The Ramsey Show - App - My Job Pays Well but the Culture Is Toxic (Hour 3)

Episode Date: July 11, 2023

Ken Coleman & George Kamel answer your questions and discuss:  Should I stay at a job that is bad for my mental health?  $50K in debt and I can't find a job,  Struggling to make traction on our debt, The right time to re-fi, What's the fastest way to pay off $850k in debt? Have a question for the show? Call 888-825-5225 Weekdays from 2-5pm ET Here's an EveryDollar deal just for our listeners: get a 14-day free trial PLUS $15 off your first year of premium. Click the link below and start budgeting today! www.everydollar.com/george Want a plan for your money? Find out where to start: https://bit.ly/3cEP4n6 Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts: https://bit.ly/3GxiXm6 Interested in advertising on The Ramsey Show? https://ter.li/s64ye3 Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

Девочка-пай Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the pods, moving and storage studio, this is The Ramsey Show. It's where we help you win in life, specifically your money, your work, and your relationships. All three of those areas are tied together. I'm Ken Coleman. George Campbell joins me this hour. 888-825-5225. 888-825-5225. So we're taking your calls. Money questions. How about work questions? George is the money expert. I'll

help you in your work life. And that could be, I'm stuck. I'm in a toxic situation. I'm burned out. I'm bored. I want to make more money. Any of those questions, we want to help you increase that income. That gets you through the baby steps faster, so I'm here to help in that area. And George, of course, is the Mac daddy. Wow. The daddy of the Mac, I think they said one time in the 90s. It is.

I don't remember what artist said that. I was probably four years old, so I have no idea. Yeah, there it is. There it is. I'll have to do that on Ask Jeeves to figure out who did that one. Ask Jeeves. I do. I do.

888-825-5225 is the number to jump in. George and I love doing this, so we're going to start it out this hour with Nick in the Big Apple. Nick, how can we help? Hey, good afternoon, guys. Thanks for taking my call. You bet. What's up? So, I make a lot of money. I've been with the same job for about four years.

I'm 26 years old. But I recently, this past year, have just been struggling with some mental health issues. Everything at work seems to be negative. I contribute a lot. I feel like I'm doing my job well, but the organization itself is not doing all that well. But all the negativity really trickles down. It's a lot of yelling.

It's a lot of nothing's ever right. Hold on a second. Who's yelling? A lot of the leadership team. Okay. And what else is going on? I heard that you feel like you're doing your job. You're pulling your weight.

You've got some teammates that aren't, or maybe your leader isn't. What's going on there? Right, exactly. So I work in enterprise technology sales, B2B, and it can be interesting the way that some of these deals shape up. And sometimes you'll have years where it'll be very dependent on one or two transactions. So you're basically all or nothing. And I've had a good run so far, but it's spotty. There's things that you can't control. You could be really good at your job, but your attainment might not reflect that. And I think that's what's going on across the

organization and especially the economy, the way that it is. It's been challenging this past year, especially. So what does it mean to you when you say I'm having mental health issues? What does that look like, feel like? Just every day that I wake up during the work week, it's another day that I just would rather not mutter through and just kind of going through the motions, losing motivation. Yeah. Really just struggling to keep my performance where it was because I just don't feel valued. I don't feel like I make any sort of difference. You nailed it.

All right. So the reason I ask this, and I want us to be careful, and Nick, this is not at you. This is to the larger audience as well. I guess you could get into a debate about whether that's mental health or not. I don't think that's what I would call a mental health issue. That right there is just you aren't feeling valued, and you don't want to keep going into that place. And yet you got to right now until you replace it. And so there's obligation that is colliding with, you know, exhaustion.

I would tell you you are mentally and emotionally exhausted. That I know. And so it's okay to use the phrase mental health, but I just want to stipulate that you're okay. You just need a new location. You need a new gig. And so I don't know if you were calling for permission on that. You don't need it from us, but I think I'm looking. If you haven't already started looking, I'm looking because when I hear things like they're yelling and it's just a nasty culture, that is rarely able, I mean, rarely can you change that.

You having a meeting with your leader is probably not going to change that. Is that right? Yeah, that's correct. I am asking for your permission now because it's tied to a financial predicament. What's the predicament? The predicament is I am under contract to purchase a co-op in Queens that I was hoping to close this month. But the contingency is there's a garage spot that the owner of this co-op has that he needs to sell to somebody else in the building. And I do not want it for the price that he's asking.

