The Ramsey Show - App - Math Doesn’t Care What You Want… (Hour 1)

Episode Date: August 11, 2023

МУЗЫКАЛЬНАЯ ЗАСТАВКА МУЗЫКАЛЬНАЯ ЗАСТАВКА Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Pods Moving and Storage Studio, it's the Ramsey Show where we help people build wealth, do work they love, and connect with real people. I'm John Deloney, joined here by my good friend George Camel. We are taking your calls on money, life, mental health, emotional health, whatever you got going on, your marriages, your retirement plans, whatever you got going on, we've got an

opinion about it and we are here to help. 888-825-5225, 88-825-5225. Let's go out to Charlie in Orlando. What's up, Charlie? Hey, John. Hey, George. It's a pleasure to talk with you guys. You too, man. What's up?

Yeah, so my question is regarding my in-laws. I'm recently married, and I have their numbers pulled up and everything. The question is for my wife and I is if we're going to have to help my in-laws financially with retirement, they're wanting to retire in about five years. They have a whole financial fiasco and we're currently working on baby step two. We're plowing through our debt. We're doing pretty well. And we're just wondering, are we going to have to help them and their financial mess when we're trying to still work on ours, you know, building into step three. And unless it's something they can figure out on their own, you know, we're just kind of worried about the future basically for both parties. Have they asked you for your help?

So they have not. Then this call is over. Yeah, there's not a lot you can do, man. Not a lot you can do, and I hate that for you. What made you feel like we've got to take on the burden of their financial future? It's kind of that whole, you know, obviously we want to live like no one else, so we can later live and give like no one else mindset. My mother-in-law has kind of opened up to wanting some help with finance,

but my father-in-law is like, I don't have any debt, just my wife. And it was like, oh man. You know, that kind of scenario. Has he always been like that? That's a scary thought process. How long have you been married, Charlie? So I've been married for only a few months, but they've been married for at least 30 years.

They bought their house in 92 in Orlando. Yes, I'm going to give you some wisdom. I've been married for 21 years. Okay. Yes, sir. I would stay as far away from the inner workings of your in-laws marriage as you possibly can. Yes, sir. Unless both of them, not one of them, if both of them sit down and say, will you help us? Right. Otherwise you're going to get triangulated into this mess and you're going to end up, into this mess and you're going to end up it's your wife's going to have to choose between you and is the whole thing goes sideways

i think the best thing you could do right now is um what i used to tell my daughter when she was four which is you worry about you and let them worry about them yeah that's how i felt too like one time she came to my wife needing gas money. It was kind of one of those, is this going to get bigger than gas money one day? Yes, yes. It was kind of, yeah, it's scary. Gas money is the gateway drug to more enabling here.

Exactly. So here's what you can do, because I don't want to leave you in a lurch, just be like, ha ha, you can't do anything. There is something you can do that is way more powerful, and that is you live out this plan in such a way and talk about it openly to where they go huh tell me more about that that snowball thing you guys are doing because you seem to be like on fire and something's different you guys want to

make some changes that is going to be your best path to getting them to change versus writing them a check every month hoping that it's going to solve anything george you george just gave you the optimistic version here's the other one when you say i'm not going we're not going on that cruise that you just planned that we're supposed to pay for because that's not in our budget and it's not a part of our debt payment plan or we're not flying to wherever for christmas because we are working on our on our debt and they're oh my gosh are you kidding me you're telling me this stupid plan is more important than your family yeah Yeah, because we're playing a long game. Yeah. And if y'all opt to do Christmas without us, y'all can do that because y'all are grownups. But as for me and my house,

right? So either way, they're either going to see the light and the fire inside of you, or they're going to be on the other side of your boundaries that you've put up. Either way, they're going to watch you. Your behavior is going to be a language for them. And that's going to be the best initial teacher until they both sit down and say, all right, what are y'all doing? Will you teach us? And that's a whole different conversation. That's what I've gathered because my mother-in-law is more receptive. Like she's actually already seeing a marriage counselor by herself.

