The Ramsey Show - App - Short-Term Thinking Keeps You From Building Long-Term Wealth

Episode Date: June 17, 2025

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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. Jade Wachow, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author is my co-host today. Megan is with us in Chicago. Hi Megan, how are you? Hi, how are you? Thanks for having me. Sure, what's up? Well, just quick context, my husband is an addict. He on average spends about six thousand dollars a year on his addiction to tobacco and marijuana. We've had kind of a rough couple of months. His father passed away, his grandfather passed away.

I'm currently pregnant with our third child and taking a toll on him. So I've actually seen his spending go up a little bit. I shouldn't say a little bit. It's kind of doubled in the past couple months. Last month was $700 alone on his addictions. Anyway, that by way of context, my main question is we have a car payment, it's 600 a month, we currently have the cash that I could write a check, pay off the car, the loan is $20,000 and some change.

And we would still have six months emergency reserve, like you suggest. My concern is with his kind of out of control and erratic behavior right now, I'm afraid if I do cut a check, pay off the car, and we gain the $600 monthly to help with groceries and other bills, I'm afraid it's just gonna go out the window and we can't contribute to savings

and things are super tight anyway. So, yeah. What's your household income? Right now it's 156. Does he agree that he has a problem? Is he willing to get help? He does agree and he says he wants to get help, but I have to say, like, the come to Jesus talk happens about every two weeks. So, wait a minute, what um, okay one more time what's your household income? 156 a year. Okay and what do you make and what does he make? I'm a stay-at-home mom right now and so the whole salary is on his side.

So if you said to him... You use language differently than I do. Okay? Okay. If I was to say that my wife was an addict, that would mean that our marriage was either getting ready to end or she was getting help next week. Yeah. How long is it? But you use this like it's part of next week. Yeah. How long is it? But you use this like it's part of the budget.

Yeah. Yeah, it has been for several years. Yeah, that's on you. Yeah, that's why, if you said you've had several come to Jesus moments and he's clearly not gotten the help, at the very least, have you had the conversation of, well, if you're not gonna get help, I need to be in control of the money because you're going to starve us.

Yeah, I am in control of the money. Then how does he get money for pot? Right, how is he getting the money for drugs and tobacco? He only has access to his paycheck which goes into our joint account. He has the only paycheck. Yeah. Yeah. So you're not in control of the money. Well, we have a joint account that he has. But when I say you being in control of the money, I mean,

he doesn't have access to it because he's not well. If you're going to call him an addict, you're going to have to act like it. Yeah. Otherwise, you could just say, my husband smokes some pot sometimes, and he drinks sometimes, and it runs about 500 bucks a month, and I'm not okay with that. That's a different statement than opening the call with my husband is an addict. Agree. That's what I mean by language differences.

Okay. Because I kind of think your husband smokes some pot sometimes and I think he drinks sometimes and it runs five to seven hundred bucks a month and he makes a hundred fifty thousand dollars a year he can actually afford it. It's not really killing your household unless his behavior becomes erratic and he loses his freaking job because he's you know so freaking mellow from smoking dope all the time. On the spectrum from what Dave said, where is he? Where does he lie on that spectrum?

I mean, if you want to call him an addict, I'm okay with that, but you're going to have to act like it then for your sake and the kid's sake. You don't leave children in the home with an addict. For years. Yeah. It's unhealthy. Yeah. I get it. I get it I get it so which you know you got

you're gonna have to read you're either gonna have to reclassify this in your mind or you're gonna have to take some more severe action than you have been willing to take so far so because you're not if, if he drinks a six pack of beer or whatever, I don't know, whatever this equates to, I don't even know what it amounts to, but anyway, the, and it's not affecting, he's not drunk and it's not affecting his work life, but you don't like it. That's different than an addict. Yeah, that's a question I have.

Is this, is this just like Dave said, is it a budgetary thing? Is it a thing that you think, hey, you shouldn't be spending money on this, there's better things we could be spending money on. You said it's a behavior-georatic. Or is it a- What do you mean by that? Yeah, I guess I didn't wanna go into everything, but yeah. We're here now.

Okay, I'm happy to divulge but I was just trying to keep it to the point and um. Well the problem is here's the issue okay the problem in the household was presented as you have there's an addiction in the household and I can't tell you what to do with the car loan until we address the problem. Okay. Because the problem is, you're right, but you're trying to say, oh, well, not paying off the car, keeping some savings back is going to make this living with an addict, okay, it doesn't. No.

And paying off the car and working our plan, doing smart things with it, getting yourself out of debt, using $156,000 to be debt-free, living on a budget where you're not worried about food and that kind of stuff because you mentioned food and you shouldn't have a shortage of food in a 156,000 dollar household even if there's a $700 addiction problem. It's still the math doesn't keep you from eating, right? Well it does. No it doesn't. What are the other factors we're missing? Mathematically, it does not. Tell us what we're missing, Megan. Okay.

Well, so just this past month, he spent $700 on his addiction. Our mortgage is $3,400. Your car payment is $600. Car payment is $600. What's your take home pay every month? Just so I know, I'm doing this math with you. After all, after bills, after everything. No, just what's the paycheck? What is his check?

What check gets the bank? The check is $393. $3,900. Twice a month? Yep. Okay. Yep. You got way too much coming out of this check.

You must be putting money in 401k. Yeah, I know he's contributing to 401k. I'm not sure what that is. Yeah. Okay. You guys got serious other issues, hon. Y'all need to sit down with a good marriage counselor, and you need to come to a conclusion that This is not an addiction. It is a use and

Or it is an addiction and the marriage needs to come to an end and the children need to be moved out of a house of An addict it's not safe for them But when you when you're making eight thousand dollars a month Take home pay and you have a $3,000 house payment you are not out of food because he spent $250 bucks. Now you are gonna be out of food if he loses his job because he stays drunk all the time. That you know so I can't tell what the flip's going on here. Jade Walshaw, Ramsey personality is my cohost.

Caleb is in London. Hi Caleb. Welcome to the Ramsey show. All right. Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it. Sure. How can we help? Um, my father has got terminal cancer. He's got about a year to live and he's decided to give me and my brother some money before he dies for me to buy a house and my brother to pay off his house. So he wants to give each of us $340,000. And my question is, should I try and get kind of the best house for the money I can get or should I try and just get the cheapest things if you know what I mean, the cheapest house straight out of the gate?

What else? What's the other picture of your financial situation? Are you out of debt? Is it time for you to buy a house? Okay. So I've just started the baby steps. I'll have completed, I'll have my emergency $1,000 by the end of this month. And then I have $1,600 of credit card debt, but nothing else. Oh.

And I rent at the moment. I rent at the moment. I rent at the moment. So what does $340,000 get you in your area? Is that an apartment? Is that? So the low range of houses in my area is $600,000, but I could probably borrow up to $850,000. Now, my kind of gut instinct is to,

me and my girlfriend are very simple people. We don't, when we think of what we'd need in a house, we just want three bedrooms. We don't really care about too much else. So I'm kind of, you know, we don't have children and we're not planning to have children. So it's not like I foresee us having to move, you know, another couple of times in our life. So that's why I'm kind of thinking, should I kind of get something that we'll be happy with for the long term, or do we just try and get something very basic

to start with, I don't know. I would start with what you can afford. And if you have 340, I like the idea of putting more than half down on something that's maybe in the $600,000 range, because then you're doing what we teach in above and beyond, which is gonna put you in a really great situation, because the truth is, you don't know Caleb what's going to happen

on down the line. Maybe you will get married, maybe you will have a family and maybe you will want to move up in house. And if that does happen, maybe five to seven years from now, you'll have gained equity and you'll be able to transition out of that house into something more and maybe pay cash for it because at that point you'll have no payments. Maybe this current house will be paid off. So it does set you up in a really great way.

If you were in America, I would tell you that your assumptions are BS because the number of times that people stay in a home longer than six years or seven years in America is almost none. The average house rolls every six years here. And so when someone in America tells me this is my forever home, I call BS. It's never true. Because your only forever home is heaven. And so you're not going to be there forever.

That's just a bull. And so I don't, but I don't know the differences in the UK and in London, whether that might be, you might be there a long time. I don't know. That would be a cultural difference is what I'm saying and that I could, that it's possible I'm not familiar with but I'm with Jade, I think you get into something that you know you can afford. Your dad's, it's one of his last wishes that you have a home. It all needs to be in your name since you're not married. Again, I don't know UK law, but in the States you don't put girlfriends on

houses, okay? Not when daddy gives me the money. Hmm, we do plan to get married. I mean I... Well, that would be after you get married that your name could be on the house then. Because again, I'm going off of US law and I can't, I don't know what divorce law looks like there and all that kind of stuff But in the states, it's suicidal to put your girlfriend on your house or your car. You're asking for troubles There was one other related question. I had to this and that was whether I I had the idea It looks like you fell off but I saw the other part of the question. It looks like you wanted to possibly invest the money.

No, I would put it in the house. I would buy the, cause this is what, it's his dad's money. It's what he asked. His dad's giving it to him. It's his last wish and his last year of life, buy a house. Yeah, that's not, no, I'm not gonna do something else with it.

Yeah. And I think you're right. I think you buy a conservative property. In his case, that sounds like it's six, and I think you're right I think you buy a conservative property in his case That sounds like it's six five or six hundred thousand with three hundred down and then go ahead and get it paid off and put It in your name and that isn't going in and step with the baby steps 3b is when you would save up the down payment For a house in this case. It was gifted to him. We didn't we didn't change anything for that call. Yeah, very good Good point Dan's in Philadelphia. Hi, Dan. How are you?

