pretty sure they want to work from home rather than go to work for someone else. Yeah, you can make more money doing something on your own than flopping whoppers. Yes, sir. You really can. Nothing against it, but hey, why work for someone else when you can work for yourself? Anthony O'Neill is with us.

The Teen Entrepreneur Toolbox is what we're talking about. We'll take your calls about teens in colleges and college students here on the Dave Ramsey Show when we come back. For years, I refused to endorse any company that claimed to get people out of timeshares. I told my listeners it's a horrible product and that, unfortunately, they didn't have a lot of options. Then a few years ago, I sat down with Brandon Reed, the owner of Timeshare Exit Team. Brandon walked me through the timeshare industry, and I learned that you can't sell them and you can't even give them away. And then we talked about Timeshare Exit Team's process. Every ownership situation is different, which is why they have more solutions than any other company. And that's when they

earned my respect. Don't call any of the imposters out there. And there's a lot. The only timeshare exit company I stand behind is timeshare exit team. They have exited thousands from their timeshare burden this year alone. Yes, you will write them a check, but they stand behind their guarantee. They will get you out or they'll give you a full refund. Call 844-999-EXIT online at timeshareexitteam.com. Ramsey Personality, Anthony O'Neill, joins us this hour answering your questions. If you're in high school or college or you have folks in high school or college, you want to jump in. Or questions about anything about money, just jump in.

The phone number is 888-825-5225. Dominic is in Germany. Hey, Dominic, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. So I'm 23 years old. I'm currently active duty military, and that's why I'm out here in Germany. And I've gone through your financial peace university twice. And my issue that I run into is I feel like all my money is being spent

on like the bills that I need, like, you know, my phone bill, internet, stuff like that. But with being in the military, you know, most of my expenses are provided for me. But yet I still struggle to set up the $1,000 emergency fund and savings account and all that other stuff to build up to the debt snowball. It's confusing me how to get started on all of that so that I can get debt- free and actually feel like I've got money and breathing room to do stuff. So what's your income? Roughly around $24,000 a year. Okay. So you get about $2,000 a month, and your meals and housing are furnished.

Yeah. Okay. And so what bills do you have out of the $2,000? Internet and phone bill and just various other. Say again? How much are those? Probably roughly about $300-ish. Okay. $2,000 minus $300 is $1,700. Where'd that go?

I don't know. That's why I'm struggling, Dave. Yeah, you're not doing a budget, and you're not sticking to it. Okay. You know where it's going. You just don't want to tell me. You're partying. Not me, Dave.

I will say I am an impulse buyer, and I do buy stuff for, like, my gaming stuff and other things like that and whatnot. You could spend $200 a month on gaming and still save $1,000 a month. Yeah. But right now, my issue is with student loans and getting some of my other debt and bills paid off. It kind of wipes me down to zero. Oh, how much debt have you got?

$20,000 in student loans. How much is that payment? About $200-something a month. Okay, I'm down to $1,500 before gaming. And what's your other debt? Car? Car? Just random groceries and random stuff. Grocery.

You have food furnished. Yeah. Yeah, just odds and ends groceries. Okay. Anthony? You know, Dominic, man, I want to say first off, thank you for serving the country, man. We really do appreciate you and value for doing that. Amen.

But I definitely want to just address something in a respectful way. You're saying that you're having a hard time setting aside a thousand dollars. It seems like you're not having a hard time. You're choosing not to save a thousand dollars. You're choosing to invest into your gaming side, into some other things. That's a choice. That's not a hard time. That's just you saying, hey, you know what?

I'm going to stop for a matter of really from what we're just adding up right now. In one month, you can have that $1,000 to start working towards your debt. If you say, you know what? I'm going to stop this month and do it. But the very first thing I want you to do, Dominique, man, is get on the budget. Download our EveryDollar app and get on the budget and spend your money on paper first. Stop making excuses. Stop getting into the gaming.

Spend an hour and just sit down and just write down your money so you can see and tell your money where it's going. I don't have a problem with you getting into gaming, but I do have a problem when that is over your priorities and your foundation. And you have to get that $1,000 set aside and start working on your baby step number two. Yeah. So if we pay the student loan debt and we pay the other $300 on the Internet and the phone, let's just do your budget. I mean, put $2,000 at the top of the page. Yeah. And then you take out, you know, Internet and phone, and we take out student loan debt payment. I got $1,500 left.

