The Ramsey Show - App - NEVER Finance Solar Panels! (Hour 2)

Episode Date: April 30, 2020

Anthony ONeal, Debt, Taxes, Insurance Tools to get you started:  Debt Calculator: http://bit.ly/2QIoSPV Insurance Coverage Checkup: http://bit.ly/2BrqEuo Complete Guide to Budgeting: http://bit.ly/2QEyonc Interview Guide: http://bit.ly/2BuGnZE Check out other podcasts in the Ramsey Network: http://bit.ly/2JgzaQR 

🎵 Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, it's the Dave Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thank you for joining us. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Wanda is with us to start off this hour in Texas. Hey, Wanda, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave. I have a question for you in regards to mortgage. So we have a home in Florida and two years ago we were in the middle of a short sale offer on our home when the Category 5 Hurricane Michael hit and severely damaged our home. Since then, we've had to get two different attorneys,

one to fight the foreclosure and the other to fight the insurance company. Now, two years, almost two years later, here we are. The insurance company is finally responding to our attorney offered money and we are only getting a portion of what is owed on you know the full amount on the home you don't really know okay you're getting the the insurance settlement on the repairs is how much is the full amount was 168 but of course we have to pay you know the attorney so we're getting 124 back what do you owe on the house in december our other attorneys told us 158 but now all of a sudden they're telling us it's

179 000 and uh and and what is the house worth if you don't repair it? Someone told us they would give us $50,000 for it. Okay, it's not been repaired, right? It has not been repaired. There's black mold. There's all kinds of craziness. You can see the sky. So it needs to be pushed down. It does.

Okay. What's the lot worth? I was told around $25,000. Okay. Have your attorney... From an ELP that we've been using. Good. Have your attorney offer your mortgage company 124 000 settlement

in full okay and then you'll own the property free and clear uh you're gonna have to come up with the money to push it down then that'll cost you you know 15 000 bucks probably or whatever uh and or sell or just sell it as is and let the let the buyer push it down you know right and so then sell the lot that's probably what i'd do i probably wouldn't even push it down i'd probably just let somebody else scrape it and just go uh put the put it up for sale as is and basically it's lot price minus demolition is what the current is what it currently would be worth then it's what the lots were 25 and the demolition is what it currently would be worth then. So if the lot's worth $25,000 and the demolition's $10,000, you know, you put on the market for $15,000. Mm-hmm.

Correct. Or you can push it down and scrape the lot if you want to. But I think you can probably get this mortgage company to settle with you for the balance. This is what the repairs are. The property's not worth anything. Or we'll do a short sale with you if you want to do that. You know, you can take it back. But I don't think they want it now.

Yeah, it's a different mortgage company now because the other bank lost in court to us. Is the insurance not also got the mortgage company on it? The insurance no longer is on it as of December, from what we were told. So you're going to get the check. It's not going to be also where the mortgage company has to sign off on the check. Oh, no, they will have to sign off. The insurance company already sent us a check. However, they put the wrong mortgage already sent us a check however they

put the wrong mortgage company on there i think it was just a scheme to yeah for us not to be able to get the money again right so you know what we're saying is is try to get your mortgage your attorney that's handling the foreclosure to get them to accept the insurance proceeds as settlement on the debt and call it a day or you can give them call it a day. Or you can give them a deed. I don't care. You can give them a deed and the check. That doesn't hurt anything. Either settle the debt in full for that, and then you take the lot and dispose of it,

or just give them a deed. They can have the lot. They can have the lot and the check and go away, and it's done. Because that's what you're looking for. You're just looking to be clear. You're not going to get anything else out of this. So, wow. All right, Luke is with us in Connecticut.

Hey, Luke, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. How can Anthony and I help? My question is, I'm in a fleece. I just started following you probably about a month ago, watching every video I can on your YouTube channel.

And I have three loans that I need to pay off. So whatever is remaining on my lease, it's going to end on not this July, the following July. So I expect to pay off my personal loan of $5,000 by November, if not earlier. My question is, when my lease is up in July, I'm going to be looking to purchase a used car, and I actually need a van that's handicap accessible for my daughter. So when my personal loan is paid off in November at $600, I can keep. Should I start snowballing that into the lease? Should I snowball it into my credit card that has $18,000 on it?

