The Ramsey Show - App - My Son Just Had Brain Surgery - What's Our Next Financial Step? (Hour 3)

Episode Date: July 17, 2020

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🎵 Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studio, this is the Dave Ramsey Show, where America hangs out to have a conversation about your life and your money. My name is Anthony O'Neill, hosting the show today. We're going to keep it real, relevant, and relatable. And so I want to have a conversation with you 888-825-5225 888-825-5225 and i'm ashley you know i have my computer up so if you want to tweet me or instagram me some questions uh go over to at anthony o'neill look for the blue check mark

that's right the blue check mark uh at anthony'Neill. I have Twitter and Instagram. Pull it up. Follow me. Send me a message. And I am having a conversation. I want to start off the show by giving some love to our YouTube family. Thank you all for tuning in and been rocking with us for the last two hours. We've got one more hour together. We're going to have a good time. So triple eight, eight, two, five, five, two, two, five. Let's go out to Pensacola, Florida and have a conversation with Tina.

Tina, good afternoon. How can I help you? Hey, Anthony. I have a question. My husband and I are new to FPU. We started I think four weeks ago because our class took the holiday off.

And we have, so far we have paid off almost 10,000 in debt and we still have 14, nine to go. We have 11,000 in our savings, which if we took it down 10 to pay off debt would leave us with the thousand. Mike, but my husband and I both feel like if we did that, we wouldn't learn our lesson. Are we wrong or are we right? What lesson does he want you to learn?

Like our lesson in how we got into this mess with credit cards and debt in the first place. If we just wipe it out, we feel like we won't feel the pain, if that makes sense. Oh, yeah. Okay, hold on. I mean, no, we're not on beans and rice. We're not that, you know, but... What's y'all's combined income right now?

Four grand a month. Combined income is four grand a month, okay. Mm-hmm. All right, all right. He's retired. He's retired. And I'm a month. Okay. Mm-hmm. All right. All right. He's retired. He's retired. And I'm still working.

And you're still working. He's retired, so I'm still working. Okay, cool. So, respectfully saying- Our house is paid for. Oh, the house is- Yeah. The house is paid for.

We have two credit cards and a truck. And that's what the 14-9 is? Two credit cards and a truck left? Yes. Okay. We paid off six credit cards, including Satan, and Faith America.

All right. We still have American Depressed, and then another credit card. Yeah. I'm paying it all off today. As soon as I hang up the phone, I'm cutting a check, and I am, Tina, I'm telling your husband, we're going to have a conversation, like the phone, I'm cutting a check. And I am Tina.

I'm telling your husband we're going to have a conversation like, hey, let's pay it off. Because here's the thing. You've learned your lesson already for what you've done. Do not pay penalty because you want to keep learning it. So the more you allow to go on, then the more interest, the more penalty you are paying and you're not receiving interest. And so I will go immediately get the $10,000 and cut that. I mean, I'm cutting the check.

All right. And then when y'all get paid in the next couple of weeks, I'm cutting another check to completely get out of debt. Then after that, we're following the baby steps. Baby step number three, you are going to put some money into an emergency fund three to six months then we're going to start really fully investing into your retirement and into you all's future so that way now we're receiving interest but to sit here and to say that we want to stay in debt so we can learn the lesson and pay interest so we can learn, that is not a wise move.

That is crazy. Okay. I'm not Dave. I wouldn't say that's dumb. I'm going to say that's crazy. Okay. I want you to cut the check today because every day you're accruing interest. Every single day you're paying somebody else for the credit card.

Every single day you're paying whatever bank for the credit card. Every single day, you're paying whatever bank for the card. No, pay it off. Cut the check. Cut it all off. Line it up in the debt snowball. Pay it all off.

No, no. You learned your lesson. That's why you called in to the show. Let me help you learn another lesson. Pay off your debt. Pay it off. Pay it off. Pay it off. Man, 888-825-5225, 888-825-5225.

We're going to go out and have a conversation here with Miles. Miles, good afternoon. How can I help you? Hi, I'm almost 14 and I have $1,300 in the bank. I'm just wondering what to do with it. Whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait. You can't fly by like that, Miles. You're almost 14 years old and you have $1,300 in the bank?

