The Ramsey Show - App - Quit Aiming Forever and Shoot Something Already!

Episode Date: August 8, 2024

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. George Campbell, number one best-selling author. Ramsey personality would be my co-host today. He's also the host of the super popular YouTube show, The George Campbell Show, with a K. Check it out on the Ramsey Networks. It's all there. The phone number here is 888-825-5225. Dusty's in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Hi, Dusty.

How are you? Hey, Dave. I'm doing pretty good. Good. What's up? I have a question on what I should do. I'm planning on building a house on my parents' land during the next year or two. And I want to know how to go about it.

So I've been listening to your show for about four months now. And in that time, I've been fortunate enough, I've paid off about $26,000 in debt. Good for you. And I'll be debt-free right now in about the next three months. I should be completely debt-free. And I want to know, should I – so I live next to my parents right now in a tiny house that I built last year. So my question is, should I save up for a down payment and get a construction loan to finance the house? I'm doing a barn dominium, one of the

barn do kits. Um, or should I just save up and try to pay it all out in cash and be able to do it, you know, over the next probably three years to be able to build the entire thing. Um, I, I have been in construction for the past 13 years, so I'm pretty handy on that stuff. Cool. So you're single?'re single no no i'm married i'm married with uh with uh one kid and i got one on the way wow in a tiny home that's impressive yeah or crazy i'm not sure which but yeah okay that's also that's also a big factor now my wife, it's not, I mean, it's about 500 square feet. She wants us, she said she's okay in it, that she doesn't need, you know, immediate big house or anything. But I don't know, I kind of feel a sense of urgency with the next kid coming on the way.

Okay, so explain to me, the land is going to be retitled to you? So a couple years ago, I did a business on the land, and they had to do a quick claim deed just to put my name on it. So I don't know if that would— On the whole piece of land? Yeah, yeah, on the whole piece. Okay, so your parents live on the land too? Yes. So you now own the property that they live on?

Well, see, I'm not sure. I mean, the quick claim deed, I'm added on to it, but they're also still there. I mean, they still have their name on the land, and my name is added to it also. Okay. And I'm guessing this is generational land. No?

Was it your grandpa's? No. No, my dad bought it. Now, his plans are he wants to give each of his kids a portion of the land. It's split into five lots. He owns all five lots, and they're all tied into the same. It's already platted and subdivided? Yes.

Deed one of the lots to you then, exclusively you, without their name on it. Okay. Do not do this where your parents own the property, the dirt under your barn dominium. No. Or own a portion of the dirt. No. Okay. Okay.

The quit claim deed is probably either done poorly or wrong. You guys need to look at that. Because if they probably, I guess they put some percentage of an undivided interest or something into your name um but that means you now own all a portion of all those lots that are your brothers and sisters right that was dumb okay it's unclean and when you do things that are unclean like that because everybody's just going to get along then they don't get along then you're completely screwed so let me ask you what happens if you get these tracts of land are how big? Five acres, you said?

Two and a half. Two and a half. Okay, so you get two and a half acres completely in your name. You build a barn dominium on it, and three years later you decide to move to Kansas City. Can you sell it? You own it, but relationally, is everybody going to lose their freaking minds yeah 100 yeah that's 100 i would not build on it then

it's i mean it's where i grew up and i yeah i'm pretty i'm me and my wife are both hard sale on raising let me just tell you what you're a hundred percent gonna stay there if it goes toxic if it goes sideways if your brother gets into cocaine if your mother has dementia and shoots somebody all kinds of crap man i've been doing this 35 years nothing works like you think it's going to work. When stuff happens, you've got to have some autonomy and you don't have any. It's as if you never left home and live in their basement. This is really bad. I personally wouldn't do what you're doing and I would advise you against it. Not because I think your parents are bad people.

I don't or that you're bad people or that you really don't think you're going to stay there. You really think you're going to stay there. And you really might. But the truth is, most people don't. The truth is, 40 years from now, the chances of you being on that piece of dirt is almost zero. That's the truth. People just don't. Life changes.

Things come up. Different things occur in family situations. You don't want to be over there. I don't know what's in your future that's positive or negative that would push you away from that dirt, but you have no ability to leave it with the deal you're doing. And that is just bad medicine. And if you're going to go forward though, at least for God's sakes, get it in your name. Don't be building on something that's got your parents' name on the dirt. A hundred percent of that lot is in you and your wife's name. At least you've got the legal option of turning the property over if you need to,

even though relationally you don't think you would ever want to. I get that you don't think that's going to happen, Dan, but what you don't get is you think you're doing six things that cause cancer. I'm a cancer doctor. I seen cancer for 35 years. You're doing all the stuff that causes cancer and you're going to have cancer. And I don't know, I don't know how to stop you from doing it. So that's the problem. And so I have to come at this from the negative because it's what you and I see every day, George. Yeah. These are handc dirt so is there an alternative here Dave where he goes all right I'm going to buy land elsewhere that that is mine and that I will build on that's what I would do that feels like the best alternative you know even if it's down the street I mean it's in the neighborhood but my kids live you know in a 30 minute radius from us I would be heartbroken if they moved to

Kansas City you know I'd be heartbroken if they moved away with my grandkids I don't want that uh but I don't get to decide that they get to decide that and he's surrendering his autonomy he's surrendering his ability to make a decision for his family unit um regard no matter what happens it's like in chiseled in concrete and he might be pouring six figures into something that he can't get back out he can't get it out that's frightening because he we want real estate to be an investment well it's going to go up in value but if you're unwilling to sell it under any circumstances because of the dirt handcuffs four siblings now that are upset about it that's oof the number of times i've gotten the call from, Dusty, your wife,

that says my husband and I built on his dad's property and we can't sell it. I've gotten that call 50 times. Easy. And it's never a good call. So you guys do what you want to do. I'm going to try to talk you out of it. I doubt I did, though. This is The Ramsey Show.

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Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Thanks, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? All right. So I just graduated from undergraduate college debt-free. Woo! And I am planning on going to graduate school in clinical psychology,

but I'm going to have to go into debt and take student loans to pay for the degree. Is this a bad decision? Yes. Okay, so what should I do instead? That's a good question. You said you had to. Is it someone who's forcing you to? Why are you going to grad school for critical psychology?

What's the goal? To be a practicing clinical psychologist and private practice okay so you have to have a master's to do that right okay and where'd you get your undergrad um at the local public school south alabama okay and do they offer a master's um not to my knowledge they don't offer a master's i know other programs um near me offer a master's but um i think that the application deadline for that is too late so would you recommend me um taking a year off and applying to master's programs. Why did you, okay, you went through the undergrad and got a degree in psychology in undergrad, and you paid cash for it.

That's right. And then why did you suddenly decide, I have to go to a school I can't afford to do my grad work? Because you could have gone to a school you could afford, but you chose not to, and now these deadlines have passed you. Why? Right. Well, I assumed, assumed i guess that i needed

to get a doctorate degree in clinical psychology to practice you know you have to have a master's right master's will get you licensed in most states anyway uh there may be a few that require a doctorate now i don't know but. What's it going to cost you? Well, it's quite a bit. It's $35,000 a year. And you've researched all the programs, even online ones, and that's the best deal? No, that's not the best deal. You can get

this degree for $20,000. That's the point. Have we done the research to see if we can find a more affordable option and then see what it would take to cash flow that? Okay. That's what I would do. I've seen some programs that I thought were ridiculous. They were around like $70,000 or somewhat $50,000,

and I didn't even consider those. Yeah, that's good. You did do a little shopping, but you can get this degree for half of what you're talking about. Okay. And nobody cares where you went to school, by the way. All they care is did you pass your boards and can you help them. Right.

No one ever went to a marriage counselor and said, wait, wait. Let me check the frame on the wall. Where'd you go to school? Nobody ever did that. Ever. All they want to know is can Dan guide me with his psychological training through this rough spot in my life i need a guide can he help me that's really what they want to know you want to be a healer good for you right you're a good person yeah and you um so if i mean you call to

ask i i think number one even let's pretend you had $50,000 cash in your bank account. I would still tell you not to pay $35,000 for this. I'd still tell you to go get a better deal. Because there's something about this particular critical psychology path at this particular location that romanced you. Or it was just a one option and that's now what I got to do because we didn't look for more options. So no, I would not go in debt because here's the thing. You got to get out. It's a two-year process to finish your master's, get licensed, pass your boards, and then you've got to get out and actually start making money. And in most states,

you're going to have to put some hours under your belt before you can get licensed so it's going to be a while before you make any money to pay this to get a return on investment into this degree and even then um you're going to have to choose carefully how you choose to practice psychology because you can do it psychology not as bad as sociology but they both are very tough you can do it. Psychology, not as bad as sociology, but they both are very tough. You can get into some very underpaid situations with those. And, okay, now I make, you know, $26,000 a year after spending all this money as a school counselor. No.

No. Okay? And people come out with $200,000 and you know, you're not Dan, but people come out with $200,000 in, uh, student loans because they did their graduate work at some school they shouldn't have. And they end up in a school counselor role. This is just don't do that. I'm begging you use some common sense or use some wisdom, pay cash for it and pay, pay less for it because it's going to be a while before you monetize it. And that might mean taking a year off and working your tail off and getting a few side jobs.

It might or it might mean going and sitting down in the, you know, so many schools, they actually need students. So, oh, the deadline passed. Oh, kiss my butt. I'm going to sit down with the guy who runs the administration office and go, hey, I got money. You want me in? And they're going, oh, look, an opening just occurred.

