The Ramsey Show - App - Should I Buy a House While Still in Debt? (Hour 3)

Episode Date: December 6, 2023

Девочка-пай 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 amazing relationships. I'm George Campbell, joined by my good pal, Dr. John Deloney, and we are here to serve you, America. Give us a call at 888-825-5225, and we'll talk about your life and your money. Ashley is going to kick us off in Denver this hour. Ashley, welcome to the show. Thank you. Absolutely. How can we help? This question is mostly about my daughter, and we're trying to figure out how to help her. Um, she is 20 years old and she lives in a different state than us. Um, mostly just because it's pretty expensive here. Um, but she's really struggling. We're talking debt up the wazoo, and we're having some issues with some drugs, as well as making some poor choices where we have been in jail for short periods of time. And we just don't know what to do.

We want to help her. I mean, she calls me every week to talk, but I know giving her money financially is not a smart thing because it won't get used appropriately. Is she asking for money on these calls? She's mentioned it, and at this point, she stopped asking because we don't have it to give her. We're still working through Ramsey's baby steps ourselves. And I said, honey, we don't have that kind of money. And two, if you really look at your finances, you will find the money.

It's just about how you budget. What is she doing right now? Is she in school? Is she working? She was in school for a year, and she dropped out saying it wasn't for her, which is fine. Not everybody needs a four-year college degree. I believe that wholeheartedly. She's working on a farm now, and she loves it.

Is she still actively using? Yes. Unfortunately, and I wish I could give you different news, any sort of life change or behavior change or relationship change will have to come on the back end of her choosing to not be using anymore. Yeah. I know what she was using was legal in Colorado, but it's not really legal everywhere, and she just doesn't want to give it up.

Okay. And I think it's causing some behaviors. Yeah, well, yeah, of course. And so the only way I've seen people have effective relationships moving forward is that y'all meet somehow in person, whether she comes home to visit you for the holidays or you fly out there, you drive out there and you take her out. And I say this all the time and people kind of roll their eyes.

The reason I tell people to take somebody that they love when they have to have a difficult conversation to breakfast is twofold. Number one, it changes the environment. If you have a conversation in your house, the same old house that you got in trouble at when you were a kid or whatever, it just changes the dynamic. And there's a lot of literature about the psychological shift when you're in a different environment. That's number

one. Number two, if you wait till dinner, you get these marathon conversations that don't end till 10 or 11 or 12 at night. If you start at breakfast, the sun is up, it's eight in the morning, it's nine in the morning, it's 10 in the morning, and we can talk for a while and it's still sunshine outside. It still feels like there's some optimism and hope. Okay. But I think you have the conversation and say, me and your dad have decided we can help in this way or that way. That might be, she can come live with you as she goes to rehab she can um stay with she she can keep working on this farm and y'all will support x y or z if she wants to whatever y'all decide but it only comes on the back of she goes through some sort of treatment program or goes to

meet with a group and then she gets to hold all of the relational cards. And so the way you phrase it is, we don't work well without you being whole and well. And you get to choose whether you want to be whole or well and with us or not. It will break our heart if you choose something else, but you get to do that because you're an adult. And that way she can't say, they kicked me out. They don't love me.

I did this thing and they drew a line. No, you chose it. And I'm so heartbroken. We'll be right here when you get back. We love you, love you, love you, love you. That's the only way I've ever seen that be successful. And then you and your husband have to grieve and weep bitterly because one of the people you love more than anything on planet Earth is an adult, and adults have access to poor decisions,

and it's heartbreaking to see adults that we love making decisions that we know are destroying their lives. Yeah. I know it looks like she may be going back to jail, and we've talked about this, like she'll lose everything. We've talked about going out there'll lose everything um we've talked about going out there and getting a storage unit and helping her pack it up just because we're like what do we do like we can't not like we don't have control over that part but talking with her and

just saying we will pay for a storage unit for this many months, but after that... It sounds like you are more... You're more stressed about this than she is. What has the conversation been like on her side? Because it doesn't sound like she really wants to change her life at this point. Anytime she's gotten in trouble, she'll call me really upset. What does in trouble mean? I know when... Financially? with the cops with the cops financially um after she got out of jail she called me and said i don't know what to do like and um and contrary to popular belief or

what your friends might tell you saying that telling, if you're sober, come home right now. I'll come get you. I'll get you a flight. You can't bring drugs into my house and you can't come into my house if you're not of sound body and mind. But if you're sober, come home. That's okay. I don't think that's enabling. I think that's love and that's connection.