Yeah. Are you serious? Yeah. Okay, help me understand this. Did your mom and dad, what did you do to get this $1300 did you save did you work what did you do I've done lemonade stands

I've saved stuff up from Christmas birthdays wow wow what do you want to do in the future so you're 13 what grade are you in right now Miles I'm going into the eighth. Eighth grade. Miles, let me tell you something right now, because I want America to hear this.

And Miles, are your parents near you? Yeah. OK, cool. Great. I want them to hear this, too. Parents. Awesome job. Miles, you have amazing parents. Let me tell you why. Nearly about 48 percent of people in America today don don't even have $400 in their savings account. You have $1,300. Okay? So you are winning. Here's what I want you to do with that $1,300.

Keep it in the bank. Okay? And the next time you get some money, here's what I want you to do. I want you to take your mom and dad to McDonald's or Burger King or take them somewhere and tell them thank you for teaching you early on. And then keep stacking that money, keep stacking that money and keep stacking that money. And I want you to start thinking about, you know, your first car when you turn 16, 17, keep your grades up right and tight. And I'm pretty sure your parents can sit here and say, you know what? We're going to meet you halfway on the car. OK, so now by the time you get 16, if you got five grand in the account and your parents match you with five grand, you can buy you a ten thousand dollar car.

Or if you got twenty five hundred dollars in the account and they match with twenty five hundred dollars, you have a five thousand dollar car. But what I want you to do is keep stacking your money. Keep saving your money. And every now and then, buy you something nice. Every now and then, treat your mom and dad to lunch. Don't take them to expensive places,

but treat them somewhere nice. But I'm so proud of you, Mal. You keep this up. Do you know if you want to go to college? Yes, I do. Do you know where you want to go to college uh yes i do do you know where you want to go to college um not yet do you know what you want to do for a career yet yes what do you want to do for a career i want to be an architect you want to be an architect you want to make some money that's what you want to do i like that you's what you want to do. I like that. You know what? You are absolutely amazing, Miles.

You know, I just love it. I want you to stay on the line. Get your parents on the phone. I'm going to send you a free copy of my book, Debt Free Degree, because you will be an architect and you're going to get this degree 100 percent debt free. Miles, I'm so proud of you. You keep that up. Wow. Wow.

Wow. That's listen. My son or daughter will need to be friends with us. That's what I'm talking about. $1,300. Yes, sir. Yes, ma'am. This is Dave Ramsey Show. Folks, I love telling you about well-made, well-thought-out products. Today, I'm talking about Grip6 belts.

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Plus, I like the way these guys do business. Grip 6 is determined to help build and modernize american manufacturing to learn more and get this month's dave ramsey special visit grip six dot com that's grip six dot com blinds.com 100 satisfaction guarantee means even if you mismeasure or pick the wrong color they will remake your blinds for free 100 you get free samples free shipping and with the new promos they run every month you'll save even more i want you to use a promo code Ramsey to get the best deal. Rules and restrictions do apply. Today's question comes from Sam in Massachusetts. He visits Dave Ramsey dot com to ask. I just graduated high school and I'm starting college in September. My question is about student loans. After the 5,500 federal loans, I still have $8,500 remaining balance to left to pay. My parents keep telling me to take on

loans to cover this amount and to not worry like these loans aren't a big deal. I have $2,000 in savings and they keep pressuring me to not put the money to my bill because they say that this amount won't make a difference in the end. My question is, should I put the $2,000 to my remaining bill or not? Or how can I make them see

how dangerous taking on these loans are? Sam, there's two questions here, actually, that you should have asked. The first question is not. Should I take two thousand dollars and put it towards the bill? Because it sounds like up front you can't afford that college period because you're saying after the five thousand five hundred dollars in federal loans you still owe another fit another eighty five hundred dollars okay so this sounds like this school is outside of your particular budget what i'm always recommending to people around the world is that to take debt off of the table

and to select an affordable school an affordable school is what you can graduate from 100 percent debt free. So it sounds like you need to actually step back and have two conversations with your parents. You need to respectfully say, mom and dad, this is my future and I do not want to borrow any money to go to college. So with that being said, which is the second conversation you need to have is mom and dad. I want to go to maybe start off at a community college. Mom and dad, I want to actually go to maybe a local in-state school because study show. I'll talk about this in my book, Debt Free Degree. You can go to Amazon or you can go anywhere.

