The Ramsey Show - App - Should I Travel While Paying Off Debt? (Hour 1)

Episode Date: December 14, 2023

🎵 Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, this is The Ramsey Show, where we help people win in their life, specifically their money, in their work, and in their relationships. The phone number to jump in is 888-825-5225, 888-825-5225. 888-825-5225. I'm Ken Coleman, Ramsey Personality, and I'm joined by Ramsey Personality and my good friend

Jade Warshaw. She's our money guru on today's show. I'll help you out in areas of work and income, getting that income up, and we team up together to take your questions. 888-825-5225. You ready to go? I'm ready to do it, Ken. Ready to go. Columbus, Ohio is where we start. Nick is there. Nick, how can we help? Hey, Ken. Hey, Jade. How are you guys doing today?

We're having a blast. What's up? So my wife and I are in a bit of a pickle. So background real quick is we just got married a few months ago. We had a really expensive last year with weddings and our wedding and all that. We got through it all. We combined our finances and we started tackling a big mountain of student loans and various smaller loans together here the last few months. So we're in the middle of baby step two and we recently got invited and actually my wife was asked to be in the wedding we got invited to a wedding out of the country oh where oh uh it's in italy i love that always oh my goodness so and she's supposed to be

part of the bridal party too which is even more expensive because you got the dresses and the activities and the latida. How much debt do you guys have? We are we have about ninety seven thousand left. OK, ninety seven thousand left. And who who is this person to you? Whose wedding is this? It's one of her best friends um not family or anything but like recent best friends or best friends from high school or from college like is this person in her daily life day to day yeah i would say i mean they've been best friends for the last

four or five years i wouldn't say since they grew up together like they didn't grow up together is she the maid of honor no okay so she's not the maid of honor, which means she ain't the best friend unless the girl has a sister. It does matter in this. It does matter. Okay. Right.

I'm going to shoot you straight here because I don't think that you guys can afford a trip to Italy, and I don't think that you can afford all of the things that goes along with being a bridesmaid because in 2023, these bridesmaid prices have gone through the roof. What are we talking about? Do we have a price tag? I'm curious.

It's the parties, it's everything. So what, what do you think it's going to cost? So the whole thing is about four days, I believe. That's just the minimum, the minimum like stay. So the whole thing is about four days, I believe. The minimum stay, and that's not even including travel, I priced out to about $6,000. That's if we just did the four days. And that's for the two of you? I mean, yeah.

Flights, I can't find anything under like four grand for two flights. Right. And then there's tuxedo dresses is that everything included yeah the the next question i have is do you have six thousand dollars um we don't um we did save a little bit of our um we got some money from the wedding, and we put most of it towards our debt. And we did save about $3,000 of it in case we decided to go to Italy. So what's the pickle? Because that implies to me that maybe you guys aren't on the same page. Is that true?

Yeah. I mean, she's all in on going. Yeah, because it's her friend. I'm on the we-can't-afford- it side, but I don't want to come between. Let me ask you this, because if it were me, if I were you and the script was flipped and it was my husband who wanted to go for his friends, I would say, what would you think about us

throwing a really nice bridal shower or in this case, groom's party for your friend here stateside. And we can do that. And that way we're finding a way to participate, doing something nice, but we can also keep it within a much smaller scope. All right, come on. And not bust the budget. That's Jade, the financial expert and the very disciplined person who changed her life.

You're legit, but come on. I want Jade, the woman on this. Okay. her life you're legit but come on i want to i want jade the woman on this okay so if he says that to his wife i think she goes sorry pal that's not a viable option i have a different way to me in the middle i got one i got okay hit him kim he doesn't go he says babe this is your dear friend i know that they're like paying you not to go it's a big deal, but babe, we are in financial. It's still $3,000. He can go make $3,000. When is the trip? In June.

Okay. Between now, no, I'm okay if you don't like this. I don't know how I feel. I'm still marinating. Good, because I am trying to help this man in his marriage. And I am asking you as a woman to get real. If this were you and Sam, and this was your really good friend, and you were in, come on now. All right, Ken.

He has no option but to work his butt off. He can sell stuff, make some money, come up with, and I don't think it's three grand if she goes. He can. And Nick, we're arguing this for you. He's got to say something. Hold on. Go ahead. If it's any consolation, we're putting about $1,000 a month towards our debt.