Or should I go over and put it in a fund so I can buy a handicapped van outright with cash in July? How much is your lease right now? How much is left on the lease? About $7,000. What's your income right now? My income is about

$4,900 a month without any overtime that's kind of sparse okay I'm sticking with follow the debt snowball man that's where I'm pretty much at

go ahead and just knock everything off and then as quickly as you can get out of this lease I'm going to say get out of this lease but then I think we got to set some cash aside as well because you said you need to purchase a car that is a handicap uh accessible for your daughter correct correct yeah they're about about 10 to 12 grand used with like 80 000 miles on it which is fine because i have a uh a second car that i got from my grandmother for free that i can use but i have a family with four kids and anyone who's handic, so I need to buy a used car.

So I'm just doing the math. I can pay off my personal loan if I roll my money from my personal loan and whatever I get for my taxes. Yeah, what you've got to do is you've got to back out from a year from July when the lease is up and back out how many months it's going to take you to have $10,000. Okay. And stop everything.

If you could do it in five months, okay, $2,000 a month, you back out five months out of July, and you stop everything at that moment and pile up cash. Until then, I would just tear into your existing debts, not the lease. But up until, you know, figure out how long it's going to take you to get $10,000 together, back that off of July and stop everything and then pile up the cash to cause that to happen. So, good question. Wow. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Thank you. For most of us, health care costs seem to increase every year,

and saving money on health insurance feels more and more out of reach. For example, take the Olcheski family from LaGrange, Texas. Jeff and Cherise had just celebrated the birth of a new baby boy. Shortly after, they had a health scare involving one of their kids that was completely unexpected. With today's healthcare climate, this could have bankrupted them. But thanks to Christian Healthcare Ministries, the Olcheskis were spared from a ton of medical bills. As members of Christian Healthcare Ministries, they're part of a group of believers who financially and spiritually support each other. CHM is the original health cost sharing ministry and is a Better Business Bureau accredited charity. It's biblical, affordable,

and it's shared nearly $97,000 to help the Olszewskis. To be a part of Christian Healthcare Ministries, visit chministries.org. That's chministries.org. CHM is a proud sponsor of Dave Ramsey Live Events. chministries.org. Thanks for joining us, America. Anthony O'Neill, Ramsey Personality No. 1 bestselling author, joins me this hour answering your questions here on The Dave Ramsey Show. Our question of the day comes from Blinds.com. Find out for yourself why Blinds.com is the number one online retailer of custom window coverings.

You get free samples, free shipping, and with the new promos they run every month, you'll save even more. The promo code is RAMSEY. Anthony, our question comes from Jessica in Kentucky. During COVID-19, federal student loan interest has been set to zero and payments have been postponed. I plan to continue making payments during this time, and I want to make the most of this opportunity. My loans are split into seven separate groups with varying interest rates and accrued interest. Should I put all my payment toward one single loan and have more of my payment go towards principal, or should I pay off my accrued interest on all of my loans

and then put later towards principal? Oh man, that's a great question. I'm getting this a lot right now, Dave. So she has seven different groups of loans. I'm going to line it up just like it's a debt snowball as long as that's the only debt that she has. So if she has other credit cards and stuff like that, then I'm going to use all the debt snowball. But let's talk about her just having only student loan debt. So line all seven of them up, make your minimum payments on each, and then yes, attack the very first one and just make as many payments as you can towards that, and just use it just like the debt snowball until you get to that last one, to that last group. Anthony's exactly right, because the math principles is whether you've got the accrued

interest or whether you've got no interest being charged really does not affect the math other than you don't have the accrued interest doesn't affect the math you have a total amount of x due let's call it fifty thousand dollars yep now there's not going to be interest charged on some or all of that between now and September. Okay, good. That means more of what you pay will go towards the $50,000 in total. And so you lose nothing by stopping payments where you can stop them and applying payments on that smallest debt wide open and then the next one down and the next one down. Mathematically, it works out exactly the same.