My website,ony.com dave ramsey.com any bookstore and get this book and one of the things i talk about is the average in-state school is going to run you in between six and eleven thousand dollars uh a year so if you stay at home go to an in-state school it's going to maybe cost you about 830 840 a month to go to that school or you can go to a community college and you can start off small there. That will cost you anywhere from free to about $4,000 to go to a community college a year. And so, Sam, what I want to recommend is I want you to step back and I want you to reassess your whole situation. I want you to ask yourself, okay, am I making the best decision for my future?

Okay, that's the question. And right now, it sounds like you're not. It really does. It sounds like, no, this is not the right school for me. There's nothing wrong with going to a community school, a community college. There's nothing wrong with going to a local in-state college. Take your $2,000 over there. Two plus two equals four. A bachelor's degree is a bachelor's degree, whether it's from Harvard, Yale, local in-state school, you name it. Do not take out any loans. So have the conversation with your

parents. Tell them you're not doing it. Tell them thank you so much for your love. And thank you so much for wanting the very best for me. But there's one thing that you're also missing is that student loans, student loans are hurting individuals. People are graduating with a mortgage, but don't even have any real estate. They're graduating with $100,000 in student loans. But that's it. So, no, do not do it at all. Don't do it.

We're going to go out to Houston, Texas, have a conversation there with Ben. Ben, thank you so much for calling in. How can I help you this afternoon? Hey, Anthony, great talking to you. Great talking to you, man. Thanks for calling. How can I help?

We started Baby Steps in March. We've paid off about $ 000 so far and we are uh in dire need of like a backyard fence for our dogs like they keep getting out is it okay to budget that fence in well here's the thing because i mean i'm in this exact same boat as you man i just purchased a german shepherd here um about a couple of weeks ago and i'm also in the process of looking at putting a fence in my backyard because I'm scared of my dogs getting out as well. But the difference between you and I is you're in baby step number two and I'm not. So help me understand this. Where are you with baby step number two right now?

How much debt do you have left? We got about 96 left. 96K in debt left. All right. What's your yearly income? About 180. About $180,000 in income. That's your combined income with 96K.

All right. How much would this fence cost? Have you gotten a quote for it? Yeah, we have. We need to replace the back and the side. It's going to be about $4,000. Okay. It's going to be about $4,000.

All right. And break down the debt for me. How, what, what's, what is a debt? Student loans, cars. Yeah, we have two student loans. Um, one's 10,000, the other one's 13. Okay. And then two car loans, which are 34 and 27. What are you driving for $34,000, bro? We were upside down and we traded it in. We got a Jeep. It's a Jeep?

Okay. So you're clearly way upside down on that. So it's going to be hard for you to sell that car. Okay. Alright, you got a student loan, you have a car. What else you have? We got a personal loan that's got about $7,000 on it. Okay. Personal loan. Okay. Personal loan. Okay.

Anything else? No credit cards? We have actually paid off all the credit cards. Okay. So you paid off all the credit cards. All right. So, and what kind of dogs do you have? I'm starting to love dogs. Two winter dogs and a big lab.

Big lab. Yeah, big lab. Yeah, I was looking at that too, but I don't like labs. I love them for you, but I like German Shepherds. So here's what I'm going to recommend, okay? Because I do understand safety, and I do understand making sure that your dogs, because your dogs, you'll be held liable for anything. So if they go out there and attack someone or if they do anything,

you all will be held liable for it. Right. I'm not a huge fan of you stopping baby step number two to do this but i don't have a problem with you paying cash for the fence because if you don't and if your dogs get out and unfortunately attack someone or do something they shouldn't be doing then i can honestly bring a little bit more expense onto your plate so i don't have a problem with you doing this fence if i was was you, I would try to hold off as long as I possibly can. But if you do do it, Ben, you have to pay for cash. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Maybe pick up a side job. You're already making $180,000. But try and figure out a way how to do that. I don't have a problem with that at all because

I do want to make sure that you're not held liable for anything, uh, down the road from, from that perspective. So definitely you, you can do it if you need to. Um, but if you don't have to,

I'm still attacking baby step number two. All right. Uh, I'm still attacking baby step number two. Let me say that one more time. Um, we're, we're not playing around with baby step number two.