Exactly. This is a cash flow situation. Exactly. And for me, I'm like, if you can just go out and earn $3,000 for a wedding, I'm like, all I see is your debt going from $97,000 down to $94,000. That's what I see. I'm like, look, with almost $100,000 of debt, how long have you guys been working the baby step to?

How long have you been in it? It's been like two and a half months. You're just getting started. All I see is his wife resenting him for years to come when she's looking at Instagram and seeing the wedding pictures. She's not because what I... Get her on the phone. I'm telling you, I'm right on this one.

She's going to be mad for a minute, but here's the thing. Ken, I don't even talk about my wedding on a weekly basis, a monthly basis, or a yearly basis. It's not even her day. She's going to get over it.

You're the exception. She's going to get over it. Ken Coleman, you looked at your wedding album. Man, I'm a dude, but this is a woman. Weddings to women is a whole different i'm a woman too i just gave you the perspective i just don't think you're keeping it real well okay the man is calling us with a money and relationship question and i am trying to help him with both look nick what are

you leaning towards after you heard ken and i chop it chop it up what do you think i it's just i'm between pausing the debt and saving up some money and just going the minimum that we need to be there. We also postponed our honeymoon. We didn't do a honeymoon because we underestimated how expensive Italy was going to be. That was supposed to be. And see, that's the thing. You didn't do your own honeymoon to do this. Okay. He's on the phone talking to phone talk i want you to understand you're grown so you're gonna walk away and do what you want and whatever makes you sleep at night however what i do want to tell you is you're just getting started and the choices that you make now

are setting the tone for your whole baby step two journey so the moment that you start saying this is the exception or that's the exception you're you're you're creating a rule with that you're creating a rule with this decision i that. You're creating a rule with this decision. I agree with you. I'm trying to help him out. I know you are, Ken. Because I got the feeling, we're running out of time with him, but I have the feeling his wife is really like, I'm going.

She wants to go to, everybody wants to go to Italy and everybody wants to be in their friend's wedding. I'm not saying that that's not the case. No dude in the world, any dude's like, sorry, pal, I can't afford this. But women, it's a different deal. So I want to see you sit down and have a candlelight dinner conversation with mama and see where she's really at. And then if you really have to split the difference, my option is a viable option. And not stop paying the debt.

I don't want him to slow down. I don't know, Kim Coleman. I'm saying he's going to cash flow it on top of paying the debt off. I know. I wish I was as hardcore as you. I'm not. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show, America.

We're thrilled you're with us. We're here to help you with your money and your work questions today. I'm Ken Coleman. Jade Warshaw joins me. Our question of the day is brought to you by Neighborly, your hub for home services. When you need to make repairs, schedule routine maintenance, or get local help for home improvement projects, go to neighborly.com slash Ramsey, your source to find and schedule reliable home service providers in your area. All right. Today's question comes from Dalton in Kentucky. My wife and I have been stupid over the

last year. We moved across the country for a job and immediately purchased a home while still having student loans. After finding the reality of our new job was not accurately displayed in the interview process, my wife and I made the move back to our home state, both of us having higher paying jobs than before. However, we were financially wrecked from letting the dream become a nightmare and have to receive financial help from my parents. We have just said no to a car loan for $45,000 for a $45,000 vehicle and feel empowered again to start the baby steps. That's good.

My question is, how do we start and find the motivation after backsliding for the last year? Now, this is an interesting question because he says they backslid, but he doesn't really explain exactly what all they did because it sounds like you turned down the car loan, which was great. It sounds like the big mistake here was you moved for a job you bought a home and then you had to kind of come back i don't know what tail between your legs and go back to your home state now unless you took a major hit when you moved from the home i'm not seeing where you made a bunch of mistakes because it says look we both went back to our home state and we have higher

paying jobs than before so i'm struggling to see ken what they look if you say you backslid for a year then i believe you that you backslid for a year i don't know exactly what that looks like but what it sounds like is you understand the baby steps and you understand the ramsey principles and you you know what you've done and so this is really just your wake-up call to go okay like, like we made a mistake. It's not about what I did. It's about what I did next. And now you're back in Kentucky. And so now it's time to get after it again. Yeah.