Look at that. Look at that. We can squeeze in. Oh, that deadline thing. Oh, you know, I mean, come on. Yeah, seriously. It's not like they have a line around the block at most of these schools to get into graduate work on psych. So, sorry, you're not getting in law school or med school here this

psych so yeah seriously i i think you go poke around try to try to stay on the track but if you end up taking six months off or you end up taking a year off okay then go pile up a bunch of money and you're you have a little bit of a war chest to go out this erwin is with us in cleveland ohio hi erwin how are you? Hi, Dave and George. I'm way better than I deserve. Thanks for having me on. Oh, good. We're glad to have you, sir. What's up? So I've got a question for you here. I've got around $200,000 left on my mortgage, a 3% interest rate, and I have been absolutely laser focused on getting that paid off. And so the strategy that I've taken is I opened a high interest savings account, which gets me about interest rate. And I have been absolutely laser focused on getting that paid off. And so the

strategy that I've taken is I opened a high interest savings account, which gets me about 4.125%. And rather than paying any extra money on my mortgage, I've been putting it in that account. And I've got around $120,000 saved up in there right now. Your high yield savings account pays what? About 4.125%. And your mortgage interest rate is what? 3%. Okay. So I spoke with my financial advisor about that strategy, and I put it into ChatCPT, which seems to know everything. And both of them came back and said that that was a good strategy to put it in there. And then once I hit that $200,000, just pay it

off in one lump sum because I'm actually making more money on that interest than I would be if I just paid it off slowly as I went. I just wanted to ask you guys if you thought that was a good idea or not. You called the right place. I don't think it's a good idea. I'm going to disagree with AI and tell you that it's much wiser to pay off your mortgage.

It's what I did, Erwin, personally. And we did our millionaire study. Not one said, well, the money I would have put toward the mortgage, I invested instead, and that's how I became wealthy. We found that wealthy people actually pay off their mortgages 10 years on average. And so I would absolutely pay it off, and I wouldn't wait until you had $200,000 to do it. So, dude, 1% on $120,000 we don't have a 12 we don't have a 1200

problem we have a 200 000 problem you have fixed the 200 000 problem because you're a genius and you're able to live on less than you make and save money okay so you're saying as because what i've been doing is taking my bonus checks and i'm saying i'm saying all of this gy so you're saying, because what I've been doing is taking my bonus checks and putting them away. I'm saying all of this gyration you're doing, fire your financial advisor and quit looking up crap on the internet to get advice for anything except whose birthday it is. Oh my gosh, no, no. Yeah, pay cash as fast as you can, as hard as you can on this mortgage. You're doing all these double backflips. You look like one of these Olympic divers all for $1,200.

And $1,200 in a spit against the measure of $200,000. Pay off the mortgage and start investing that payment you were making and then come back and tell us it wasn't a good move. Oh, wait, wait. The $1,200 is income. It's taxable. So it's not $1,200. It's $800. You did all of this for less than $1, wait. The $1,200 is income. It's taxable. So it's not $1,200. It's $800. You did all of this for less than $1,000. AI ought to be ashamed of itself.

But it's not that smart. This is The Ramsey Show. George Campbell Ramsey Personality is my co-host on the debt-free stage in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions. Dane is with us. Hi, Dane. How are you? Hi, Dave and George. How are you? Better than we deserve, brother. Welcome. Where do you live? Live in Sacramento, Dave. Oh, beautiful. Love Sacramento. Welcome to Nashville. And how much debt have you paid? Sure. So $216,765.21. Excellent.

And how long did this take? It took eight years and four months. Wow. And your range of income during that time? Sure. So it started about $80,000 and then up to $128,000. Cool. What do you do for a living?

I'm in client relations sales for a local government association in California. Okay well that would put you in sacramento for sure okay cool very cool and uh the 217 000 what kind of debt was this it was my house dave yeah a guy in california owns his house paid for that is really weird way to go weirdo i'm proud of you thank you what's the house job uh well i actually had a few uh kind of life changes so actually sold it uh recently so uh that was kind of part of the journey uh selling the house but i got you okay all right well good for you man congratulations how's it feel to be free it feels amazing it feels uh It feels free. You feel so relaxed and can do so many other things, obviously, coming out here to Nashville to be a part of your show today and obviously being able to be more generous to whether the church or just everyday life. It's great. So in the selling of

the house, you buy another one then later? No, not right now. You will someday? I think so. Just kind of got to get through this process well good for you brother yes well done man all right what happened eight years ago that put you on this journey what was the moment that woke you up what's your uh your why why did you do this and and what what motivated you how'd you get connected to us sure yeah no it uh it was it, uh, it was actually in September of 2015. I was on a work trip and, uh, was traveling around and, and the show was on the radio station that I was listening to and I hadn't heard of the show at all. And, and I was thought I was doing pretty well. I had paid off my credit card, credit card debt and student loan debt. And, you know, just figured I was going to have a 30 year mortgage to, to, uh, you know, manage for the next 30 years. And, uh, I think David, the time you were yelling at someone to

pay off their mortgage. And so I, uh, you know, I, that took, uh, how important that is. And, and I, I listened to it and I started thinking about it and I was like, well, this would, you know, I can do this too. And, uh, obviously for the rest of 2015, I, you know, kind of wasn't serious about it. And then in 2016, it was, it was game on. Okay. Very cool. What do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is you paid off your house? Oh boy. I mean, a few things for me, the budget was key. Certainly having that financial plan, you know, telling your money where to go every month was important. Financial Peace University, my son's here as well, and their mom, Kristen, got me into an FBU class about five years ago. That was obviously key.

And so I definitely want to thank her for that. And a reason, right? A reason to change your family tree, right? And then a community of support was helpful as well. So I would listen to your guys' show and those times when I would kind of get down a little discouraged about the journey that I was on. And this is, you know, I've still got four or five years left and it would help. Wow. That's impressive. And you know, the kids got a front row seat. Were they even born when you started the journey? They were, yes. Wow. Yeah.

And you went, was this part of legacy of just, I want my kids to grow up not knowing debt? Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, just having them see to kind of go through that, the journey and the challenge and that they can be debt-free as well. And they were actually very involved. We built kind of a debt chain at home and they would cut the links off of it when we'd pay off. Yeah, that's a core memory right there. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And just, you know, one of the things I just wanted to say too, is that we just, I know back then, you know, I said 2015 was when I first heard the message and I'm sure, you know, Dave and Georgia was the 10,000th time you guys had said that, but that

day it reached me and changed my life. So thank you so much to you and the teamth time you guys had said that, but that day it reached me and changed my life. So thank you so much to you and the team for what you guys do. Well, and this day, your debt-free scream is reaching someone today. So it does go full circle. The ripple effect. Does go full circle. You're paying it forward by celebrating this so openly. Congratulations.

Very, very well done. Powerful, Dane. Very powerful. Good stuff. So the why is the boys, and they got to watch the whole thing happen, and they'll never have debt because they've seen how dad acts.

Certainly so. Yeah, it kind of came from my mom here as well, and they gave me the foundation of hard work and sacrificing for your goals, my parents. So obviously we all get somewhere with someone else, and I try to do my part going forward. Yeah. foundation of hard work and sacrificing for your goals, my parents. So it's, you know, obviously, we all get somewhere with someone else. And I try to do my part going forward. Yeah. Well, congratulations, brother. Very proud of you. I bring the boys up. Let's introduce them. What are their names and ages? Sure. So this is Colin right here. He's nine. And this is Caden.

He's 11. All right. Very cool. Very cool. Well, congratulations, you guys. You're heroes. So proud of you. So you say the key is the budget and what else? Certainly the FPU, Financial Peace University. And I think, you know, like I said, having a reason. And the community. That was the other thing. That's important. Plug it into something that is telling you to do it and that is supporting you rather than tearing you down because there's always some bozo in the background yelling not to do it too so um you guys you really worked your tail off and pulled this off i'm so proud of y'all way to go hero thank you so much yeah those young men have got a dad they can definitely look up to that's pretty cool stuff all right dane and caden and cohen ah here we go baby 21. $217,000 paid off. House and everything in California.

Did this in eight years and four months, making $80,000 to $128,000. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Okay. Three, two, one. We're debt-free! Yeah! Yeah! Mortgage free. Mortgage free in California.

Those two things just don't go together. You don't hear that in a sentence very often. I thought it couldn't be done. It's impossible. Wow. The things you and George teach are impossible. Until you do it. Oh wait, then there's Dane.

Yeah, he kind of messed screwed it up yeah it's that whole well no one does that well so you can't say that anymore so we messed that up i'm curious dave doing this for 30 years now like he said you know has have things changed as you've been yelling at people to pay off their mortgage getting accused of yelling a lot in this segment i I've noticed I'm forceful with my opinions, but I usually don't yell. Well, not unless someone needs a little slapping around. That's rare these days. Okay. But are more and more people saying, I'm going to hang on to the mortgage because of fear, because of the market? Have you seen a

trend over 30 years when it comes to mortgage payoff? You know, debt payoff in general, there's always been somebody trying to find a shortcut. You know, I'm going to borrow money and instead of paying off my debt, I'm going to put it in a high yield savings or, you know, there's always some kind of angle. I'll get a second mortgage. Instead of just doing it, we human beings look for a scam. We look for an angle. We want an angle. And to angle and we you know just do it stand around talk about it you know you could already had the garage swept while you were discussing how to sweep it sweep the dadgum garage i mean come on that sounds like my dad right there right i mean you know you've been talking about this and trying to decide whether you're going to get a blower or

a broom or what kind of broom get a just get started sweeping just sweep you know i mean everybody's got to try to find some thing where they figured out the universe well the universe has already figured it out god's figured it out he told you borrow or slave to the lender how long you won't be a slave stop it you know you got to get into it and so that that's what dane did he leaned into it and he knocked it out there's no angle that but it's human nature. So yeah, for 35 years, I've been hearing people looking for an angle. You know, how can I keep this debt and still be debt free? My financial advisor told me. We just took that call. My broke friend that I went to happy hour with, seven beers and two joints later, told me I should keep my mortgage.

You know, well, of course he did. He's a moron. And then we did our millionaire study, and it turns out millionaires actually pay off their mortgage in 10.2 years on average. The baby steppers paid off in seven years on average, and Dane is right there in the middle. Yeah. Eight years, four months. Yeah.

Perfect. He's on a lot. Imagine seven years from now, eight years from now, you could have no mortgage if you wanted to, if you so chose. But don't discuss how to sweep the garage. Just sweep the garage. Start sweeping. Extra payments. You're talking about your dadgum theories. Ready?'t discuss how to sweep the garage. Just sweep the garage. Start sweeping. Extra payments.

Quit talking about your dadgum theories. Don't overcomplicate it. Aim, aim, aim, aim. You don't need strategies. Shoot something! Gosh! See, he does yell. This is the Ramsey Show.