Hey Dave, how are you better than I deserve. How can I help? All right. I had a quick question. I have about $130,000 in crypto. I'm sorry. Can you hear me? Yeah, I'm sorry. Oh, sorry. I have about $130,000 in crypto. No, but he's sorry that you have the money invested in crypto. Okay. It was a joke, but not really. Okay. I've made out pretty well on the investment and after newly listening to your show and hearing what you have to say about cryptocurrency,

I'm starting to get a little scared with it. Yeah. So also at this time I'm looking to buy a house. I was wondering do I, when I go to sell that cryptocurrency, do I put a large majority of it towards the house or would I sell it and keep some, kind of like have a large nest egg. Good for you. Okay, the only thing I want to change in the conversation is I want to change the word invest because you don't invest into commodities that are new and don't have a history. You speculate. So you're a crypto speculator and there's people that have made money speculating in crypto but it's a short-term play it's not a long-term play and it's very

volatile and so yes I would a lot rather based on all the data we have on wealth building the number of people that bought homes that became wealthy far surpasses the number of people that became wealthy in crypto okay so if I were you I would take the money out and put it into something much more predictable much more stable which would be a good home purchase. And yes, I'd put it all in the house because I'm going to, we're going to lead you and if you've been around this for more than five minutes, you know, we're going to lead you out of debt because then you get control of your most powerful wealth building tool, which is your income and it's not crypto.

Your income is your most powerful wealth building tool. And you go use that to become very wealthy once you get the house paid off and you get the house paid off faster by putting the whole thing down. Now you make sure you're debt free. Yeah, emergency fund. And you have an emergency fund

of three to six months of expenses. And then we put everything else we have above that on the house, as big a possible down payment as you can. So the last two calls bring up the exact same point and that is wealthy people do not see mortgages as forever. Middle-class and poor people see mortgages as forever. Wealthy people ask how much, poor people ask how much down, how much a month. How much a month, that's a big one. And so if you're going to if you're going to get your mortgage or your house

based on how much down how much a month you're thinking like poor people. You're thinking I want to be a slave to the bank the rest of my life. Wealthy people if they take out a mortgage detest it, hate it, fight to get it paid off, and then when they do they yell I'm debt free. Okay? Then this is the path of the wealthy, not just Ramsey people, but when we study millionaires this is what they do. And millionaires have a mindset that is long term and it is very freedom oriented.

That's right. Free from control by other people. One of the reasons people build wealth is it gives you margin, it gives you distance between other people telling you what to do. If you have a million dollars in a mutual fund and you have zero debt and your boss walks in and starts cussing you, you can just walk off.

Where are you going? I don't have any payments. I'm not putting up with you. Bye. Right? But if your boss starts cussing and you have, you know, payments coming out your ears and a student loan that's been around so long you think it's a pet, then you'd be stuck in a toxic job because you got to eat and stuff. But you put yourself in that corner. You painted and painted and painted and painted and now you're standing in the corner and you're gonna get paint on your shoes. That's it.

And so that's this is the thing. So the both of those calls, you know, should I invest it instead of putting it all down on the house? Both of them said that. 340 from dad, 130 from crypto. Should I invest some of it or put it all on the house? The answer is put it all on the house and right in the four column of the check, freedom. That's right. This is an investment to freedom because freedom is where wealth comes from.

It doesn't come from stepping up to the bank and kissing their butt. And poor people kiss banks butts their whole lives. And it's the borrower is slave to the freaking lender. Period. Mike is in Pittsburgh. Hey Mike, welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hey Dave, how you doing? Better than I deserve. What's up? Alright, so I'm 36. We're about to be and I want to propose to my girlfriend,

but we disagree on finances. We agree on everything else. But the problem is I want to combine finances. She has a rental property and I have a house. I just sold a piece of land that I'm going to walk away with $180,000. I want to pay off my house. I have a budget, made a budget to pay off in about four years. And I want to rent it out and then buy a bigger house with her.

And I talked to her about paying off my house quickly and then throwing a bunch of money at her rental and pay that off faster so that we have you know more cash flow coming in from the two houses well she wants you know she said if we do get married she wants to find a prenup which you know i don't agree with and i see no reason for it because you know your asset base is fairly similar right and you're not you're not ready to propose is her family no no how long y'all been dating about eight months okay all right you've got some more work to do on this relationship before it becomes a marriage and here's why. You called

NASCAR opinion so I'll give you my opinion. I'm gonna treat you like you're my kid because my kids are your age, okay? And the number one cause of divorce in North America is disagreement over money. Money fights, money problems, okay? And you are sitting square in the middle of it. And here's the problem. Jesus said your treasure is where your heart is. People spend their money on what they value. And Dr. John Delaney says behavior is a language. And so when she says I don't like your plan, I don't like it so much that I want my stuff to be

separated in a prenup. What she's saying is I don't agree with how you're spending your money and our value systems are not aligned. You value different things and if you want to go super extreme she likes her rental property more than she likes you. Right. That's to go super extreme, she likes her rental property more than she likes you Right that's that's super that's super

Yeah, I think she's sort of short-sighted interviews because yeah, she all she has is her savings which is 160 grand She says this is not a dollar amount thing. This is a power struggle This is not a dollar amount thing. This is a power struggle. And we're not aligned on our values because you spend your money on what you value and you value different things than she values. This makes for a very long and uncomfortable life if you stay married and you probably won't statistically. So you guys have got to continue to have this discussion until we can come to some kind of mediated agreement on what we're going to do with our lives and that we like each other,

we love each other more than this stuff. Yeah, because the response to conflict can't be, well then I'm just going to take my stuff over here. I'm going to take my toys and go home. The response is let's enter into it and figure out where we both stand and how we can do this together. So that's, to me that's a red flag. It's no, it's a no go forward flag. It's not just a red flag.

It's not a lot of, don't go forward until you solve this. I'm not saying you have to break up with her, but please do not get engaged and get married because statistically you have to break up with her but I please do not get engaged and get married because you're statistically you have almost no chance. Right I think a lot of it comes from her mother you know her mom's always raised her he wants to have kids your life is over even though she wants to have kids and then her mom's you know if she kind of has the outlook of you need to have like her mom you need to have money to run away if something goes bad. Yeah that's it

there we go. So we're already planning our exit and we hadn't even gotten to the altar. Yeah, and she said she goes to therapy to work on all that because she doesn't agree with her mom and she doesn't like that outlook. But I think, you know, we always say the apple never falls far from the tree. Well, it hasn't yet. It hasn't yet. It can roll away over time. It can, it can, but it hasn't yet. So because she's functioning in exactly the same fears. As soon as you bumped into, we're gonna be closely and completely knit together with these, with the

restructuring of this situation after we get married. The thing you proposed was very interwoven. It violated this keep things separate so I can bolt thing and she retreated to a prenup and all of that is it's not an issue of the prenup it's not an issue the real estate it's an issue of how the relationships going and it says you're not aligned there are four things that if you're aligned on them statistically you will have a 90% probability of your marriage lasting money in laws away mothers involved. Okay children Oh wait, we're already talking about that and possibly disagreed. Okay, and oh wait religion That's the only one of the four we hadn't got to and you've got to get some alignment on those things

So you guys have some work to do on the relationship? I would suggest some good pre-marriage counseling and See if you can begin to not only discuss where these fears and values come from, but which of them we're going to keep and which ones we're going to take forward into the marriage. It could be that you're a little uptight

and spreadsheet dude, nerd dude, and you need to loosen up on that. That might be, I didn't hear that, but it could be. If you were gonna fall on one side of the other, that's the side you would fall on. Yeah. Based on talking to you. But, uh, but it didn't sound toxic, but I think you scared her. I, well, I think what it sounded to me, like what she was dealing with was fear-based and it wouldn't have mattered who

the guy was. That idea of getting... The proposal of the interwoven freaked her out. Freaked her out, yeah. And so it's not a discussion of the validity of prenups, it's a discussion of the proper way to do marriage relationships for statistical probability of success. Right, that's right. Hello. I mean that sounds like no romantic at all, but there you go. Hello, I mean that sounds like no romantic at all, but there you go So because you know I got you know 43 years I'm in you you want the statistical probability of success

It's really really good. Yeah, you want to be where I am. It's sweet. I got eight grandbabies. I got Three wonderful people have married my children that I love dearly. Yeah, I actually like them all That's so weird. You know how weird that is? That means I raised children to pick well, okay? And so the whole family actually got together Sunday night. We had a blast. Oh yeah, I saw some of the videos. Yeah, yeah, dunking them, yeah, the whole bit. So, I mean, but I mean, that's,

that doesn't, that's not an accidental thing. Well, let me ask you this, because I don't wanna put a broad blanket over it, but I kind of feel this way. Don't you feel like when you're dating, like when you're in that phase between dating, about to get engaged, don't you think it should be easy? It's been so long, I forgot.

Like, I just feel, I'm like, man, to have these level of disagreements and fights, like that always just feels like, that's true, they're a little bit older. I was 22. Yeah, I was 22 as well. We had married, I was 22. that's true that was older I was 22 yeah I was 22 we got married I was 22 I don't have anything to put that on he's been single a long time yeah you got two older singles they have they're more entrenched that's true that is very true when you're 22 it's like yeah whatever but or at least it was for me but for me too now that I think back I'm

like okay that's why I said I don't wanna make a broad statement, but. It's very important to be aligned on those four things. And if you combine that with a six month or so engagement period minimum, maximum of a year, year and a half, and you combine that with pre-marriage counseling, those six things combined will put you in the 90 percentile that you'll still be married 25 years later.

Yeah, I believe it. And so, pre-marriage counseling aligned on those four things in a reasonable length of engagement. Not too long, not too short. And the data, that's all from research folks. That's the studying the actual divorce stats. 50% of the marriage is in divorce. Yeah, that includes all these people that should not have gotten married in the first place

because they didn't do any of those things I just talked about. And if they did them, they would have run away. That's right. Run away. Like Jeff Foxworthy said, when I was a kid, we had a cat and it tore up mama's curtains and the next day that cat ran away.