There's no benefit to trying to do some kind of a shell game and figure out which one works, which one doesn't. You still have the total debt, and you're still going to take $50,000 to make it go away. And so he's exactly right. You run that smallest to largest, and you'll come out exactly the same. Victoria is in Hawaii. Hi, Victoria. Welcome to the dave ramsey show hello thank you for taking my call sure what's up um so my husband and i are in a uh solar con solar lease contract and we're having some issues because we're trying to sell our house um we've had seven offers back out. We've come out of escrow twice for our house because of the solar contract.

We were told before we signed the contract that if we were to sell our house, then the new buyers would be able to renegotiate their contract. And if they didn't want to, then the company would remove the panels. Or we could take the panels with us to wherever we were moving next, or we could buy the panels out. Those are our three options. We are both active duty military, and we'll be moving to Texas in July. Okay, so they told you all of those things.

Is any of that not in the actual contract? No, it's not. Okay, so it didn't happen then. What does the contract actually say? You just owe them a set amount of money, right? Yes, the options for the contract were a ballooning payment over the next 20 years or a set payment, which would have fell off a little bit higher but not changed. There's not a payoff amount just to pay them off?

So the early buyout option isn't an option until six years into your contract. The option that they're giving us right now to buy it out is $78,000. The system itself, if you were to buy one outright brand new, is only $25,000. So you did a lease. Did you say you did a lease on this yes we did oh geez okay what a mess um so the option that they're giving us to buy out right now is what the contract is worth to the investors which is about $78,000 okay can can you you not pay it off as part of the sale of the house? No, we cannot because that's $78,000. And we won't be making that much money on the house. How much will you be making on the house?

We're looking at about $40,000. Profit? Yeah. With the solar panels on the house? If we can get somebody to take the current contract. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, I'm just saying if you leave the solar panels on the house, the house is only worth enough to put $40,000 in your pocket.

That is correct. And that's with paying the solar company nothing? Correct. Okay. You need a lawyer. Yeah. You need a lawyer, and you're probably going to give your $40,000 of equity to the solar company to settle the contract and leave the solar panels on the house and walk away.

You lost your equity when you did this deal. Okay. Yeah, if you can get them to take $40,000 to settle on the 78 today, my God, you must have covered the whole house in solar panels. We did. The electricity out here in Hawaii is pretty expensive. We were paying $600 a month in electricity. Yeah, it's still a really, really bad idea to do this.

I mean, the only time solar panels work is if you pay cash for them. And they do work if you pay cash for them, but never, ever finance them. And triple never lease them because of this exact situation right here. Yeah. And never believe anything is a part of the deal if it's not in the contract. Yeah. We got an old attorney friend of mine that says if it's not in the contract, if it's not in writing, it didn't happen.

Yeah. And that's what you're discovering here, that you had a slime ball at your kitchen table telling you the deal was one thing when it wasn't. It was something else. And we know he's a slime ball at your kitchen table telling you the deal was one thing when it wasn't it was something else and we know he's a slime ball because he lied that's the point you have very clear you know belief of this i mean if you have any of the old sales materials that indicate that the contract should say that your attorney could use that as a part of the negotiating process and go we're getting ready to sue you guys because you're just a bunch of slimy people. My God, $78,000 worth of solar panels?

You wouldn't break even on that? Oh, that's awful. That's really awful. We believe in solar around here. There are certain areas of the country that it breaks even, but you need a break even on those things and you know four or five years you don't need a 15-year break even on solar panels and then you don't buy you don't buy anything that does that meaning you save enough on electricity to pay to give you the cash that

you paid for the solar panel back within five years and if you don't do that you don't need to do the deal they're not efficient enough in the area that you're in with your particular situation with the cost of electricity in your situation to do that and then you don't need to do the deal. They're not efficient enough in the area that you're in with your particular situation, with the cost of electricity in your situation to do that, and then you don't get caught up in what Victoria's in. Victoria, get you a lawyer. Steve is in California. Hey, Steve, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. How are you? Great. How can Anthony and I help? Hi. I'm a 58-year-old retiree. My wife and I work part-time just because we need to stay busy. It's nice to have the extra income.

We just finished putting my daughter through college. We are done with that. We have money in a 401, and we have extra income just coming in because of our part-time jobs and our pension. We're just trying to figure out what we should be doing at this time in our life. We're FPU coordinators for seven years. It's changed our lives. It's changed our marriage. We just absolutely believe in FPU, but we're at a point now where we're trying to figure out what's our next step. Well, thanks, man. We appreciate you being coordinators. How much is in your nest egg? The 401 is $180.