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George Camel Ramsey personality is my co-host. Karen is with us in Los Angeles. Hi, Karen, how are you? Hi, good. Thank you for taking my call. Sure. What's up? Well, I have some questions. Well, one question. I recently, my husband passed away. Oh, I'm sorry. When did he pass? He passed June 15th. Oh, just the other day. Okay. Wow. Yeah, just a minute ago. Oh, my. How long were you all married? 24 years. How old was he? 55 years old. Wow. What happened?

He was, you know, it started with COVID, but what happened was he had a heart attack, and he died in his sleep. I'm so sorry, Janet. How are you doing? Thank you so much. It's a roller coaster. I have my good days and I have my bad days.

But I feel very grateful in so many ways because he did die in his sleep. And I kept telling him that he was in need of a doctor and I kept pushing and pushing and he wouldn't listen to me. that he was in need of a doctor, and I kept pushing and pushing, and he wouldn't listen to me. And so I knew something was going to happen. So I was expecting it, and so that's a weird thing to say. Wow. Okay.

Yeah. So you're doing okay, though? I'm trying. I'm worried about my kids. Okay. Yeah. So you're doing okay though? I'm trying. I'm worried about my kids. Okay. How old are your kids? 23 and 17. Are they living at the house with you? Yes, they live at the house and we've been staying very close, but in two weeks I go back to work. My work has been very, very generous with my time. But in two weeks, I go back to work. And so they're on their own a lot. Well, the 23-year-old needs to get to work, I guess. Well, she's in school full time.

Oh, okay, good. She's back in school? Yeah. Well, not yet. She took the summer off. He died right when summer school was happening, and she just dropped out, which was okay. I understood. Sure.

But my son kept going, and today's his last day, so we're going to take a little vacation. We're going to go away for vacation and for a week. And then when I get back, I'm going right to work. Good for you. What do you make at work? How much money? About 80,000. Okay. So how are you set up financially? Are you okay? Well, um, we had life insurance and so I'm financially secure now. We were a mess. Um, but I, as soon as the life insurance was in progress, I started listening to your show and, and we had a ton of bills. I mean, we had $80,000 worth of debt, and we don't own a home. We lost our home. And I had $40,000 worth of IRS bills. And all that's paid?

It's all paid. How much life insurance did you get? $1.5 million. Okay, good. So the problem is I didn't pay off. I didn't know what to do about it. I had leased a car, and I didn't know what to do. You don't talk about leased cars very often, but you're not positive about them,

and I know that they're not a good value. Yeah, I'm positive we don't do them but you did it it's okay so you just call here's what you do just call who's the who's the lease with uh bmw just call bmw and tell them you need the early buyout which is early buyout yeah which is like the payoff i want to pay the car off i need the early buyout i want my title okay that's what i wanted to know and it's like it's like if you had a loan you're obviously not going to pay the interest for the all the years remaining you're just going to pay the payoff on the principal balance right yes and that's what you're asking for it's the same thing okay so that's the smartest

thing is to early buy out and then keep the car yeah yeah you don't you don't you don't hate the car right oh i love the car it's so awesome but i know that it's a bad investment and i thought you were going to tell me to keep it for the three years or no i didn't know what you were going to say pay it off off and keep it. You've got the money. You're okay. How much money will you have left over once all that's done? 1.4 something, something, something. Yeah. Where is that money kept right now?

I put it in Vanguard and in my retirement account as much as I could at work. So it's invested. Yes. Okay. And Fidelity. Okay. Not Fidelity. I think I opened a Chase account. I don't know. I spread it around a little bit because I was confused and I needed to get it FDIC insured. Sure. Well, I would recommend you get connected with a smart investor pro. You can find one at ramseysolutions.com. I want to make sure this money does grow for you and that it

can help you, you know, replace that income and grows at a good rate for you. And we start talking about buying a house out of it at some point, not necessarily today, but at some point in the meantime, yeah, just get the lease paid off and you'll be you'll be heading in the right direction. And Karen, anything you need, you holler at us. We'll help you any way we can. OK. Hadn't even been two months. Goodness gracious. She was she's on it. She came on. Wow. She jumped right at it. I probably didn't have a choice on some of it.

Joseph's in Dallas. Hey, Joseph, what's up? Hi. How are you guys doing? Better than I deserve. How can I help? So I just had a question. How do I convince my wife to pay off her student loan and the rest of our debt and do it as efficiently as possible?

What caused you to want to do it? Well, I just don't like debt, but we've ended up racking up. We chose to rack up more debt out of here. We have some credit card debt. So something changed, and you decided to get intense and get out of debt. When was that? Well, I just never liked it, and I was... No, that's not true. You went into debt. You're ready to do something drastic.

What happened the other day, two weeks ago or five months ago? Something happened, and you went, I want to get out of debt. Maybe you start listening to this show. I don't know. What happened? happened and you went i want to get out of debt maybe you start listening to this show i don't know what happened i guess yeah i did start listening to your show like my high school one of my high school teachers had mentioned you guys um years ago and i was like okay like that's cool but i didn't have any debt then either so it's like i was just going through life so you waited to get some to go all right now i'll start listening to this show yeah pretty much like it only took us 10 months to rack up our debt that we have now and um how much do you have i think about 41 000 debt the reason george are asking you the

same question reason george and i are asking you the same question of how what got you fired up because something happened that you got new information that made you so excited that you were willing to sacrifice and get very intense and get out of debt. That was not there before. And that's what happens with your wife. It's exactly the same thing. You expect her to just wake up one morning and suddenly out of the blue feel exactly like you when you didn't used to feel this way but now something happened and you got new information you thought gosh it'd be worth it to sacrifice and when i look at this when i step back and look at it scares the crap out of me we went this far in debt in just 10 months we got to

stop that we got to turn the car around we got to go back and get off the interstate the other direction and um we got to repent we have to do a 180 and, you know, and that's what does it for her. It's not, honey, we got to do this because I'm smart and I figured it out. No, it's here's, this is terrifying me that we went this far in. Let's look at this. And I get really not terrified. I get excited when I talk about getting out of it. Let's talk about how our life would look if we got out of it. What would we do if we didn't have any debt? How much wealth could we build?

And where could we travel? And what kind of generosity could we do? And let's dream with her into the future. Ask her what she would want to do if we were debt-free and give her a reason to be excited about it other than you just did some math. She needs her own catalyst to get this journey started. And then we need to show her that there's a new Joseph. You've got to actually change some habits. It might be you selling some stuff, getting rid of an old subscription where she goes,

oh, my gosh, you really want to do this, don't you? And I think that's part of it. It's got to be more than just words. It's got to be action with that. Absolutely. Financial Peace University is the best way. If you just wanted a silver bullet, Financial Peace gives you the language. Yeah, we'll do that.

Helps you dream together. Gives you the class to go through. You and your wife go through Financial Peace on us. And if you can get her to go to the class, I'll convince her. You won't have to. This is the Ramsey Show. Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show. We help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships.

George Camel, number one best-selling author, Ramsey personality, and host of The George Camel Show. He's my co-host today. Thank you for joining us. The phone number is 888-825-5225. Gina's in New York City. Hi, Gina. How are you? I'm good.

How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? So about five years ago, we lost our house. We lost about a half a million dollars in a failed business. Prior to that, we were always really good with our finances, but since then we've been renting and we don't have a savings. We don't have a retirement. We don't have anything. All we have is a property that my father-in-law gifted us that's worth about $1.6 million, no mortgage,

and we don't know how to move forward. Do we mortgage that and do something else with it? Do we continue renting? Our expenses really is just we cover what we make, what we spend. So we're just not sure what the best decision would be. We're kind of afraid to move. I'm sorry. That's devastating.

So really, during the last five years, since all this happened, you've really not made any progress. Right. Why? So we put two kids through state college. We didn't have them incur any debt. We covered their college. I have another son that's going to college next year.

My other son's in the Navy. Because he didn't go to college, we were paying for half his wedding, the reception only. So it's just been like, and then everything just seems to be getting more and more expensive. So what we're making, maybe where there was a little left, I make $42,000 a year. My husband makes $115,000 a year. Okay. Well, the thing is you're not made any progress during the five years since the horrible event.

Okay. So typically what happens is, you know, after there's a forest fire, things start to grow back. And nothing's growing back here because you're continuing to spend everything you make. And you make $150,000. And so, you know, you can't continue to do what you're doing. That's the answer to your question. You've got to, you know, you've got to get to a position that you say the thing we learn from the failed business and the lost home and our heart being broken and our emotions being gutted, the thing we learn is we don't borrow money.

The thing we learn is that we're going to live on less than we make. And this is what Sharon and I went through. I mean, not only we were 28, you're not 28, but it gutted us emotionally. We couldn't, you know uh we were numb uh we were uh well i walked around for a year blaming everybody else i was a victim um and then i discovered that i was a victim of my own stupidity that i signed up for the trip i got to take and uh that was a harsh discovery and that began healing. I said, okay, I'm going to take responsibility. And the responsibility is, is I don't borrow money

anymore. And the responsibility is I'm going to be on a budget. And the responsibility is we're going to be tithing at our church. And the responsibility is Sharon and I are going to be in agreement on every dollar that leaves this place before it leaves. And we're freaking hardcore about it. And we're going to live on less than we make and if that means looking at a kid and saying no we're going to look at a kid and say no if that means looking at a relative and saying no or a friend we're going to say no because i got one goal here me and sharon are never going back to this mess again and that was kind of the way we did it um it was a long time ago, but you can tell by the emotion in my voice, I remember it. So I know how you feel.

You're kind of weak in the knees. But, you know, you guys have really got to look at what we've gone through an extreme thing. And the way to recover from an extreme thing is extreme discipline that make any sense yeah i agree with that yeah and i'm i and i don't think what you've done i mean paying for kids weddings not evil paying for the college is not evil uh you know you haven't done anything that's evil here that's not the point, but you just did it like it didn't matter. And as if this other stuff hadn't happened and did it anyway and left you and your husband broke and still broken, you're still scared. You're still terrified as if this was as if this happened a month ago instead of five years ago. And i i i want i want you guys i want to see some emotional healing

and financial healing for you and your husband your kids will be they'll make it they'll be all right lots of kids parents have gone broke and they turned out okay what's what shrapnel is left from this thing do you guys have any debt you're still trying to pay off um minimal we didn't really have debt. So we have like, you know, we have three cars, two are paid off. One I owe about $25,000 on. I have about $5,000 on an American Express and $8,000 on a different credit card with zero interest. But that's it.