Oh, oh yeah. So you run away. You go to the farm. You go to the train station. You run away. You run. So I don't think that's where the stage that he's at. I don't think Mike's at that stage. No, he's got a lot of thinking to do. But he is at the, as the teenagers used to say, the define the relationship stage. Yeah, they got a lot of thinking and decisions to make. The DTR right now. And you're going gonna have to sit down probably with a good pre-marriage Counselor and help you work through that. She's probably a keeper

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Spots are limited. Sign up for free at everydollar.com slash webinar. Justin is in Madison, Wisconsin. Hey Justin, what's up? Hi, sir. I am looking at building a new house for my family and I'm just worried about the mortgage on it and the monthly costs and what that will kind of look like for our family considering we have a little bit of a unique situation.

What's the unique situation? So I have twin boys, my wife and I, that are turning five years old, but they both have, um, semi-severe disabilities. Uh, and we are outgrowing our current house and we need a bigger house. Uh, but, um, due to the things that need to be in this house, the size of it, et cetera, it is not going to be a small house. Um, and it, you know it won't be necessarily cheap, and I think that the monthly payment will be about half of our take-home pay.

What is the nature of their severe disabilities? So they were both born, well they're twins obviously, they were both born at the same time. They were born three months premature, one having a significant brain bleed which has caused fairly severe cognitive and physical delayments and then the other one has a condition called central core myopathy. Sorry. Yeah. He's on a ventilator and requires pretty much 24-7 constant care. We have like some day nurses and night nurses that are able to help us out. But on the times they're not here, you know, one of us kind of has to be with him 24 seven, so sleep in his room with him, um, they both need to be picked up, you know, carried wherever they need to go.

Um, so their bathrooms are going to need to be bigger. Bedrooms are going to be, need to be bigger than standard size things like ceiling mounted, higher lifts. Um, we need a larger garage because the van, you know, has a fold out ramp, all sorts of that kind of stuff. And actually I'm also paralyzed. So you're paralyzed. Yes, sir. Yes. I was paralyzed at the age of 12. Um, and I work in actually the architecture field. I'm a designer. And so I've designed the house and there's nothing fancy in it.

No grander countertops, no hardwood floors, trying to make this as affordable as possible. But with current construction prices and interest rates, it's looking like it'll be about half our take home pay. What does your wife do? She's a teacher. Okay. Justin, I can't imagine what y'all are facing. The, uh, the, just the day to day grind of care in your home is,

um, it's overwhelming. And, um, so I want nothing but good things for you my friend and the last thing I want for you is a house payment that's 50% of your take-home pay it will add to your stress not relieve it. Yeah. It'll be a deal-breaker. You simply

cannot do that. It's not good for you, it's not good for your sons. While the picture you have in your mind of your family in a bankruptcy scenario. And so you just cannot, you just cannot function when your house payments 50% of your take home pay, it will not work. It's not sustainable. You can't eat everything that you do from this point forward. Any other things you do with your life will be new

debt and the debt piles up because you've destroyed what economists call disposable income. There's no room left in your budget for life. You become what we call house poor. And so what we've got to do, and I don't know how to do it on the phone call, on the radio, or on the podcast, but what we've got to do is we have to solve for a better living situation that doesn't break your family. Because you've got two options right now and both of them suck. Staying where you are in an untenable physical condition situation with all the things you guys are facing and the other option is bankrupt your family. And you don't get a pass on math because of tragedy.

You don't get a pass on math because of unbelievable heartbreaking challenges that you guys are facing. So I'm not diminishing those things at all, but the math will catch you and make your life worse, and I don't want that for you my friend. So I mean what you've got to talk about is okay what what elements of the square footage are we going to do away with if we build to get the price down to where we can do it or do we take some money and just start renovating where we are and create a more tenable?

Situation there is on the twins. Can I be? You've been very kind to give us all the information and that's very hard information Can I ask a hard question Yes, sir Is the life expectancy on the twins long-term? For one of the boys, yes. The brain bleed probably has no, you know, effect on his long-term life. He'll just need assistance and care throughout life. My other son... That's why you couldn't get those words out when you were talking about him, right?

Yes, sir. Yeah, okay. That's fair. I don't blame you. I can't breathe and I just met you, so I get it, okay? Yeah, they don't know a ton about the condition. Yeah. So it's hard to predict. Oh and I don't want to be indelicate but you also don't want to... gosh I don't know I'm gonna say it just because I'm supposed to but you don't put the family, the entire family in jeopardy to build a room out where there's not good life expectancy. And that's not fair to the rest of the family.

And that sounds very cold and like I don't care about the kid. That's not what I mean at all. But I'm stepping back and you called for us to love you well and I want to be kind to you and tell you the truth. So I think you do all you can for all your kids. All of us do that. We all love our kids and everyone listening right now, his heart is broken and is praying for you guys right this second. And I want you to do something that has a good long-term plan for your family. So we got to reset your plan to where it's

not 50% and I don't know what else to tell you. I do know we'll put one of our financial coaches over there to help you at our cost. We'll pay for them and get them in your corner and see if they can give you a better answer than Jade and I were able to do here on the air. I mean if he's designing this house I wonder if there's a way he I wonder if there's a way he can design something that's a little less upfront but provides the space over time to do the things they need. The thing we designed would be the best for every single thing but something's got to give. So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what's the least priority? So what ranking these features in the house and what features in the house can we cut back on that cut the cost down.

That's right. And I did that but for much less noble reasons when I built the last house. We grew it up and we went, I don't think so. So I think we're not going to do that and we're not going to do that and we're not going to do that because it got into the stupid zone. Which is tough when everything seems like a necessary item. Yeah when this is all, but that in my stuff was more like little selfish little boy stuff, not noble dad taking care of kids stuff. What a wonderful man.

I know, wow. You're a good dad, Justin. You hang on and I will hook you up with one of our coaches and see if we can walk with you through this and see if we can be of service to you. I hope I wasn't unkind to you. I didn't mean to be. Wow! 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. Jay Washaw, number one bestselling author, Ramsey Personality is my co-host today. Dylan is in Dayton, Ohio.

Hi, Dylan, how are you? Good, how are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? I'm looking at switching careers and I'm just trying to make it make sense financially because I need to go up in income but I cannot do that where I'm currently at.

But I don't know how to get somewhere better without going down first, which I can't afford to do. What are you doing now versus what you wanna do? Right now, I'm a pharmacy tech and I wanted to transition into the trade either like HVAC or electrician or something like that. What are you making now? I'm making about 24 an hour so there's some overtime opportunities and that's kind of how I'm getting by. So an apprenticeship in HVAC doesn't pay 25 an hour? Everything I've looked around I put in a couple applications and they're paying 17, 18 around me right now. You're single?

No, I'm married. What's your wife make? She's working part-time as a pharmacy tech right now, so she's bringing home maybe 1,300 a month. How many kids you got? One and hopefully one more soon Okay Are you are you saying you're hoping to add to your family or she's pregnant? Are you saying you're hoping to add to your family or she's pregnant? We had a miscarriage recently. Okay, so someday. Okay, alright, I'm sorry for that. So I think the trick is how long are you at $17?

Yeah, so I looked into the electrician union close to me and they'd be paying 16 to start and that would be after four years I'd get back to where I am now. Okay. Doesn't sound like a good trade. No. Well, and then after that, you know, you'd be making 38. Yeah. So it's just getting there.

But it still doesn't sound like a good trade. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think I'm going to keep looking. I love the idea of the trades, but you probably could actually get into something where you're making what you're making now starting out, if you keep poking at it. Now it might not be a union gig, it may be something else. Union gigs are pretty well set. They're going to be what they is.

What caused you to choose HVAC? Or electrician? I love working with my hands and doing something physical. I never really intended on becoming a pharmacy tech. I just ended up in it as a story. But I'd much rather be... Well if you could find something where you know 1820 or even what you're making now. If you find something you're making now, it's a no brainer.

Go do it. Right? Yeah. even what you're making now. If you find something you're making now, it's a no brainer, go do it, right? Yeah, yeah. Okay, but every time you take a cut, then how long is the cut gonna be? It's a step back to take steps forward. How long is it? In four years doesn't work for me.

One year works for me, and you work weekends as a pharmacy tech to make up the difference. Do you have an every dollar budget? Yeah, I gotta pull it up the difference. Do you have an every dollar budget? Yeah, I got to pull up right now. Okay, so I'd play some games on that and find out what's, you know, figure out these numbers. What's the lowest amount you can live off of? What does that look like when she's pregnant? Like run a couple of different scenarios based off of your life now, what you think it could

become, what happens if she gets pregnant again and there's another child and you know she's working part time. Run a lot of those scenarios out so you guys can get a clear picture of what this will be and what it can look like in all those different scenarios. But the price you pay might not be a pay cut, it might be a per hour cut but an increase in hours. You might be working pharmacy tech and some and you might be working your 40 hour on the new gig 18 or 20 or 19 or whatever it is but you make up the difference with some overtime at keep keep your part-time keep the pharmacy tech job

part-time and you put in 1300 and she puts in 1300 and then you make the other money and you end up making more but you're gonna be working all time and that's the price you pay to make this transition. And you have to have those non-negotiables set in stone before you start. Yeah, that's why four years doesn't work. That's what I'm saying, you have to set in stone, hey, no matter what, we're not using credit cards, we're not going into debt, there's no debt

that's gonna be part of this transition, and you guys need to agree with that on the forefront. That's why I said run those scenarios, so you don't find yourself in a situation where you think debt's the only option. Yeah, you don't back yourself into a corner. Yeah, exactly. That's a good point Because it'll get you know not go well, but is it okay to sacrifice to win 100% absolutely But we have to sacrifice a reasonable amount to win an unreasonable amount. Yeah, that's what we want to do So yeah, you know if you want to move towards the, the trades are a good place to be right now.

And the pay is really, really good, and there's a lot of demand. And I think I'd keep pushing around, keep checking. Again, just because the union thing doesn't work doesn't mean that there's not another way to doing this. Yeah, there's going to be some sacrifice in this at some point, and you're going to feel it deeply is my guess.

My pastor used to say, highly successful people tend to be highly sacrificial people. There's just a part that goes with it. No discipline seems pleasant at the time but it yields the harvest of righteousness. That's right. Exactly. All right. Kula is with us in New York. Hey Kula, what's up?