And there's kind of the, from what we've gathered gathered already that he's not even agreeing with that either that it's our problem so why should someone else help us fix it and all right so i'm going to give you some more wisdom and it's going to be the exact same wisdom i gave you earlier get out of that marriage deal with your own right that's our goal we have our own place next friday and i was i kind of felt i that reassurance, I guess, is it's okay to step back and start our own family tree and really be an example, like you said. And grieve with your wife as she is sad that her parents' marriage is falling apart and that their finances are a zoo and they're both exhausted. And instead of celebrating with you two, they're trying to tread water.

It's going to be hard on your wife, and you're all in with her, and so there's going to be some grieving that goes along with that naturally, right? Yes, sir. Yeah, man. Well, good for you, man. Hey, thanks for being a guy that cares and loves, right? But, man, that one's… Getting other people to do something I want them to do,

I don't think it's ever worked out in my life. And that seems to be... It makes me so frustrated. It's the engine that maybe Congress runs on. Like, our whole thing is, I'm going to get you to do something you don't want to do. It just doesn't ever work, right? It never works, unless you use force,

and that always ends up in just bodies everywhere. Well, you know, John, you're really in shape. And John's always like, dude, you got to move your body. You got to work out. But John can't want it more than i do you know what i mean john just can't be like dude you're gonna work out you're going to you can't just tell me to go to the gym i think the last time we talked i was like i will give you a workout plan when you've gone for 30 days there we go i can't work yeah but what you can do is i'm like man john you look good you're like yeah i just i've been on this real simple plan.

I'm happy to send you the plan. Now I'm kind of intrigued. That doesn't mean I'll do it. Or when Whitney says, man, John's got humongous muscles. How does he have those and you don't? And you're like, I'll talk to John. Versus you being like, dude, you're real flabby. You've got to hit the gym, man.

Never works. That's not going to work. And I do think most of the time, sometimes that's based out of shame, right? But I think a lot of times, like Charlie here, it comes from a good place. Oh, yeah. Salt of the earth, that guy. I don't want your life to be like this. And it's hard when you have to look in the mirror and say,

they didn't ask my opinion on what they're doing with their life, right? Well, and the older you get, it's harder to change. I mean, when you're now 60 and you've lived out the same bad financial habits for 35 years and never worked on your marriage, trying to do that now is just even harder, which is why I'm extra inspired when I meet a 65-year-old on the debt-free stage. Right. What they did versus the 22-year-old is like, dude, old dogs can learn new tricks. All day.

But you really got to want it at that age. And I think it's an important lesson for all of us to learn. You heard me joking with Charlie, but not joking to stay out of his parents' marriage. I'll take that one step further. We do this with our bosses. I bet they just, they're probably doing that because you know, they have this thing. We have no idea why they're doing that. I bet that Congressman is just doing this just because you don't know. And what you do is we spin ourselves up, getting in other people's head and deciding why they just did what they did. We do that with our spouse. We do that with our kids. You just did that because you don't know. And so again, as I told my sweet daughter,

Josephine, when she was little, you take care of you, get out of people's heads. Get out of their judging their actions. Maybe you can be curious once in a while, but take care of you. Take care of you. And if we all take care of ourselves, it's amazing what the world could look like, right? It's a good word. And George, go to the gym. This is The Ramsey Show. We'll be right back. Hey, you guys. Health insurance costs are only moving one way, and that way isn't down. And if higher costs aren't enough, the wait times to see your doctor are longer, and it's harder than ever to get anything approved through the bureaucracy.