So this is going to drag out, it seems, for at least another few months, if not half a year. So if I go and start looking for jobs now and potentially receive an offer and I'm looking to make a move, that might affect my mortgage lending ability. Because of your change in income? Well, potentially because of my change in income, but also just because of my tenure. That doesn't matter, Nick. You can always buy a co-op. I would not make a decision about a co-op. I would make the decision about my life. And this work situation is much bigger than the co-op situation. This is about your livelihood, your life, the way you live it. You're having a hard time getting out of bed.

So the job decision is the one that I'm focused on, not the co-op. What are you making right now, Nick? My income varies a little bit because I'm in sales, but the average of the past three years is about $140,000. And you don't think you could make $140,000 in tech sales at a different company? No, I definitely think I could. It's just a matter of I'm scared to make a jump because I don't want it to negatively affect the mortgage process on this co-op and have this fall through because I think it's a big opportunity financially for me to finally own something and have an asset. And I'm young and I'm trying to get in the real estate game. I'm not really passionate about sex sales.

I make a lot of money doing it, but I'm really not stimulated by it the way that I would like to. Are you going to live in this co-op? Yes. Do you have any debt? No debt. Okay. Well, what's the worst-case scenario here?

Let's say the deal, the mortgage doesn't get approved because you have this change in income or whatever. What happens? I can't close on the co-op and I'm stuck living in, we're in a very small apartment right now in the basement of one of my dad's rental properties. The price is right. I'm living for free. I've been living here for about 10 or 11 months. The initial plan was only to live here for a couple until I could close on something. That's a sweet deal in New York. Well, do you lose any money if you back out of this deal because of the mortgage falling through? Some, a couple thousand bucks, but nothing crazy. Okay. So it's not going to tank your life. It would stink because you're really excited about this, but I'm with Canon. I don't want to stick in this job I hate for six months just because Okay. So it's not going to tank your life. It would stink because you're really excited about this.

But I'm with Canon. I don't want to stick in this job I hate for six months just because of this co-op deal. Yeah. So I would find another tech sales job if that's what you need right now. Eventually, I think you need a whole new career. At least in a better environment. Yeah. Just to get stable. Just to get stable.

Then we can figure out what's next and what career is right for you. Thanks for the call. Hang in there. Better days are ahead. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm Ken Coleman, joined by George Camel. 888-825-5225.

888-825-5225 is the phone number. Ryan joins us now in San Jose, California. Ryan, how can we help? Hi. Good afternoon, guys. I'm in $50,000 in student debt, and I've been looking for a job, but no one has hired me. What are the next steps I should do?

Well, you just keep going. You don't quit. So what have you been trying to get hired to do? So I graduated from university 18 months ago. And when I first graduated, I wrote, I go on my Excel spreadsheet, type in like all the students that went in. And then I'm just like, okay, first goal, I'm going to go try to seek a job. And then that was from january of 2022 till now it's been 18 months been applying for jobs been on active on linkedin zip recruiter indeed been applying for jobs no one calls me for interviews okay and either that or i've been

ghosted and then i'm just like initially i was thinking like okay if there's student loan forgiveness what's to happen,000 might be forgiven. But if not, I need to be serious about this plan. What should I do before I make my first payment in October? Yeah. All right. So, Ryan, I'm going to give you two pieces of advice here. I want George to weigh in as well.

You should have been working the entire time. Is it the job that you've been trying to get? Probably not. I don't know if it was attached to your major. I never got an answer from you as to what type of jobs you're looking for. We'll get to that in a minute. But you need to be working. We are in a fantastic gig economy.

Now, if you've not heard that phrase, it just means we live in an economy where you can work, whether you're driving delivery from one of the major ride share companies or you're doing something locally or you're doing freelance work. The gig economy is I'm a private contractor. Essentially, I set my own hours. I come and go. And there is a lot of opportunity in our economy for those type of jobs. There are also right now, we're seeing a tremendous amount of jobs that are available in the $15 to $20 an hour range, maybe doing something menial, maybe not doing something that you want to do, but it is money nonetheless. And you've been sitting on the sidelines waiting for someone to discover you. I've been doing right from the

side. I've been doing right from the side. I've been doing right from the side. Oh, you didn't tell us that. Is that how you've been paying the bills for the last 16 months? Correct. I've been paying the bills for the last 16 months. How much money are you making? I don't pay rent. Per weekend, I am making between $500 to $600.