You know, it's funny when somebody asks, how can you find the motivation? We get those questions a lot in different aspects of the work we do here at Ramsey. And the root word of motivation is motive. And most of the time we use the word motive. It's in a legal context, right? And so most of us, we hear the word motive in some type of a legal drama, whether it's a television show or a movie. And so what are they trying to do? The prosecutor is trying to prove to the jury that the defendant had a motive to do whatever it is they've been charged with. So they're going, what's the motive? They had motive to act this way.

So when we look at it that way, I'm breaking it down, a little nerdy word exercise to then say, well, motivation is just the act of moving forward on something that you want to happen. So motive is about emotion. And so if I want to be free of debt, free of these mistakes, free of whatever he's talking about, free of shackled to a credit card or a carpet, whatever it is, I can't live the life I want, meaning I'm too stressed out because

of debt, or I can't do some of the things I want to do because I don't have any money. So focus on that feeling. That's very good. That emotion, and I'm really nerding out right now. Come on, you're a thespian, Ken. I'm ready for it. But emotion, again, we've got the word emote, motive, emote. I'm just saying, you want to get motivated? Focus on that emotion that is nagging at you, driving you crazy, that is not allowing you.

The emotion is a result of I'm not where I want to be in my life. So whether it's losing weight, getting a better gig, a job, getting out of debt, getting out of a bad abusive relationship, what motivates someone to act is the feeling. You change the way you feel, you'll change the way you act. And so I've got to get into that negative feeling to then pursue what I need to do to get the positive feeling. I'm not trying to get all psychology on it, but that's how we get motivated. What's your motive? I like that, Ken. You do have to think about your motive and you know my two cents to add to that is i think that people look at motivation often as a as a they they need that in order to start right and i'm like listen motivation is really a byproduct of having started you get that reward of oh i did it you know you get that hit of what dopamine or whatever and you're feeling good about

yourself and then you go hey this really works and then you have motivation and action which is like okay i want to keep going with this and so if you're sitting around you you can go ken's route which some people are able to just up and motivate themselves and get going they feel that emotion it's enough to drive them and then there's other people who's like listen you need to start regardless of how you feel yeah you just need to up and start and take it one day at a time. Don't look at the whole DATGUM journey. Look at one foot in front of the other. And then tomorrow is a new set of choices that you get to make.

But if you're sitting around waiting for lightning to strike you and for the current to go through your body and then you got the spirit and you move, that may not happen for you. Motivation is a product of after you start, you feel it and you want to keep going. All right. Good question, though. Thank you for the question. All right, let's get to the phones. We go to the Big Apple. Jason is on the line there. Jason, how can we help? Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my call. Quick question. I live in New York City with my wife. I'm 37 years old. We have a kid. We've got one more on the way within the next couple of weeks. And we're thinking about moving to the suburbs. We have no debt. We're in a pretty good financial situation. And I'm thinking about taking out a small mortgage, which goes against everything I have ever learned in life in terms of getting

into debt. And it scares me to death. You know, we have our budget, we can afford it. But again, it's money that I'm going to be paying to a mortgage that I can be saving and use in the future. So my question is, you know, if I can afford something, how do I know if it's a decision and am I making a mistake by taking out a mortgage right now? Well, listen, let me be the first to say we are a no debt, you know, that's our philosophy, no debt. But the only debt that we're never going to, you know, get mad at you for taking out is a home mortgage when you do it the right way and within reason. So if you, you know, if it's your principle in life that you just like Dave Ramsey does not

borrow money, not even for a home purchase. Okay. So if you want to go to that level, and if you've decided, Hey, I'm Jason, and that's my standard, I'm not going to take that away from you in this moment. But I would like to introduce you to the idea if you're open to it, that look, taking out a small amount for a mortgage is not a bad thing if you would like to be open to that. How much are you talking about taking out? It would be a pretty small mortgage, probably between $400,000 and $500,000. Okay. And what would be the cost?