Can I tell you, Gina, the way you're talking, that's it. It's minimal. That freaks me out. And I think you need that, the way you're talking, that's it. It's minimal. That freaks me out. And I think you need that level of intensity to never go back to this spot again. Right. And so before we cover kids' college and pay for a wedding, we've got to clean up our debt because you guys have nothing in savings, you told me. We've got to put our own mask on first here. You're still spending more than $150,000.

Right. You've got to stop it. And I understand, but I'm telling you that you can't keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect the different results. Right. The land, the $1.6 million, that's a curious thing off to the side of this story. He just handed you the keys to this? Well, he owns my husband's first generation, so he owns a few properties and he gave one to each of his kids. That's the one that we got.

It's a six family building. We don't take anything from it. Why? Because it's rent stabilized, so it doesn't make a ton of money as it is. And we just let it kind of accumulate. My father-in-law is still alive, so obviously he still takes from it. Oh, he does? No, not obviously. He gave it to you. It's not obvious. So you own it, but he gets the profits?

Mostly, yes. We take about $, but he gets the profits? Um, mostly, yes. We take about $1,200 a month from it, and that was included in the $150. So it's not really yours, though, emotionally, in the sense that if you wanted to sell it, that would cause a problem. Well, he says we can if we want to take a loan out on it. Our problem is a loan. I don't want to take a loan out on it our problem is alone i don't want to i said sell it right yeah sell it and buy you a house i i don't know that i would need to buy a house that cost that much and i don't want to cost that much i just don't want to own this

like you're you call me up you completely broke, broken and emotionally wounded, and over here to the side you have a paid for $1.6 million property. You're making $10,000 a year from it. These two things are incongruent. It's incongruent to your story, but it makes me think that you don't really have the relational option to sell it. I don't think your father-in-law is going to go along with you selling it. He's going to have a fit and then go buy you a $600,000 house and put some money in some mutual funds or buy another piece of real estate that you own that actually makes a good rate of return because this thing sucks on the rate of return. What does the future hold

for business? Ask nine experts and you'll get ten different answers. Economic growth or a recession. Business taxes will go up or down. AI will help us work or it will replace us all. But there's no such thing as a crystal ball. That's why more than 40,000 businesses have future-proofed themselves with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud enterprise resource planning system.

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And when you're closing the books in days, not weeks, you can spend less time looking backward and more time focusing on what's next. And speaking of what's next, download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com slash Ramsey. It's free at netsuite.com slash Ramsey. George Campbell Ramsey personality is my co-host today. Today's question of the day is brought to you by Y Refi. If private student loan debt is taking away from your peace of mind,

you don't see any way out. Well, you need Y Refi. Y Refi refinances defaulted private student loans that other places won't touch and gives you a low fixed rate loan that's customized to you, built for you. Go to whyrefi.com slash Ramsey today. That's the letter Y, R-E-F-Y dot com slash Ramsey might not be in all states. Today's question comes from Michael in Ohio. How do you reconcile paying off debt prior to funding college? We started on our journey to freedom from debt last year, and our son will be attending college within the next two years. My focus has been earmarking cash specifically for his college tuition and expenses with early debt payoff as a secondary priority

based on the time frame of when that cash is needed. What's your advice to parents with a more imminent timeline to college? Imminent. So intense. Okay. So we're talking within the next two years, son is attending college. They've got some consumer debt. They're trying to help pay for junior's college. What say you, Dave? Why this order? Because baby step two is payoff your consumer debt baby step five is safe for kids college well this is not really saving for kids college this is almost budgeting because this is a current budget line item because it's here cash flowing and so what it's doing is it's whatever we're paying out of our pocket for the kids' college because it's upon us.

It's imminent, to use his word. Because of that, it's a budget item. It's not really a baby step. And so what that does then, by mathematical necessity, is it reduces the amount of money you put towards your debt because you have this expense line in your budget. It's going to slow down your debt payoff. But that's not because college is more important.

It's because college is on top of you. Now, having said all of that, Michael in Ohio, Junior is going to community college for the first two years. Because he's got a mom and dad that are broke. He's not going to Harvard. Hello? The number one reason people go into student loan debt is not to get an education. It's because they chose to go to a college they couldn't afford. The University of Tennessee at Knoxville, an in-state school for a Tennessee resident,

is right now $14,000. Vanderbilt, here in Nashville, is $75,000. If you have extra money and you want your child to go to Vanderbilt, that's fine. But you do not go in student loan debt to go to Vanderbilt versus go to the University of Tennessee. And you can't convince me it's better because I went to the University of Tennessee and people that went to Vanderbilt worked for me. Ouch.

Sick burn. So there's that. So college selection is what's important. It's the number one thing because people, they, here's what's, here's the irony of it. And we talked about this in borrowed future in the, in the documentary. The irony is, is that people are stupid about education that's an irony we're dumb about education if you think about it we don't shop for the price so what we want is we want junior to go to college we want him to get an education we want him to get a degree in something that's useful not left-handed puppetry or german polka history you'll end up a barista

okay so and two hundred thousand dollars in debt and you got it from a name brand college that all your friends would think is fancy so you're a fancy barista hello two nose rings so there we go and i want to know what juniors buy in it is in this college process hello that's number two isn't it feels entitled to it i'm i'm thinking junior signing up for scholarships as hard as old dad is working here to save money because it's imminent love that word i think junior needs to realize it's imminent and he needs to be doing three essays a night registering for free money called scholarships oh and Junior needs to plan to work while he's in school. It's not child abuse.

It's really not. Little Snowflake will make it. They'll be okay. Well, and the data shows 15 to 20 hours a week, part-time job, you have a higher GPA than those who don't work. So he'll be okay. He'll actually be smarter. Yeah, actually be smarter.

He'll develop this interesting thing called work ethic while he's there. I want him to be able to study and play beer pong. That's what you're saying, actually. You don't realize it if you've ever seen it. It's a well-rounded education, Dave. It's rounded, a little round white ball. Yeah, I got you, George. I saw what you did there.

Thank you. So, yeah, we don't get a degree in beer pong. We're going to work. Oh, by the way, it's interesting. When I'm speaking to adult audiences, 5,000 people in the audience, and I say, if you went to college, how many of you went to college? And people raise their hands, like most of the audience, right? How many of you worked while you were in college?

Almost everybody in the room raised their hand. The number of people that went to college and worked zero hours while they were in college is almost zero. So junior is going to be working. Junior is going to be getting scholarships. We're going to choose a college that is inexpensive and in the area because we don't have any money. And he's going to graduate and go be successful because he understands that the reason for an education is it's not a magic bullet that makes you successful. It puts tools in the belt of someone that knows how to work hard, be honest, apply themselves in the marketplace, and those tools help you to be successful. But no one ever

became successful because of their degree. They became successful because of hard work, moxie, confidence, being competent in the marketplace, and kicking butt and taking names. That's how you become successful. I had a guy working here one time. He came in my office, and he said, you know, he had more degrees than a thermometer, and he said, you know, people that have as many degrees as I have when they work for big companies, they make a lot more than I make here. And I said, yeah, but you work for a small business. He said, yeah, I know. I said, well, that's, you know, the rules of small business are different.

Your raise is effective when you are. I couldn't care less about your dadgum degrees. All I care is can you do something with them that brings money into this place and I'll share some with you. Hello, that's how this works. So make yourself a value, boys and girls. That some with you. Hello. That's how this works. So make yourself a value boys and girls. That is what makes you valuable. It is not the fact that you went to college somewhere and therefore the society owes you an income because you have a degree. Society doesn't know

you squat and you will find that out as soon as you walk out there because it will spit in your face. And then you'll be going, I sure hope Biden will help me. He's asleep in the basement. You're not going to get any help. So not coming. Not coming, boys and girls. So that's the rant there, Michael. You're doing a good thing.

Put it in the budget. I'm not disagreeing with you. But then don't tell me, oh, well, my son told me he's going to this school. See, that's the thing. A 17-year-old didn't tell me anything at my house. I told them stuff, but they didn't tell me stuff. I solicited their input and then told them what we were going to do. You're paying for it.

There's rules. And you've said, Dave, here's the rules. You have to graduate in four years with this four-year degree. And it's interesting. I told my kids, I said, here's the syllabus. That's the list of classes you take in order to graduate. And so if you take all of these classes and you pass them all, you know what they give you a degree. It's magical. And, you know, if you take all these classes and you pass them all in four years, you know what you get a degree. If you do it in three years, you know what you get the exact same degree.

You know what you do if you do it in eight years? A degree. The exact same degree. So take the freaking classes. Show up. What are you doing? I mean, we're laying out on top of the dorm getting a suntan. It's spring.

You're killing me. And you missed the class that it took to graduate? Well, the average student. That's right. The average anything. You don't want to be. You don't want to be average. We're not signing up for average.

Golly. 57% of the people that start college do not graduate. That's scary. That means 43%. Nationally, we have a graduation rate of 43%. If you got a 57% do graduate. I got that backwards. A 43% dropout rate.

If you got a 57 on a test at any one of those colleges, they would call it an F. But they walk around acting like they did something, graduating 57% of the people. That means 43% of you leave without the degree and with the student loan. Don't do this. It was a lie. You were sold a lie. That's why they brag about acceptance rate, Dave, not the graduation rate. Mm-hmm.

Pay cash. They ought to brag about the job rate after we left the school and got the degree. That's the thing you ought to be bragging about. This is the Ramsey Show. George Campbell Ramsey personality is my co-host today. Nine years ago, we got word that a friend of a friend, a young church planter at that time was 30 years old, that he had a small congregation that had kicked off and was booming, but had just kind of gotten the whole thing going up in Indiana. And we got word that his pregnant wife had been murdered in their home. And reached out, got in touch, and began a friendship over the years.

And now Davey Blackburn is with us today. He's continued to be a friend and has a brand-new book out called Nothing is Wasted, A True Story of Hope, Forgiveness, and Finding Purpose in Pain. Welcome back, my friend. Yeah, thank you, Dave. This is an honor. Thank you, George. Absolutely.