You guys are 80, 180,000. Well, no, $96,000 000 of debt you're making real good money right now you all should be able to be out of debt within the next 12 to 18 months so i would definitely uh definitely definitely definitely uh be attacking that there's this new thing out called so so savings uh that i i'm going to talk about in the next segment and i'm gonna read a little bit about it right now, but I will talk about this in the next segment. A lot of people are saying, hey, Anthony, what do you think about so-so savings? This new thing that everyone's talking about?

It sounds so cool. I'm going to do it. And you guys, I have some thoughts on this thing. I really do. So I want you to tell your friends tell your family i need you to get on the dave ramsey show go to youtube.com and look up the dave ramsey show live because a lot of people especially um um millennials are hitting me up hey man what do you think about so-so savings we think about this so-so thing so so things. And here's my response before the break. I'm so, so.

I'm just, I just have, I have some questions. I have some concerns. And we're going to talk about this after the break. We'll be right back. This is Dave Ramsey. Thank you. Before the break, we were talking about this new thing that's just catching a lot of noise out right now about SOSOU, S-O-U, S-O-U, and how it's creating a lot of noise. I have a lot of friends, a lot of peers, a lot of people hitting me up asking me, hey, what are my thoughts on this SOSOU savings thing? And I'm going to read a little bit about it. Essence did an article on it and I like,

I like the definition of it. So I really want to explain it to you all and then give you my thoughts. So a so-so S O U S O U is an informal rotating savings club where a group of people get together and contribute an equal amount of money into a fund weekly, biweekly, or monthly. The total pool is then paid to one member of the club on a previously agreed schedule. The pool rotates until all members have received their share.

So here's how it works. If 10 members, I want you to think about this. If 10 members, if 10 people contributing one hundred dollars a week each week, one member will receive a thousand dollars hand or cash lump sum. And then the cycle begins after 10 weeks. OK, so so so which comes from the Yoruba term issue. I think I'm saying I write E.S.E.S.U. originated in West Africarica but it's practiced in america and the caribbean countries so here's the thing sosu is not regulated by any laws and can therefore be very very risky if you allow someone to come in here's why i do not like it. Is it illegal? No. Is it a wise move?

No. Because we're teaching you to save. We want you to park your money in a savings account. In my personal opinion, this is another lazy form, another lazy way of saving. If you want to save money, put it into a money market account,

put it into a high yield savings account online, because here's the difference. If you do so, so if you give, you know, one hundred dollars this week, you have to wait 10 weeks or whenever, however many weeks to get your money. We want you to keep your savings account liquid. All right. So if an emergency happened and you have your money in a savings account, let's say a money market account or a high yielded savings account, you can get that money within 24 hours. If you have it in a so-so savings account, you got to wait for your turn and your turn could be anywhere from two weeks to 10 weeks. It all depends.

And you're only getting a thousand dollars. So if you do this for a whole year, you miss out on, on high savings accounts from anywhere from one to two to maybe three percent. You never know. So, no, here's the thing. We want you to keep your cash liquid. Keep your savings account liquid. You need to be able to get to it when you need an emergency. Number two, you're missing out on some some interest. Now, we're not trying to get rich, but if you're going to stack five thousand, ten thousand dollars in a savings account, why not get an extra fifty, one hundred, one hundred and fifty bucks on your savings account for just sitting there? You're not getting nothing with so-so. One of my friends said, well, I do that because I'm just not good at saving. Well, that sounds like you have a personal problem.

It sounds like you need to grow up and say, you know what? I'm going to good at saving. Well, that sounds like you have a personal problem. Sounds like you need to grow up and say, you know what? I'm going to set aside my money. Because why are you going to give someone $100 a week and if one person backs out, if two people back out, you lose your money. If someone shady gets inside of this group,

you lose your money. At least with the banks, you're covered with all of your money up until $250,000. Okay? So, I want you to look into if you're doing a so-so, please stop.