Now, what are you going to do with that? Or whatever your take-home pay is, you can look at your check and know what you've got coming into your account, right? We'll put that at the top of the page and then just spend it on paper, on purpose, before the month begins. Anthony and I are saying, we don't care if you have some fun in there, but you're calling us all the way from Germany going, I can't make this work. Well, I'm with Anthony. You've got to write it down, and you tell the money what to do, and then once you've written it down, it tells you what to do.

That piece of paper becomes your boss, but you're the boss of it until you get it drawn. Does that make sense? Yes. So with the impulse buying, what's the best way to combat that with the budget? Be a grown-up. Yeah. I mean, you're not four years old. You're 23.

You're in the military. You're a man. And so you write down and you go, what I want for my life as a 23-year-old man is I want my Internet covered, I want my student loan covered, my cell phone bill covered, and I want to put X number of dollars in savings, and I'm going to spend Y number of dollars on gaming and not a penny more. You have control of your emotions. Just decide to. It's a decision.

You can do that. Adults devise a plan and follow it. Children do what feels good. And the thing is, I recommend you do spend something on the things you love, and that will keep you. If you spend zero on the things you love. Yeah. And that will keep you. If you spend zero on the things you love, you'll blow your budget up and you'll go impulse city and fall off the wagon. But if you'll take some of the money, and I don't care, put 200 bucks on gaming.

I don't even, you know, whatever you're going to spend. But, you know, you're spending a lot of money on something. Yeah. It's going away. It's going away. Going away. You know, Dominic, I want to say this, too. A man does what he has to do. A man does what he has to do.

A boy does what he wants to do. Be a man and do what you have to do right now. Get that budget in place and then, man, enjoy yourself. But, hey, you've got to do the first thing first. Amy's in Birmingham. Amy, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Hi, Anthony. Thank you for taking my call today.

Sure. How can we help? So, my husband and I are on your plan. We're currently working through Baby Step 1, and we're trying to pay off a bet to obviously stay current with that, and then once we pass Baby Step 1, then we'll really, really hit hard with Step 2. But recently I've started considering going back to school. The reason being my job right now, I'm a real estate assistant and my husband works with my father who owns his own business. And so our income is kind of limited.

We make together, we make between 30 and 40,000 a year, depending on, obviously, with real estate, the industry, the time of year that it is, it fluctuates. What are you going back to school to do? I want to do nursing. And so the community college that I'm looking into, obviously, in the state, is a two-year program. And at the end of that, if I pass my boards, I'd have my RN degree. And so that's what I'm looking into. What's that cost?

My question, I guess. It depends, obviously, on how quickly I do it. But when I'm looking at the two-year plan, if I remember right, I think it's somewhere around like $15,000, give or take. A year or total? Total. Okay. So $7,500 a year out of $40,000, give or take. A year or total? Total. Okay. So $7,500 a year out of $40,000.

How much debt do you guys have? About $13,000. Okay. All right. And so if you can come up with $28,000 over the next two years, you could be debt-free and have your nursing degree. Right. Wow.

Sounds like your husband's delivering pizza to me. Yeah, that's the concern is debating on if I should do that now, which with the timing of it, I couldn't actually start the program at all because of the deadlines until January of next year. Okay. Well, then work your butt off, both of you, between now and January and clear the $13,000. Both of you take six extra jobs. Yeah.

What do you think, Anthony? Here's the other problem. We have an eight-month-old son, and so child care, which my mom and my sister help with that, and then I can work from home a little too, but putting on a second job or third or fourth or sixth for either of us. It doesn't take two of you to watch an eight-month-old. It doesn't take two people to watch an eight-month-old. One can do it.

That's true. I'm not talking about forever. We're not putting a child in an orphanage. We're just going to say dad's going to go to work and clean up the mess so Mom can go be a nurse. You've got very reachable goals here, but you guys are going to have to decide to pay a price to get there. Absolutely. Absolutely. And, Amy, I want to suggest on our way out, look into Christy Wright Business Boutique,

because if you're going to be at home watching your baby, work from home. And Christy Wright and her team at Business Boutique team can help you make at least another $1,500 to $2,000 from your house. That's a good idea. Really good suggestion. Anthony O'Neill, Ramsey Personality, author of the Teen Entrepreneur Toolbox. Check it out. Thanks, Anthony. Hey, it's Blake, Chief Production Officer for the show.

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