Nine years later, this ends up as a book. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. That's got to be simultaneously fulfilling to talk through the ministry and what has happened out of this tragedy, this disaster, and also, God, just draining. I mean, I'm talking about this all the time, even though it's nine years ago. Yeah, it is. But it's also very cathartic, you know, especially to see how many people are healing because of it. You know, every time we go and share the message, you find out that pain's

the common denominator of life. Whether they've gone through this degree of pain, everyone has dealt with pain. It's kind of the thing that equalizes the playing field for us as humans. And then also- I skirted over it, but take a second and tell the, you know, the thumbnail version of the story. You're 30 years old, old your wife's pregnant you got a little baby you went to the gym if i remember left for the gym on a tuesday morning three men were on a random crime spree in indianapolis broke into the home three doors down from me saw me leave for the gym that morning and decided to break into our home and amanda got caught up in that we had a 15 month old at the time and um she was 13 weeks pregnant with our second and she was shot three times and when i came home i found her and she was uh still breathing very

laboriously but unconscious and when we got her to the hospital the doctors revealed to me that she had three bullet wounds that prognosis was very grim and how long did she live after that? About 24 hours later, she was pronounced officially deceased. Okay. Yeah. And the toddler was in the house? Yeah, he was in his crib the entire time, untouched, unharmed. So our world turned upside down in 24 hours. Yeah, you went from a picture-perfect little life, so to speak, to the opposite end of

the spectrum in one morning at the gym. Right, right. So what was the next step? Out of all the grief, when did you kind of go, hey, I need to share this message? And Nothing Is Wasted Ministries began. Yeah, well, there was a long process, right? You know, now looking back on it, my counselor told me we want God to heal us in poof, but he normally heals us in process.

And so I had to go through a long healing journey, but being a pastor, I was immediately beginning to share the story. And unfortunately, because our story was such a national media story, I was also thrust in front of a couple of national television media outlets. And so I started sharing that story. Now, looking back on it, it was cathartic and helpful to begin to share that story because that's part of your healing to externalize the things that have gone on in your life and to be able to find where God is in that story. But I really had no choice. I had to begin sharing that with my congregation. And as I did, I found that people with their own pain stepped forward and they were finding healing in the midst of whatever they were going through, too.

Wow. It's powerful. I don't care who you are or where you studied or how you grew up. You're 30 years old. Your wife gets shot three times and they leave the baby in the crib. That's got to change your relationship with God. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It got to be a little anger. There was a lot of anger. There was a lot of rage. There was a lot of confusion because my, my idea as a believer was as long as I'm following after God and I'm in the middle of his will, then everything's going to go well for me. You know, I'll be healthy, wealthy, and wise. Right. But then you find out, well, Benjamin Franklin's the one that said that scripture doesn't say that. Right. And so then you look into scripture and you go, wow, Benjamin Franklin's the one that said that. Scripture doesn't say that, right? And so then you look into scripture and you go, wow, actually the people who follow Jesus the closest, they had a lot of very tragic endings to their life.

And so what it began to do is reorient for me who God really is, that his promises are actually a lot sweeter than the real shallow promises that I was holding onto. And that in the midst of difficulty, trauma, tragedy in our life, he is walking with us. And so I found that, you know, Elizabeth Elliot says, there'll be situations that we go through that there's no explanation for why it happened, but God brings us something even greater. And that's incarnation. He's walking with us. And so in the midst of wrestling with God, the really deep, dark, despairing questions that I had to bring to God, he really showed up in profound ways that made it undeniable that he's not just real,

but he also cares. He's a loving father, and he wants to journey this valley with me. I seem to remember, and I may be wrong, you can correct me, that the phrase nothing wasted came pretty quick in the story, that nothing is wasted. Talk about where that came from because that's the title of the book. Yeah. Well, while we were in the hospital, we were waiting on test results to come back, and I put on Pandora radio station at the foot of Amanda's bed, Elevation Worship. I knew she would want to listen at the foot of Amanda's bed, elevation worship.

I knew she would want to listen to elevation worship if she could hear anything. And Pandora is randomized. You don't get to choose what comes up, right? But the first song that came up was the song, nothing is wasted. And that was the first moment where we felt, I was sitting there with her sister and we looked at each other. No words were necessary. We knew that God was stepping into that moment and he was bringing what scripture calls a peace that passes all understanding. And this is what we felt like he said. He said, this is not going to end the way that you want it to, but I promise you, I'm not going to waste this. And then later that week, as we were preparing for her funeral celebration of life service, we, it reminded us of what she was doing

as a business endeavor. She was refinishing furniture. She was going to all these antique shows all over Indianapolis. And she had asked me to go pick up furniture like I was American pickers off the side of the road that people had thrown out. And I remember looking at her the first time I did this and going, what are you going to do with this dresser? This is garbage. Nobody is going to buy this. And she said, Davey, trust me, give me a little time and I'm going to turn this into something

beautiful. And she would over and over and over. And that week after she passed away, I felt like the Holy Spirit said, Davey, trust me, give me a little time and I'm going to turn this into something beautiful. And that's the cover of the book is that's the color furniture being refinished. We actually got to, as a team creatively direct that and uh that's her sister that is modeling wow for that and uh and and refinishing that furniture yeah wow very cool um so you eventually were able to forgive the guys the men that did the murder yeah they were convicted finally they were convicted seven years later it took seven years for it to go to trial. And I came out originally saying I've chosen to forgive because I was a pastor. I'd preached messages on forgiveness. I knew the right thing to do and the right thing to say, but now I was

confronted with this for the first time in this kind of a gravity. And so I knew that forgiveness was a decision, but I didn't feel like forgiving, and a couple of things helped me on that journey. You know, the first thing that really helped me on that journey is realizing that unforgiveness was going to destroy me, and it was going to destroy the people that I love. You know, it's like cancer that just rots at you. Your toddler will pick up on it every time you walk in the room. If you don't let God transform your pain, you'll transfer it onto other people. Oh, there's a line. And so I didn't want that to happen.

So forgiveness was more for me. Releasing that bitterness and trusting God that he's the better avenger, that he's going to ultimately make this right. No matter what happens here on earth, he's the one that settles accounts. And then I also remembered the way that I heard the gospel was a very unconventional way. I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, Gardendale First Baptist. I went to this Easter play there. And the pastor comes out and he said, Jesus was murdered for my sin and for your sin. So at eight years old, that's how I heard the gospel.

Jesus was murdered for my sin and for your sin. Then at eight years old, that's how I heard the gospel. Jesus was murdered for my sin and for your sin. Then at 30 years old, my wife is murdered. Well, in that moment at that Easter play, the scene starts back up and Jesus on the cross says, Father, forgive them for they don't know what they're doing. And God drew me back to that moment and said, hey, are you willing to be a conduit of forgiveness the same way that Jesus offered forgiveness to you?

Wow. It's powerful. The book is Nothing is Wasted by our friend Davey Blackburn. A true story of hope, forgiveness, and finding purpose in pain. He's got a wonderful ministry helping people that have been through all kinds of trauma that's in 200 churches across America. Be sure and check all of that out. You can find him at Davey Blackburn and learn all you need to know.

Nothing is wasted because it's not. Love you, my friend. Yeah, thanks, Dave. Thanks, George. Proud of you for telling this story. Thank you, guys. This is The Ramsey Show. George Campbell, Ramsey personality, is my co-host. He also is my co-host.

He also is my co-cruiser. He and the other Ramsey personalities and my wife Sharon will be spending seven days on the high seas with you if you get one of the last few remaining cabins. We're going to be on an almost brand-new Holland America high-end, very nice ship, and we will be going to Turks and Caicos, Stnew Holland America high-end, very nice ship, and we will be going to Turks and Caicos, St. Thomas, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas. No one will be on the ship except Ramsey people.

So you're stuck with other people trying to get out of debt. Boy, can you imagine bringing someone that did not like us onto that cruise and sticking them on there for seven days? That would be hell for them. That's a good revenge plot right there. Because we've got events and speaking. we will be the only entertainment on there well and the people were bringing with us which includes free cruise i'm buying and they show up and they go oh my gosh see what you did yeah steven curtis chapman will be with us a dove award winner multi

uh grammy award winner uh steven i was with him the other night, and he told a story. He got inducted into the Grand Ole Opry the other day, one of the first Christian artists to ever get inducted. He was very emotional about that. Don't blame him a bit. That's quite an honor. He'll be with us. Dina Carter, country music star, will be with us.

Remember Strawberry Wine? She'll be with us. And a bunch of other folks, including Manit Chauhan from the Food Channel will be doing a little food demonstration. We'll all be doing different speaking. Deloney, he'll be helping your mental health on the high seas and so forth. So I think Coleman's going to help you with seasickness, actually. Is that his specialty now?

That's his specialty. No, I'm kidding. Handing out Dramamine. There we go. That's good. He's the Dramamine guy. Yeah, I'm looking at the lineup. It's just amazing how many friends we get to bring on board.

Magicians, comedians, songwriters. I don't know why there's any seats left for anybody else with all the people we're bringing that's true we're bringing a crew yeah it's a crew so everybody wanted to help on this it's kind of amazing so there we go all right the live like no one else cruise because if you're not on baby step four or beyond you shouldn't come we tell people not to be going on vacation and all that kind of stuff while you're in debt we're not hypocrites you shouldn't even buy our cruise so we want you to come and celebrate though if you've gotten four and beyond it's a good way to do it there's a few cabins left and you know what's left after that george what's that fomo oh catch the

next one if it ever happens who knows i wouldn't count on it ramsey solutions.com slash cruise yep we're doing it and And fun on the high seas. Jacob is in Spokane, Washington. Jacob, what's up in your world? Hey, not much. How's it going over there? Better than I deserve, man. How can we help?

Good. Hey, just want to say I love you guys, and I've been listening to you since 2007 when my teacher showed us your program, and now he's my financial advisor. Wow. Back in high school. Yeah. You went through the high school curriculum.

Cool. Almost 20 years ago. Cool. How can we help? So I just finalized a divorce and I owe her $150,000, which is her half of the equity of the house. And I have $70,000 saved up and it looks like a HELOC might be the only way I can go because I owe her the rest of the money in,

by the end of August, basically. So I know I'm a little bit behind, but we had kind of made plans to make payments up until the end of the divorce. So she changed it over and said that she wanted to buy a house. So, um, yeah, I was just wondering if there was any other options other than HELOC. Okay, what's the balance on the first mortgage? $110. What's the value of the home? About $430, $440. What's the interest rate on the first?