Because anything dealing with people, anything that's not covered legally, I don't want my money a part of it. I need insurance. It needs to be covered. And there's two different things you can do well three different things you can do to save your money you can do a savings account general okay you can go to your bank and just open up a regular savings account get anywhere

from point something something to 0.23 or whatever that is interest rate or you can do a money market account money market accounts go anywhere from like 0.8 to maybe 1.1, 1.2 on an interest account, uh, on an interest paid out, or you can do what I do. I do high yield savings account. Okay. That's what I actually do. And there are several companies out there that, um, that, that I like about them. And one of the main reasons why I like a high yielded savings account online is simply because they're online. They don't have a large overhead and they can give you a little bit more your AP wise. And there's no too little cost to get involved with them.

And what I also like about online is it takes 24 to 48 hours for me to get my money. So I really have enough time to make sure this is an emergency. OK, so I want you to Google some banks out there who are offering some good interest rates. I mean, I'm looking at some now. I won't name the name of the banks because I, you know, I don't know all of them. And some, I'll be honest with you, I don't like all of them. But there are a couple out there like Ally. I like Ally Bank.

They are offering some good interest rates. I do VO Bank and they're offering 1.11 right now. So you got so-so is not the route to go. Don't don't do it. OK, do not do it, because if the wrong people get involved with this, they can get in there, steal your money and run. And now you're out of your money because it's not covered. And it was just you and a group of friends getting together. I don't want you to do it.

Going out to Birmingham, Alabama, we're going to have a conversation here with Michael. Michael, thank you so much for calling in. How can I help you? Hey, Anthony. Thanks for taking my call. No problem at all. Kind of make it short. I want to find out, where do we go from here?

We're finally going to be finished up with our $100,000 debt journey this month. Yes. And I appreciate it. It was a long journey for the past two years. 2018, we found out our two-year-old son had a brain tumor out of the blue. So we had to do immediate surgery to remove that. We lived on credit cards for a while while we were in the hospital. So he racked up quite a bit of debt coming up to the $100,000.

How is your son now? He's doing okay. His tumors did come back. As of right now, we're in the wait and see. We're doing three-month scans right now to make sure everything is staying where it's at. If they do continue growing, we're going to have to go back in and take them out again. But as of right now, we're in the wait and see stage. Okay.

Okay. Okay. We have $30,000 in medical, $60,000 in credit cards, and $10,000 in personal loans. Like I said, we have $2,500 left owed as of this month, and we'll be debt-free at the end of the month. Trying to find out, it's kind of hard to articulate where we go from here on paper. I know we had something, kind of a goal to shoot forward to when we're paying everything off. I know we want to become wealthy and give, but we're trying to find out how do we do it. We're looking like we're going to have about $3,000 left over net every single month.

Okay, okay. What's your yearly income? Between the two of us, we're looking right at $125,000. $125,000. And you'll be debt-free at the end of us we're looking right at 125 000 125 000 and uh you'll be debt free at the end of this month you have about three thousand dollars left over with that um less and i love the fact that you all want to be wealthy but is there a possibility that you may have to rack up some more expenses and medical bills with your son. What's that possibility? Is it very likely?

Is it slim or is it like 50-50? It's close to the 50-50 range as of right now. My wife, we moved from Florida to Alabama, so we moved up here to get closer to St. Jude's. They kind of helped us out before, but when we had to do immediate surgery, we were not able to drive all the way from Florida to Tennessee to take care of that.

So we did the surgery in Orlando, but now we're here in Alabama. So if something does come up, we kind of are able to not have to worry about a $1.3 million doctor bill again. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, Michael, here's the thing that I'm going to recommend for you is, I want to say this up front too, praying for your son, you know, and I'm praying for you and your wife, you know, to be mothers and to be fathers of and to watch your child grow up with some some some issues, some pain. I know that has to be hard for you. So I'm praying for you and your family. When it comes to your question, what's the next practical step?