Hi. Hello. Hi. Can we help? Yes. I definitely a big fan of your show. I did have a quick question. So me and my wife are expecting the baby in the next couple months to come out. Yay. But we're trying to be wise with our money and trying to be just be better at our money especially as this baby is coming but we do have student loan and we do have around 25,000 saved up for a house is it's the question that I have is should we just focus on that loan before

this baby comes or start looking for housing with the baby on the way? It's a good question. I mean, the order that I would do this, knowing that the baby is coming, I would start putting aside a lot of money, but I wouldn't pay it towards the debt or the student loans yet. I'd save it up and keep it aside

until the baby gets here really nice and healthy and everything's good, everybody's home. And then that money, I would walk the baby steps with it. Whatever you have saved plus the 25,000 Yeah, I'd knock that down to a thousand and baby step one and then everything less left I do baby step two, which is your debt snowball. How many student loans do you have how much? Just just one. That's the only debt we have to kind of back $51,000 51 5 1

Uh, it's $51,000. 51, five one? Uh, 61. 61. Okay, yeah. So I'd make that the goal for the next nine months. Can we save up another $25,000 or more? And then when the baby comes, can we virtually knock out these student loans? And then after that, yeah, we're saving up three to six months.

Here's what I don't want. I don't want you to buy a house after this baby is born with a bunch of debt and no savings No, if you have to buy an extra bedroom for Sally Mae you did it in the wrong order Yeah, so we do so I did save up for the baby and the mom for the last couple months We have around 18,000 just for the baby and the mom until the whole thing kind of clears and we do have an emergency fund $25,000 I want to save up enough that when the baby comes and comes home like Jade said we write a check the student loans gone we rebuild the emergency fund then we save up a down payment for the house and that's this process that we use don't do

not buy a house wonderful having a baby coming wonderful that that's your wakeup call and you're like I got to get crap together. Good for you. You're gonna be a good dad. Now do it in the right order. Don't go buy a house with a student loan of 61,000 hanging around your neck. That's wrong order. You're gonna get yourself in a mess. Get the loans cleared. Get the emergency fund in place. And then buy the house. and then buy the house. You know, sometimes investing, when you sit down with an investing professional, they sound like Charlie Brown's teacher. Are you old enough to remember that? Yeah, that's it. Your investing professional needs to speak in

clearly discernible English, so that you know what they're saying. They're there to teach you not to impress you. You're supposed to know as an understand your investments before you do them and if you're a complete beginner or you're looking for next-level strategies go to RamseySolutions.com slash investing or click the link in the description. It'll help you with the whole process. John is in Atlanta. Hi John, how are you? How you guys doing? Better than we deserve. What's up? Yeah so I was looking for advice where my next move should be. I'm

really well considered bankruptcy. Right now I'm going through a divorce where my ex-wife, she also filed for bankruptcy, forcing, you know, she forced me into to consider bankruptcy because of a co-sign on the car that's being pushed onto me. Then I had my car that fell behind. Then on top of that, we had, on top of that we had also Our son together and then I lost my job. So I really don't know what my next move is. I do own a business but it's a cleaning business and Yeah, that's pretty much everything but I did have my student loans forgiven though

You had your student loans forgiven? Yes sir. Why? Uh, the school... Oh, the school was a sham. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Does the cleaning business generate like a living income? What's it generate?

Um, well my expenses luckily are very low for right now. That wasn't what she asked. She asked if you're making any money. I'm making money weekly. What kind of money are you making with the cleaning business honey? Probably around $500 on average. It can range from $500 a week to $1,000 a week. Okay.

All right, good. Can you ramp that up or do you need to get a job? Definitely I can. I want to ramp that up. That's maybe what I want to go towards because I don't know if I want to work for anybody else. Okay, so if you get this tuned way up, could you get it to a couple grand a week? Yeah, definitely. Okay, and how long would it take you to do that? Four or five months? Six months? Well, definitely trying to figure out the blueprint to that. What?

Um, but... Is it you need more people helping you or you just need more clients? Yes. Yeah, more clients, both probably. Okay. All right. Well, here's the thing. You're not bankrupt. Everything in your life got ran over by a train.

Yes. You lost your job. You lost your wife. Dad is piled up on top of you. I mean, you just got the snot beat out of you, man. You're not bankrupt. You're just bruised and battered. You've been in a car wreck, kinda.

You follow me? Yes, sir. bankrupt you just you're just bruised and battered you've been in a car wreck kind of you follow me yes sir and you you wouldn't you'd be a weird human if you weren't moving slow right now if you weren't sore if you weren't scared if you weren't paranoid looking over your shoulder that's the way we all feel when we're in a situation like that and so but the fix to the whole thing is to create a sustainable life that you can project out over 10 years and then we can figure out what to do with the debts but that means we've got to get a steady income so either you go pick up a job and you continue to grow this business or you grow this

business very quickly okay okay so because, so because I, in other words, if you start making $5,000 a month from some source, we have a completely different discussion than we have today, agreed? Agreed. Okay. Now, then let's go ahead and move forward and say, let's pretend you did that,

because I think you're capable of it once you get past your broken heart and your normal, the normal things that people, the anger and everything else that we face when we've been through all these things so you said there was a car cosine and there was a car repossession yes so the cosine car was mine it's it's wise which she filed bankruptcy and which automatically going to push that on to me. Wait a minute, this current divorce or the divorce before? Ah, this current.

Okay, this current. Okay, all right. So how much is that debt on that car? Thirty-six thousand. Okay, did that car get repoed? Yes. Good. And what, okay, that's perfect. And then the other car, is it repoed? Yes. Good. And what was it? It was at 20k. Okay, perfect. Do you have any other debts? Well, we had eviction also. You had what?

An eviction. An eviction. Yeah. Have they sued you? Yeah, so they left a balance of $5,000 on top of that. Gotcha. Anything else? That's pretty much it. No other debt? Okay. You're not bankrupt. You're not bankrupt. You're broke and you have a broken heart, but you're not bankrupt and You're angry and all of those are normal human emotions for where you are, but you're not bankrupt This is not hopeless and let me walk you through why okay car repossessions They sell the car and the difference. Let's say they sell the 36 as an example for 20 on a repo lot

All right, then they're gonna come after you for the difference, which is 16. That's called the deficit balance Okay Okay, they will settle that for a quarter on the dollar in lump sum. Well If I may add I think most of the added money on top of that is interest. That doesn't matter. They're going to come after you for something and whatever they come after you for is the deficit balance on the loan and they will settle that for a quarter on the dollar. So the $36,000 car, probably $4,000 or $5,000 will get rid of both of these car loans and the and the eviction is probably gonna take a hundred cents on the dollars probably gonna take five thousand bucks to get rid of it but you

could offer them three okay so in other words let's just pretend we cleared the two cars for five each and we cleared the eviction for three that means you have thirteen thousand dollars in debt you're not bankrupt ok you just need to go make some freaking money to be able to have a little war chest little stack of cash when these guys do call and you go ok I don't have enough to pay you in full but I can pay you three thousand dollars if you'll take that as settlement in full because I'm trying to not have to file bankruptcy and they go okay I'll take that or no but we'll take thirty five hundred and you go okay no payments lump sum hear me

yes yes so you stack some cash by making money by gearing this business up getting a job or both you stack some cash and somewhere around $15,000 will make you debt free if you negotiate settlements with all three of these situations. You are not bankrupt for 15 grand, dude. Is your son with you or with his mom? So we're doing split custody, but most of the time he's with me.

Okay, because I was gonna say if not then this is you working Day and night night and day he's not there you're working Okay, because you need a stack of cash to get this crap out of your life So let's fast forward one year from today. You're a hundred percent debt-free You have fifteen thousand dollars cash in the bank is an emergency fund and your income is five thousand dollars a month and you've had a horrible year with a divorce in your rear-view mirror and you thought you were bankrupt but you weren't and you made it out and you're a hero that's where you're going owner yeah successful yes yes feel better way better okay and you call us

back if you need some help we we're here. But I've walked thousands and thousands of people through this. You are not bankrupt. Okay. You just need a stack of cash and you know where to get that. Works what makes money happen. Go get you some and get this mess cleaned up. Put this mess in your rear view mirror, and then get about the business of being a great dad, and a great businessman, and we wanna talk about the time that you called here 10 years later, and now you're a Baby Steps millionaire. That's right, that's right.

That's the time I wanna talk about. And believe me, I've been doing this for 30 years, seen it happen many, many times. Because this is more about hope than it is math and the weird thing is sometimes the math will actually give you hope if you know how to run the numbers this is the Ramsey show our question of the day is brought to you by WhyRefi. WhyRefi works with borrowers who have defaulted private student loans even when other lenders

have said no. With a lower payment and a low fixed rate you could have a clear path forward. Visit WhyRefi.com slash Ramsey that's the letter Y-R-E-F-Y dot com slash Ramsey might not be in all states. All right. Today's question comes from Jackie in Massachusetts. She says, everywhere I go these days, there's a tipping screen now at the end of the purchase. For the average person who's not in baby step seven, when is it appropriate to leave a tip at coffee shops and restaurants versus not giving one?

That's actually a really good question. I mean, I definitely feel like since COVID, since the pandemic, tipping has kind of gone into the stratosphere, I think. And there's been some tipping fatigue out there. I definitely think whenever you're in a restaurant situation where you're sitting down, you're placing an order, there's somebody attending to your table, you should always tip. And I think that you should tip between 18 to 20 percent. That's just me. I'm a 22 percent tipper. That's my, that's Jade's personal thing, but you need to at least be, I think, 18 at those places. Now there are, I think also anything that's really a close, close, I'm going to call it a closely felt service, right?