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at chministries.org slash budget at chministries.org slash budget. This is the Ramsey Show. I'm John Deloney, joined by George Campbell, 888-825-5225. We're talking money, we're talking marriage, We're talking your mental and emotional health, your work, whatever you got going on. 888-825-5225. And since I'm hosting the show today, I'm going to take a minute and talk about something. George, I'm real excited about this. I got a brand new book coming out called Building a Non-Anxious Life. If you pre-order today, as Dave's been saying, we'll bribe you. We'll send you a whole bunch of stuff. The pre-sale helps us out. It just helps me out as an author. It helps with the rankings and all kinds of things. But here's the deal. You know it and I know it

that we've reached a point where we can't continue to live these stressed out, burned out, fried out, anxious lives. At some point, this stops. And my hope is instead of not changing the oil on your car and driving it until your engine just turns into a brick and you can never drive that car again, that we're all able to pull off on the side of the road, read this book, follow the plan to help live a life where your anxiety alarms are not ringing off the hook all day, every day. It affects your kids. It affects your workplace. It affects your home. It affects your longevity. It affects your marriage. It affects everything. And we have to be honest about the ways we've been trying to tackle this problem over the last decade, it's not working. When they discovered penicillin and started applying it to folks who had infections, deaths from infections fell off the table. That was a cure. It fixed

that problem, right? To some degree. This is different. What we've been trying to do and trying to do and trying to do is not working. And so what this book is, is me taking all the neuroscience, all the grad school, all the sitting with people for the last 20 years and my own path that's been up and down all over the place and backing out 30,000 feet and saying, all right, let's reimagine this problem. And let's actually put a real solution out on the table. And the solution is not easy. It's very similar similar to the baby steps like you don't just snap your fingers and walk out in the street and go i'm dead free and your money goes away you gotta you gotta you gotta pay the piper right you got some work to do um and you still have to make budgets for the rest

of your life right similar with dealing with your mental health and your emotional health and your anxiety, but this book gives you a path. It's 20 bucks and I'll send you 75 bucks of free bonus items, including a free talk I just gave, as well as ebook, audio book. You get it all. Go to ramsaysolutions.com. And George, since you're about to be a new parent, I'm going to give you two copies just for free, just because I love you. Wow. Just going to hook you up. Actually, a friend of mine has been like, dude, can you give me a copy of john's book i'm like dude i don't have it yet he won't even give it to me how can i give it to you i i they gave me one and they said under

penalty of death can this leave your uh your your dang it soon there'll be like boxes everywhere that's right but this is all the rage among the youth and this is a book which is cool that is for everyone yeah you know some of our plan it's controversial everybody wants to build a non-anxious life like how could you be like nah that's not for me i'll take the anxiety yeah for 500 you know i'm kind of down with the with the chronic stress exactly burnout's fun for me and my family has been preaching about money for years you are doing for relationships and mental health and i'm so excited to see how this book helps people john i appreciate it man and for the thousands and thousands of folks who've already pre-ordered it, y'all know I talk too much when I host this show. I find myself speechless as they send

the numbers over and it's just been very humbling, very overwhelming. And so I'm really, really grateful. RamseySolutions.com, pick it up. And thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Let's run out to Salt Lake City, Utah and talk to the great and powerful Patrick. What's up, Patrick? Hey, good. How are you guys doing this morning? We're partying, man. How about you? I'm doing well. Thank you. What's up? So my wife just finished optometry school and we also want to maybe start having kids in the next couple years.

We've got about $160,000 in student loan debt plus our home mortgage and no other debt. What's the fastest way to pay that off so that she can maybe go half-time? And with that, should we pay more into our retirement or less into our retirement and more until our debt is paid down or paid off? Great questions. Well, I'm happy for her that she's done with this now. Is she working? Yep. She's all done.

She started working about two months ago. Awesome. So what's the household income now? Per month or per year? We're about $245 a year. Love to hear that. That's the kind of numbers that will help you get out of $160,000 of debt. So you're right. You're starting to grapple with like, we want to have kids. We want to do retirement, want to pay off the debt. And what we found is that when you focus on just one thing, like a laser, it is done much faster

and you're actually able to finish. And so I would not do any retirement investing. You guys have plenty of time to invest for the future, right? How old are you two? Well, I'm 53 and she's 29. So the time is a little bit, lots for her, not so much for me. Okay. Have you been investing at all over the course of your working life? I have. I had to give up some of it when I got divorced about 12 years ago. I have about $280,000, almost $300,000. Awesome. Well, that's quite the head start. So the question now becomes, how much of this $245,000 can we start shoveling towards these student loans?

