The Ramsey Show - App - Should I Keep Putting Money Into My Old Car? (Hour 3)

Episode Date: July 8, 2024

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Jade Walsh, our Ramsey personality, is my co-host. Thank you for joining us, America. We're so glad you're here. Open phones at 888-825-5225. April is with us in Detroit. Hi, April.

Hi, how are you? Great. What's up? I was calling to see if I should buy a new car. I have put about over $6,000 in the car over the last less than two months. And I am a single parent, so I'm just like, I'm a little overwhelmed with the amount of money that I'm dumping into the car. $6,000 in two months? Did you rebuild it? I had to put a new transmission in and then this morning my car wouldn't start

and the tow truck driver told me that I could possibly be looking at a new engine. They did however call me back and let me know that it would be a new starter so I would be looking at another $600 so when I look at the value of my car it is around $7,000 but I also have a daughter that is going into high school and I just want to make sure that I have something that is good on the road but at the same time I'm not trying to go into more debt you owe money on the $7,000 car yes oh how much um oh well not if I buy a new car no honey how much do you have any money laying around at all just i'm trying to get a snapshot about five thousand dollars left and all of this money is coming out of my savings that i put to the site to buy a house what do you you have set aside? The $5,000 is all that's left, period? Yes. Okay. So I'm a bit frustrated. Yeah, I bet. Because how much did you start with?

I was like right around $12,000. I'm sorry. What's your income? I make around $65,000 a year. Okay, good. You know, for me, I'd want to start looking and seeing what's out there. You know, your car's worth $7,000. You owe $4,800 on it. If you sold it, what would you get? $7,000. Yeah, and I looked up the Kelly Blue Book. It's at a great price.

I could get about $65,000, $7,000. Yeah, I'd probably try to get out of it and put some more money with it and get into something else. But this time around, I would do a lot more research on getting the car. If I were in your shoes, I'd be asking around, does anybody have a car that they're selling? Is there anybody at my church who has a car and they were the only driver and I can get into it for super cheap? That's the type of research I'd want to do because if you're going to choose an older car with more miles, you do want to know what you're getting into. Flat out.

Here's what you're looking for, okay? You're looking for a car that no one thinks is impressive. All we're looking for is reliability, okay? Okay. You would trade. What kind of car have you got now? A 2016 Ford Fusion. Okay. All right.

So we want to get a car that has a little bit of size to it, a little bit of substance to it. Um, and, uh, the drive train and the engine have a little bit of oomph to them. Um, they're not being strained every time you start the stupid thing. And these, these little baby cars, they're not being strained every time you start the stupid thing and these these little baby cars they're always in a strain and so um it's always a problem and so you're looking for uh something like a used camry a used accord um a used taaurus, something like that,

and that family of mid-sized vehicles, you're looking for something that probably is going to have to have a name because it's ugly. Old Blue, Big Red, Bessie, okay? But Bessie has very few miles. A horrible paint job in the interior is not much. The radio might not work. Certainly doesn't have Apple Play. Okay?

So Bessie is 100% of the time going to turn on when you turn the key and get you there, and 100% of the time is not going to get you a date. And I'm okay with that yeah okay as long as i get to where i yeah that's what we're after we see you get my point i call them garage sale cars because sometimes you'll find a five thousand dollar car like that in the garage of a granny who's died and they're having an estate sale and it's got dust half an inch thick on it and it smells like estee lauder inside right that's the kind of car you're looking for that's that's the one i want right there because she has you know it's faded and so nobody knows how much love is left in this thing but there's a lot of love left in it that's the type of vehicle you're looking for

the second piece of advice i'll give you do you have family in the area i do okay are you in a good are you in a good church yes i am okay good get a guy from one of those two pools from church or family that knows a little bit about vehicles to help you shop for two reasons one is they'll give you information but i think you're capable of doing it two is sometimes people that are selling cars um are the most sexist human beings on the planet and an ugly guy standing there who don't know nothing i'll get further than a brilliant woman standing there. And that's not right, but it is a fact. And so if you got your old Uncle Henry standing there and he's scratching his armpit and he just shakes his head,

that sometimes will make you $1,000 on the dadgum negotiation. You follow me? Yes. And it might be that Unclery actually knows something about a car too that'd be a handy um and so you don't step off into it again then the last thing i'll give you is this i've got two more things i can't stop because you're just you're i think you're incredible okay you've been fighting a battle all by yourself and been losing and and you just called us just to say i don't know what to do i. I'm scared. And I think you're stronger than you think you are.