What are you doing during the week? During the week, I'm just waking up at 9 and 9, and I just keep on looking at my laptop and just applying for jobs until someone reaches out to me and interviews me. Ryan, that's not enough. You need to be working full-time. You need to be working 40 hours a week and knocking out that debt. You could have knocked a huge chunk of that debt out working 40 hours a week. Just a retail job, whatever it is. But what you're doing right now is not working. And you are essentially playing the professional lottery by going on LinkedIn and sending out messages, sending out resumes, and you are a nameless, faceless person. And I hate that for you.

But that's the process we live in right now where everything's AI. And if you apply for a job, if you don't have a relationship connection to that company to say, hey, let me tell you about Ryan. I know Ryan. I've known Ryan since he was a baby or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever it is. You've got to make real personal connections at these companies to get yourself an interview. You're not even getting to the interview phase. And then when you are getting there, nothing's happening because you haven't stood out prior to the process or in the game.

So I'm going to give you some free resources. I'm also going to give you a couple of paid resources towards the end. I'll tell you what those are. But you need to understand that right now your goal is you've got to get out of the doldrums. You've got to get out of this rut where you're just sitting around getting rejected day in and day out, hearing nothing but crickets and only doing ride share on the weekend. You could be paying off this student loan debt. George, how much could he, I mean, you know the numbers, crunch the numbers. How much could he be paying off every month? How much could he have paid off if he's working full-time while he's trying to find that, that, that, that placement in the field he wants to be in? Well, a lot of these,

as you know, these rideshare jobs, you can easily make 20 bucks an hour delivering food, groceries, people, packages. And so let's even call that 20 bucks an hour, 40 hours a week. That's 800 bucks a week. So you start multiplying that out. You said you don't pay rent, right? No, I don't pay rent. So you're talking over $3,000 a month that could have been going towards paying off the student loans during the pause so that you're not in this predicament where now student loan payments are coming back and you still aren't employed. So I would get to work ASAP, even if it's not the dream job. You could almost be out of the $50,000 of debt is what we're getting at.

You could be very close to have paid that off just doing what George did with those numbers. So what field are you trying to get into? So I've been trying to be a data analyst or a financial analyst because I have more into data analytics and graduate finance. Okay. So you got the degree, you had a good GPA, all that stuff? Correct, sir. All right. So you realize that you're going to have to make some personal connections.

You've got to have some people calling people on your behalf. You've already played it the way that most people try to play it, and then they get discouraged. So I'm going to give you a book called The Proximity Principle, all right? And I want you to read it, or I'll give you the audio version if that's your preference. And it's a deep dive on how to make connections because the right people, Ryan, plus the right places bring me opportunity. They show up at your door. Do you understand that formula?

Yes, sir. Yeah. When I'm around the right people, they'll make good connections for me. When I'm in the right places, I meet more of the right people, and I start getting opportunities. You've got to get really serious about this, but you're going to cut your time that you've just been sitting there submitting resumes and all that, and you're going to get busy,

and you're going to get some momentum in paying off this debt. And then from there, you're going to feel a little bit more juice because you're not just sitting there looking at that student loan payment come in and nothing happening. You need some wins right now. And paying off that student loan by working 40, 50, maybe 60 hours a week for a while would be great. And then making connections. You're driving, and when you're not driving, you're meeting with people. George, that's the play. And with no rent, I mean, let's knock this thing out while you have that sweet deal happening yeah so hang on the line we'll get you a copy of

the proximity principle it'll help you there all right let's go to madison wisconsin where clint joins us clint how can we help how are you doing guys great how are you sir oh pretty good um so me and my wife we're about sixty thousand000 in debt and just are struggling to get anywhere. We've been paying on it and it seems like we're stuck. What's your income? About $90,000 to $100,000 a year. Okay. And what kind of debt is the $60,000? So there's about $22 about 22 in credit card.

There's about 30, say about 34 in car loans. And, um, yeah, I think that's about it. And what is your other car worth? You have two? Um, yeah, sorry. Yeah, sorry. Um, the other one we owe, I uh 16 on it okay so we got two cars so we got if i'm looking at this what are those cars worth you owe 34 and you owe 16 what are both of those cars worth uh the 16 it it's worth uh 32 000 and the other car is worth like $40,000 something. I think like $45,000.