And my guess is, if you look truthfully, the answer is most of it. Yeah. The real question is, if you look truthfully, the answer is most of it. Yeah. The real question is, how little can we live on? Well, our mortgage is $2,500. And then we make about, I think we bring in, I don't know, what the, about $15, about $20 a month. Yeah, about $20. It sounds like a lot, right? It is a lot. It's a lot. So just imagine if you put like $15,000 a month towards these loans,

how quickly could you pay them off? Well, I have a little debt chart here, and I think I could get out of our student loan debt within the slope of the line is saying about a year. That sounds about right if you get intense about this. And so think about where you are a year from now if you just do this. You're completely debt-free, and then a few months later, you're going to have a fully funded emergency fund, and then you're back to investing. And we're talking, what, 14 months from now, you're there.

So should we do the company match at 5% and 6% on each of our jobs, or should we just let that go? Well, the idea that I'm letting it go, here's how I see it. Instead of just doing a measly match, you're going to come at this thing full throttle 14 months from now doing 15% instead of 3%, 4%, 5%.

So put pause on that. Number one, it's going to put a fire under your butt. That's why I like it. Because you're like, dang, I want that match. I can't believe we got into this mess. It's a stupid tax on that. Number one, it's going to put a fire under your butt. That's why I like it. Because you're like, dang, I want that match. I can't believe we got into this mess. It's a stupid tax on yourself. You're taxing yourself for having gone into debt and it's going to inspire you to get

done with this real fast. You're withholding the dessert until we get in shape a little bit. You know what I mean? So this is, it's twofold. Number one, 5% of $245,000 is a heck of a lot of money that you could be throwing at this debt. So number one, your debt's done faster. And number two, it makes you angry at the debt, which makes it gone faster and gets you back to investing more in a shorter amount of time.

Okay. Why does your wife want to go half-time after just finishing grad school? Because she's 29 years old, and she's like, I'm going to want to not be able to have kids if we don't hurry up and get them. Do you already have kids from a previous marriage? I have one. He's in his early 20s. He's 21, and he's outside of the house. So you're getting back up on the merry-go-round.

You're going to go again? Yeah. Yeah. She wants to have kids. I'm like, you know, I wanted to have more than one, so let's consider that. I would recommend from now on saying we want to have kids. Otherwise, it's going to sound weird. Yeah.

Well, we do. We both want to have kids. There you go. Look at that, Patrick. I'm excited for it. We'll use that to fuel this debt-free journey, and we're going to help you out with that. If you go to ramseysolutions.com slash studentloans, we have an awesome student loan hub there with resources. Our team is updating on what's going on out there.

We've got student loan payoff calculators, all kinds of things. And so you and your lovely wife, go check that out at ramseysolutions.com slash studentloans, and call us back when you're debt-free. We'd love to celebrate with you. Okay, we're going to do that. Thank you very much. Absolutely. Hey, man, you're on your path to freedom, Patrick. Everybody listening, that's what this show's about. It's about freedom and not in like the star-spangled underwear kind of way, but in the... But John, the government said they're going to forgive my loans. That's freedom. That's probably the worst accident i ever heard in my life thank you but it's about not owing anybody anything and then you can go part-time half-time full-time whatever you want to do

because you don't owe anybody anything freedom we'll be right back All right, this is The Ramsey Show, 888-825-5225. And this is a segment I like to call, This is My Confession. All right. I've been going to counseling. I'm trying to be better as a human and admit my faults. faults and so at the end of the last segment george gave a perfect king of the hill uh accent do it again george dang it bobby something like that so he did it perfect and i knew he did it perfect but i couldn't think of the show and so instead of saying that's a great accent for that one show i can't think of the name for it i just of saying, that's a great accent for that one show, I can't think of the name for it, I just said, hey, George,

that's the worst accent I've ever heard. That wasn't true. It was perfect. I couldn't remember the show, and I was kind of embarrassed because I love that show. Thank you, John. It's fantastic. Thank you for that apology.