I have a 30-year pension through the state with full benefits. And so we're fine. I mean, we have everything paid off. So you're mainly living off the pension then, obviously, because you're not 59 and a half to tap into the paid off. So you're mainly living off the pension then, obviously,

because you're not 59 1⁄2 to tap into the old 401. So, you know, I think the only thing I would say is, you know, I'm about your age. I would want something to do for the next 30 years other than part-time jobs. Yeah. So maybe an encore career or maybe open a business. I don't know. I'd want something else to do personally. But that's just an opinion. I don't know. I'd want something else to do, personally. But that's just an opinion.

I don't think you've done anything wrong. But congratulations on being able to sit where you're sitting. Hey, folks, there's literally never been a better time to try online grocery. My friends at eMeals make it incredibly easy for you. eMeals creates a shopping list based on the meals you want for the week and then directly sends it to Walmart, Kroger, Instacart, Shipt, or Amazon Fresh. Your choice. Head to eMeals.com slash grocery. Find what delivery and pickup providers are available in your area.

Try eMeals free for two full weeks. That's eMeals.com slash grocery. so we decided to try something new at ramsey publishing a few months ago and we've already got our first two out they're called quick reads and uh the first one came out, Destroy Your Student Loan Debt by Anthony O'Neill. Wrote the number one best-selling book, Debt-Free Degree. And then it kept running into people and went, yeah, well, too late, already got the debt.

How do I get out of the debt? And so Destroy Your Student Loan Debt is already selling like hotcakes. It's going fast. Yes. And basically it's, what, 64 pages? Is that right, Anthony? 65. 65 pages.

And what's it say? And pretty much I took a deep dive, Dave, into baby step number two on how to pretty much attack your student loan debt. And right now it's a great time, especially with this having no interest. But I'm talking everything from how do you make some extra income, what's the truth about student loan forgiveness, and also when is it the best time, if it is a good time, for you to refi. So I answer all the questions around pretty much how to destroy and get rid of your student loan

debt for good. So these little quick reads are basically a couple of chapters long, you know, 50, 60, 70 pages or something like that. And we had already put up the white paper, the national study that was done by our research team with Chris Hogan for the findings that were used to do the book Everyday Millionaires. And the nerds that wanted all the details in the background on it, this thing will put you to sleep right here. Okay. But people wanted it. We were already selling it as a PDF download for $9. Now we've got it for $10 with a little cover on it with Chris's smiling face.

And so this is the actual white paper of the study, and it's like 100 pages because it's got all the graphs and charts and all that. I've read through it because I own the company, and I felt like I had to. But it's painful. But if you really, really want the details, if you're that kind of nerdy person, this thing is absolutely amazing. The National Study of Millionaires, findings from the research study behind everyday millionaires. We just got these in yesterday. And so another quick read.

So these are, again, little chapter book type things. And we're going to start doing more of these because we can get them out real fast. And there's a lot of different subjects that people want to get into without reading an entire book necessarily. And so those two are up right now on the site. Of course, you can go to DaveRamsey.com right now. And all of our books are on sale for $10. Those are $10. But you can get like the full book for $10 too of any of our best-selling books right now debt-free degree proximity principle by ken coleman total money makeover by me all of rachel

cruz's number one bestsellers all of hogan's number one bestsellers including the actual book everyday millionaire so here's an interesting thing you could do i hadn't thought of this you could get like debt-free degree and destroy your student loan for 10 bucks each yes sir you could get like everyday millionaires and get the study yeah for 10 bucks each yeah right now with this going on the way it is so all the audios are uh 399 or less so be sure and check all of those out davramsey.com slash hope and for a few more days you're going to be able to get the financial peace university 14-day free trial there as well all of this at uh finance at davramsey.com slash hope in a couple of weeks sometime in the next couple of weeks we're going to do a generosity theme hour i want and kelly daniels our associate producer wants stories from you about generosity during COVID,

generosity during the coronavirus time, during the shutdown. A lot of people have done some really cool things for each other. There's a lot of negative out there about this, and there's a lot of reason to be negative about it, but there's also a lot of reason to be positive. A lot of fun things. We've had a lot of very fun things happen just around Ramsey. Some of our foundation things we did. Some of the things our team did for each other.