$2.25. Okay. So you would borrow $80 on a HELOC, and you make what? $130. Okay. So I don't tell people to borrow money, but you're already in debt. You're in debt to your ex-wife, and we're going to change that to another kind of debt called a HELOC.

And so you're not borrowing money. You're changing the money. You're changing the type of debt. You follow me? Yep. And so, yeah, that's what I would do. The only other thing I can think of, Jacob, is why are you keeping the house? It's in a great school district for my kids.

Are you keeping the kids? I love the house. We're doing 50-50, but, yeah, I want to keep them in the school district and just want to keep them from having to move back and forth. One's four and a half and one is like five months. Neither one of them care. You're the only one that cares. Well, I also don't think I can sell a house and get the money in time.

Is the divorce final? Yes. It's finalized, and then I just made sure that I could get the loan. And then as I'm going through it, I'm like, I just decided to call you guys and just see if there's any other options that I could look into. You're under a time crunch. But here's what I would do. I wouldn't just go just go well i'm just going to stay in the house forever

what you could do is do the heloc then list the house when it sells you immediately pay off the heloc and take whatever's left as your new down payment yeah um yeah here's the thing i you could keep the house if you want but most of the the time in 30 years of financial counseling with folks that they're in this situation, they keep the house for all the wrong reasons. And when you tell me you're keeping a house for a four year old and a five month old, that's the wrong reason because they don't care.

They truly don't care. You're just being emotional in the middle of this horrible catastrophe called a divorce. And I don't blame you for that because your heart's broken and you want to try to be a good dad and all that kind of stuff. But you just want to, you know, I'm not sure keeping the house is a smart thing to do, but if you want to get a HELOC just to get her off your back, that's fine. But honestly, where you are five years from now should be a completely different world than where you are today. And it probably is going to involve a different house because your next wife probably doesn't want to live in the house where your ex or her ex, your ex-wife used to live in the same bedroom.

So just doubt it. I just doubt it. That's just humans. Been dealing with them a long time. It helps to move on in that way to get rid of the physical place. You had a 12 year old and a 14 year old and they had friends that were deep and you've been there for 15 years and a lot of ties in the community. That's fine. But a five month old does not have any feelings except food and wet diapers. These are the feelings they have. And, um, I'm and um you know we've got babies in the

grandbabies in the family right now and they need two things a dry butt and a full belly and that's pretty much what they need and most humans that's that's about all they need yeah that's it most adults that's a good day but i mean i honestly i'm picking on you jacob you're going through a hard time but it's okay to sell this house. And it doesn't make you a bad dad. And I'm challenging the decision-making paradigm you're using to make the decision. But it's okay to take out a HELOC, and it's okay to keep the house, and it's okay to work it through with the numbers you've got.

So that's what you wanted to know. And you always get more than you want to know when you call here. That's how it works, folks. So because I'm really here to help you, not just help you do what you want to do there's a difference and it's free so you gave them more than they even paid for on top of that that's impressive you got a lot for that price well all of you listening to the show on the youtube or the podcast, the show is about to end. The last 40 minutes of the show is now on the Ramsey Network app. The Ramsey Network app is completely free.

It does not cost you a dime. You can listen to the whole show or watch the whole show on the Ramsey Network app. But the last 40 minutes of the show, as of this week, we are moving over to the Ramsey Network app for a lot of different reasons but change is about the only thing you can count on around technology and so it's changing those of you that listen on radio on talk radio you're going to keep getting exactly whatever your city's been getting not changing a thing there so we continue to do the show but again if you want the last 40 minutes of the show, the thing to do is go to the App Store or Google Play, download the Ramsey Network app. There's a lot of cool stuff there, including you can email us and we'll be answering some questions from the app.

You can search all of the calls. We've got them logged back for several years and we built an algorithm in there. And so you can search a call by a certain subject. Find three or four times we've answered on that subject and listen to it like maybe should i get a heloc when i'm getting a divorce that could come up you know it's like it's come up before i promise so um you're going to get the same little speech and so uh you can get stuff answered and you don't have to wait through you know sit through five hours worth of listening just to get the answer you're looking for but the whole thing is there all uh all the segments are there every day on the Ramsey Network app,

including the last segment that begins in just a few moments. And again, if you're on the Ramsey Network app, but the podcast world and the YouTube world, the show is ending for you now. And we really appreciate you being with us. I was so glued into the app, I didn't pay attention, Dave. I just searched horse. Don't recommend searching horse in the Ramsey Network app. Just find out for yourself. Did you come up? I'm right there, Dave. Thanks, team. Thanks for putting that in there. Go check it out. Ramsey Network app in the App Store, Google Play. George. Mistake. Unbelievable. Big mistake. store google play george mistake unbelievable big mistake this is the ramsey show live from the headquarters of ramsey solutions it's the ramsey show where we help people

build wealth do work that they love and create actual amazing relationships george camel ramsey personality number one best-selling author co-host of the ramsey love, and create actual amazing relationships. George Campbell, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author, co-host of the Ramsey Smart Money Happy Hour that he does with Rachel Cruz. He's my co-host today. Melissa is with us in Washington, D.C. Hi, Melissa. How are you? I'm doing great. Thank you, Dave. How are you guys?

Better than we deserve. What's up? Well, I know how you feel normally about vehicles, but we really need your advice and George's advice on what we should do with this vehicle. We do have credit card debt, and we do need to build up our three to six months of savings. We do use every dollar, so we're trying. But the basic thing is, is we have spent over $5,400 on this van. What did you do to it? That's just it. It's not really anything I've done. This is the third time this year we're having to get brakes done on the van.

What's wrong with your mechanic that he can't put brakes on that last more than a month and a half? Well, see, it's a commercial van. It's one of those big, like, vans. But they don't go through brakes every month and a half. No, but they do go every 30,000 miles. And we drive a lot. You went through 30,000 miles in a month and a half?

Well, not in a month and a half. We had the front brakes done in January and that was about little over $1,400. And then in May we had to have the rear brakes done and calipers, all that good stuff. So why are you driving a commercial van? We have four children. And when we bought the van, we lived in California. Everything was very close. And it fit our military family with moving back and forth across country with all of our animals

because we have, at the time, three dogs and a cat. So it fit everybody comfortably. Now he's retired, so we don't move around anymore. We are not sure if this is the van we should be keeping, but again, like you said, we don't want to go into debt for another vehicle. I'm still confused how you're putting 30,000 miles on something in a few months. Why? We drive, my husband, where we live, we live, I think, an hour and a half from the Pentagon, and that's where he works, in the Pentagon. So he drives an hour and a half from the Pentagon, and that's where he works. He's the Pentagon. So he drives an hour and a half every day. And he drives the commercial van that runs out of brakes.

No, sir. I do. I do. Then what's that got to do with the van? I asked you how you put 30,000 miles on the van. Him working at the Pentagon doesn't affect that. I'm sorry. My daughter goes to school about an hour from us.

Why? Because we pay for private school. Yeah. Why? We pay for private school. I'm sorry. My daughter goes to school about an hour from us. Why? Because we pay for private school. Yeah, we pay for private school. Because we don't want our children in the public schools. Why would you book a school an hour away? That is the closest school that we can get her in that's affordable for us. Okay. Well, obviously you can't keep this van. It's a ridiculous vehicle.

You need something that you can run the wheels off because you guys just live in your cars. What a horrible life. That's a lot of commute time. That's a horrible life. Just chauffeuring around. Oh, you live in the car. You ought to just get, like, an RV and live in it because you live in the car all the time. You got an hour to school, an hour back home, an hour back to school to pick them up,

and an hour back home. And he goes an hour and a half to the Pentagon and an hour and a half back. Y'all are killing me. I have a 12-minute commute. I cannot even imagine. I've got a headache just listening to your life. It's awful. I'm so sorry. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, get something that is much more reliable and cheaper to operate. Obviously, this van was not designed to do what you're trying to do with it because it doesn't hold up under the number of miles you're putting on. So you need something that is high, low maintenance cost and inexpensive.

Because, by the way, with the miles you're putting on, whatever it is you're driving, you're destroying the value of whatever either one of you drive. Whatever your husband's driving, he's destroying it. Because you put that kind of miles on a vehicle, you know, you start talking about putting 50, 60, 70,000 miles on a car a a year you're throwing away hundreds of dollars out the window every time you drive it you know that kind of commute so here let me help what we're trying to say is the cost of that private school is like double the cost of the tuition because you're driving so freaking far over there to take them. And so you haven't even calculated that in the cost of this education.

So I think you ought to move closer to one of these things so that you can get a better life and not live in the car. But, yeah, this van's got to go. It's got to go for sure. Wow. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Jasmine's with us in Los Angeles. Hi, Jasmine. How are you? Oh, my God. How are you guys? I'm so good.

Good. How can we help? Okay. So here's my situation. I'm on baby step four. Oh, I just started taking baby step four pretty seriously. At my emergency fund of $4,200, I'm fortunate enough to live with my boyfriend and family, so my expenses are very low. I'm hoping to be in nursing school next year in August, and the school that I want to go to is going to be about $40,000 minimum. I don't know if I should invest my 15% of my paycheck or just try to save up as much as I can. No, I would pile up cash and get ready for school.

I would just stop your total money makeover, stop your baby steps, and pile up cash and get ready for school. Is that $40,000 total for the whole program? Yeah. Okay. Two-year program? Yes. Okay.

So can you put the money together and cash flow this? I'm not, I mean, I'm going to try my best. No, no, you're going to have to work extra. You said you have very little expenses, which is great. I want you to work all the time. I want you to work all the time. Okay. Because this is worth it.

This is a great investment, Jasmine. You are a great investment, Jasmine. You are a great investment. Nursing is a career that you can work as much as you want, and there's always been a shortage and always will be a shortage. Okay. You can make a lot of money, or you can work very flexible. You can create your life like you want to do it with nursing. It is a great thing for you to do to go get that.

It is a great investment in Jasmine, and you're worth the investment. But I want you to go crazy between now and then and pay cash for it, okay? Okay. Should I stop my 401k as well? Yes. Okay. Stop everything. You're the investment.