Like, are you putting anything with that money? We'd be putting a significant amount of money down. And I guess I forgot to say, we have an apartment in the city. We've been saving up for a very long time. We bought our apartment all cash. And I'd be using all that equity to buy a house with a mortgage on top. I'd buy a beautiful house with the equity that we have. Absolutely. So we don't need it. And again, I would just be mad at myself 20 years down the line if I said, why did I take a mortgage when I could have afforded a new house?

Jason, give me two numbers. What's the purchase price of the house you're talking about and what's your combined income? Yeah, so our purchase price is $2 million and our combined income is about $550,000. All right, that's what Jay needed to know on that. Okay, yeah. So, I mean, you're paying $1.5 million in cash, which is amazing. Yeah. yeah incredible and then you've got a really strong income to where look chopping down a mortgage of four to five hundred thousand when you've got a five hundred fifty thousand dollar mortgage especially since you are now moving out of the city so your cost of living is going down um i jade warshaw would 100 do that and sleep like a baby. Yeah, because of your income and the size of the down payment. Do you understand what we're saying, Jason? So this is not a crazy move.

Okay, it scares me. I've never been in debt in my entire life, so it scares me to death. Well, then don't do it. Most people don't put down three quarters of the amount of the loan in cash. You're a unicorn just by those numbers alone with your income and the amount you put down. But listen, if you don't feel right about it. Don't do it. I mean, if you don't feel good about it, a $1.5 million house is amazing.

Why ask him how much longer would it take to save up to pay cash for something like that? Those houses are still going to be there. That's right. That's good, Ken. You've got options. You've got options. You've got options, Jason. I think you've got to trust your feelings. Talk it out with the wife.

Make sure we're on the same page on all that. But financially, for taking out a mortgage, you guys, you easily meet our criteria, is what we're telling you. So thanks for the call, Jason. All right, don't move. She's Jade Warshaw. I'm Ken Coleman.

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The phone number to jump in is 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Let's go to Tampa, Florida. Connor joins us. Connor, how can we help? Hey, guys. How you doing? Great.

What's going on? Yeah, so I'm interested in pursuing a graduate degree and I am 24, single, no dependents. I'm on, I've completed baby steps three. And my question is paying for that graduate degree without going to student loans. So getting some guidance on doing that. How much is it going to cost? A master's program is looking at about $45,000, and a PhD is looking at double that. Are you planning to pursue both or just considering both?

I'm going through the process of figuring out what program is best for me because I really want to be able to work. What do you want to do? I want to be a professor in international relations. All right. And does that require a PhD? I become a professor? Yes. So this is the only way for you to teach at the level you want to teach. You have to have a PhD. I would start off with getting a master's or going full into a four-year PhD program. So yes, that is the route.

Which is most efficient? Could you jump straight to the PhD? In other words, I don't know this world, the higher ed world like you do. Do I need the master's if I can go straight to a PhD? It wouldn't necessarily, you would need the master's, but I'm I'm trying to work full time while also paying for this program part time. So the programs I've been finding out there is it'd be, it looks like it'd be easier to get the master's program first and then jump and do a PhD program full time. I get that.

But my point is, does the masters help you make more money in the meantime? Is that why you think you need the masters? I'm a teacher, so it would give me a little bit of a bump, but it would not give me a big bump for finishing that PhD. Then I wouldn't do it. You're asking, I wouldn't do it. It's not giving me enough bump, and you know what it's doing? It's delaying the action needed to get into the PhD program. And if I'm going to cash flow it, meaning can I do it as I go, or do I need to press pause and just save up the money for the PhD program, which you said is how much again?

It's looking anywhere from like $90 to $120, depending on what school you go to. I mean, if it were me, I would skip the master's. I'd start busting it, working as much as I could. This is a long-term play, and I'd save up the money. And so to me, the master's is effort that doesn't ROI. I could be using that time to work extra, to tutor, to take a different job, get out of the education space and get a higher paying job. I've got to come up with a way to cash flow this PhD because the PhD in this case

is the only way in the arena. So why spend the time, effort, and money on something that isn't necessary? Understood. Understood. Unless I'm missing something. I'm not trying to put you in a corner i'm just going to walk through this logically so that i'm putting all my effort into getting that phd that's the ticket no i understand i understand where you're coming from jade any thoughts on that how long does it i thoughts. A, how long does it take to get the PhD? Full-time, you're looking at four to five years. But did you say you're doing part-time? Well, my idea was to keep working my current job and to pursue a master's program,