It's connection with boundaries, connection with accountability. And then she gets to make a choice. Yeah, I know she decided to leave at one point because we said we weren't going to allow the drugs in our house, and I didn't care if they were legal or illegal in this state, that it wasn't happening. And so she made a hard, difficult choice. She did, and it's not gotten better.

It's gotten worse. Yeah. Everything has. And it breaks my heart as a parent myself. You can't change another adult. No. And it feels powerless, huh? It does feel powerless.

And I mean, we've talked about trying to help her get out of debt by saying you can live here for free. Meals are free, obviously, like room and board. This is not a debt issue, hon. This is not a debt issue. You're trying to find a thing that you can fix for her, but none of this stuff improves until she's sober. Yeah. And right now, I don't think she's willing to be. I've told her that she's tried to negotiate different things with us so that she can come home, and I'm like, it always just feels wrong. And as a parent, she won't understand this

because she's not on the other side of it, but as a parent, the idea that I'd have to tell my kid, no, you can't come home unless dot, dot, dot, they'll never know how hard that is. I think you're doing the right thing. So sorry you're going through this, Ashley. I hate it for you. We're going to send you a copy of Dr. John Deloney's

Own Your Past, Change Your Future so you can heal and grieve and navigate this wild journey that you're on. So sorry you're going through it. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Campbell, joined by Dr. John Deloney. John, we've got a lot going on around here, and one of those things is the pre-sale for my new book, Breaking Free from Broke. Did you see the actual this is the real one, John. We got it the other day. It feels

just right. Is it everything you hoped and dreamed for? Well, number one, it's got you on the cover. That's really all I care about. That's what America needs right now. Usually, we need healing, John. They only put my face on it, so you got your whole B-O-D-Y on here, which is impressive, I'm not gonna lie. The further you zoom out from my face on it. So you got your whole BODY on here, which is impressive. I'm not going to lie. The further you zoom out from my face, the better it looks. So I want it

as small as it could be on the cover. I agree. The team did a great job with it. It's Breaking Free from Broke, the ultimate guide to more money and less stress. And this is my story. 10 years here at Ramsey, 10 years going from broke with $40,000 in debt to baby steps millionaire, unpacking all the traps. If you've listened to Borrowed Future or The Fine Print, the podcast that I hosted, it has that kind of investigative feel with tons of research, with tons of humor. And by the end, you're going to have the ick. You're going to want to shower and you're going to want to break free from this toxic matrix that we've all found ourselves in. As you listen to the calls on the show, you know exactly what I'm talking about. We are stuck in this cycle of debt because we have fallen for a system designed to keep us broke. And I will show you a clear path

to break free and have more margin, more options, more joy than ever before. And it's on sale right now for 20 bucks at ramseysolutions.com slash store. And we'll throw in a hundred bucks in free bonus items like the e-book, audio book, a free talk, on video, an exclusive online event and so much more. So I appreciate

everyone who's checked it out so far, John. When does it actually hit the streets? Hits the streets January 16th is the pub date and so pre-order before then

and you'll get all of those goodies. This is the book I wish I had that, you know, everything you wish you knew about money. This is money 201, 301, 101, and it's conversational because I don't know how to write. So I wrote like a fifth grader. It's very easy to read and conversational. All right,

let's get to the calls. Cameron joins us in my hometown, Boston, Massachusetts. What's going on, Cameron? Hey guys, thanks for taking my call. Thank you for having the accent I was hoping you would have. I'm just going to say that. Oh, God. I just wanted to start off by saying thank you for motivating me. As of now, I'm through Baby Step 1. And as of yesterday, I have paid off $5,000 out of $6,000 of my credit card debt. Way to go, man.