I am selling these cars. The cars are what's crushing you guys. I mean, this is way over half your income in the car's values. Right. And the nice thing about car loans, the only nice thing is that you can kind of undo some of this, especially if the car is worth more than what you owe. And so what if we sold these cars and you netted out of this deal,

you'd net, let's see, you'd probably walk away with at least $20,000, right? You could buy two cheaper cars. Right. So you buy two cheaper cars that are $10,000 each for now. We'll upgrade later to something reasonable with cash. That leaves you with the credit card debt because that high interest is killing you guys. And let's just knock this stuff out. You're making $100,000. upgrade later to something reasonable with cash that leaves you with the credit card debt because that high interest is killing you guys and let's just knock this stuff out you're making 100k

you got cars that are reasonable you're down to 22k instead of 60 and let's debt snowball this thing smallest to largest regardless of the interest rate knock this out get on a budget get on a proven plan cut all the discretionary spending let's try to make more right now for a season and you'll be out of this thing within months. But if you hang on to these cars, there's just going to be a wait. Should we get him an FPU? I think we should.

Let's hook them up with Financial Peace University for one year. He feels tired and he feels like he doesn't have a lot of hope and we're going to get you hope with community. So hang on the line. We'll get you an FPU, get you and your wife in there

and you guys, you're going to change your life. I know you are. We believe in you, Clint. Thank you so much for the call. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. Thrilled to have you with us. I'm Ken Coleman, joined by George Camel.

The phone number is 888-825-5225, helping you win in your life, specifically your money, your work, and your relationships. 888-825-5255, helping you win in your life, specifically your money, your work, and your relationships. 888-825-5255. Let's go to Diana, who joins us in Houston, Texas. Diana, how can we help? Hi, good afternoon, Ken and George. So my question is, when will it be a good time for us to refinance our home? What's making you want to refinance?

Well, for starters, we are paying a 5% interest for the past 14 years. And we still owe a little over $100,000 on our principal balance. We have two daughters. One of them is about to go to college within a year and a half from now. The other one is not that far from there. So I want to free up money to start saving up for college,

also start ramping up on our retirement fund, and just, you know, having more cash available for us, you know. Oh, are you wanting to do a cash out refinance, not just a refinance? Well, I don't know what will make more sense because, you know, right now I called my mortgage company yesterday and I was just getting information and they told me they gave me a interest rate of a 6.5, which is higher than what we're paying right now.

So I just want to see what will be a good decision. Should we just continue paying the house as we are and just making an extra payment towards the principal, or should we refinance? So that's what I'm calling it. Yeah, refinancing is not going to solve any problems for you right now. And right now is one of the worst times to refinance because you guys have a lower interest rate than the market. So that's not the solution to your problems. I would absolutely not do a cash out refinance

because that's putting you further into debt. And so you think it may be solving one problem over here, but you're just adding more to the other side in the pile. So the only time it would make sense to refinance is if you can get a lower interest rate, if you can move from a variable rate to a fixed rate, which I assume you guys have a fixed rate right now? Correct. Okay. You can get a shorter loan term. So if you were refinancing from a 30 to a 15 year, and you could kind of ROI on that, because you're going to pay closing costs, it's going to cost money to this refinance.

You want to make sure that it actually makes financial sense. Right, right. So it doesn't sound like it's going to solve any of that for you. It may just be that the mortgage is just too much for you guys based on your income. Is that the case? Well, no. Right now, our income is between $80,000 to $100,000 net, depending on what my husband does and so forth. But, you know, I just... And what's the mortgage?

Right now, what we pay a month, it's about a little over $1,400 a month. So the mortgage is reasonable, and that tells me that the mortgage isn't the problem. Are there other expenses that are holding you guys back from being able to save up for college? Do you have any other debt other than the mortgage? No, we don't. No, the mortgage is it. Okay, so you're telling me you're taking home

anywhere from $6,500 to $8,000 a month? Mm-hmm. I'm sorry. it all depends i know that because i had you know we um we're in the transportation industry so um sometimes you know we a couple of years that we have really good um you know income there are a couple of years where we just kind of low so that's basically our average. Sometimes we have made down to $60, maybe $50 a year, so it all depends. So hopefully, you know, it'll be better. Like we're projecting maybe this year at about $80, so $80 to $90.