So somebody who's cutting your hair, someone who's doing your nails or like involved in your bodily person while they're doing a service. I think that those people also should be tipped. Again, 15% is a great place to start on that. Things that I don't tip for, or sometimes it just depends, sometimes it's like,

it just depends on if it's really great, would be, I don't know, like a barista service, something like that. It's like, I got my coffee. If it was really good and I know the person and it's like always the same guy or something, I might tip them a little bit. Grocery delivery, if it's raining out, always tip them. What about you Dave? I'm just trying to think what do you not tip for? I'm trying to think what I don't tip for. I'm a tipper though. I lean heavily into tipping. For me, tipping falls in the bucket with generosity. Yeah, I think me too. So I overdo it to the point that my wife cringes. Well, we have it on our budget as a line item.

She's like, you don't need to leave that much. It wasn't that good. And I'm like, yeah, well, they don't care if it's that good. And here's the thing, the kitchen might have screwed up, not the poor waitress. That's right. No, please don't take out on the waitress. So sometimes a waitress is an idiot too.

That happens. It does. But in my case, I don't really have a choice because they're gonna have a Dave Ramsey story, it might as well be a good one. That's true, you're a known fellow. I'm a known felon, so I have to. Fellow, fellow.

That too, that too. I have to leave a tip even when I don't want to, but I want to, I like doing that. But the times that I walk up to the counter and someone spins an iPad at me and I leave a tip, is precisely zero. I do not tip there ever. That is not a tippable.

Well, if I know that person is gonna be touching my food. There's a tip jar on the counter at the gas station and I just walked in to pay for my gas. No. No. I'm not tipping. You can flip that screen at me all you want. I'm not tipping. No can flip that screen at me all you want, I'm not tipping. No, you didn't do anything.

And so, sorry, it's not in the thing. Yeah, like take out. But I over tip on everything else. Here's one where people don't tip, and I think this is horrible. 100% of the time I stay in a hotel, I pinch a 20, and I leave it in it, standing on the end of the bed when I leave every day.

The maid service, yeah. Every day the maid gets tipped. And my wife is like, well they didn't even do turn down service. Oh my God, would you quit with this already? So you don't wait till the end, you do it at the end of each day? Every day. I like that. Every day.

And so, and you know what? I never have a problem with the room either. Yeah, that's true. Ever. And the one that drives me real crazy, and I saw this happen the other day, he got pulled up in a Mercedes, like a 130,000 dollar Mercedes. And he's parking a car in the valet. And it's raining. And he gives this kid $5.

Stop it. I don't like that. And I'm like, no, this is just dumb. You just gave him the keys to your $130,000 car, Ferris Bueller. Man, he's going to mess with the seats. He's's gonna change all the stations. And you gave him five dollars? Are you moron? I mean come on. So, um, I either, you know, um, I've tipped valets fifty dollars. You better tip the valet. But you know what? That car's sitting right there when I come out too. They didn't even park it. It's just sitting there. They didn't even touch it. And so, uh, that's good. I like that. So that's good

service goes with the good tips. So yeah and I um... Listen I used to work in food service. And when I pull up with the valets in some cases I almost always hit them on the front end and then another person brings the car back. And get them to... And so no sometimes I do but sometimes I go hey the other guy I hit the other guy on the front end and he goes oh I heard about it. Oh okay yeah Yeah, they usually tip-share anyway. They knew what was that so you want to do that but that that's a Reputation thing and it's a generosity thing But this thing of you just poured some coffee at Starbucks and you spin the thing around face it in my

Negatory. I don't buy coffee at Starbucks. Why am I saying that? But I'm saying that type of scenario. I've never been on a Starbucks in 15 years. So what am I saying? But I mean, coffee shop. If I went into a coffee shop and they pour me a cup of coffee and they hand it across the counter. Quick serve, not it. No, thank you. I don't tip chick-fil-a.

I'm sorry. No, it's not what I'm doing. I'm driving through, you're handing me the Jesus chicken out and I'm gone. Now I do feel like if you can't, like when you go to actual restaurants, I feel like if you can't afford to I do feel like if you can't, like when you go to actual restaurants, I feel like if you can't afford to leave a nice tip, you can't go. If you can't afford tip,

you shouldn't go. You can't go, yeah. No, that's for sure. Cause those people are working for tips. They're working hard. Yeah. And a lot of them aren't being paid well unless they're tipped.

And so- And have a nice demeanor towards them too. Cause listen, back in the day when I worked at Applebee's, I don't want to tell you some of the things I saw back there No, let me see. when people were acting, when tables were acting up. Payback's hell on that. Oh man, you don't wanna know. You don't wanna know what happened to your food

before it came out. But the... I never did anything. I would never do something like that. No, I don't think you would. I never would. Well, it would be against your religion to mess up food. Because you like food.

I love food, I love people. Even if somebody's wilding out, I still would not do some of the things that I have witnessed. But I'll tell you the other, you know what we used to do, because one of the things we, now everybody door dashes and whatever to get out of debt. That's their get out of debt side hustle. But it used to be that we'd all just go, hey, go deliver pizzas. And so we had a thing for a long time on this show, and we could start it again right now. This says, okay, if DoorDash or if Domino's or Marco's or Pizza Hut or whoever shows up at your door with a pizza,

and you say, how are you doing, and they say, better than I deserve. Oh, that's great. That's code for, I'm working this job to get out of debt. You gotta double their tip. I love that. You gotta double their tip. I love that. And so, cause they're trying to get out of debt, you gotta double their tip. I love that, I love that. And so, cause they're trying to get out of debt

and you're now helping them, they're out here hustling, they're bringing you food and the rain while you're sitting on your butt, so double their tip. Man, and give it to them in cash, like if I can catch the door-dash person, like over the holidays, you know, you're ordering food and people are in the house. I always do cash.

If you can catch them at the door and give them cash. I always do cash, yeah, I always do cash. If you can catch them at the door and give them cash. I always do cash, yeah. I always do cash. Yeah, because if somebody's working Christmas Eve. Well, that kind of thing. Yeah. Or, you know, valleys, that kind of thing. Now, if I'm in a fine dining restaurant,

I'm gonna pay a part of the bill. Yeah, for sure, for sure. With the debit card. And they always make fun of me. Is this a debit card? Yeah, well, is this your tip? Yeah. Yeah, so yeah.

We'll see how this works, but yeah. Anyway, yeah, absolutely. This is, it's see how this works. But yeah, anyway, yeah, absolutely. You, this is, it's a kindness. It's an exchange, but this spend the iPad around is not an exchange. And I got zero obligations. If I'm, I picked up some queso at the Mexican restaurant to go to take to Rachel's house for Father's Day Sunday night and I did not tip them. They had the little queso at the door. I paid them at the queso. They did not serve my table.

You drove, yeah, you drove and got it. I walked in, in the rain, got the queso, got in the truck, went to Rachel's house. No, we don't tip that. Yeah, I don't tip that. Now, if they bring it, there's one restaurant I go to where they'll bring it out to the car, to your door. And I'm like, I do tip that one.

Cause I'm like, you packed it up and you brought it out to me. I did drive, that one I'll tip. That one's up to your discretion. Yeah, you I do tip that one because I'm like you packed it up and you brought it out to me I did drive that one I'll tip that one's up to your discretion yeah you hit in the middle there but I this thing of it's kind of like it's a manipulative well you have the spinning of the iPad is a manipulation well then they stand and I don't appreciate you if the other one is do you want to give to the wounded wounded pet association or something to your change up dollar yeah the change to your groceries no if I wanted to give to the wounded wounded pet association or something to your channel dollar yeah add the change to your groceries no if I wanted to give

to the wounded pet association I would have already given them money it's not I'm not adding it to my grocery bill and you get the credit for the charity no so zero on those I don't I don't add a dollar for the blind cat society or whatever the heck it is that they put on there it's just they come up with some crap man it's unbelievable or blind dog society I don't care which ever one you want to me just no we're not no not even the 12 cents that's not a tip though that's a that's a but it's a manipulation at checkout it is the same thing it's still a manipulation at checkout and it's nickel and diamond you to death and no

Thank you, and I don't feel guilty Kate's in Chicago. Hi Kate. Welcome to the Ramsey show. Hello. Hey, what's up? My question is how do I start a business when friends and family owe me debt or owe me money? What's one got to do with another? How much money do they owe you? We've got one friend who owes us about, I wanna say close to two grand,

and then I've got another friend that or family member that owes us close to four grand and it has caused us to go into debt. Why did that cause you to go into debt? Because at first we had the money and then we didn't and my husband and I had a conversation about it and I told him I didn't want to loan these people money and he didn't want to listen. So, you don't have a friends and family problem, you have a husband problem. Yeah, that too.

Yeah, so what's your philosophy on loaning money? We know your husband's, what's your philosophy on loaning money? We know your husbands, what's yours? We had made a vow to not loan anybody money after we had gotten out of debt the first time. And then when COVID hit and everybody was out of work, then all these people came to us and I didn't want to do it. And he was like, well, it's just a little bit and I'm going, yeah, but these people won't pay us back. So you're okay.

Got it. Well, they're not going to pay you back. So you might as well forget all that and you need to stop doing it. But what's that got to do with going into business? Over the years, God has planted a seed in my life to start a business, and I didn't understand what it was. And I've come to more realization of what He wants me to do. And the cost of purchasing the land to start this business is way more. It would be a camp slash school learning center for both adults and children.

You don't have a two thousand dollar problem. No. Okay, so that these things are not related at all. No. Well that's how you framed it. You said, why can't, how can I not open? I can't open a business because I keep loaning friends and family money and that's just not a true statement.

You're not six, you don't have a $6,000 problem. You have a $300,000 problem. So let's tackle the first one first. The debt, the loaning of money. I, you and your husband need to sit down and decide, I would tell you since you called in to stop loaning people money period if you have the money to give. Give it to them.

You give it. And then there's no strings attached. And I would call both these people and just say the debt is forgiven. Yeah. Forget it. You're not going to get it back anyway. But no more lending. And then as far as living your dream, so if God gave you the dream, if it is God,

and I'm not saying it's not, because I'm living a God dream myself right now, He will give you the money. And some instructions, like to build the thing. Yeah. I've been currently praying about it and it has been to create the plan. Good. And I read your book, Building a Business That You Love. Mm-hmm. Good. And that made me realize that I

need to pause on this dream and pay off my debt first. Good. And that is the step that I'm currently working on. We completed baby step number one. We're in baby step number two. We've got about $20,000 in debt that we need to pay off. Great. Let's get it cleared up. What's your household income today? With my income and my husband's combined, we are at $100K yearly.