You're a warrior princess. Okay? So here's the deal. The next time you have a $7,000 car, never put $6,000 in it again. You cut bait sooner than that. Okay? We don't spend $6,000 on a $7,000 car. We sell it for salvage and take the $6,000 and buy a good car.

You don't put more in a car than it's worth. And then the last thing in this series of instructions I'm giving you is, this too shall pass. You're still going to get a house. It's just going to be a little bit longer than you thought it was because of this stupid car. But you're still going to get there. You're still going to be a little bit longer than you thought it was because of this stupid car. But you're still going to get there. You're still going to win. And 10 years from now, this will be a story you tell your kids about the time you went and bought old Bessie.

And you're going to be okay. This is The Ramsey Show. Jade Walsh, all Ramsey personality. Best-selling author is my co-host speaking of best-selling authors one of my good friends dr henry cloud dropped by he is uh the author of the famous book boundaries among many others and uh integrity and necessary endings and and and and and many others and henry and i um inside baseball are good friends we spend a lot of time together our wives do and uh last winter he sent me a manuscript and i was sitting and reading it and tears running

down my face and i went henry this is a different henry cloud book this is way different than anything you've done the new book is out it is officially a national bestseller. It came out a couple of weeks ago, Why I Believe, A Psychologist's Thoughts on Suffering, Miracles, Science, and Faith. This book is different for you, and it was real personal, real vulnerable for you, wasn't it? It was very vulnerable. I never had done that before. You know, I write books on psychology and business, and sometimes how faith interacts with that. I never had written one on faith, and it's probably the easiest way to summarize it is in the preface. It starts with, I have a problem, and this book is my attempt to

solve it. I love God. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he's real. He's proven that to me for decades. That's not my problem. My problem is I love my friends, and many of them don't know him. And I struggle sometimes with how to talk to him. He's a hard conversation with some people. And it's divisive for some people. They feel threatened. They feel uneasy. They feel like you're trying to convert them. And I had so many friends in business and other places that just never have gotten into that conversation. I said, Dadgummit, that's not being a good friend either. I'm going to solve my problem.

So all the things we never talked about. Why I believe. Why I believe. This is why I'm one of those weirdos. Why you're one of those christians yeah one of us christians i like it but the attack you the the way you go at it the um approach is almost like um like you're solving the objections it's like okay you think this but here's what i see and then some people think this and this is what i see and yeah and you walk through several different chapters on that and uh how suffering

miracles science and faith all can coexist yeah it started i didn't know any other way to do except tell my story um which came out of deep suffering i mean i was almost non-functional depressed way back when and um reached out to god one day didn't know if he was really there or not, and he showed up. And, you know, the book goes through the whole sad story, how he took me from hitting the pavement to being above the waterline, how he healed me. But then also a lot of miracles that I've seen along the way. And the why, why i believe started out with me realizing that he was real but then when i when i became a christian in a real way all of a sudden i had all these intellectual quandaries because everybody told me you know science is

disproving the bible it's a bunch of myths and all this so i did a deep dive for a long time into those questions as an intellectual, you've got a problem. Yeah, you put your brain in a jar or something. And so the book kind of also goes through how those questions were resolved for me. And then it ends up with one area of science I actually know something about, and that's psychology. And I talk about how the science of psychology proved the bible to me to be true and a lot of people know you as one of america's great psychologists and you've written and spoken

all over the world on these subjects um but i i don't think a lot of people know the story that you actually are a wounded healer, that you actually came out of. The way you got into psychology was you discovered it on your own path to healing. Right. You know, one of my favorite verses says, we comfort others with the comfort by which God has comforted us. Sort of like your story. I mean, you didn't start off above the waterline in finance.