And you said that's take-home pay. That's net income? Correct. Okay, that's $6,500 a month. Let's call it $6-home pay. That's net income? Correct. Okay. That's $6,500 a month. Let's call it six for even numbers. $1,400 is reasonable. That puts you right at about 25% of your take-home pay for the mortgage. And so I say all that to say the home is not the issue. We've got to look at, we can increase income. That's one way we can save up for college. The other way is to decrease other expenses. And so we got to look at the budget and go, where in the budget are we missing something? How can we lower our insurance rates by shopping around with our

friends at Zander? Are there other discretionary expenses? Are we eating out too much? Do we have too many subscriptions? Do we need to cut the expensive gym membership? Those kinds of things, as you add them all up, can add up to big numbers to help you guys save. So are you investing right now in retirement? Yes, we are. What percentage of your income? At this time, we're not. We stopped last year. We, I have about 150 in IRA. Why'd you stop? Well, There were COVID started, you know, when COVID started, my husband didn't work for a couple of months. So when he, when everything started opening up.

That was three years ago. Right, right. So it could be, you know, I would say expenses, even though we don't have any debt, but expenses that we- I think you guys aren't doing a detailed monthly budget right now, and the money is just floating away, and we need to get back on track. So I'm going to help you with that. I'm going to gift you one year of every dollar, the premium version, to really make a plan. You lay out that $6,500 at the top, and you are the boss of that budget. And once you make the budget, the budget is the boss of you guys. And that will free you to go, oh, that's where

our money's going. We said we were going to spend 500 bucks on food. It ended up being a thousand because we got a little lazy. So if you add all of that stuff up in the budget, it will allow you to go, we got to invest 15% of our income to retirement first. Whatever's left on top of that, we're going to start throwing at college. Whatever's left over that, we're going to throw at the house. And if it turns out there's not enough money, we got to increase our income and find some more stability. Yeah. So hang on the line. We'll gift you every dollar premium. And for those of you listening out there, we have an amazing deal right now. If you go to everydollar.com slash George, 14 day free trial and 15 bucks off, 15 bucks off if you want to get the premium version.

So hang on the line. We'll get you that. Let's go to Ali in Washington, D.C. How can we help? Hi, George and Ken. Thank you so much for taking my call. Sure. My question is on student loans, whether I should pay it all off

or whether I should pay in lump sum. Aren't those the same thing? So I owe a total of about $64,000. I do have enough cash on hand to pay it all off. But then I'm a little bit nervous about not having enough money for down payment next year. So that's part of it. And then the other part is we were just thinking about maybe perhaps pay 40K on the student loan and then like take it to next year, perhaps like in two years completely pay off. Okay. Well, in the Ramsey plan, the way that will help you do this with peace is to slow down on the home ownership goal, because right now we got a pile of debt to clean up. So I would not Mae's name on it, not your new home name on it.

And so I would pay it off in full today. Let's see where we're at. Let's then get an emergency fund in place of three to six months, then begin saving up that down payment. How long would that take you if you did it that way? I think I could get it done by the end of next year. I would have more than enough for a down payment, a nice down payment for the house. And then, of course, emergency financing, I already have. Now imagine that.

Good amount. It stinks because you're like, man, I want to get a house sooner than that. But a year and a half from now, you step into home ownership with no debt except for this mortgage. That's reasonable. You step in with a fully funded emergency fund ready to cover you because home ownership is freaking expensive and then you also have the down payment instead of trying to put nothing down to scrape by to get into the home so that's the way to do it and if you do a 15-year fixed rate with the payments no more than a quarter of your take-home pay even though it's going to take longer i understand that you will walk into this with a whole lot more peace yeah and that's what

we want for you and ali you've been disciplined to save that money to be able to pay off these loans. You now know that Uncle Joe's not coming through. So pay it off. It's a game changer. You're going to be so much further ahead. Don't look at it as I'm behind in my homeowner goal. Look at it as I'm ahead in life because that's really what's going on. I'd pay him off now, today, like before close of business. That'll be a fantastic, fantastic way to sleep tonight. Thank you for the call. All right, don't move.