Dude. How does it feel? Yeah, it feels great. What credit card debt way to go man how does it feel yeah it feels great what credit card is it what's that what what credit card is it uh it was uh capital one oh man are you gonna miss it yeah nope because i cut it up amen man i'm proud of you how can we help today you're gonna have to use cash at your Harvard boss. Did I do it right? John just offended all people groups right there somehow. I love that.

So the reason for my call today, guys, is I'm 26, and I'm still living at home. I moved back in to help me out with finances and stuff. I still have a good bit of debt and I have a savings account, which, um, would help me pay off my truck a little bit, but I'm also keeping it around because it's basically like six months of an emergency fund. Um, so basically where I'm at today is I don't, I don't know if I want to sacrifice that to dig into my truck or keep it around for a house. Because I'm obviously really trying to save up for a house and I don't want to see that money just go. But you're seeing that money just go every month when you make a payment on a depreciating asset.

I understand. It's just whether you want it to go today or later but it's going okay I'm going to give you some hard news and that is Cameron's plan has not been working and it will not work in the foreseeable future if you continue to carry this debt

use this money to buy a house which then depletes the emergency fund while you still have debt you got to do things in a certain order with focus intensity. And that's the Ramsey baby steps. And it's the same one I followed to get out of $40,000 in debt in 18 months and buy a house the right way with peace. And you're going to get there. It may take, you know, a few years longer than you wanted it to, but right now that money's spoken for because it's got, you know, Ford Motor Company's name on it because you owe on this truck.

So how much do you have in savings? So after paying the credit cards off, I have about $10,000 left in my emergency fund. Okay. And six months of expenses is around $8,000. So I have the $1,000 emergency fund, and then I have that other savings account with $10,000 in it. So you got $11,000 to your name, and what's left on your debt? You got $1,000 on credit card. What else? I owe $32,000 on the truck. Whew.

What do you make? How much money do you make? This year, I'm going to bring home about $65,000. Dude, that is a lot of truck for a guy with your income. It is a lot of truck. What do you use that truck for? So I got into the electrical union, so it was a little bit of an impulse buy. I'm not going to lie.

Can it be an impulse sell like this weekend? I know. It would be tough to part ways with, but I guess I could sacrifice that. Are there not more trucks out there? There are definitely more trucks out there. So could you downgrade and truck and do it with cash? I could. I could. What if, what would that truck sell for?

If you did, you know, got the most you could for it. So the dealer would probably lowball me at like 26, but I could put it up on facebook and probably get 30 okay and you have the money as aside could you get a cheap truck right now to beat around in and then upgrade later yes this gets you out of debt completely right or do you have more debt no that's it just the 32 on you're free! Dude, I would be free tomorrow instead of trying to arduously pay this thing off. It's going to take you a while

to pay off $32,000. And it's just going to continue to be worth less and less and less and less. Which is also going to delay you from buying a house, which you told us is your dream. Yeah, absolutely.

So do you want a house or do you want a sweet truck that's going down in value every day? I really would like a house. And if you meet somebody and she goes outside and sees this truck, you're like, yeah, that's right. This is my truck. And right now you have to take her to your mom's house. Not that cool.

So what if you just bit the bullet, sold the truck, you're debt free, worked really hard to get your own place. By the age of 30, you're a total, I mean, your life is so transformed, you wouldn't even recognize it. Yeah, that would be, that would be nice. Um, so if I sell the truck and still, you know, if I only get $30,000 for it, it's obviously okay to dip into the savings and pay the difference. Cover the difference, yep. Yeah, you're free, man. Cover the difference.

That leaves you with $8,000, and you need a car still. So you're going to get something that will get you around for maybe, you know, $7,000, leaving you with $1,000, but now look at where you're at. You've got no debt. You have all your income to your name, and now we can restock this emergency fund up to six months, then we can start working on that home down payment, and we'll get another 30, 40, 50k over time. And when you don't have debt weighing you down, you're going to get there faster. You get to be your own bank, dude.