The next practical step is to stack your emergency fund all the way up to six months. And then what I would even do is not just six months. I will go ahead and put some more cushion in there and put a little bit more money in there to make sure that you all have some money set aside for the medical bills that possibly could come with your son if he goes back into it. Now, we're going

to speak by faith that he does not have to go back there. But we also want to make sure that we're practical and that we're wise and we are preparing for the worst. Here's the only thing that can happen if he doesn't go that way, which I pray he won't. That's extra money in the savings account. But the practical thing right now is to make sure that you and your family are prepared for if it comes back. So get your fully funded emergency fund up, plus some more money for possible medical bills. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. scripture of the day comes from matthew chapter 6 verse 33 but seek first his kingdom and his

righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving. Albert I. Stain. Going out to Memphis, Tennessee, we're going to have a conversation here with Evelyn. Evelyn, good afternoon, and thank you so much for calling in. How can I help? Hey, thank you so much for taking my call here. I have a question. So currently working on Baby Step 2, and by the end of the year,

we will be debt free and on baby step four. All right. How much are you all going to pay off this year? We will be paying off roughly about $21,000. Okay. All right. Sounds good. Sorry. Hold on. Roughly about $30,000 actually. Okay, perfect. Sorry about that. Yes. So my question is, can we skip baby step five and six since we're not planning to get to those just yet? Or should we actually budget those in for when that time is right and we have the money? Yeah. So baby step five, baby step number five is pay cash for college. So you guys don't have any kids, correct?

Correct. And then babysit number six is pay off the house, okay? So you all do not have a house, or do you already have a paid off house? Which one is it? No, we don't have a house, and we're still not looking to buy a house, though. Okay, sounds good. So here's the thing. When it comes to Baby Steps 4 through 7, you can do all of those at the exact same time.

So you're not really skipping anything because we just recommend you do all of them at the same time. So you can go ahead and invest your 15% into a 401k or a Roth IRA or any type of retirement investments. And then, while you're doing paying, you're saving up cash. You're investing into like a five 29 or ESA for your college, for your kids college. And while at the same time you're paying off your mortgage. And then at the same time you're saving and you're giving, and you just be building wealth.

So for you, it sounds like you all are going to be investing your 15%. And then you guys will be just building wealth and just giving. Now, let me ask you this question. You all do not see yourself purchasing a home ever? Not ever. It's just not in the picture

right now. We currently live here, and this is not where we want to be at. We just want to work to build our wealth. And since we both have a good job here and then eventually move to wherever we decide to move and then purchase

a home. Okay, so in that case this is what I'm going to recommend. Pay off your debt this year. Go ahead and get your fully funded emergency fund up this year. Start investing into Babes number 4, which is the 15% of your income and going ahead and start saving for the down payment towards your house.

Cause what I hear you all saying is right now, we don't like where we're staying. We don't like where we're living like this. We see ourselves moving eventually. And one day when we get to our dream city, that's when we're going to purchase our home. So going ahead and just start doing little small baby steps towards setting some money aside to go on ahead and to have the down payment. So that way, when you get there, instead of you having 20%, you may have 30, 40, 50, or maybe a hundred percent to put down towards the home. So I have no problem at all with you,

Evelyn. Just, just, you don't have any kids, so you can't do babysit number five. You don't have a house, so you can't do babysit number six, but make sure you pay off your debt.

Go ahead and get your fully funded emergency fund up. Start investing 15% into your retirement. Start saving some money to put down towards a house or to eventually purchase the home while at the same time you're building wealth and you are giving. Going out to Chicago, we're going to have a conversation with Max. Max, good afternoon. How can I help you? Hi, Anthony.

Hope you're having an amazing day. I was just wondering if it's worth pursuing my college career. Currently, I haven't went to college and i'm a web designer okay so i was wondering if it's worth you know going on and doing some website designer or do you do like it stuff on the back end of websites a little bit of both actually okay all right all right um is it worth you going to college if If you go to college, have you done the research? How much money can you make if you have a degree in this field?