That ends. And this is why we tell you, counseling works, guys. This ends the segment called This Is My Confession. All right, let's go out to Naima in Detroit. What's up, Naima? Hi, how are you guys? Thank you for taking my call. Thank you so much for calling.

We're doing great. What's up? Okay, so I have a very interesting situation. So my husband and I live in a duplex that we purchased about six years ago. We live in the top unit, and we have tenants on the bottom unit. We have two children. We're sharing one car right now that's being leased. And so we're about $53,000 in consumer debt,

and we owe about $180K on the home. And so the home is not in the greatest neighborhood. Like I said, we have two children, so we're kind of outgrowing the home as well. And so this is for your show. I told my husband, I said, I think we should sell the home. And we look to make about anywhere from $100,000 to $150,000 on the profit of the house. And so we would be able to pay off all of our debt.

We would have a fully funded emergency fund, be able to get rid of the lease and purchase two cars if we really need cash and then also have a down payment on a future home so it does a lot and so he's convinced that we should keep the home and I kind of feel like he's kind of gambling our potential future he feels like it's this unicorn of investment and after you know x amount of years we're going to have like this big payoff and so I've done like two financial models to show him like, you know, how even if we keep it and then rent somewhere else that we're struggling,

like we're really tight, you know, with our budget, which doesn't leave any room for like paying down the debt or saving for emergency, let alone for the children's future or retirement. So my question is like,

what can I show him or do to help him understand the necessity to sell the home and not keep it for a potential payoff later. Wow. You laid that out beautifully. And if you've already tried financial models, I don't know what's going to convince this guy other than being his wife and just sitting him down and being like, I'm scared. I'm not sleeping well. We don't have an emergency fund. We're $53,000 in debt. We're in a dangerous neighborhood trying to raise these two kids. And I want better for us. And selling this house would

give us a clean slate next week. And we'll be back. We'll be investing in the future in no time. But right now, we got to clean up this mess. Have you just sat them down and did that instead of showing Excel spreadsheets? Yes, I have. I started with that. I started with high emotion, you know, not to move back out of it. Let me figure this out for myself. And I did all the numbers, and I've been reading and working to educate myself to make sure that I wasn't missing anything. And I've shown him the models as well. And he still believes that, you know, we should move out, but that we should keep it as a rental as we're renting. And I just told him that our liability is going to wind up.

So he wants to get broker by keeping the mortgage and then getting another mortgage on top of the consumer debt while having no savings. Well, we would rent next year for two years and then get a mortgage after, yes. We would eventually have two mortgages on top of... Yeah, rent plus a mortgage is not fun. Yeah, he's going to be getting an increase in pay soon. And so he thinks that, oh, I'm making more money. So I'm saying, I'm telling him like like the money can't go up with the expenses, but that we're basically in the same position that if we increase our income,

we have less expenses and we have all this extra money to now put towards debt, I mean, towards retirement and savings and things like that. So I'm just having a hard time getting through to him. Also part of that is he's an architect by trade and he recently got into development. So I think because he's in development now, he's like looking at all the numbers and all the potentials, and he's like, you know, he's entrepreneurial. And he wants us to be, you know, extremely wealthy,

and I appreciate that, but I think he wants to put the chicken before the egg, and he wants to just jump into this thing and hold on to it. He's afraid of losing, as you said, our only asset. Well, I think there's something bigger than this, Naima. I appreciate you wanting to defend him and think that, hey, he's doing all these cool things with his new job and that must be what it is. He's looking at all these numbers. I don't think that's it at all. I think he is around some guys that are ahead of him financially and they've got some rental properties. I think

he watches too much YouTube and watches too much Instagram or TikTok. And I think he hears all these dudes flexing about real estate, real estate, real estate. And he's over here with the least car, one car, and he can't even see the forest for the trees, right? It's that guy that hasn't been to the gym in years but just keeps putting on tighter shirts because he feels big inside of them, right? It's just a strange flex that's not working.

I don't think this has anything to do with him getting sophisticated or smarter with numbers. I think it sounds like a guy who's getting more and more scared. Because math doesn't care what you want. Math is just math. And he's got, I'll tell you, this is also scary. He has a brilliant, very clear thinking wife. Because you've been through all the numbers. You've been through all the emotions.