Excellent. So let's clean up the debt and then let's start saving towards the dream and let's see how God provides. And I will tell you that he is not going to provide a loan. Correct. Zero times in Scripture, zero times in Scripture did God give people something to do and then put them in debt doing it? Never did the children of Israel get him down in the valley and the Hittites were getting ready to kill them, and so they did a bond issue. Never.

Never. It never happened. So it's not in the Bible. So if you involve God in this discussion, so I'll just jump on the bandwagon with you. God will provide. God has provided at Ramsey Solutions over 35 years what we needed when we needed it. Not when we wanted it, but when we needed it.

And we have paid cash from the profits to grow the business little bit by little bit by little bit by little bit and now it's a big deal but those all those 35 years of little bits all in cash all added together profits p-r-o-f-i-t-s yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah we're talking biblical stuff i don't want anybody to think woo-woo stuff. Isaiah was not involved, yeah. No cash from that prophet. Yeah, exactly.

No one brought in a suitcase of money and said, God told us to give you this. No, didn't happen. It was, we sold more books, we sold more financial peace university, and we were able to pay cash for another studio. We were able to pay cash for this, and we continue to bless people,

continue to serve and feed his lambs. And that is our call and that is what we do. So, yeah, it's just, you know, I think the time, I'm not doubting the call of what he's given you to do, honey, but I am 100% sure he didn't ask you to do it today because he has not provided the money today. And so it's not today. That's right.

And in the $2,000 or the $4,000, it's owed to you, has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion at all, except you got the opportunity to have us tell you just forgive it and move on and quit doing it. Oh, Drew's in Sacramento. Hey, Drew, what's up? Hi, thanks for having me.

Sure, a little short on time go straight to your question so I'm wondering if I should I'm at a place where I have no debt except for my house which I owe 260 on how old are you that family I'm 39 okay cool good for you thank you there's a family incentive if I get it down to a hundred, my father will pay the rest. That's cool. And I have enough in my 401k to pay it off. Nope.

I'm wondering... No, okay. You're going to get hit with your tax rate plus a 10% penalty. You're borrowing money at 30% interest. Okay. You're going to get killed financially to cash that money out of that 401k. What's your income? $140,000 annually. Good, good. And I'm the sole provider with four kids. Good for you. Okay. Well, I mean, I would just, I would say we're out of debt. We have our emergency fund. We're on a budget. We need to come up with $160,000 worth of debt reduction. So dad writes the other $100, we have our emergency fund, we're on a budget, we need to come up with $160,000

worth of debt reduction, so dad writes the other 100, and let's start working towards that. It's not gonna happen in one year. It might happen in four years, and it would still be a wonderful story. That's a wonderful story, I like the idea too. That's a great incentive to. Yeah, really, really good direction to go. I

like it. So, but yeah don't don't borrow money at 30% interest or 40% interest to make that work because at 130,000 your tax rates 31% 32% and then you get a 10% penalty so it's gonna be 40% interest that you're gonna be the equivalent of. I mean you're gonna get hit with taxes and penalties of 40% Dave would I borrow money at 40% interest to pay off my house no you would not and that's probably not what the dad wanted no he said I'd give you wanted that he didn't he hasn't done good at math but yeah that's right and he probably wouldn't have had a hundred K to give away so there you go but yeah yeah I think it's a wonderful situation you're

in you've done a really good job at 39 years old and I would continue to plow through. And I understand the temptation, but the math tells you not to do it. Never cash out your 401k folks early, except to avoid a bankruptcy or a foreclosure because otherwise you're effectively borrowing money at 35 or 40% interest to pay off your debts and that never, never, never, never, never makes sense. So stay away from that game. It's a bad game, it's one you will lose. So I want you out of debt, Jade wants you out of debt, Ramsey wants you out of debt,

house and everything as fast as you can. We love that idea of freedom for you, but we don't wanna trade one form of stupid for another form of stupid. Not a good trade. Good point. Good point. 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. Jade Waschall, number one bestselling author and Ramsey personality is my co-host today.

Logan is in Tampa, Florida. Hey Logan, how are you? Hey Dave, good, how are you? Better than I deserve deserve what's up? So my wife and I decided in January to move into a camper we bought a camper and decided to try to get out of debt save some money we actually relocated down to the Tampa area for a job and, um, you know, we're going to work the debt snowball and all that good stuff.

Um, but what we really did was just started, uh, spending more money because we had some more money with our living expenses going down. And, uh, we found out last night that, um, she's pregnant with our second baby. Um, so we are trying to figure out what to do now. Uh, we've got about $55,000 of debt. Um, I make 75,000 a year. Um, so we're just trying to see, should we sell the camper? Should we sell, um, my wife's car?

Uh, do you owe on your wife? I'm sorry. How much do you owe on her car? It's around 14,000. Okay. And what's your household income? 75,000 a year. Okay. I'm sorry, that was, and that includes your wife working. She doesn't work. She stays home with our first child. What'd you spend on the camper? So we financed it and we owe about 15,000, I think 16,000 on it now. So your plan was to get out of debt by going $16,000 into debt? I know. I know. Okay. It doesn't make much sense. No, it doesn't make any sense at all. All right, so what will the camper sell for? We could

probably get, I would imagine, between 10 to 15 for it, I would imagine. I hope so. This has only been six months, yeah. Okay. And so, I'm sorry, you said you had 55 in debt? Yes, sir. Okay, so 16 on a camper, 14 on her car. What's the rest of it? 22,000 of it is my wife's student loans and there's 3,000 on the old credit card. Okay. So So the way I answer questions here is if I woke up in your shoes knowing what I know today, what would I do? Okay. Now I've been married 43 years. We had three kids. I have eight grandkids. The chances that Sharon Ramsey at any point in our life, no matter how broke or how poor we were, was going to live in a camper is pretty close to zero. So the first thing I'm going to do is put my wife and my pregnant wife and new baby into an apartment, a one-bedroom apartment and put the kids in the living room. And I'm gonna sell the camper.

That clears half your debt. And I'm gonna work 80 hours a week and we're gonna live on beans and rice and we're gonna live on beans and rice and we're not going out to eat if she's staying home with baby she cooks and she cooks from scratch because it's cheaper and better for you and we're not going on vacation and you work 80 hours a week and you clean up this dead gum mess you made what's and all this stuff about we're gonna move into a camper but we spent more money all that's bull crap that's all done it's time for you guys to get your crap together you got two babies and

you're broke what's the fourteen thousand dollar car worth what do you what are you driving so she uses that my company I have a vehicle if we're not together I'm driving my company vehicle, my company truck, just back to work. I gotcha, okay, good, that's good news. That is good. Okay, yeah, I think you can get it paid off, but I think you're just working all the time,

and you guys just gotta go, okay, it got real. A pregnancy test came back, and this just got real. We've got to do this. This thing where we moved to Tampa, moved into a camper, Tampa's not bad, camper bad. We gotta undo that, we gotta get an apartment, a little cheap, as cheap as you can get, that's safe and your family's not getting,

you know, some kind of crime-ridden thing or something like that. But I mean, you get into something cheap, find a garage apartment out back of some rich old lady's house and cut her grass for half the rent or something, and you guys just start like you were starting fresh because you are starting fresh and let's clean this mess up fast you can do that once you decide to do it like your life

depends on it but now your life depends on it and the life of these two babies depends on it agreed yes sir yeah you can do this. How old are you? 26? 31. 31. Okay. Yeah. Well. So we shouldn't call the debt snowball and save up for the baby.

Well, I still want you to get out of the camper. Do you have any money saved anywhere whatsoever from this ordeal? Not really, just because. Yeah, you got to get, you got to get rid of the camper and you gotta get into an apartment and, uh, for your family to have a good environment is what it amounts to and, um, you know, and, and so, yeah, you just, you need to take care of this wife and kids right now. And then yes, you can pile up cash if you want, but you need to pile up

$55,000 in the next nine months. Minus the camper so $40,000 so that the day the baby comes home you write a check and you're debt-free so the end of the story is one year from today you're 100% debt-free with $10,000 in the bank and starting to think about saving up towards the house. And you move with the intensity as though you were paying this money off on the debt today. Absolutely. Just because you're piling it up doesn't mean that you can kind of take a smoke break. And anything she can do to add some income to this situation is a good thing.

There's always something you can do. Right now. I mean, you got a baby and a baby on the way, but still, I mean, whatever you can do that's legal and moral, let's get after it. Time to get it, time to get it, make it happen here. And yeah, this would, you know, what is it, desperate times require desperate measures?

Desperate times call for desperate measures. And you know, this is kind of, your back's against the wall here, man. So you gotta come out fighting. And you know, this is kind of, your back's against the wall here, man. So you gotta come out fighting. And you gotta get with it. And that's what we're doing here. This is very doable once you look in the mirror and say, dude, you're doing it.

Yeah. And she says, I'm gonna get out there, tough. No, I think this is the time, like for her, if I'm her, I'm getting with a buddy or a family member and saying can you watch The kids four hours a day so I can go do this side hustle And even if it's even if the deal is we do that until we can get out of the camper to get the down You know the first and last month's rent whatever that deal is I think she can contribute as well because she needs to like this yeah, but you got to get six jobs

I mean y'all gotta go create, stack as much cash as you can stack, clear the camper, get into an apartment, and then let's stack $40,000 worth of cash in the next nine months, and clear the $16,000 camper, and you're there. And this is doable, but you're not gonna see your pregnant wife much, you're gonna be working

all the time. And you can ask Sharon Ramsey, that's what happened at our house. I worked all the time. Because we were broke. And that's, you know, work is a surefire money making scheme. It is, it is. We were B-R-O-K-E broke.