No, bankrupt, yeah. But coming through mean, you didn't start off above the waterline in finance. No, bankrupt, yeah. But coming through struggle, you learn things. And what I learned in that struggle was that there are real answers to healing. I mean, we can heal from this stuff, major stuff, you know, PTSD, depression, anxiety, all of that. But there are ways that that has to happen. And God took me through those, and then I learned more about them. And slowly, I just realized, gosh, that's something I wanted to give my life to. And that's how it happened. Yeah. You know, I'm a Christian person, too. I'm a Christ follower. And I think the number one thing that people have a hard time reconciling is if God is real, why is there so much suffering? Why

would all these horrible things be happening? And so it sounds like you're talking about that very question inside of this book. I did get that question pretty deeply. Yeah, because to me, that's the hardest one. Absolutely. and especially when people are in deep suffering not only the big existential you know meta theological question of if god's good and all powerful why all this stuff but it's way more personal than that for people it's like you know why is my child suffering? Why was I abused? Where was God then? Why doesn't he stop all this? And we know, and if you scratch the internet too deep to find out God still heals today, miraculous things,

but then what about the people that aren't healed? Because they're in the pain. And that question, to me, that's the hardest one of all. And went pretty deeply into that one. What about the scientific side of it? Because for a lot of folks, there's almost like that curse of knowledge. It's like I know so much and I rely so much on logic and these other sides of things that for a lot of people,

it just doesn't feel, it just feels more like a fairy tale than like. Well, it does feel like a fairy tale if we've been told fairy tales and you know if you talk to most people well you know i don't believe in faith i believe in science and you go very deeply into that and you if you know enough to ask the questions a lot of people just repeat that line to you but when i went deeply, the first thing that really dawned on me and clearly emerged was this isn't an IQ question. It's not like dumb people believe in this and smart people don't. When I get into the science and the various fields which I talked about,

you know, astrophysics and cell biology and all of this deep, deep stuff, so many of the leading scientists themselves, the science led them to faith. I mean, you can start with complicated design, but what actually gets into it, when you begin to see, science can only look at what exists and examine what exists. Then you have to jump into faith, both on the atheistic side and the believing side. The atheists have to say, well, since there's no God, it must have just happened once. We must have gotten something from nothing.

We must have gotten life from non-life. And that's an act of faith too. And so we're not really talking about science versus faith. We're talking about faith versus faith when you get past the science. Because you got to interpret what is somehow. It takes a lot more faith for me and a lot of other people especially really really like like um you know francis collins the guy that unmapped all the human genome and the all of that that's what brought him to faith so it's not like idiots only believe there are a lot of smart people that the science drove them to faith sir ezekiel yep yeah even darwin one of my favorite things i put in the book darwin himself said the human eye causes me to shudder it takes a lot of faith to think a booger a piece of goo turned into that

thing that does all that it does this human eye yeah that's evolution the essence of it the book is why i believe by dr henry cloud new y New York Times bestselling author of Boundaries and many others many times over. He's been informing you about a lot of things in your life over the years. And now he's talking about why he believes. Why I believe. Dr. Henry Cloud. Be sure and check it out, boys and girls. I read it in manuscript form.

I've endorsed it. I'm probably on here. Yeah, there I am right there on the back. Who knew? There it is. And it's what happens when you're friends.'s a good book worth the read good to see you my friend it's good to see y'all thanks dr henry cloud this is the ramsey show you guys notice real estate out there is weird right now

it's weird if you're gonna buy a house in this current environment and you should if you're ready because they're not going anywhere but up you need a really good real estate agent in your corner if you're gonna sell a house in this current environment you need a really good real estate agent in your corner and i'm not talking about your uncle henry who got his license three weeks ago and i never sold a house in his life and he's going to sell your $300,000 house that's dumb just tell Uncle Henry you love him but no thanks get somebody that's an actual pro that does 50 100 200 transactions a year knows what the flip they're doing that's who Ramsey trusted agents are we don't have anybody in the Ramsey trusted real estate agent program that's not a high producer

high octane high protein get her done proven track record that's and by the way they know the ramsey stuff inside and out and so they're not going to give you advice it's contrary to what you're hearing here on the air either we call them elps endorsed local providers they live there in your neighborhood but they're the best of the best in your area and they have become ramsey trusted agents be sure and check them out if you want to find out who is ramsey trusted in your area uh you can do that for free at ramseysolutions.com slash agent then you talk to them and you interview them and see if you find the same thing that we found when we talked to them and we interviewed them and we coached them because we do all of those things. Marie is with us.