The earning potential is anywhere from like $50,000 to $70,000, give or take. Okay. If you don't go to college, how much money can you make in this field? I would say about the same, honestly. It's just based on experience and the connections there, I would say about the same, honestly, it's just based on experience and the connections there, I would say. So then I think you just answered your question.

You know, I think you have to ask yourself, do you want to go through four years of education to get the exact same payout? That's the question that you have to ask yourself. All right. Now, I'm recommending to you to dream even bigger, Max. I want you to think about, all right, I'm going to be a website designer, but how do I start my own website company?

How do I build a company to where we're making websites? I'm employing people. Now, from there, maybe I'm going to school to get a business degree while I'm still doing what I really love so that way I can be a website designer,

do some IT stuff on the back end. But now I'm thinking long term instead of for $50,000 to $75,000 at your age right now, I want you thinking about how can you be a millionaire? How can you build something and employ people? And so now we're talking, okay, is education worth that? I think so. But we're going to do it debt free. Then we're going, okay, is education worth that? I think so. But we're going to do it debt-free. Then we're going to do it debt-free. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? So that's what I would recommend.

But if you did go to school, where are you going to school at, Max? It would probably be some local community college, in all honesty. Yes, yes. How old are you, man? I'm 21. Yes, sir. I like local community college, in all honesty. Yes. Yes. How old are you, Matt? I'm 21. Yes, sir. I like local community college. What state are you in again? You're in Chicago, Illinois.

And Chicago, I mean, Illinois is an expensive state to go to school. But they have some good programs out there for community colleges that you can actually get some free right there in Chicago, actually. And somewhere around $2,000 or $3,000 a there in Chicago, actually, and some right around two or three thousand dollars a year. So so, Max, absolutely. Absolutely. I'm I'm choosing that route. I'm going that route and you're going to be all right, man. So do you go to college? I think if you're thinking bigger than just being a designer. Yes. If you just want to be a designer. No, you said why? Why do when I'm going to pay $30,000, $40,000 to get the same payout? It's not worth it.

Going out to Boston, we're going to have a conversation there with Dan. Dan, good afternoon. How can I help you? What's your question here real quick, man? We have about $50,000 in student loans we're paying down. And I was looking at my wife's 401k. She's switching careers and has about $12,000 split between two different 401ks. And just trying to figure out if we should, we don't have income tax where we live. So if we should take that money, put it towards those loans or just continue our path of paying them off and keep that

invested. You have $12,000 in a 401k right now? Yes. With $40,000 in debt, you said? $50,000. $50,000 in debt. What's your household income? We're at about $90,000 right now. $90,000 in income in Boston, Massachusetts. All right, cool. Dan, do you know what my answer is going to be already? I don't. Okay, that's good. Okay, cool, great. No, because you have $12,000.

And let me tell you why. Let me go deeper. I'm not just going to say no. I love the fact that you're trying to pay off your debt. But here's the thing, Dan. Okay. You take that $12,000. All right.

You don't have to pay state tax, you said, but you will have to pay penalties. So that $12,000 comes to maybe about $9,000, $8,000. And you save it by your state tax, but you say that I pay federal taxes. And so here's the thing. No, you do not want to take from your future. Go on ahead. Keep that money inside of your 401k. Let it build, let it grow, and you're making good income.

So going ahead and just start attacking your debt with that income. $50,000 sounds like a lot of money, but we've had people on here with $100,000, $200,000, $300,000. I've even heard someone as up to $900,000 in consumer debt. Consumer debt. We're not including their mortgage, $9,000 in consumer debt. Consumer debt. We're not including their mortgage. $9,000 in student loans. So if they can get out of it,

you can get out of $50,000. Do not touch your future for your present right now. America has been fun. Three hours with you guys is absolutely amazing. I'm just excited. And thank you all for tuning in. I want to thank our producer, James Childs, and our associate producer,

Kelly Daniel, on the phone lines. America, please do not remember. I mean, please remember. The caliber of your financial future will be determined by the decisions you make today. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. This is James Childs,

producer of The Dave Ramsey Show. Once again, you made The Dave Ramsey Show one of the top four most popular podcasts last year. To get your daily dose of motivation and inspiration from the Ramsey network subscribe or follow today wherever you listen to podcasts