You've been through all the tracks. I mean, you've done it all. I honestly would go back to what George said, that I would do it not in your home Okay, I know that sounds weird, but I would take him somewhere There's something about our homes or something about places that are familiar that our brains automates a lot of things And sometimes it makes it hard to hear or hard to learn or hard to see a different perspective Because everything just gets dumped into a,

think of it like a highway that's familiar. When you're in a road that you've never been on before, every one of your senses is up and alert. Where are we? What's safe? Where are we going? And so taking them out for breakfast somewhere, y'all getting away for a weekend

and just going to a nice hotel somewhere, whatever, take them away and say, I want to plan for the future for real. And I want you to start that conversation with, I'm so scared I can't breathe. Look, y'all, I have a truck. I know, I know, I know. I feel like he needs something else. I'm looking for, like, is there another piece of data?

No, this is not a data issue. Okay, it's not a data issue. This is not a math problem. You could have a 400-page spreadsheet and all the data in the world, and he's still going to be like, this is a grown man with an ego problem. This is not a math problem. You could have a 400-page spreadsheet and all the data in the world, and he's still going to be like, this is a grown man with an ego problem. This is not a math problem. We called it a unicorn asset. This could be a unicorn asset.

A duplex in Detroit in a bad neighborhood is a unicorn of an asset? Is he listening to himself? Also, we put a lot into it. We purchased it. It was completely dilapidated. We put all this energy in. We remodeled it. And it turned out great. And the neighborhood. It was like, you know, completely dilapidated. We put all this energy and we remodeled it. I mean,

and it turned out great. And the neighborhood is up and coming, but it's slow. And honestly, in six years, it hasn't moved as fast as we thought. And so,

you know, we do have profit in it, which is great, but it's like, it's still, it's just not, I don't know, the unicorn part.

He said that. That's a quote. Oh, it sounds like something he would say. But like John said, at the root of this is not a guy who's super smart it's a guy who there's three things going on here there's pride fear and greed

and maybe a little bit of all of it and that doesn't mean he's a bad person it just means he's gotten starry-eyed about how smart he is and now he's the exception to the rule and now he's going to become the next rich guy and one day you're going to thank him for doing this risky thing but right now you're scared and you want what's best for your family there's also a number four detached from reality right if he if he found a hundred thousand dollar property in downtown nashville and said honey we just need to hold this for a second i've got a unicorn i would go yeah you're right He did because national properties are insane. A dilapidated, refurbed duplex.

You are, it's a hippopotamus. It is not a unicorn. And what happens when you guys move out and the tenants trash the place and then the HVAC's broken and you still have a lease car and $50,000 in debt while paying rent, while needing to pay the mortgage, and the tenants stop paying on top of that. Has he thought about that as a possibility? And see, here's the thing, I think because we've had really good tenants for six years, we've never had a mispayment. We've done great with that. I think that he thinks that that's going to be the norm. We move out and then they're going to keep paying on time and we haven't had any major expenses, but we're hitting over the six-year mark now. So that means the

house is going to start doing some stuff. It was built in 1900, like really 1901. This is a guy that has had one rental house, one experience. George and I get to sit by Dave, who's got a whole, whole bunch of rental properties. People don't pay. If you watch the news and watch what happened with COVID, people just quit paying their rent so much so that politicians had to pass laws and say you couldn't kick them out of their house because people just quit paying. They couldn't pay. They didn't have any jobs.