You're going to make a lot more money investing in Jasmine than you will in mutual funds. And guess what? Doing this debt-free means you're going to have all of your income to invest with once you graduate unlike most people who would be lucky to invest a lot you got the rest of your life as a nurse to make a lot of money and put it in 401ks go get that degree that's a good one to go get pay cash for it make it happen with hustle good for you kiddo this is the Ramsey Show. The best way to make the most of your money is by making the money that you have behave. It needs to do what you say. You need to tell it what to do and make it behave. Money is a wonderful slave. It is a horrible master. P.T. Barnum actually said that. So there you go. Every dollar makes it simple to plan your spending, track your expenses,

paycheck plan, follow the baby steps, keep a pulse on your spending. Work together with your spouse. Download EveryDollar for free in the App Store or at Google Play today. Ronald is in North Carolina. Hi, Ronald. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hello, Dave. It's really great to talk to you and George. It's an honor. Honor to speak with you, sir.

How can we help? I have a real estate question for you. I have a 17-acre track of land about 13 miles from where I live, and I keep getting these offers through the mail. I have received 63 of them in the past three years. They offer me $40,000 to $202,000 for the 17-acre piece of land. Is that a scam? Could be. It could just be a wholesaler shopping. A lot of these guys that buy property for a living at a deal just do mailers,

and they just randomly generate these things and send them out. Do you have any idea what the property is worth? I would say $10,000 an acre. Okay. So you think it's worth $170,000? I do, yeah. Okay. Have you gotten $170,000?

You got a $200,000 offer, you said? Yes, I had a $200,000 offer. I only paid $12,000 for it in 1980 yeah good for you do you want to sell it i mean for two hundred thousand why not okay i don't know but i don't i don't know whether i should sign one of these pieces no i would not sign anything i'd get in touch with them and try to find out what's going on did the offer have contingencies in it things that it was dependent upon well if i uh no liens or anything against it like that and it passes such and such and such you know but i mean it's nothing wrong with it uh yeah uh so what makes you think it's worth $170?

That's the going price for acreage in this section of the country. It's out in the middle of nowhere. And that's why I don't understand why I'm getting so many offers for it. Somebody's just doing mass mailings. The offers below the $170 are obviously looking for a deal, right? Yes, yes. We know that's not a problem. So if you want to talk, you know, what I would do is I want you to establish, instead of wet finger in the air what we think it's worth,

which is what you're doing, you heard rumors of what something went for, and that's, I would really, you know, if I had a $200,000 or so asset and I wasn't sure about it, I would want to have it appraised or at least have a good real estate agent look at it and run a market analysis on it for me. You could do that by going to RamseySolutions.com and clicking on Ramsey Trusted for real estate agents. Find one in that area and say, hey, not sure if I want to sell this or not, but if you'd run a market analysis on it, it would help me make a decision and then have them bring that to you. And you might find out it's worth 250 and then that's why somebody was offering you 200. I don't know. I don't know what it's worth. Yeah, a lot of these, they prey on owners who don't know the land value and they get excited or there's a sense of urgency, but I'd still do

all the homework, Ronald, on who these people are. And if they're not transparent, run. So here's the thing. If it's under price, if the offer is under the actual value, then we know what someone trying to buy it wholesale and resell it for profit, right? And people do that all the time. It's a big business in the real estate world if the offer is 200 and it's truly worth 170 well i smell a rat don't you so i've got to look and go what are these people trying to do there must be some kind of little thing in here where they're not gonna maybe they're gonna owner finance it for 100 which makes the deal worthless um or there's some kind of weird thing they're doing that makes you know why would they overpay

they've got some they've been to some weekend seminar get rich quick real estate crap from some tick especially if it's the middle of nowhere yeah and so they but they've got the idea that they can somehow tie this property up for 200 and not ever pay you until they get their deal or something and that's you know you don't want to get into any of that but if it's cash on the barrel head close it by friday and all we got to do is provide no liens and somebody will pay you 200 for something that's appraised at 170 and you want to sell it i wouldn't blame you but i i doubt it i doubt that's coming in the mail it feels too good to be true it is that's right so i'm going to give you a high percentage bet that something in these numbers is wrong or one of these deals something is wrong so that's the answer to your question

cory's in phoenix arizona hi cory how are you i'm good dave thanks for taking my call sure what's up okay so my wife and i um we are trying to make it to that next chapter in life, grow our family, and just move forward. We have some financial challenges we're trying to figure out. We have about $27,000 in debt. Our household income is about $80,000 to $85,000 in debt. Our household income is about 80 to 85 right now. The challenge we're facing, we have a car payment that from a vehicle that my wife had from her previous marriage. She is now the only one on that vehicle.

She still owes 15 on it owes $15,000 on it. It is worth about $8,000 to $10,000 when it's running. It kind of pooped out on us about two weeks ago, and the repairs are about $4,000 to $5,000. What's wrong with it uh we found i found uh oil in the coolant it's a pretty major fix i usually fix most of the stuff myself but that's a pretty major one um that's not like a crack block yeah it's a blown engine yeah and that's why it's you know it's kind of a big a big issue um typically that's what it is

the technician that is uh specifically a subaru technician so that it isn't actually the head or the block necessarily i guess this generation has some seals inside that you can replace but you still have to take the engine apart, and it still is an extensive repair. Yeah, okay. Is the Subaru mechanic at the Subaru dealer? Yes, but I also have my childhood friend grew up and opened up a diesel shop as well, and he's very successful at that,

and kind of confirmed that as well. I know, but have you found somebody that works on Subarus that's not at a dealer because you're well aware apparently the dealers charge a lot yes yes and i'm not going to go with the dealer um okay you know okay so but back to your question so the 15 is of the 27 and you make 85 right yes so we have 12 thousand dollars in addition to her car yes and we want to move on with our life what does that mean um i have some some people that i know they you know i'm trying i'm trying to figure this out they are telling me oh maybe you should just you know surrender the car and then let it go to collections. And then, you know, after, like, don't pay them for a little bit.

You know some dumb people. You know some people who aren't smart. Right. Some people are saying file bankruptcy. Yeah, these are idiots. If you're the smartest one in your friend group, you need new friends. Yeah, this is bad. This is bad.

Well, they actually aren't my friends.'re good possibly some family members and good that's even that's even worse but yeah stay away from them okay yeah that's really bad advice okay you only met you only have 27 000 in debt you make 85 right you guys need to get on a tight budget stay out of a restaurant unless you're working there, and don't go on vacation and go scorched earth on your lifestyle and get this mess cleaned up. You can clean it up fast, man. Two grand a month, 12 months, it's gone. Yeah. And that's what I was leaning towards.

That's what you got to do. And, of course, you got to build a budget four grand in there to fix the Subaru. But I got to tell you, your analysis on the Subaru engine was excellent. Your analysis on the repossession was horrible. So I think you fixed the engine. You're very wise on how you went at that. Get the thing fixed up and either keep driving the car or sell it and get another one. I don't know.

I don't care about that. But plow your way through at $27,000. No, you don't repo this car. You get killed. No. This is the Ramsey Show. George Campbell, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Jeff's with us in Phoenix, Arizona.

Hi, Jeff. How are you? Hey, I'm good, Dave. Good to meet you. It's a privilege and an honor. Thank you for taking my call. Honor to speak to you, sir. How can we help?

The purpose of my call is brief. Listen, we sold our home in California in April of this year. We paid off all of our mortgage. We've been debt-free, no car payments, no credit cards. Awesome. We're in your seventh. Yep. Thank you for your baby steps. We have followed that diligently for quite a few years. I'm 61. My wife is 51. My income is $270,000 combined. And we're in the final stages of building wealth and giving. Because we paid off our debt, we can give 10% of our gross or more to our local church. We're privileged to do that. Now we're figuring out how to build wealth, our retirement savings. We have approximately $40,000 in 401k, not much, and $50,000 in savings. We have a car accident settlement coming in for $70,000 here in the next two weeks. And so my question to you... So did you buy another home with some of the proceeds

that you paid cash for? Did I understand that? No, we sold our home in California and paid cash for a home in Arizona. That's what I meant. Yeah. Okay. All right. So the home that you have that's paid for is worth what today? $420,000. Good for you. Okay. Excellent. Good position. Thank you. Okay. How can we help? Thank you. Thank you for your help. So I have concerns about investing, especially in the volatility of the stock market. I don't trust it. I see more volatility in the years ahead. What would you recommend to my family and to callers listening? Safe ways to invest and get a safe return without taking risks in the markets. That's my question for you. Well, there's a thing in finance called risk-return ratio. The more risk you take, the more return you get, if you're wise, hypothetically, right?

And so you could take no risk and put it in a fruit jar and bury it in the sand in arizona right but that actually ends up costing you because with inflation and taxes you're losing six or seven percent a year and of course you had opportunity costs meaning what you could have made on that money that you missed out on. But there's no risk other than some scorpions getting in the jar, right? Okay. So then we can move up that risk-return ratio and say, okay, I'm going to put it in the bank in a CD, a certificate of depression, and I'm going to make 3% or 5% high-yield savings, maybe 6%.

And inflation is running more than that, so you're still running backwards. You're not even keeping up with inflation, right? Okay. But you took a little bit more risk because you put it in a bank, and the bank could go sideways, and it might take you a little while to get your FDIC money back out. So it's not 100% no risk, but it's almost no risk, right? And then you can move along, and you move along that spectrum,

and so what you don't want to do is go way past over on the other end of the spectrum and go to las vegas yeah we're not doing the roulette wheel and we're not buying bitcoin we're not day trading yeah and we're not doing all these silly things okay but so i try to land somewhere in the middle where i take enough risk that I make enough return to make what economists call a real rate of return, which is money beyond taxes and inflation, which takes a minimum of 6% a year. Okay. To beat inflation and taxes. Inflation for the last 78 years, not counting Bidenomics, has averaged 4.2% for 78 years.

Okay. So you can have we call inflation four percent takes about another two percent to pay your taxes it takes about six to break even with inflation and taxes on average year in and year out so you got to do better than that so i do use mutual funds and i buy real estate that i pay cash for that is income-producing real estate, and you could do some of that. But that's kind of where you are. I'm curious where you got your information that the stock market is unsafe. It's not that it's unsafe. I mean, I just look at volatility.