Pretty cool stuff. So if you have a generosity story around the coronavirus shutdown time or the coronavirus crisis that is you being generous or someone being generous to you, I don't care either way. Email it to Dave on air at DaveRamsey.com. Put generosity in the subject line. DaveOnAir at DaveRamsey.com. Put generosity in the subject line. Jennifer is in Massachusetts. Hi, Jennifer.

Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. I was calling today to find out your opinion about refinancing my house while i'm still working baby step two um i have enough equity to roll do you have enough equity to roll the closing costs in i do what's your current interest rate uh four percent and you could get and you could get and you could get three

yeah they actually told me 2.875 on a 15-year. But it would definitely slow my debt snowball down a little bit, about $500, $600 a month. Yeah, that's not the end of the world probably. I mean, what's your household income? $160,000. Oh, I wouldn't worry about that then. Okay.

What's your loan balance? $227,000. And what did they quote you for the closing costs? $3,000, but plus my prepaid. So I think they're going to roll my prepaid into... You get your prepaid back on the other mortgage. So that offsets. Correct.

Okay. Okay. That's what I thought. Yeah. So $3,000, you're going to roll it into the mortgage. It doesn't come out in cash. But how quickly do you recoup on that? You're going to recoup in a year and a half.

Right. That's what I thought because it sees me about $2,500 in interest a year. Yep. Yep. Yeah, that's a no-brainer. Let's do that. Okay. All right.

That's what I thought. I just wanted to make sure. Thanks for the call. All right. Thank you, Dave. So break-even analysis on the mortgage is the way we do that, Anthony, right? Yes, sir. So, how quick are you going to get your money back with the interest saved on the closing costs?

Yes, sir. So, she's saving a little over 1% on two and a quarter, so that's $2,500 a year in interest she's saving, but her closing cost was $3,000. Yes, sir. And she's not really pausing baby step number two, though. She's still paying off her debt every month. It slows it down because her payment goes up a little bit by dropping down to a 15-year while she's doing this. Yes.

But that's not the point. Yes. You don't refinance to go from a 30 to a 15. Yeah. a 30 to a 15. You refinance to get a lower interest rate if you're going to stay in the house long enough to recoup the closing costs from the interest saved. Yes, sir. Sounds like a great deal to me. It works out.

Yeah. Chad is with us. Chad is in Colorado. Hi, Chad. How are you? Hi, Dave. How are you? Hey, man.

How are you? Good. Quick question. I need to know if I can move on to baby steps four, five, and six. Hi, Dave. How are you? Hey, man. How are you? Good. Quick question. I need to know if I can move on to Baby Steps 4, 5, and 6. My wife and I have been basically debt-free since December 4th, but I'm waiting to pay a capital gains tax with my IRS bill, and I have about $60,000 in the bank. Okay.

How much is the bill uh they've told me about 35 000 but my cpa has not uh finished my taxes yet yeah well i mean when you're there you have the money uh so yeah you have moved on i mean you're just the technicality if you don't want to file till july 15th because we don't want to send them the money until then yeah and i just tired of marking time yeah so you you sit there once you you do need that exact dollar amount that's going to be due and you set that aside out of your 60 000 and then you have your emergency fund is the rest of it right yes that's the plan yeah and then that moves on to baby step four so i don't see why you couldn't uh as long as he doesn't come back and give you some kind of a bill that's higher than 60 grand yeah yeah and i don't imagine that uh you know

we'll just sold some real estate to get us out of debt faster and that was about 30 000 i sold some stocks and actually sold some livestock so i have to pay capital gains on those two things okay three things and you you think that the calculator you know i have him run a quick calculation for you so you know what you're doing, just to make sure that what you, because it sounds like you've done it kind of in your head, right? She ran a calculation with me before I sold my house. Okay.

And actually my duplex, and she told me to save $30,000 out of that. And then I got about almost $20,000 out of the other two sales, so I figured another 25% of that. Well, it shouldn't all be gain. You should have had a basis in those. I did. I was just putting a cushion in there. Okay, so $35,000 takes care of you.