then jump into the PhD program because the master's program, I can work and pay off as I go with the amount of current cash I have. and pay off as I go with the amount of current cash I have. Right. But if you go, if you take Ken's route and you go straight to the PhD, are you doing that full time or are you having to do like, okay. Yeah, that would be full time. And the question is, can you afford, what is it? $22,000 a year for the next four years? Can you afford that? Currently? no. Currently, no. So then my question for you is, what's the plan? Because we can't enter into this without a plan to being able to pay for it, or else you will do what so many other people do and default to student loans,

thinking that's your only option. The plan is patience. You've got to wait a little bit. You've got to wait. You've got to work. And you've got to work, and that means you You got to wait. You got to work and you got to work and that means you got to wait. And if you wait, it's worth the wait. I can tell you, cause you're going to come out of this. See, here's the deal. Can I play another little numbers game with you, Connor? You willing to do this? Sure. All right. Let's say you do what most people do and you take out a loan for this. So you're going to be how much in debt? $90,000 to $120,000. He's going to cash flow some. I said about $40,000 to $50,000 in student loans are probably taken out.

Right. Okay, so $40,000 to $50,000. And so how much are you going to make? What's a reasonable salary you're going to make if you get this professor job right out of being a PhD? What's the salary going to be? $80,000. So $80,000 starting out.

Now I want you to fast forward. I want you to fast forward to this reality because I believe you'll get there and I know you can get the loan. So now you're going to be making 80. This thing you've been working for years for going full-time all the time to put in there and then you're making 80 and you owe half of your gross pay? More. You see what I'm saying? I do. You've got to fast forward.

Nobody ever fast forward into this discussion because everybody goes, you're going to get a PhD and you're going to be Dr. Connor so-and-so and you're going to have this awesome international relations job at this great campus, but you're going to be broke and you're going to be miserable. I'm asking you to wait. I'd rather deal with the emotion of patience than the emotion of misery. They're very different emotions. And let me add one to that, Ken. You're working hard right now and you're going to be working very, very hard to get this PhD. Let's pretend that you

go through with your way where you take out the 40 to 50 000 in student loan debt you work your way through this program work fast forwarding like ken said here's the way you're going to feel relief i finally got this phd i finally got through the last thing you're going to want to do is buckle down and live on beans and rice rice and beans to pay off fifty thousand dollars of debt and you're it's what so many people do is go i've worked hard i'm entitled i should be able to just come home kick my feet up enjoy my paycheck you're not going i'm just telling you you're not going to want to pay off this debt and that's when people get into trouble because it starts ballooning and it's like, all right, I'll get to it later. I'll get to it later.

And one thing with student loans, if you try to get to it later, it'll get to you. What's the dream for us a little bit? What would be an ideal job after getting the PhD? Give me a university that you're, give me a city, a university. Talk me through that. Either I'm from Florida, so either UCF or be a top tier, you know, Ivy League institution. Yeah. Okay. So imagine being in any of those places and the positive side of this as you waited, and now you're making 80,000 and you're comfortable. You're comfortable. You can actually enjoy your life. You don't come home after a full day of teaching and stressing out about the bills. That's what I'm asking you to wait for. I'm asking you to wait for the gig, but the gig without pressure. That's worth waiting for. It's my take, Connor.

But listen, Jade and I are the rare people they're going to tell you this everybody else is going to go ah it's fine it's the price of admission and that's just false it's it's it's like half truth yeah it's the price of admission you got to pay the 90 to 120 i don't question that but you don't have to loan it that's right that's right ken yeah we're going to tell you the hard truth we're going to look not just at right now but like you said kenneth at the future and that's that's where the decision is made right there so connor how's your stomach right now no i'm just taking in your guys's advice indigestion a little stress you feeling some peace about this what are you thinking i've i've made no decisions yet so i'm really just trying to figure

out. I have your guys' advice. And everybody else. Well, here's the deal. We are in the minority, my friend. So at the end of the day, this is up to you, but I'm asking you to press fast forward and play that out and really sit with those emotions. Most people don't do that. They deal with it when it comes, and then they're like, golly, this sucks. Look, when I was in elementary school, there was a poster on the wall that said, in a world of followers, dare to be a leader. And when you go to school and pay cash for it, you are leading, my friend. Connor, I think Jade just double dog dared you, as we used to say at elementary school.