More calls coming up. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm Ken Coleman. I'm joined by George Camel. Thrilled to have you with us. Our scripture of the day comes from Proverbs 24, 16. For the righteous fall seven times and rises again,

but the wicked stumble in times of calamity. Our quote from Michael Jordan. I've failed over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed. So that's fun. So during the commercial break, just to get a little inside baseball, George and I, or any of the Ramsey personalities, twice an hour we go out and we meet folks in the lobby and say hi, high five, sign books, take pictures and all this stuff.

And so in hour one today, we had a fine young lady, just had her act together. Good questions. Her name was Jessica. She was from in nashville so we said this is in our backyard and so as we were talking to jessica uh i asked her what point what does she does what does she do and she works for for uh crumble corporate training corporate training yeah and i just made a little smart alec comment well first thing you

need to do is drop a box of cookies by sometime. And she said, as I recall, playfully, I can make that happen. Well, so here we are in hour three, and we go out in the lobby to say hi to some folks. And who is in the lobby with her dad? Jessica. With a giant box of crumble cookies. With a giant box of crumble cookies. I think that thing is bigger than me. It's huge.

We have it on air if you're watching on YouTube. Ken brought it in the studio. I brought it. Oh, my gosh. Can you reveal that to the camera, Ken? Is there a way to do that? I'm afraid I'm going to dump it. Don't dump it is what Kelly said.

Do not dump it. That's precious cargo. There it is. That's all I can do. I'm very nervous. Crumble is not a sponsor. They're not an advertiser. We just thought it was really fun.

It's not an advertising spot. When people bring us good food, I'm thank them that's really kind of jessica so jessica you're amazing she's out in the lobby and she has her act together she's great and she's leaving at four in the morning wow to go on a training trip so she's getting after it so well and if listeners out there she wrote us a nice card the way to ken's heart is through food he will accept it if you bring it yeah i got no problem people problem. People ask me all the time, will you eat it? I go, absolutely, we're going to eat it. What do I do?

I don't need an official taster. She did say we have to share it with the team. So we're going to share it with the team, by the way. They're very excited. Now, look at them. They haven't been paying attention for three hours, and now they're jumping up. It's the best part of their day. They're so excited.

So this is for the team, because they're the ones that deserve it anyway. But here we go. That's right. Let's go to Vancouver. You ever been to Vancouver? I haven't. I've been to Montreal in Quebec, but not Vancouver. I'd really like to go. Look at me now. See, I'm getting free

cookies. Now I'm looking for a free trip. Make it stop, George. I gotta stop. Brandon, can you send Ken to Vancouver? Can you make it happen? Brandon, you're on the Ramsey Show. How's it going? Hey, guys. Good. Thanks for taking my call today. You bet. I'm fairly new. I've been about three weeks new to this whole Ramsey Show. How's it going? Hey, guys. Good. Thanks for taking my call today. So I'm fairly new. I've been about three weeks new to this whole Ramsey Show stuff to work on. And it came at a perfect time because I have a mountain of debt. And just

wondering what the fastest way to pay it off would be. It's about a total of $850,000, and that's including mortgages. Okay. Lay them out for me with the consumer debt first. Okay, consumer debt first. So I've got $4,000 on an LOC. I've got a MasterCard with $24,000, a car with $21,000, a truck with $77,000. And then we've got my personal house, which has got a mortgage remaining of $577,000 and then we've got my personal house which has got a mortgage remaining of $550,000

and then a rental house with a remaining mortgage of $170,000 plus a HELOC on my personal house which is about $190,000. Holy goodness, you've been collecting this stuff, man. What is your income? I'm not too proud about it. My household income is about $160,000 to $170,000. Okay. What is the truck for? It's a vehicle that we bought with me and my wife. We have five children, and we wanted something to

be able to pull a trailer to take our family on vacation. Do you have an RV? No, we actually pulled my parents' 27-foot trailer to go camping up in Yocon, Oregon. Okay. It's time to buy some tents. I think for now we vacation in our home because we are freaking broke. I think this truck needs to go. That's staring me down in a bad way. And because you can sell this stuff, I'd probably sell the truck and the car just to help clean some of this up to give you guys some breathing room. But what you do, here's what you do. Ignore the mortgage parts for now. Let's focus on this consumer debt and lay them out smallest to largest.