Yeah, you're good. I'm with you. Absolutely. Yeah, I'd definitely move on if I were you. Yeah. Move on real quick, 15% into retirement. That gets you there. You've got the money to do it. I'm not going to

send the IRS money early just to get started on my 401k. We'll pay them as late as we can possibly pay them. And as little as we can possibly pay them. I agree. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. We'll be right back. Please hear me loud and clear. The government is not going to bail you out of your student loans, at least not completely and not without a catch.

What they're talking about only impacts federal, not private loans, and you need to take responsibility for what you owe and pay your debt down quicker. Right now, Splash Financial is offering their lowest rates ever. With lower rates and extra payments, you could just find yourself debt-free in the next five years. Visit SplashFinancial.com slash Ramsey to see if you qualify. thanks for joining us america this This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Anthony O'Neill joins me this hour answering your questions. Ramsey, personality number one, best-selling author of the book Debt-Free Degree. That and the Borrowed Future podcast have both been massive hits. Borrowed Future, eight episodes featuring Anthony and many of the rest of us, and many experts and many stories about the student loan crisis in America,

the student loan debacle, the epic failure of the student loan program. You can get an eight-episode podcast at Ramsey Networks, easy to download from any podcast, anywhere you get podcasts out there, whether it's Apple or Google Play or whatever it is you're using, Spotify, wherever. It's at all of them. You can get it all, and you'll hear a lot of comments from Anthony. Kyler is with us. Kyler's in Michigan.

Hey, Kyler, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Thank you for having me on, Dave. How are you and Anthony today? Good. How can we help? Well, so I recently started your baby steps. I had to actually restart baby step one. I had that done and was on two. I only had about $2,500 left on my baby step two, but had to tap into my savings to get some car repairs done. So I'm working on that. But my question for you today is, I have a year left on my fleet. And next year, I should hopefully have,

if all goes to plan, about $10,000 to $15,000 saved up for a car. And I'm wondering what you recommend, if I should use that in full to purchase a used vehicle in cash or step down in vehicle to around $5,000 and use the additional money that I have and put that into an emergency fund. How old are you, Kyler? I'm 27. 27.

How much debt are you in right now? About $2,500. That's just credit cards, no student loans. No student loans. And you're talking about putting $15,000 into a car. $10,000. I mean, $10,000 into a car and then coming back and paying off the debt. Did I hear that correctly?

No. Well, I would be paying the debt off before I purchased the vehicle. Perfect. After I finished my day's work. Then it's a matter of how much. You put $10,000 on the car and then start your emergency fund, or do you take $5,000 on a car and $5,000 on the emergency fund? Well, I'm doing $5,000 on the car and $5,000 on the emergency fund.

I mean, you're young. You're a smart kid. So right now I'm going to say do $5,000. And honestly, it's not really about the amount. Just find a reliable car. You can actually possibly find a reliable car for $2,500 Kyler so do the research man get out there and see what you can find if you can find something for $2,500 you should be able to get at least two months in your babysit number three with $7,500

at your age right now yeah so the principle Kyler that we're using to answer the question is that a $5,000 car is a necessity or a $3,000 or something, whatever, right in there. You know, a basic car is a necessity. The difference from a $5,000 car to a $10,000 car is a luxury. Yes. And we don't do luxuries until you have the emergency fund in place. And so because you would be at baby step three doing doing your emergency fund. Buying a nicer car is not an emergency from five to ten,

jumping up from a $5,000 car to a $10,000 car. It's not an emergency. So Anthony's exactly right. That's why we would say let's go ahead and do the 5K car and put 5K in your emergency fund, and then let's get that emergency fund built up. If you want to step back up and car a little further later, then you would save up and

do that you know add to it later in a year a year and a half something like that you're going to be in a position to do that leila is with us leila is in arizona hi leila welcome to dave ramsey show hi i'm so excited to be speaking with you you too what's up um well first i wanted to say thank you for all your guidance two years ago my husband and i were able to pay off all our debt and start our emergency fund and then last year we had just the craziest year of our lives from my husband leaving his job to me being put on bed rest for my pregnancy to having a heart condition to me being in emergency surgery and it was just your phone your phone's breaking up Can you speak directly into it, please?