They weren't allowed to go to work, right? Yeah, I wish there was a math problem. I wish there was a, oh yeah, just say this. But you've got a husband, like those three things George is talking about, you've got a husband that's detached from reality and that has this grandiose vision of himself and his smarts and his universe

that is simply not true. The only way I know through that is emotions. This is The Ramsey Show, 888-825-5225. I'm John Deloney, joined here by George Campbell. Listen, if you're a new listener and you want to dive deeper into the Ramsey baby steps, or you're wondering, what are y'all talking about when you even say baby steps? Go to ramseysolutions.com and click on the get started button. So many people are like, all right, I'm all in. I'm all in. I don't even know where to start. We're going to help you

figure out the best next step for your financial journey based on exactly where you are right now. Very personalized. This is for you. Go to ramseysolutions.com and click get started. We'll get you going. So John, this was a great tweet from our friend Dave Ramsey the other day. He said, I remember standing in the grocery store one day when Sharon and I were flat broke. I wrote a check for food and immediately got this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, wondering if I had just spent the money that we needed to pay the electric bill. And so what Dave's getting at here is this thing we talk about on the show,

this I've had it moment where you go, that was it. Everyone has that thing or they point back to it and go, that's when I realized this is a problem worth solving. What was yours? Mine was when I experienced identity theft and I knew that. Identity theft is for real, Jim. It's a real thing. So I pulled my credit reports and the scarier part was not the identity theft of these accounts

people opened. It was the accounts that I opened for all of these student loans. And I had never actually looked at the numbers. I just knew like, well, we'll get student loans and eventually I'll have to deal with them. I had it up exactly what I owed and all these student loans, and it took my breath away. And then I realized my first job out of college, it was barely enough to pay rent, the student loan minimum payments, because you actually have to pay those back once you graduate, all of my utility bills. And I was like, this is the path that I was sold? This is it?

And that is when I was like, something's got to give because this sucks. This life is terrible. And I was super cynical towards adulthood, toward all the lies that people had told me. And then I realized, oh, okay, it's not all my fault, but it's my responsibility to do what's next. And so we actually polled the Baby Steps group. Do you have any that you remember? Man, I remember it was during 2008, 2009 when the financial crisis hit and I was

working at a fancy university and man, I was reading all of this data in higher education about all these schools that were super debt leveraged and that pushed me over into some other literature about how these businesses were debt leveraged and now when the credit markets were frozen that they couldn't operate and eat and i was found myself thinking what idiots would have this much business revenue but owe this much money what kind of idiots would do that oh god that's me right like we owed this much money it's like six figures two loans we had we had thousands so much we owed so much money and i remember having a like a multi-year panic attack that just never stopped for a long time because i realized oh i'm as leveraged as them but i don't have a government that's gonna bail me out right my

family and i just lose our house and i had a new toddler so there was this there was a terrifying moment that as i was watching these businesses fail and these big banks fail i just could see the see the writing on the wall like oh you're next your family's next this intellectual exercise became an emotional mirror for you where you went like oh this isn't just like news headlines i'm living this this is me i make this much money and i have borrowed this much money. That's good. Well, we pulled the Baby Steps Facebook group over 400,000 folks in there. And here's just some interesting ones that I think may inspire some folks out there to either have their own or decide I've had it. One person said, I was changing my daughter, getting her ready for bed. Her pajamas were too small and I had just used my last few dollars to

buy formula. Didn't meet Dave until later, but I started then to live without debt. Wow. that's a wake-up call. That would be so scary. Like, I can't afford clothes that fit this child because of how leveraged I am. Here's another one. After Christmas in 2019, I sat down to pay the bills and just got so annoyed that we were always a step behind. I literally said to my husband, we make too much to be this broke. That is the quote that tells me you're ready. Until you say that out loud, you're not ready.

Another one, when I had to take money out of my child's savings to pay bills, it was the first quote debt I paid in baby step two. That's a sobering moment when the first item on your debt snowball is putting the money back that you stole from your child. Oh my goodness. That's a move that keeps you up at night, right? Yeah. When my husband had to have emergency surgery

and I couldn't be with him because we were in so much debt. Oh my goodness. I couldn't miss the hours at work. Yeah. Wow. When my card declined a day before payday at the McDonald's drive-thru, all I wanted was $2.99 fries for my daughter.

I became so bitter with living paycheck to paycheck and didn't sleep that night. That's how I found Dave on YouTube. Fast forward to six months now, and I went from baby step zero to baby step six. I work like a horse never again. So I think this is so important, and this is the thing that gets this show in hot water all the time. Has for years. You can have a never again moment and just go on a blaming, raged out tirade.