Marie's in Philadelphia. Hi, Marie. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? So I'm currently living in hotels.

I can't seem to find an apartment. I've been looking for a roommate. What should I do? You can't seem to find an apartment. Why? My credit score is abysmal. Okay. Are you working?

Yes, full time. What do you make? I take in $87,000 a year before taxes 87 000 a year yeah good for you what do you do i'm an occupational therapist how'd you end up homeless um well i moved from state to state for love and a relationship, and that did not work out. And my only real option at the time was to find a hotel for temporary housing, and I really didn't have anything saved up. I wasn't prepared.

Do you have any money now? No, because I'm basically spending $2,200 a month just to keep a roof over my head. But you make $87,000. Yeah. You must have a lot of debt payments. Where else is your money going? Yeah, so I have a car lease, and I have my student loan debt.

How much are the student loans? Tell me the amounts, if you don't mind. Yeah, I think they're probably at $275,000 right now in student loan debt. $275,000? Yes. Okay. What else? And then, you know, car insurance, my phone, and food.

That's really what I've got money for. Tell me about the car lease. It ends next month. Okay, good. About $340 a month. I'm not even sure if I'm going to be able to get a car by the time that's over. So Dave asked you the question and it was kind of a vague answer. I want to know financially what put you here because you've got the 275 in student loans how much is that for you per month with your income um it's about a thousand dollars a month okay are you current no have you been paying it no are are they federal um part of them are federal and part of them are private. Okay.

Marie, I'm struggling, okay? You've not paid that. You paid a $300 payment. You make $87,000 and you paid a hotel bill. That's all you've done. Where is all your money going, kiddo? It is going to eating out. I only have a microwave here, so I can't really cook traditional meals.

So I'm eating out and just trying to survive with food and drink. And it goes to my phone bill. and just trying to survive with food and drink. And it goes to my phone bill. $84,000 is $7,000 a month minus taxes. You should be getting $5,000 a month coming home. I take home $2,200 every two weeks because I put in about like $300 every paycheck into my 401k. Well, I reckon you need to stop that. Okay, let's stop your 401k, and that gets you to $4,800 then take-home pay, which is pretty close to what I'm talking about. And then you can start to, even with eating out and even with a hotel bill you can uh still stack some cash so um

i i'm gonna um i can't tell what's going on in the numbers but numbers generally talk to me because i've done this a long time so i think what i'm hearing is a highly educated very intelligent lady whose heart got broken oh let me take that further got crushed and you've been in a spiral emotionally since and everything's out of control yeah is that right yes okay all right because the numbers aren't telling me anything else it because you're too smart you're're too intellectually bright to be in this situation if you were functioning at a normal level. And right now you're functioning with a broken heart. And it's clouding everything.

You're spending all of your calories and your emotional energy going over and over and over and over this and feeling ashamed for having chased somebody that dumped you and feeling bad that the guy wasn't worth your trouble and all the different things or whatever it is we do when we're in your situation and normal humans do it so you're not a bad person you're not a weak person you're just um been stomped on and you're hurting and it causes your math to get screwed up does that make sense yeah Yeah. Okay. Because here's what I hear.

You've got plenty of money to go rent an apartment. Lots of places will rent somebody with bad credit an apartment. You just put up a good deposit, and you get out of $2,200 a month, and you get straightened out. Where did you move from to move to Philadelphia? I moved from Voorhees. Where's that? In New Jersey. Okay, okay. So just down, just a few hours away. Do you have family back there? My mom is further south in Jersey,

down by the shore, and my dad is in South Carolina. How's your relationship with either one of them? Awful. We don't talk. We're not speaking to them. All right. Here's what I want you to do. Jade and I are going to help you, all right? We've got Ramsey Preferred Coaches that we have trained to coach people on finances.