Not a problem. Is that better? Yes, ma'am. Thank you. So he had an emergency. He had a heart surgery or what? So I had a heart condition. I ended up needing a surgery on my leg, which was unrelated to the heart condition.

My husband was laid off from his job. It was the craziest year in our lives in terms of financial insecurity, and we were able to pay for everything from our emergency funds, because we had saved up, we had no debt, and we were able to survive it. So thank you for having those guidance and helping us get our finances in place before we had faced that storm. Thank you so much. Thank you. How can we help today?

So for today, we're just coming out of the blurb last year, and we completely lost focus when it comes to saving for our retirement. And I'm trying to get us back on track this year. Both of us are self-employed where we don't have an employer helping us save towards retirement. So we have a set setup. Currently, we have about $40,000 in our retirement fund. I don't know if we need to be increasing more than 15% yearly towards that for self-employed and don't have any other sources of you know support towards our retirement you can put 15 percent of your income towards your retirement through a setup why wouldn't you do that so we are doing that

i'm wondering if we should do more not until you get your house paid off yeah not until the what get your house paid off maybe step four is 15 of your income going into retirement okay so are you out of debt except your house correct we paid off all of our debt two years okay and you have your emergency fund of three to six months of expenses? Yes, we just finished refunding that. Perfect. We had a refund of that last year. Perfect. Then just use your 15% of your income going towards retirement,

no more, in your SEP. You don't have to do more because you're self-employed. I'm self-employed. That's plenty for now until you get your house paid off, and then you move on to baby step five if you have kids, save for kids' college, and six, pay off the house early. When you get the house paid off. And then you move on to baby step five if you have kids, save for kids' college, and six, pay off the house early. When you get the house paid off, then you can come back and load up some of the different other retirement things

you can be doing in addition to the SEP. And I suspect there's some things you're still able to do. Get with a smart investor pro to find out. But you don't really need to be doing more than 15% at this stage. Yeah. And, Dave, I would say the exact same thing. Follow the baby steps. You know, go ahead and get the baby step number six, pay that house off, and then get baby

step number seven. And actually be a little bit more generous. Maybe not even save as much. Maybe be a blessing. Give a little bit more to the church. Give a little bit more to nonprofits. But don't focus on trying to invest more right now. Shelby's with us in Los Angeles.

Hi, Shelby. Or in Louisiana. I'm sorry. Hi, Shelby. How are you? Hey, I'm good. Thanks for taking my call. Sure.

How can we help? So my husband and I are in Baby Step 2, and he wants to go back to school to get his EMT and become a firefighter. I'm just wondering if you have recommendations on the best way to do that. How much debt are you all in right now in Baby Step 2? We've got about $ 30,000 left okay and what's y'all's household income um i don't know it's kind of in the air right now he makes about 80 on a good in a good year um and i make about 34 emts in your area get paid 80 i don't

think he's he's not an emt i know i know he's gonna take a pay cut right i was about to say the same thing i think he probably would right now he's in the oil field so he's trying to get out okay all right what's the school cost yeah well i don't know for sure we just started looking at our options um i think if he goes online it might be about two2,000. Yeah, that's not a problem. I mean, knock it out and change careers if you want. That's fine.

Obviously, if your income goes down, it's going to slow your get-out-of-debt plan somewhat. But $2,000, you pay cash for it, everything, always, right? Yes. Okay, but I didn't know you could do EMT online for two grand. That's interesting. I think he found one where he could, but we're just starting to look and talk about it. So we're not, we don't have it all laid out yet. And make sure the people that would be hiring in your area for those positions are recognizing that school and that certificate.

And here's a key thing too, Shelby. Make sure that that's what you're going to do. Now, if we're going back to a school that's going to cost me $10,000, $20,000 a year, we're not going to do it. Not right now. That's true. That's true. You need to finish up getting out of debt first. Yes. That would be true. But $2,000, I think we can stop

and go there. Yeah. That puts us out of the Dave Ramsey Show, in the books. In the middle of these uncertain times, Ramsey Solutions wants to give you some hope. For the very first time ever, we're giving you Financial Peace University free for 14 days. Go to DaveRamsey.com slash hope so you can watch from home.