That makes it palatable, right? If you go, how quickly can you pay off this 4k and LLC debt? A month? We just wrote actually our thing up last night on our plan and we're hoping to have that paid off by the end of August. Okay. So end of August, we knock out the first debt. What's the next biggest debt? The credit cards? If we sell the car? The car is 21. The MasterCard is 24. Okay. Now my personal plan, because I can't breathe right now, is to just sell these vehicles and just drive beaters for now, even if they're two $10,000 cars. We're not going on vacation. We're broke.

So we can't afford that anyways. We're not towing any trailers anytime soon. What if we cleaned up the car debt? That alleviates $100,000 of this consumer debt. Now you just have credit cards in front of you for consumer debt. Then we're at the mortgages. You how that just speeded sped up that process yeah no absolutely our truck unfortunately a month after we bought it we actually got hit and it's been now had to be fixed it had about twenty thousand dollars in damage a month after we bought it so i've thought about selling, but from what I've heard from,

I was talking with an insurance adjuster, they figure it's only worth, the price has dropped about 30 to 40% based on that accident, but we could get for it. So we'd still be left with like 20 to 25,000 remaining on that. Even after you fix it up?

Well, it's already been fixed. We've had it for a little over a year now. But it's depreciated the value because of the accident. Exactly, yes. Well, you said your income was how much? $140, $160? $160 to $170. $160, $170. Is there a way to increase that? I'm already working overtime now. My wife's also starting to pick up some overtime to help bring that up as well.

Okay. Well, there's no easy shortcut way out of this, and there's no amount of debt you can move around to make this go away. The only way to make it go away is aggressively pay it off with the debt snowball, smallest to largest, increase the income, decrease the expenses, find as much margin as you can to throw at that smallest debt, and just work your way at this thing. And I'd probably sell the rental. What's the rental worth? Around $300,000.

So you could net about $100,000 plus to throw at the other debt? Yeah, and that would, that we used to actually, I know this is terrible thinking on my part looking back now, but we used our home equity line of credit to purchase our rental house. And it had a slew of repairs to the extent of about $70,000 more than what we were expecting. And that's where we have our HELOC from. Okay, but you can still sell the rental? Yes. That's a game changer.

You have to do that. It gives you pretty big momentum to get this thing started. Now, there's still a lot of work to do, but that'll help. And even being underwater on that truck, I'd probably sell the rental and use that to cover the underwater portion, sell the car, get two beater cars. That at least cleans up a whole lot of this debt. That leaves you with the LLC, the credit cards, and the HELOC, and then save the mortgage until the very end. Okay.

What is the house worth? My personal residence? Yes. About a million dollars. Okay. Now, I don't think you need to sell the house unless this mortgage payment is killing you guys. Is it a big part of your monthly take-home pay? It's right around that quarter mark.

It's about $2,500 a 2500 a month okay and you're bringing in 10k approximately 10 okay yeah so i didn't think the mortgage was the problem and i would just save that to the very end i'm not a huge fan of just using that as the first shortcut to just sell the house to get out of this thing i want to see some behavior change otherwise you're going to be right back in this mess a year from now and that means the sacrifices of paying off the truck that we use for the family vacations and the car. We've got to stop looking for shortcuts. And I feel like you're ready for that. Yeah.

Is your spouse on board as well? At first, it was tough. I've been listening to your guys' podcast religiously for the last three weeks, and she's not quite on board, but she's definitely more on board now that we've put it out on paper, kind of a plan I was planning on doing. But I figured to call you guys, I think

she'll be able to come on board with it. It might be a little bit of a struggle, but it's a good conversation. If you just show her these numbers on paper, show her the interest, show her how long it's going to take to crawl out of this thing. She's going to be willing to sell some stuff. Yeah, I agree. I can't wait looking at this stuff, man.

I'm pulling for you to get out of this thing. Call us back if we can help in any way. Imagine just looking at the budget once all those things are paid off that we just talked about by the one part sale of the house. That's a game changer. That'll get somebody on board. Show them real numbers. Good hour, George. You're going to need a massage

after walking through that last call. Maybe a chiropractor. I don't know. Big thanks to Kelly Daniel for keeping it on the tracks and the crew in there with her and then also you, America. This is The Ramsey Show.

Hey, it's Ken. If you love the show and want a deeper dive on your money journey, we have a weekly newsletter that gives you trending and helpful articles and tips on following the Ramsey way. Go to ramsesolutions.com today to sign up for our newsletter. Again, that's ramsesolutions.com to sign up for our weekly newsletter.