Okay? I'm going to pay for you to have one for free as my gift thank you because you're hurting and you need somebody to put their arms around you and we're the people that are going to do it okay and then then i'm also going to have that person recommend to you get plugged into a good local church and between the coaching on put it pulling the money together to deal with an apartment and to deal with getting an inexpensive paid-for car with this lease running out, we're going to get you back to sustainability, okay? But you need some human beings in your life because you're wandering out there

in the middle of a huge crowd called Philadelphia completely alone. Yeah. Yeah. And that's not going to lead you to where you want to go you need community you need human beings with their arms around you helping you loving you and showing you the way and even maybe helping you a little bit with the money stuff but we're not going to give you money we're just going to you got plenty of money your money's just out of control because your heart's messed up okay so we'll walk with you kiddo and you need to get out

of this hotel and you need to get out of this lease and you need to throw your shoulders back and get your dignity back because you're worth way more than you sound like you think you're worth so you hold on and we'll pick up we're gonna get you hooked up with one of our coaches and they'll plug you into a good church and And between the two, we're going to get you in community and get yourself squared around. Hang on, kiddo. This is The Ramsey Show. Our scripture of the day, Isaiah 5811. The Lord will guide you always.

He will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. That's for our last caller. Yeah. Elizabeth Elliott said, of one thing I am perfectly sure, God's story never ends with ashes. Ooh. You know what? Mini rant. Because that and the last caller and the caller before

with the car that was breaking down, I think the number one factor that people sleep on is community. I think it's the number one thing when it comes to your life and your money, having a church family, a community around you. And here's the thing, I get it. Like anybody listening, they're like, Jay, I don't follow Jesus. I'm not into that. I really don't care.

Being in a place where people will love you and care for you, it is such an answer that it's a place where you can go when you need somebody to look after the kids. It's a place where you can go if you need somebody to help you go down in the car dealership and buy the right car, somebody who has a car that they're selling. It a place where you can go if you need somebody to help you go down the car dealership and buy the right car somebody who has a car that they're selling it's someplace where you can go where your heart broken and people will put their arms around

you and pray with you it's a place where you can go when the election is going crazy and you don't you are fearful of the future there's so many things that come up in normal everyday life that i mean we say it all the time you don't want to go through life alone. And it is the number, I'm telling you, it's the number one thing that will help you keep it together in life. That's it. That's all I have to say. Community. Psychologists say it regulates. Yeah. You regulate yourself off of others and you only go crazy in your own head. You don't do that because, you know, even if your family's nuts i mean in her case she's estranged from her mother and father but and they're separated obviously yeah uh divorced probably or whatever i don't know what her story was but um you know that that's um you know i grew

up on a street in suburban nashville and it was like a something out of a book you know like we didn't knock on the neighbor's door we just walked in yeah we all the kids played hide and seek outside until 10 o'clock at night we jumped over plywood in the middle of the street on our bicycles and yes we had no helmets it was a long time ago i'm a dinosaur and uh but i gotta tell you if a neighbor built a deck on the back of their house all of the kids and the men from the neighborhood are up there swinging a hammer yeah 12 years old i'm driving nails in the neighbor's deck i can show you the nails i put in you know like i knew what i was doing but you know that was what we were taught that you're there for your neighbor you're there for each other you're in community community. If, I mean, my grandmother died, I remember, and my parents jumped in the car and took off and dropped us on the front porch of one of the neighbor's houses.

Yeah. And took off, you know, to go to take, to go, you know, eight hours away and so on. And so, you know, that's the kind of, you've got to have it's a support system you're not sustainable as standalone and uh dr deloney talks about this a lot that we are the loneliest culture at this moment in time and um i don't know exactly if i was gonna i don't know if we need to blame that on something or not um but if you were gonna blame it it on something i think i blame it on the smartphone i i 100 would blame it on that and the the idea that people got confused at some point that facebook friends are real friends yeah they're not they're not there at two o'clock in the morning

help you change a tire i'm just telling you you're you know you you gotta drop one kid off because you're going to have the other kid and and, you know, you're getting ready to have the second baby. No Facebook friend. That's it. No, they're not real. They're virtual, which means not real by definition. And so this idea that, and we've gotten disconnected. You know, we don't need to go next door for a cup of sugar yeah how long how old