Yeah, that sounds great to me. Are you a good electrician? That wasn't rhetorical. Are you a good electrician? That wasn't rhetorical. Are you a good electrician? No. I'm an apprentice, so. But someone's paying you $65,000 a year to do this. Yeah, yeah. I'm still working my way, but I'm getting better and better every day.

I'm learning. That's pretty good to be terrible at your job. You're my favorite person to talk to today. You're awesome. He admits, I'm not good at my job, but I get paid $65,000. People ask me, are you good at the radio? I go, no, not great, not great. No, I am good at my job.

I just don't know everything. Obviously, every day I learn stuff, so it's good to... That's good. Well, I say that to say this. Nobody's hiring you because of your truck. They're hiring Cameron because they trust him to do the electrical work needed to be done. Absolutely.

And so the truck is for Cameron to feel good about himself, and I want you to feel good about yourself aside from a thing that you own. Yeah. Are you dating anybody, Cameron? I am. I've been with my girlfriend for six years, and we're mutually working hard to,

you know, save up for this house. Okay. I want to challenge you. Okay. Will you do a 90 day challenge? Sure. You can have a couple of days off for Christmas. Here's my 90 day challenge. You get done with your apprentice work and you're exhausted. You high five your mom, you give your girlfriend a shout, and then you go deliver pizzas in that cold winter. Or you go bartend, or you go work security. You go do something for 90 days on top of your apprentice job. And in three months, you're going to be so tired you can't see straight, and you will have completely transformed your financial life. In unfathomable,

fathomable ways. People underestimate how much they can radically change your life in three months. Go for it. Game on. Go. I'm George Campbell joined by Dr. John Deloney. This is The Ramsey Show. It's a free call at 888-825-5225. It is that time of the year, folks. In a few weeks, we are going to be doing a special giving edition of The Ramsey Show, and we want to hear stories from you about how you have given generously this season. Maybe you tipped that waitress $100. You bought Thanksgiving dinner for a family who couldn't afford it. Maybe you blessed someone in need by giving them a car, or maybe you've been on the receiving end of generosity and had your life changed by it. We want to hear from you. We want to hear your stories. We want to inspire others with it. So here's what you need to do. Go to ramsaysolutions.com

slash ask and put giving in the subject line. And our team will be reaching out and sourcing some of the best stories and sharing them on the show. We do this every year at Christmas. It's one of our most popular shows, and it's happening on December 18th. I'll be on with our good friend Dave Ramsey, and we'll be sharing those stories. So start sending them in today, and let's celebrate living like no one else so you can give like no one else. RamseySolutions.com slash ask. Iris joins us in North Dakota. Iris, us in North Dakota. Iris, welcome to the show. Hi, thank you for taking my call.

Absolutely. How can John and I help? Okay, so recently I had searched on YouTube on how to get out of debt because I'm a little bit deep in. One of the major ones is I owe to the IRS. And I was just wondering if it was smart or not to dip into my 401k to pay for that. Do you have any other debt? Yes. Credit card, personal loans, and my car. Okay. Well, I'll answer your question, and that's the short answer, and the answer is no, do not pull from your 401K to pay off the IRS. How much do you owe them?

Ten grand, a little bit under ten grand. Okay. Like nine something. Have you been in contact with them? Are you on some kind of payment plan? Where does it stand? Recently, I logged back into my IRS account and I started making payments. As soon as I get like some cash, I would just put it in there and try to pay it off. But I read through some information that that would be like the first one to pay off. Correct. Aside of my other debt.

Yeah. So you want to make minimum payments on all of your debts, but the IRS debt goes to the top of what we call the debt snowball. So we usually say, hey, list all your debts, smallest to largest, attack the little one with a vengeance. Once you knock that one out, move on to the next smallest debt. But IRS debt is different because the IRS can royally screw up your life and they can garnish your wages. And so we put that at the very top of the list. That is your A1 is to get rid of this debt. You do nothing else. You don't save, you don't invest, you don't buy things, you pay off the IRS. So how quickly could you do that if you got really intense and just focused on that? Well, that's been my plan because I recently found you guys and I did

started to do the no bond, the baby steps. I did, I just recently did a baby step number one and I saved a thousand dollars. And in the meantime, I have been paying little by little because I have two jobs. I work nonstop, and I get cash tips. So any cash that I get, I deposit it and then pay the IRS. What's your income? Well, it depends because, you know, as a server, it varies. But last year I made $70,000. Awesome.