What volatility are you looking at? Are you zooming into like a two-day period? No, I'm looking in the next 10, 20, 30 years. How can you tell it's going to be more volatile in the next 10 to 20 years? I'm looking at the S&P five-year chart right in front of me right now. There's only one point of volatility that stands out on the chart. It's really a pretty boring line except for march of 2020 okay and it's in the last five years it's 82 percent increase okay 16 a year you're an expert i am not i'm looking at

the chart i'm not an expert i just read the chart it's right in front of me you can pull it s&p 500 on google it'll be right in front of you too i can pull up S&P 500 on Google. It'll be right in front of you, too. I really didn't do anything scientific here. It's just that's the stock market. I just worry about our politics. I worry about the course of our country. I worry about. Okay. Okay.

I got all that, but that's always been there. It's not new that there are idiots in Washington. That's not new. The market survived in spite of all of that. And there's going to be some years that it's down. And so you're right, there is volatility. But if you look, there's more green than there is red. Most years it's up, some years it's down.

It's very interesting to go back and look and see what happened when Kennedy was shot to the stock market. It dove. It's interesting to go back and look when the cowards hit the towers in New York with a terrorist attack and the stock market went down. It's interesting to go back and look when Nixon resigned and the stock market went down. There's always been something negative in the news that causes the market to have volatility, but not extreme volatility. It has momentary volatility because it represents the U.S. economy. I think probably you're watching the news too much. You need to turn Fox or CNN off.

That's my guess. But you do whatever you want to do. My friend, Dr. John Deloney, he says, when you're looking at stuff like this, feelings are not your friends. Facts are your friends. And so here's some homework for you jeff go to american funds they have a the most interesting brochure of all of them that i've ever seen um and you can order their brochure i guess order ica investment company of america

and they've got a little thing in there that all the negative things that have happened throughout the last 75 years in history and it shows you what the stock market did on all the negative news and how quickly it comes back the stock market dove 600 points in 20 minutes when it did reopen after the 9-11 terror attacks. It recovered, and the headline in every newspaper, big bold print, stock market crashes from terror, all over the place, and people freaked out. Any of you old enough to remember 9-1-1? I mean, Wall Street literally got hit.

Some of the debris from the, it's in the shadow of the towers. Some of the debris hit the wall, literally hit the Wall Street. So it did. But they reopened a few days later, and trading resumed, and the market dove based on fears of terror attacks. Right? It dove. And we got tons of red ink, tons of ink about the world coming to an end all over the place.

The market fully recovered. You can look the chart up. I've looked it up many times. The market went back to where it was on the 10th of September, the day before the attack, in 54 days Not one single news outlet in the entire world reported the recovery in 54 days all of them reported the crash This week They all are reporting, the economy, recession looms,

the market is down, Iran is going to attack Israel, everything's coming to an end, it's all coming down. The market was up since the first of the year, 17% before this week. You know how many news outlets reported that? Precisely zero. No, wait.

Real quiet. There was one. Who? The Ramsey Show. Oh, there it is. There was one. Okay. We report the record highs, and no one else cares.

Look at that. Out of 30 years, Dave, the S&P 500 was up 23 out of 30 years. Had a positive return. That's pretty wild. 10 grand in the S&P 500 30 years ago would be 175 grand today. I have more fear not investing than I do investing. That's why you're here. This is The Ramsey Show. Our scripture of the day in Hebrews 12 11. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

C.S. Lewis said getting over a painful experience is much like crossing the monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward oh he's um i haven't i've read c.s lewis i've never seen that before that's a great one he's got quotes for days yeah he does sandra's in springfield illinois hi sandra how are you oh hi dave thank you so much for taking my call. I've been trying to get on here forever. Well, we're glad you made it. How can we help? Well, I need to make an important financial decision, and I'm going to base a lot of my decision on what you tell me today. Okay. I'm 74. I'm a retired nurse. I worked until I was 70, and I've been divorced for 30 years. I didn't want to retire until I had everything paid off, so I'm debt-free.

Way to go. Yeah, I worked a lot of overtime and got my kids through school by myself. Anyway, I'm thinking of going solar and getting solar panels put on my house. It's going to cost about $35,000. Um, I'm, I've been told I'm too old to make that kind of, um, investment because it'll take about seven years, they say to recoup that money. I was thinking that, you know, and I'm going to get rebates back from federal and state, so it's going to end up only costing me about $16,000. So what's the break-even on the $16,000?

Seven years? That's what they said. That's what the salesman said? That's on the $16,000. Yeah. Are you paying cash for these? Well, that's my question. I'm not going to get a HELOC.

I refuse to do that. Good. Do you have the cash? Yes. Okay. I have $65,000 in my savings. And how much? What's the size of your total nest egg?

And then I have over $350,000 in my 401K and my IRA. The 401K I don't touch. I just take the RMD every year, so I could apply that to it too. But I was thinking, my thought was just to borrow it from myself and then put the money back as I get it. Yeah. What do you think about that? In other words, pay cash, yeah.

Right. You would pay cash. And if you do it think about that? In other words, pay cash, yeah. Right. You would pay cash. And if you do it, the only way you consider doing it is pay cash. And so it would be like a lady calling me at 75 and says, I want to buy a car. There's $16,000. They go down in value, and they're worthless at the end of the story. Right. And she has $350,000.

Is that okay? Sure. It's okay. It's not going to break you, right? Right. Now let's talk about solar panels. I endorse solar panel companies in several key markets across America, particularly ones that are full of sunshine.

Springfield, Illinois would be kind of medium on that, okay? It wouldn't be exactly known as the sunshine state, but it wouldn't also be known as Seattle, where it never does anything but rain. And we only endorse people paying cash for them with a five to a seven-year break-even. Solar has come a long way in the last couple of decades. The technology has advanced dramatically. It's a lot better than it was. And it is technology.

So what you need to understand, Sandra, is if you have a seven-year-old computer, do you know what you have? Junk. It's a doorstop. If you have seven-year-old solar panels, you know what they are? Junk, because the technology is outpaced so much.

So at the end of this story, they're not going to be worth anything. So if you don't break even for seven years, and then you have something left over, and you're 82, and you're basically attached to the top of your house for your heirs to have to deal with, I'd probably just pay my electric bill if I was in your shoes. Would you really? Yeah. I'm on a rural electric co-op, and my monthly level payment has gone up to about $300 a month.

Okay, that's $3,600 a year, so it only takes us 10 years to get our money back on $35,000 or five years on $17,000 or $15,000. So, yeah, I would rather you have that money sitting there growing in the stock market and you paying your electric bill. I think you'll come out ahead, you'll have less hassle, and I think you're going to be okay without it. If you told me it was a very, very quick break-even, like some of them actually I see some three- and four-year break-evens

depending on the market and the technology and the house and the cost of the electric in that area and so on there's a lot of variables in the equation but i'm not anti-solar i'm anti-math problem okay so just do the math and some of those sales your math your math leaves us on the bubble and at the end of the story you're sitting on junk yeah and a lot of those sales guys they're like oh this is smart you're making money off of this and they'll try to do these pitches and well yeah i mean asking asking a solar guy if you should buy solar is like asking a dog if it's hungry of course they're gonna pitch it i mean that's that's fine and that's not nothing wrong with that it's what they do they believe in their product and it's not an evil product it's not a bad product i'm not

trashing solar i'm just telling you folks how to analyze it look at the break even on it and most people they just oh it's going to debt it's Look at the break-even on it. Most people, they just go, oh, it's going to debt. It's a technology-based thing. Yeah, and they do sell a lot of it on payments. Not that I endorse, obviously. But that's our deal. James is, I wouldn't buy it. James is in Raleigh, North Carolina. Hi, James. How are you?

Hey, Mr. Andrews. Thank you. I'm so grateful for you. I'll take my call. Certainly. How can we help? Yes, sir. So, I got a weird, it's not a weird question, but everybody's always so against pulling your 401k. And I know that's always the first thing everybody says, like, no, don't do that. So, but I want to run it by you guys where you immediately say no. In my thought process, I'm a retired military, got a nice paycheck.

I pretty much have zero debt besides my house. No car payments, no nothing like that. So I've been road hard, put away wet, and I'm really tired of working as hard as I do. I'm in a very physical type job and my body's just breaking down. So I have lined up some contracts to, uh, basically what I want to do is buy a used dump truck and, um, the owner operator for myself. But in order to do that, I need about a hundred thousand dollars to buy a truck.

Oh, you don't, you don't have to buy a hundred thousand dollars used dump truck. You could buy a $20,000 a year dump truck. Yes, sir, you're right. You can, but the little bigger ones you get, the more expensive they are. Well, you can't afford it. You grow over time. Do you have any money? So I've got about $100,000 and $4,000.

Do you have any money other than your 401K? No, sir, no. How old are you? 43. Okay. And what do you make a year now? With the retirement? Yeah, with everything. What's your total household income? I would probably say $110,000. income um i would probably say 110 100 if if i were in your shoes if i were in your shoes i would buy a twenty thousand dollar dump truck for cash that i had saved in one year from today

you make 120 000 get on a budget live on nothing don't go to restaurants don't go out to eat don't go on a vacation save up money and buy you a dump truck and get started and go make you some money. And when you make some money, buy another dump truck that's better. And when you make some money, buy another dump truck that's better and make a living out of it while you're at it. But don't go trashing your 401k to buy a truck you don't even need to get started. Right. Okay.

I would pay cash for your first truck in a year and get going. I want you to do it, but I want you to have a dream, not a nightmare. Yeah, I just, uh, uh, you know, after multiple surgeries, I just can't keep taking the type of work that I do. Well, then do something else for the next year. What are you doing? I just don't know much else to do. What are you doing?

What are you doing? I work don't know much else to do what are you doing what are you doing i work on like industrial equipment doing what like a mechanic okay so you're turning a wrench yes sir yeah um okay you do what you want to do james but i'm telling you if i were in your shoes i'd suck it up for a year or I'd do something else for a year and save up the money until I got the money to buy a truck but let me tell you what's going to happen the truck's going to break down and you're going to have to work on it so get ready

that's how this works that puts this hour of the Ramsey show in the books we'll be back with you before you know it in the meantime remember there's ultimately only one way to financial peace and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus. We'll see you next time.