We'll see what he does. Will he be one of the masses or will he be one of the few leaders who does it differently? That's the question. We'll talk about it on the break. Don't move. We'll be right back. This is the Ramsey Show. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show. Thrilled that you are with us.

I'm Ken Coleman. Jade Warshaw joins me. The phone number to jump in is 888-825-5225. Jade is our resident money expert, and I'm the work expert. So those two issues go together. So, hey, if you're feeling like 2024 is your year, you feel like I want to make a change, I want to make some more money, but I'm in the baby steps, Ken, how do I do that?

I love those kind of questions. Or just anything related to your work, we'll take those. Jade, not Wade. Jade will wade in, is where I was going, on those as well. And so we're always thrilled to take your questions. Whatever you want to talk about America, we're here for you. 888-825-5225. Let's go to Brandon now in Buffalo, New York. Brandon, how can we help? Hey, guys. Thanks for having me on. How's it going?

We are having a blast. What's happening with you? So I'm 24. I have $260,000 in student debt. Oh, wow. Where's my Tums? I've got to look for them. Wow.

Where'd you go to school, and what'd you go to school for them. Wow. Where'd you go to school and what'd you go to school for? So yesterday I took my last law school exam. I went to Syracuse University College of Law. Okay. I take the bar in February. Nice. Okay. What kind of law are you going to practice? Personal injury is the job I accepted after I passed the bar. And the reason I'm asking this, I'm going to get out of Jade's way, but I am curious, what do you think your first year, since you accepted the job, I'm guessing they talked about potential money. I'm just curious what you think you could make in those first 12 months. Yeah, so I already signed the contract. The base salary is $80,000, and then there are bonus offers, but I don't know what that

entails. So somewhere between $80,000 and between 80 and 90, I would imagine. Okay. Okay. So what's your question? I have two questions. One is putting myself in that much debt for a law degree worth it, given my starting salary? Well, shoulda, coulda, woulda, my guy. Yeah, I know. I know.

Hindsight's 2020. Hindsight's 2020. So we're here now. We'll just accept where we're at and we'll move on from here. So let's make it worth it, right? My answer is it better be. Okay. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, we're going to make it worth it. So what was the second part of your question? How to tackle this debt. So 60 of it is private student loans from undergrad and 200 of it is federal loans for law school. Okay. So should I tackle that60,000 private higher interest rate loans first and pay very little on the $200,000? Or should I kind of pay it all equal at the same time? Well, my first question would be to you, is this your only debt, period? Like, do you have any other debt besides student loans?

No, no credit card, no personal loans. My car is paid. I rent. No other debt. And then my next question to you would be, do you have any money laying around for savings? Do you have any money in stocks? Any other money that you could get to that's not retirement savings? Nothing significant. Well, what do you have? Like $5,000 in my bank account. Okay. I'm glad you told me about that. Okay. So I'll,

since you asked, I'm going gonna walk through our series of baby steps and this is exactly what i would do if i were in your shoes and by the way i was in your shoes my husband and i paid off 280 000 student loans okay and this is what we did we set a thousand dollars aside of our money we didn't have much but we set a thousand dollars aside and we said this is our you know rainy day, this is our rainy day fund. This is our starter emergency fund. It's not much, but if something goes down, it's there in the pocket waiting for us, okay?

Then we took any money above all of that and we decided we're gonna throw that at our debt snowball. And that's baby step two, is you pay off all of your debt except the mortgage using the debt snowball method. Now, here's how that works. And I wanna be specific with student loans because it can get a little hairy. With student loans, a lot of times you'll see, okay, I've got one big loan, it's $30,000 and there's one payment.

But if you really look closer, it's divided maybe into four or five or six or seven loans, where all of that one payment that you make, it's getting dispersed across those six or seven loans. So what I want you to do is log in and really make sure you're looking at the loan in full, because what you're going to end up doing is listing these loans in order from smallest to largest. And what's important about knowing that is, let's say, okay, so you said you've got a $60,000 personal loan.