I did serving, I work in a school, and I do like bride share on the weekends. So if you went all out, you were working nonstop, all of these jobs, how quickly could you pay off the $10,000 while making minimum payments and just covering your basic bills, food, shelter, utility, transportation? Could you do this in four months, five months? I believe I can. My friends think that I'm going crazy because I've been reading like the Ramsey books and Rachel Cruz and I've been, I put a lot of stuff on sale and people are questioning my sanity. You know who's insane? I'm fine. I'm just trying to like come up with the money and get out of this hole that I'm in

before I can, you know, continue with my savings and paying everything off. Hey, Iris, you know who's crazy? Your broke friends. Oh, my God. Your friends are broke. Like, I have my friends buy some of my stuff stuff and she's like are you okay like your house like you worked so hard for it i'm like but you don't understand my situation because everything that i

have most of it is on credit cards yes like i've learned welcome to the gang iris or the cult as some call us welcome this is This is a great sign. You know what you are? You're free. You're heading straight to freedom. Yes. I'm so proud of you. I feel so calm,

but at the same time, I just feel like I need to keep going and going and going. So do not dip into my 401k. Can I give you a great quote that will inspire you, Iris? Yeah, of course. It's the first quote of my new book, Breaking Free from Broke.

This is how it opens. It's a C.S. Lewis quote. When the whole world is running toward a cliff, he who is running in the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind. That's you. You're going against the grain. You're going against what culture is doing, against what your broke friends are doing, and it looks like you've lost your mind.

But instead, you were running away from the cliff instead of towards it. So we are so proud of you. You're doing all the right things, but we've got to aggressively get this IRS debt off our back. What's the rest of your debt? What's the total? The total, $48,663, and that includes my car payment, or my car and a personal loan. What's the car worth, and what do you owe on it? I owe $13 on it, and I think I bought it for $23. Okay. Well, we'll keep the car. I was seeing if that was the ankle biter we could get rid of, but it's not that much of your world. I would just aggressively pay it off and the debt snowball.

And I think you're going to be out of debt. I mean, you got a total of $10,000 plus the $48,000. You got $58,000 in debt. You make $70,000. That's how much I made last year. And this year I haven't done much of the ride share, but I've been picking it up on the weekends because that's when it gets the busiest.

What do you want to do? What do you want to do long-term? I'm not sure yet. I had future plans because I had planned on getting my husband here from another country and I did, but things didn't work out. So that let me, that left me in a little bit of debt and I counted on his where is he like on his income um he's here now but I'm not counting on his support financially and that's that's one thing that I had in mind but uh because he was going to help me pay off like what like one of the personal debts was that I

I took it alone to get him here you know he is here but we're separated now so now I'm left with that and um and I just need to get out of this by myself sorry to hear that Iris that that definitely throws a wrench in your plans. Oh, yeah. It's okay. I mean, I've always been alone. So I know I can do this, but I know I've been really financially irresponsible. And honestly, I've never sat down and thought about all the debt that can accumulate within the years and the interest and all the payments. Whenever I sat down and I wrote all these down in paper, that's when I'm like,

Oh my God, where is all my money going? Yeah. Your money's making other people rich. Yes. That's the best reality check. And I had to cancel on like trips and like I was supposed to go on a trip for Christmas and I had to cancel that.