It was no fun. I don't ever wanna go back there. Oh God, no, thank you. But the good news is you can get out Logan. This is the Ramsey Show. So many of you out there are trying to share this Ramsey stuff with people. You want to see them win, but you're you don't know exactly how to unpack all this stuff you hear out because you're listening to the long-form show thank you for that we're making it even easier with the Ramsey 101 playlist on YouTube the playlist is filled with the classic Ramsey clips like what are the baby steps how to pay off debt with the debt snowball how to

build an emergency fund how to agree with your spouse on spending putting together a budget all this kind of stuff. So the 101, Ramsey101 playlist, click the link at the top of the show notes to open Ramsey101 playlist on YouTube. You can text it, DM it, send it in a group chat, just say, hey, think this might help guys. If you're listening on the radio, share it. You've got the playlist featured at the top of our YouTube channel, jump in there. Who's one person that you could share this with? It's one share, one step, it could change everything for that person. And obviously all this is completely free. Dave is in Louisville. Hi Dave, welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hey Dave, thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up?

Don't really know how to handle credit card collectors while I continue to fight what's turning into being a messy custody battle. So going on three years now and don't really see any insight. I'm not really sure what to do. Okay. Are you putting the legal fees, the legal fees are going on the credit cards, is that what's happening? No, actually, that was initially, but thankfully, my attorney's actually offered to extend credit, and she's done that for over a year now. And, and that's just been because she believes in the case. And so I've racked up in addition to the credit cards, um, about 30,000 to my attorney and actually a little bit more to a different attorney who is involved

in the case and is, is, is extending credit as well. So. So how much credit card? Part of it. Uh, It's just under 40. What's your income? 100. Okay so 70 thousand dollars plus or minus 80 thousand dollars makes you a hundred percent debt-free? Yeah. Okay and you make a hundred and it's just you? Yeah and then you know partial time share with the kids but yeah. Okay. Yeah. Have you stopped 401k? No I haven't. You should. I don't care if they

match you can't pay your bills. What kind of work do you do? Um, finance. Okay, yeah. So, here's um, what I would do in this situation. The credit cards are at the bottom of the list of things to worry about. I'm not worried about them today. Your credit's already trashed, you haven't paid them in some time, right? Correct. So, no big deal. They can just sit there and whine.

They just whine, flop around. Eventually, one of them is going to sue you, but right now I'm not worried about them. And they just scream. You don't even have to answer the phone. You don't have to talk to them. Just let them sit there. So once we've kind of done that in our mind, then we've got primary, which is to not add any more debt to the attorney's fees.

And so we need to start building up some cash for the next bill so it doesn't become extended credit. Because you make enough money, I mean, what's your rent? 1200. Yeah, and you don't have a car payment? Correct. Good, okay. Can I ask a question about the case? I'm just curious, at any point, could your financial

standing have any weight on what happens with the case? Not that I know of, no. So they couldn't look at your financial situation and say, oh, his home is unfit or something like that? No. All right. Well, I mean, if I'm you I'm gonna live on like nothing like fifteen or twenty thousand dollars beans and rice rice and beans and I'm gonna work as much as I can possibly work and I'm gonna squeeze every dollar out of this budget I'm not spending money on anything at all and first goal is to not add any more attorney debt second goal is pay down add any more attorney debt. Second goal is to pay down the attorneys

and clear them. I mean if you lived on 60,000 you would be attorney debt free in one year. Do you do any work outside of your 40 hours job? I did that for a little while so there was a period where I got a second job and I was working literally seven days a week. Good. The problem I was having is it was affecting my relationship with my kids, which only have part time. And because it's a custody case, my relationship with my kids is more important than paying down the debt.

And so I actually quit that second job because I was missing all of my kids sporting meets on the weekends because I was working 20 hours on on the weekends so it was one of those where I just had to pick and so I just trying to been hold and you know I don't I don't know we don't want vacations or not doing that stuff and just trying to but I mean it's a hundred thousand dollars so let's pay off these attorney's fees. Yeah, I think you can live on 60. Nothing. Yeah, nothing.

In Louisville? Definitely. Single guy in a one bedroom apartment, man. I mean, definitely. You need to get on an every dollar budget, make all of these dollars scream, and let's clear these attorney's fees, and then let's not add any more debt to attorney's fees and then once we've done that then we call the credit cards up and save up some money and start settling for them lump sum. But one thing about being in a situation like you're in it is an emotional drain as

well as a financial drain and the financial stuff mounting up mounting up mounting up combined with the, you just get fatigued of dealing with lawyers and judges and idiot exes and all this. There's just a fatigue factor for it. And it's harder to fight through that when the debt is mounting rather than the debt is being reduced.

If you were sitting here a year from now and you've cleared all of the attorney debt and you're not adding any attorney debt and the only thing you got is the old credit cards and then a year later you've got no credit cards, you're in a different head space to fight. That's right, that's right. I think there is a fatiguing quality to this.

I'm thinking this is not the same thing at all, but I'm thinking about when we all went through the pandemic and there was a fatigue that set in and people started to ease up on good habits, right? It's like, I deserve this. And you did less of the things that you're supposed to do. And I could see the same thing happening here where you're so tired.

It's like, yeah, I'm gonna let go of that other job or I'm so tired. You know what? I do deserve to go out and let off some steam, that sort of feeling when really you wanna put your foot on the gas even more and stay I'll find a weekend job. It's Saturday night and Sunday night because there's no kids sports on Saturday night and Sunday night. That's right So I'm gonna find a way around this. There's workarounds and there's only so much of this we can Not do because we're a dad so that we can do the other stuff because we're a dad.

Yeah, exactly. So I miss your baseball game, but you don't have to live with an abusive mother. Oh, there's a good trade. That's a great trade. I'll take that trade. You know, and so, you know, whatever, that kind of stuff. So, you know, my kid, my kid's upset

because my dad missed my baseball game. Well, guess what? All dads miss baseball games. And I have eight grandkids, and that means there's 17 sports on every weekend. And you know what, how many of them I make? Almost none. Yeah.

And I'm not a bad grandpa. I mean, we've had, I've had this conversation many times on this show about what it really means when you say your family's the priority. And a lot of times the first thing we go to is, and the way I make them the priority is time. That's the first kind of like bullet point under priority. When really there's a lot of times the first thing we go to is, and the way I make them the priority is time. That's the first kind of like bullet point under priority when really there's a lot of different ways that we show priority.

And when it comes to family, a big part of that is, you know, providing financially and making sure there's stability and all those other things that are just as valid of bullet points. And during any given season, we get to decide what's the number one bullet point underneath that heading of family as priority. It's not always time. Yeah, that's true. So I mean, I don't know, but I'm gonna add income and I'm gonna pinch every dollar,

I'm gonna stop all of investing temporarily. Well, this is a temporary battle. This battle's not gonna go on for 20 years. It's not. And so we're gonna to fight it through and the better financial condition you're in, the better your head space is in and the way you get there is sacrifice in hours and sacrifice in spending so that you've got the money to attack this and clear these debts. And that's the only thing I know how to tell you to do

and it'll work too, by the way. Broxan Indianapolis. Hey Brock, welcome to the Ramsey show. Hey Dave, how are you? Thanks for taking my call today. I appreciate that. Sure. What's up?

Um, let me get to it. Yeah. So my father passed away in February of this past year. I'm sure. How old was he? Yeah. He was 82. Wasn't unexpected. He was pretty sick overall. So with that, he didn't have a lot of investments per se, right? So, but what he did have, he did have a house. And so my sister and I were both trustees of the estate. And so we are now working on renewing the house,

et cetera, et cetera, getting ready to sell it, right? We think, we think we're probably gonna get, I don't know, 180 grand maybe each out of the house. And so my question is, we met with our financial counselor actually last week, funny story, met with him last week and we were talking to him about, do we take that money and put it on the house and pay off the house? Well, not all of it, we'd probably still owe 80,000

on the house or so. Or do we go ahead and invest that 180 grand and thinking about the time value of money and so forth and what we could do with it? Um, I'm just not really, my thought on it is I want to have peace in my life. Yes. And so I don't know whether or not, because if we pay off the house, it's actually the shortest direction to have peace and the shortest direction Yes. And so I don't know whether or not, because if we pay off the house, we'll hold Aiden on it.

It's actually the shortest direction to have peace and the shortest direction to have wealth are the same answer, and that's pay off the house. Right. And here's how I know that. It's not just an opinion, okay? And Jay was there. We did the largest study on millionaires ever done in North America. We studied 10,167 of them. 89% of them, 9 out of 10, are not millionaires because of an inheritance. Okay? Nothing to do with your inheritance, but a lot of people say all

wealth is passed down. No, it's not. Most people that are wealthy started from nothing and became wealthy. 9 out of 10 in America. Okay? That's the numbers, which gives everybody hope. Now, having said that, the number of millionaires that said, I started from nothing and became a millionaire by not paying off my house and instead investing the money was very close to zero. The majority of them,

like 85-90% of them, paid off their home and all other debts as quickly as possible and then used the cash flow to invest and that's what built their wealth. And by the way, when the house is paid off, you also get peace. Right, right, and that's what I'm sort of shooting for. So, I'm 55 years old. We haven't done a great job on our investments.