Right now, is that just one payment that you're responsible for? One monthly payment? The $60,000, I'm sorry, is in a private, just it was a private student loan. Right. I'm not paying on that yet. I still have a few months

because I'm just finishing law school, but I think it will be just one payment. It'll be probably one payment, but if you look closer, it's probably divided over semester that you took it out. It is, yeah. So when you do that,

that would be technically that $60,000 loan is going to be the first one in your debt snowball, okay? But with the debt snowball, you make minimum payments on everything, but you put all the extra money on the smallest debt. So on that $60,000, you're going to need to look and go, okay, it's divided into four little ones. What's the smallest one? And you're going to have to call in and say, hey,

I already made my payment for the month, but here's 800 extra dollars. And I want it to go to this specific debt. Because if you don't tell them that, they're going to spread it across all those little ones and you're not going to make headway. Does that make sense? Yes, it does. Okay. So you got to do it like that and then you're going to see those 3 000 gone you're 4 000 gone you're going to knock them out really fast so that's thing one the second thing i want you to consider doing is while you're paying off these student loans this is the only only only time that i would suggest doing some sort of a idr with the federal loans so that you can get them to the

smallest possible balance so that you can have more money freed up to throw at your smallest debt. Does that make sense? Okay. Yeah. This is not a long-term play. This is not you kicking the can down the road. This is you going, hey, federal government, I want to make these loans as low as possible because I have to make minimum payments on everything. I have more money freed up to put on my smallest debt. In this case, it's that private student loan. And then that's how you do it. You work through, you pay off the smallest one,

then you take all that money, you throw it at the next smallest debt, and that's how the snowball goes. And it's going to blow your mind how much progress you're going to make on this, especially with your salary. Are you a single guy? I am not.

I am not. I have a girlfriend who we're moving, planning on getting engaged soon. She is in medical school. Oh, Lord. Okay, so she's got the medical debt. Well, first of all, you are single. Until you get married, you're single. So don't combine finances either. So what do you think the marriage date is going to be? I mean, just give us an idea. We chat about it a lot now. We're thinking a couple of years from now.

Oh, boy. Okay. So while you're separate, you're working your snowball, she's working her snowball, and you guys are pinky swearing that you are going ham on your, you know, respective debts, right? Yeah. For the older people in the audience, I needed an interpretation of what she meant by that a couple weeks ago. That means getting after it.

Getting after it. Now, what's her med school debt going to be? Or is it at this point? So it will be total about $200,000. Oh, boy. Did you used to watch Sanford and Son and he'd go, I'm coming to meet you. I need my own sound effect. I'll just make it myself.

I'm just going to grab my chest. That's a lot, man. It's a lot. But you guys can do it. You can do it. What's her salary going to be coming out? Do you know? She's hoping around $200.

Okay, that's better. That's good. Okay. Okay, I got advice for you, my friend. You need a police scanner. Invest in a police scanner, and you are at every accident there is. You need to get a fat bonus. Is there any commission on you bringing in new business?

There is. I'm serious. I'm not joking. She thinks I'm joking. You told this man to chase the ambulance. Wow. Listen, he's in personal injury you can't afford commercials you're the low man on the totem pole i would literally figure out what now police scanner may be ridiculous but kind of makes

sense to me i'd be showing up at every scene of an accident making sure everybody's okay and right before they go home going hi my name is brandon you're next if that would be like i i mean dude i gotta get out of debt yeah i hear you i must say for now at least the job i just accepted i represent the other side so i represent the defendant being sued by these people okay but well i can't i still i can still get a commission on bringing in new clients. No, you know what? I'd show up at the same scene of the accident, and instead of the person that's got the stiff neck, you're going to the other guy who thinks his life is over.

Go, listen, I'm your guy. Like he stopped short, didn't he? I'm going to fight for you. I'm just saying. Wow, it's good, Ken. Yeah, he needs to make extra money. You're right. I mean, I would be everywhere.

I would sleep with one eye open, police scanner in one ear. I mean, man, I don't know. I'd get after it. Hey, good hour, Jade Warshaw. Hey, don't move. We're coming back. This is The Ramsey Show.