is that is that 1950s or 1970s i don't know but i i was raised in the 60s and 70s as a kid so we literally not metaphorically literally walk next door for a cup of sugar mama would say go over to irene's and she'd call with a phone that was connected to the wall and irene would meet little skinhead dave with his shaved head at the front door no i wasn't a skinhead i had a skinned head i got you dave just be clear for you idiots out there on the internet but um you know that you're right that's mad that stuff you don't if you want to talk about privilege regardless of race that's a privilege it is and you have to work quadruple is hard to create it because like you said that digitization that's taken place you have to say to yourself

you know what i'm i'm making a batch of cookies i'm going to make a second one and bring it to the neighbors too i'm going to share this with them. You have to make, create these opportunities to share your life with people. It's because it's weird now. It's weird now. Yeah, that's right. That's true. But you can't do life alone. Man is not meant to be alone.

And I hear that sometimes in these calls. I'm like, this person doesn't have anybody to reach out to. And, you know, the moral of my story here was there's always someplace you can get plugged in. And maybe it's not your neighbors, but there's always a good church community somewhere that you can get plugged into. But you got to get plugged in. So important. Yeah. Well, I once met a jerk who went to church.

Well, good. That's where he needed to be. 100%. He needed to be in church. That's where jerks ought to be. It's their only shot. They're not being a jerk who went to church. Well, good. That's where he needed to be. 100%. He needed to be in church. That's where jerks ought to be. It's their only shot. They're not being a jerk. It's your only shot.

Zig Ziglar used to say, he says, I can't go to church. There's hypocrites there. Hey, wait a minute. I'm confused. Where did you want them to be? Right. Where'd you want those hypocrites to hang out what's their only shot man all right oh my gosh so it's you're you're exactly right there's a connectivity thing here and um the quality of your character is shifted yeah your fears are it's weird that your fears in your own head can become this monstrous boogeyman but when you actually sit down with a friend or someone who

cares yeah really cares yeah and you spit them out of your mouth by the time they come out of your head and land on the table in front of you they're little tiny loaf ears they're kind of cute but in your head they were a big freaking deal oh yeah and that's what community does it does sometimes this show does that sometimes we're your community oh 100 we're okay with being part of it but we're not real either so we're virtual well i mean we're people on the other end of a podcast for god's sakes for god's sakes we are youtubers that's the lowest i mean right there that's the bottom of the barrel so yeah i mean you don't want youtubers as your community i'm just saying so and we're bottom of the barrel we're big time youtubers man i'm telling you i mean we're on tiktok if you didn't if that didn't ruin it just tell them the truth we're on

tiktok oh my god that right there ruins it i had a video that did 7.7 million on tiktok and i didn't know how to feel about it like is this a good thing or a bad questionable it's questionable it's questionable but yeah community real real real community real human beings physically in your presence that you sit down and they turn off the television they lay the phone down face down yeah with the buzzer off and the ringer turned yeah and all this and they just sit and they're humans and they're be with you deloney is spending a lot of time talking about this as a matter of fact it's one of the six things you do for building a non-anxious life yes it's to build community and you have to be intentional about it in a world that has forgotten how to do it 100 got to work so i'll go with your main rant it's not even a mini rant it's a full segment full segment right

it is we got there yeah don't sleep i like it it's a good good plan but we did there's a pattern in some of the calls that we've taken throughout the show today certainly in the last hour or so and it does tie back to relationship issues. It ties back to community. It ties back to support systems and sustainability. And all of those things are tied into left alone. We're just all weird. We're all weird. That's so true.

We're all weird. And like you said, you can go crazy in your own head. And then take up residence there. And you get desperate, you know, when you feel like you don go crazy in your own head. And then take up residence there rent-free. And you get desperate, you know, when you feel like you don't have anywhere to look. It's like, oh, these are my only choices. I'm like, no, you need somebody with some sense to tell you otherwise. Well, because one of the things when you're in pain, you lose perspective. And you think that it's going to end in ashes.

And what Elizabeth Elliot said, one thing I'm perfectly sure, God's story to end in ashes. And what Elizabeth Elliot said, one thing I'm perfectly sure, God's story never ends in ashes. 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. Thank you.