We have some money invested. How much? He was saying, well, we're right at about 140 or so. So, we really goofed off in the beginning. So, if you pay off the house for 80, you put a hundred in investments and you could put the house payment on automatic draft out of your checking account into investments right? Well we could. Yeah. We'd also, so without the house payment we'd have about eleven thousand in margin. Good. Right? But why are you going to put like five to six in

investments in every month? Good. I like that. And then okay all right so so I guess my thinking was correct because my wife's like well I want to use it to fix up the house and all this other stuff and I'm like well we can do that after we get the house paid off. I would do that out of the cash flow and I would invest a little less and take instead of six thousand make it five thousand and put a thousand dollars in the rehab fund every month. Okay that's the thought yeah that's good I know she's really keen on doing stuff to the house so I sort of have to take keep that in mind I guess I don't think that's unfair I mean you're you're in good shape you're gonna be a

multimillionaire when you're 65 that's the plan I hope that's the math what you just described will be that okay it. Have you run the numbers out? The math on what you just described will be that, okay? It's important to run those numbers out, Brock. If you've not done it, get on ramsysolutions.com and use that investing calculator and really see what this looks like for you. That'll give you a lot of the piece that you're looking for and it'll give you a plan

and it'll help you better understand what we're telling you. Yeah, so if you're investing $5,000 a month for 10 years and you started with $100 plus what you've already got, which is $140, so you started with a quarter million, you're easily going to be worth several million dollars in 10 years. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Sitting, I mean, if you're putting it in good growth stock mutual funds and getting the

average returns of the market, that's what you'll have. Yeah. And all of the while, been fixing up the house and all of the while have a paid for house. Yeah, to me, I think that's just key. I really want to be under the guise of debt. And so, we're in baby step six now, we have no other debt at all. Still putting the child through school but we're paying cash for that basically. Good. Well, and see, when that's done, that helps them, that helps the

renovation on the house budget. Oh, immensely. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

You get that, you get that one off the payroll. It opens up everything. So you're in really good shape here, but yeah, follow your instincts. You've got good instincts. Yeah, I agree. You know, there's a big, I feel like that's one of the number one, um, temptations we get when people call in is they want to invest.

I mean we had two calls earlier. They wanted to invest over paying off the house. Instead, and the data says you're wrong. The data says that the average millionaire didn't do that. There you go. So buying or selling a home by the way is a big deal and clickbait headlines, confusing data is out there. Right now the median house price in America is a little over

440,000. That means half of them or more, half of them or less. Just to give you an idea. All the houses? No, that's the actual number. The average 15-year fixed rate is still under 6%. If you want to know more about housing market trends and get some free tools, go to ramsaysolutions.com slash market or click the show notes on the podcast or YouTube and we'll help

you out with that. Ashley's in Tulsa. Hi Ashley, how are you? I'm doing well, how are you? Better than I deserve, how can I help? Well we have some quite a bit of debt so we're kind of looking at two options, kind of consolidating all of our debt or bankruptcy. So the primary debt is student loans, house, personal debt, and then medical and then car. Okay. You understand if you file bankruptcy, student loans are not bankruptable, and if you want to keep the house, it's not bankruptable, and if you want to keep the house, it's not bankruptable. And if you want to keep the car, it's not bankruptable.

So you're not really doing much filing bankruptcy. Okay. It's kind of useless. So how much is all these different debts? What's it all total up to? Not counting your house? Not including the house. Not including the house.

About $200,000. Okay. And what's your household income? 65. And what do you owe on the cars? We owe 22 on just one car. Okay. We actually have three vehicles and we own two. Okay. How much of its medical debt? About 10,000. Okay and so that's 32 of 200. What's the rest of it? Student loan debt is about 80,000 which is majority mine and then personal debt and credit card debt. What's the personal debt? Personal debt is if I'm doing my numbers right about 15,000 okay and credit cards 7,000 okay

you're nowhere near 200 am I not oh that's including that how okay what do y'all on the house we owe 89 what's it worth it's worth 130 okay and why are you guys only making 65? Who's not working? Well, we're actually both working. Um, I actually, well, my husband's job actually pulls in 45. I pull in only 19,000 a year. Um, because I actually work full time at a school. However, I only make like $15 an hour.

Um, but I am actually, uh, in the process of trying to find a better job. I would hope. Finishing my testing for teacher. That doesn't, that doesn't, even if you make more money, doesn't, it doesn't mean that you, just cause you have more money doesn't meet, doesn't erase the problems that you currently have. Yeah it does you pay them off. True true. You went $80,000 in debt to go do something not $15 an hour you didn't go

$80,000 in debt to do $15 an hour right? Yeah. Yeah so let's get our incomes up both of you and get in attack mode. Get you on a budget. List these debts smallest to largest. No more eating out and vacations. You're spending money like you're in Congress around there and y'all ain't making much. You're not working much. Y'all gotta get a bunch of hours, get your income up, and start attacking this debt like you're mad at it. And that'll make it go away, kiddo. And that'll make it go away, kiddo. Our scripture of the day, Philippians 4-8, finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever

is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. Herb Kelleher that started Southwest Air said the world isn't going to shower gold coins on you just because you have a good idea you're going to have to work like crazy to bring that idea to the attention of people. That's wonderful. Love it. Jennifer is with us in Phoenix. Hi Jennifer how are you? I'm fine how are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? That's what I expected.

Um, I have been a forever listener. Um, but I'm attempting to get out of the hole again. Um, I just got over three years of, uh, aggressive breast cancer and a post breast cancer cause neurological disorder and I am seriously in medical debt. It's causing me not to be able to work full-time. I did pay for long-term disability on my own so I am getting paid by that, which is $2,500 a month. Um, and I did move to a home that was less expensive, but I've been so sick for so long that, um, everything's it's just been, it, it, I went through everything I went through all my money and more I am. And, uh, I've, I raised three amazing children, one's in the Navy and you know and

Social Security disability as well? Well my long-term disability company demanded or actually required me to use their partner to help me get Social Security disability. But I'm now being told it's going to take two years. Okay, so you have $2,500 a month to live on. Yeah. My son in the Navy is paying me $300 for a room in my house so that he can keep the address there, which is like the most amazing thing. And I do work a little bit, but I've been told I can't make more than probably $1,500

a month and be... Agreed. And still be on long-term disability, yeah. Yeah, that's true. And at some point they're going to start following you around with cameras to make sure that you're not working, you know, so yeah Wait, I work from home. I work from home most I know but I mean they're paying you thirty thousand dollars a year to not work That's the point. So they're pretty and I don't have insurance days. I haven't had insurance since okay So how much why not?

I haven't had insurance since March. So how much, why not? Because I was on COBRA for 18 months and then I went on to the ACA and it was $1,500 a month because they were looking at my previous year which was too much. Yeah. So what do you, how much medical debt do you have? 50,000.

Okay. All right. And, um, no car, no car. I can't drive. So I sold my car, um, to live off of. I have cashed out two very small, uh, $5,000, uh, uh, IRAs. So where you start is food and you have enough for food then you go to lights and water and you have enough for that. Yes. And my mortgage is a thousand dollars a month. Okay, and we have enough for that. I'm I'm three months behind in that why Because I had two abdominal surgeries in

December and I wasn't able to work for for three months Okay, but my point my point is this I You know, you've got a very tough situation. There's no question about that. So what we have to do is we have to go all the way back to primitive basics, almost eighth grade civics class. We buy food before we buy anything.

We keep the lights and water on before we do that and we pay the house payment before we do anything else. Those three things first, food, shelter, clothing, transportation and utilities. Basic four walls of life and the medical bills simply are not going to get paid right now. Right. And I'm not paying credit cards. I only have like seven grand in credit cards. You can't pay them either. You can't pay them either. Can't pay them either. Right.

Not right now. Not right now. Right. Because this, but everything's temporary. It's either gonna get worse or it's gonna get better. Well, this is the question. Is do I just abandon it all because it's gonna take so long that there's no way it's not gonna, it's not gonna take so long because we're not gonna be exactly here five years from now. This situation this situation is not going to be the definition of your life for the next decade. It's the definition of your life for the next five months, but it's not for the next decade. How is it going to not be for the next five? I'm going to

make the assumption that some healing is going to occur. Well this is the question is I don't have medical insurance. I understand. So I haven't had my third year oncology appointment. I haven't had the critical appointments that will allow me to take the medication that I need. And the state is obviously taking forever because they're not getting answers. And I don't know what to do anymore. Can I ask a question? Those appointments, are you not going because you're just not able or because you're afraid

of the bills that will come because of it? Correct. What does the appointment take to go and see that one doctor for that one appointment you're talking about? Well, for my critical appointment, it will be probably a grand. Okay. I'd go get your care. $1,500. Go prolong your life.

You have the money to do that and eat and pay the house payment, but you don't have the money to do anything else. Right. So, you can scrape out the very basic appointments, you know, you can't do a 10 grand one, you don't have that. Unless they want to do it as a pro bono thing and as an act of kindness. And you can ask for that. I certainly would. But as far as I say, I think what's happening is, is the, there's the, well, you're a human. And so with all the hell you've been through, it's very easy to lose your,

a portion of your perspective. And so what I'm trying to do is block this out and set things to the side so that I can see clearly. Yes. And so I'm saying, I'm not worried about the $50,000 in debt. I'm not worried about the credit card debt today. We'll get around to that. We'll either bankrupt it, never pay it,

or we'll get around to paying it when you're healed and making good money and your life is back to some semblance of normal again. That's going to be a little while apparently. It's probably not 20 minutes from now, but it's also not 20 years from now. So something's going to happen and things are going to move in one direction or another, a devastating direction or a much better direction. And so, and in either case, the, uh, the medical bills will be dealt with. So I'm, you know, I'm not worried about those, but I do want you to go get the basic a thousand dollar item, a $500 item, a thousand dollar house payment and food and lights and water.

And other than that, I'm not paying anything. Right. You don't have the money. Well you know when people call... They just tell them I don't have any money. That's what I've been saying. I'm on death's bed. I'm a cancer survivor barely and right now I don't have a single dime because I don't have any money. I will call you back when I have some money and hang up. There's no sense having a conversation with them. They're what's called a bill collector. Right.

And all of that is getting, you know, somebody in a cubicle 500 miles away is getting in, is interfering with the forced ranking of priorities here. Right. And that's what I'm trying to force upon you is food. Right. Lights and water. I had a hard time with doing that. I keep going. Well you're a person of honor you would like to pay your bills and that's a good

thing. It's a person of integrity. But it's it's literally survival mode. But today the best way for you to pay your bills is to not pay your bills. Yeah, you gotta live. You gotta live first so that you can pay your bills. That's it. Yeah. I'm sorry kiddo. Man, what a mess. I'm so sorry.

Wow. That puts us out of the Ramsey Show and 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.