Or in February I had another trip to go to Mexico for Christmas, and I had to cancel that. And February, I had another trip to go to Mexico for a campaign, and I had to cancel that. And I just have to say no to a lot of things. But I know that in the future, it's going to be worth it because I'm going to be free, and all my hard work is going to pay off. Absolutely. That's awesome. We were going to give you some resources, Iris. Number one is EveryDollar Premium, and that's going to help you. You said, hey, I put this on

paper. I'm going to help you put it digitally so you can carry it around in the palm of your hand on your phone and make a plan. And I'm also going to give you a copy of our friend Ken Coleman's book, From Paycheck to Purpose, which is going to help you figure out what that next step is for your career journey, because I think that's what you need. You need something stable that you can dig into for the next 20, 30, 40 years that you love to do, that you get paid well to do as you build wealth. So hang on the line. Hey, Austin, get her the Get Clear Assessment too.

Boom. We're hooking you up, Iris. Use it. Call us back. Let us know if we can help in any other way, and we'll celebrate your debt-free scream when you get there. This is The Ramsey Show. This is The Ramsey Show. Our scripture of the day comes from Proverbs 16, 24.

Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones. Mark Twain once said, never argue with stupid people. They will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience. One of my favorite quotes, John. It reminds me every time I jump into the YouTube comment section, I go, this was a mistake. Should have listened to Twain on that one. I think we'd all be a little better off if we listened to Twain. Agreed. In life.

He was the original tweeter. I mean, the man just spoke in tweets. But it's one of those reminders that, like, we're not doing anything new. We're finding bigger ways to blow holes in the ship and sink it faster, but human nature is human nature. Yeah, and that was before he had social media. It would have been a dark time for Twain to be around today. No way. He would have beat the cancellation.

Let's get to the calls. I need some hope, John. Let's see if Cooper can provide that in Olympia, Washington. Cooper, what is going on? Hey, how's it going? I appreciate you taking the call. Absolutely. What's going on with you? Oh, I've got hopefully a simple question you can answer. So I'm 21 years old and I'm trying to figure out if I'm currently renting out a house. I'm trying to figure out if now is a good time to start looking at purchasing my own home or it would be better to increase my savings and whether I invest the stuff I have now to maybe further my down payment.

I'm kind of a little bit lost because I got a new job, and so I'm looking for what's the next step. Okay. Give us a little bit of your financial picture. Do you have any debt? I'm debt-free. I've got roughly like $25,000 in my savings account, and then I've got $31,000 in a CD loan that I'll be pulling out in January. And is that $25,000, is that your emergency fund uh nope that's that's savings that's everything i've got in the bank okay so do you have a separate emergency fund i do not have a separate emergency fund okay let's call, three grand a month.

So, so about 20. So 18,000. Okay. So let's call 20 your emergency fund and we're not going to touch that. That's not going to be part of this home buying process. So outside of 20, you have the, the other five plus the 31? Yep. And then I have 12,000 inside of a Roth, a Vanguard Roth IRA that I started two years ago. But now that with my new job, I have the option to use a Roth as my deferred comp.

And so I've just been putting all my money into that rather than my Vanguard Roth. And I didn't know if that was something that I should pull out and use for that because I'm not so sure certain how much 12 grand over a long period of time is going to help out. I mean, it would turn into a whole lot if you left it alone. I definitely would not unplug the growth and tap into that. I know there are some people say, hey, you can dip into your Roth and take out the contributions without penalty. I wouldn't do that in your shoes. You're a young guy. You've got plenty of time for compound growth to do its thing.

I would use future income and current savings for this home purchase. And you'll get there. What's your income? Yeah, so it works a little different. So right now I'm making like roughly $89,000, but I have step pace over the next five years. I get a pretty significant increase and by roughly year five, I'm on year one right now. Year five, roughly will be probably $115,000. Awesome. So we're going to call it $90,000 for now. How much can you save making $90,000 with no debt

if you just focus on saving up for that down payment? How much could you save in a year? I'm bringing home roughly about $2,000 into my savings each month, so $24,000. And that's before overtime. I could bump that numbers up with overtime for sure. Awesome. So if we take your 36, we add 24 over the next year, that brings you to a total of 60 grand you have for a down payment.