It's their fault. If they hadn't, if this hadn't happened to me, it did. And it's worth tears. And it's worth tears and it's heartbreaking and it's often generational. But the question we all have to ask ourself is, well, now what? And these people who you're reading, I think it's so beautiful.

They had these moments and then they said, there is no, there is no cavalry coming. This is me, me and my house. We have to fix this. And so I'm going to take this bull by the horns. I'm going to wrestle to the ground and I'm going to do whatever I have to do. And there's a sense of what this show has always been about,

which is empowerment. It is that you can get back in the driver's seat of your car. And if you realize, hey, we're about to die because your car's careening off the road and you just stay in the back seat and yell, you're still going to go off the edge, right? The only chance you got is to get back in that driver's seat and try to steer it to safety.

That's a great analogy. I'm picturing the passenger holding the oh crap bar going like, oh my gosh, what do we do? And they realize like, oh, no one's in the, I can step into the driver's seat. I can step in the driver's seat and drive. I can control this vehicle, but it's hard to get to that moment.

And the good news is you don't have to get to this like rock bottom terrifying moment. You can just decide that average sucks and that you can do better than that. But it takes a step forward where you go, my plan isn't working. I'm a financial genius who's broke. Let me try a different plan. And that's what I did back in 2013. I was like, this ain't cutting it. So I went through Financial Peace University and I was like, oh, this is a paradigm shift. This is jarring. This is offensive because everything I was told, all these myths that I believe that led me here were a lie.

So you're kind of mad at Dave at first. And then you realize, oh, he's not the problem. He's just the guy on the corner being like there's a different way you got screwed and uh once you can get over that piece life change can happen yeah every single every single time man um where should they go if so if someone just heard that and they're like i'm having that i had that moment last night i went to get my kids uh clothes for school my son grew seven inches over the summer break and I can't afford jeans. I'm tired of this. Where do they go, man? Well, there's a few steps you can take. Number one, paying attention to your money while the scariest step is the most crucial. And so I always tell people, jump onto every dollar, create a free budget and just lay out a plan and just go,

oh, okay, we make this much money. Here's all of our expenses. And that at least tells you, are we in the hole or do we have plenty of margin and we're just wasting it? So that really is one of the most crucial things, just putting a plan to paper. It's just choosing reality. Where are we right now? And list out all of your debts. Some of you need to figure out how much debt you actually have because you've had your head buried in the sand, not wanting to look at it because it's too gross. And the other thing you can do is get new information. One of those is listening to the show right now. People say, I listen to the show. I get motivated. Either you go,

I'm not as bad as that person, right? That's half the people that listen to the show. Or you go, that person was me or that person could be me. So you start dreaming out loud. You go through Financial Peace University and you sit there and watch all nine lessons, and you're like, I know too much to go back. Ignorance was bliss, and not anymore, because I know too much. I know that these are all traps meant to hold me back, meant to hold back my future. And people like to be like, that whole Dave Ramsey place, man, they're like a cult telling people to cut up their credit cards. I'm like, or are you the brainwashed one who believes that this is the path? And here's what's strange. This is before I worked here. This is since I've worked here. I had knee surgery a few years ago and I heard people say, oh, that guy's

the best surgeon ever. I heard people say, I'll never have that guy do my knee surgery, right? So I had to dig in, meet with him and all that. I've never met one person before, working here or after that said, you know, I wish I hadn't paid all that debt off. I wish I hadn't done that. Huge regret. I wish I'd just gone on vacations instead of paying off. I've never heard it. Why? Because it's always worth it. Freedom

is always worth it. Hey, that's the first hour in the books. Thank you for joining us, America. We'll be back soon right here on The Ramsey Show. Hey, George Campbell here. If you love the show and you want a deeper dive on your money journey, we've got a weekly newsletter that gives you helpful articles and tips on following the Ramsey way. Just go to ramseysolutions.com today to sign up for the newsletter. Again, that's ramseysolutions.com to sign up for our weekly newsletter.