Yeah. So what is your home? The parameter that will help you with this to figure out the math on it is you want to have the mortgage payment be no more than a quarter of your after-tax income on a 15-year fixed. And you can use our mortgage calculator on our website to start crunching the numbers. And what that does, it helps you figure out what kind of home budget should I be looking for and what kind of down payment do I need to accomplish that goal. I see. Okay. And then, you know, as far as over this next, you know, the year that I'm going to be going to be working, saving up for that down payment, you know, what should I be doing with my money? Because, you know, I'm renting right now. And so that's a little annoying just because I know I'm basically burning money. And then I know that having my money just in a savings account is losing valuable. No, Cooper. Cooper, my money right now is in a savings account.

Is it? And you know how much sleep I lose? Zero. It's in a high-yield savings account. You know who else is? George. Okay. You've got to unbelieve this narrative that renting is your burning money.

Renting shows patience. It shows responsibility as you get your financial house in order. Because you know what's really burning money? When you can't afford the mortgage because it's 60% of your take-home pay because you bit off more than you can chew before you were ready. And those are the calls we get on this show. And the air conditioner goes out or the hot water heater goes out or whatever, whatever. So, I will tell you what I did as to how I got

a huge down payment saved and how we paid off our house early. We put the money in a high yield savings account. And I'll tell you at the time it was a 2% interest rate on savings accounts. And my wife and I were freaking out. We were like, we are making money hand over fist with this. And now it's four or 5%. And so you can make some decent money just holding money in a savings account. Don't invest it. Don't put it in a CD, locking your money away with penalties if you take it out early. Just put it in a high-yield savings account and be patient and sign the lease for another year as you continue to rent and save up more money. Ideally, I want you to put 20% down. I think for a young guy making really good money who's debt-free, you should be able to put 20% down, avoid that PMI, private mortgage insurance, and keep that payment to no more than a quarter of your take-home pay. Hey, Cooper, are you the first guy in your gang

to make this kind of money? Yeah. Yeah, I am. Okay. What about your family? I would say my parents are, they definitely didn't start where I was at. Okay. You know, they're the retirement age now. And so maybe the last two years they were getting roughly what I am now. So let's, let's round up and say you're making a hundred grand. There's this perception with people who don't have a hundred grand that all of their problems would be solved with a hundred grand and if they had a hundred grand they could buy any car they wanted any house they wanted and what are you doing you make a hundred grand you're renting you're gonna drive a used truck you idiot you make a hundred grand if you want to be a

millionaire you gotta slow down and you have to change you have to be a millionaire, you got to slow down. And you have to change. You have to not take money advice from broke people or from people who don't know what they're talking about on the internet. If you will rent for 12 months and you will dump all this money after you pay your debts off into a high-yield savings account and just be patient. This is just the slow pain of getting in shape. It's every day. You're going to wake up in a year and you will have transformed your entire financial

picture. Okay. Don't listen to anybody. Be slow and boring, dude. Slow and boring. Are you investing right now as well? Yeah, so... How much? What percentage? Initially, I started working in high school, and that's when I was putting all my money into that Vanguard Roth. And then from high school to essentially this last February, where I got this new job, I just basically been working 80 hours a week trying to boost my savings account as much as I can. And so I was putting all my money into that Vanguard Roth. But now that I've got my new job,

I'm just putting in $700 into my 457B. Okay. I say that because it could, if you're really jonesing to get a house, you can pause investing for a short time so that you have an extra $700 to put towards the savings goal. Yeah. If that's going to be the difference. When you say short period of time, how long is that? Yeah, no longer than a year or two. If it's going to be longer than two years to get this house, I would continue investing. And you can split the difference.

Maybe you do $200 or $300. But if you're really jonesing for a house, which I would caution to have patience and do it when you're ready, that's an option to speed this process up because you're already working your tail off, man. You're crushing it. I'm proud of you. You're doing the right things. Just don't get distracted and be the tortoise, not the hare. That puts this hour of the Ramsey Show in the books. My thanks to Dr. John Deloney, all the folks in the booth keeping the lights on and the audio going, and you, America. Thanks for listening. We'll be back before you know it.