The Ramsey Show - App - Tackling Debt in Collections (Hour 2)

Episode Date: April 24, 2024

МУЗЫКАЛЬНАЯ ЗАСТАВКА 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 Rachel Cruz, hosting today with my co-host of Smart Money Happy Hour and bestselling author, George Camel. We are here to answer your questions. So give us a call at 888-825-5225. All right, let's hit the phones. We have Tinasia from Nashville.

Hey, welcome to the show. Hello. Hello. How are y'all doing? We're doing great. How can we help? Can you hear me? Yes, we can.

Good. Well, my name is Tanasia Scales. I'm from Nashville. I'm a registered nurse. I recently moved back in with my parents and moving out of my townhome because I've been renting for six years. I have a one-year-old daughter, single mom, and I took a travel contract here in Jackson, Tennessee to save up more and to just get my debt paid off because like as now, I'm in student loan debt and also credit card. Okay.

My goal is to save up for a house. And I was just wondering, what is the best option for single moms who are willing to become, like, financial free or debt free? How much debt do you have? Having one stream of income. So how much debt do you have total? My student loan, 71. Total is 95. So the rest is in credit cards?

I did the math on it real good. Car note, student loans, and credit cards, I want to say like 10,000. And the rest is on the car. So you got about 14,000 on the car loan, 10,,000 on credit cards, $71,000 on student loans? Yes. Okay. And what's your income? Yes, sir.

My income is $75 an hour. $75 an hour? And is that temporary? Yeah, I bring home like, I'm contract so i'm internal i'm not on like a travel nurse assignment so i'm internal so it's longevity okay good so are you making like 150k a year is this is this full-time is this 40 hours a week at 75 an hour it's part-time but we've been pulling full-time hours because they've been so short of staff. Okay. So we'll call it around six figures. We can work.

Yes, sir. Okay. Well, here's the key. I want you to become a homeowner again, but I don't want the home to own you. And so regardless whether you're a single mom or not, obviously you got a lot more on your plate with a one-year-old and child care and all of that. But as far as the plan, it doesn't change. We want you to become completely debt-free, then get a fully funded emergency fund, then start saving up for your next house. Yeah, if you got on a really, really tight budget considering you're now living with your parents, are are you paying rent or are you are they letting you live there for free um let me live there for free i just i'm so burnt out on renting yeah no no you're great you're great so i'm just thinking years yeah i'm just trying to figure out for you when you the amount of money you bring home per month since

you don't have a big expense like rent which is great because you throw 50k at your debt a year yeah that's right how much could you how much could you put towards your debt because if yeah if you're making a hundred grand i mean you could you know without a housing expense you know there's a good chance you could throw exactly what george just said 50 000 a year and be completely debt free in two years and then keep at that, right? Keep at that same motivation to get an emergency fund and some savings, and then save up for a down payment for maybe a condo or a townhome. You don't need anything, you know, crazy big. It's just, you know, you and your daughter. And that's what it would look like. But I think you're still probably four to five years

out on that plan. But yeah, take this time. Like you said, you're burnt out. That's okay. Take some breathing room, you know, but take advantage of this financially. Don't let this time where you don't have a big expense like rent go past you. I mean, really focusing on where every single dollar of your income is going. So if you stay on the line, Christian and Taylor, they're going to pick up and we want to give you every dollar premium. This is our budgeting app that will connect to your bank account. And in the app, you're going to be able to not only learn how to actually, you know, sit there and do a zero-based budget because it teaches you really well how to do that. But the point there is to be really, really intentional with every single dollar because

even when you're exhausted, sometimes in that exhaustion state emotionally, you can kind of be like, oh, I don't want to do any type of work. You know, I don't want to be intentional on anything because I'm just so tired. And then you look up and it's been four months and you're like, oh my gosh, I could have put money away

and I just haven't been planning. So I think the key here is to stay motivated with the amount of money you're making because you're making great money, which is awesome. Yeah, and that debt snowball, when you make that every dollar budget, you're gonna list out all of your debt payments

and all the minimums, and it's gonna show you exactly how to lay them out. So list them out individually, attack the smallest one with a vengeance, put minimums on the rest, and you'll start to see that progress. Yep, that's right. So thanks so much for the call.

I hope that's helpful and you're doing a great job. I mean, you're making great money. That's the key, a big shovel. Yes, that you're able to attack this. All right, up next we have Monica in Philadelphia. Hey, Monica, welcome to the show. Hello, thank you for having me. So I'm a single mom in Philadelphia.

I'm currently debt-free. I'm on baby step number six. Amazing. number six amazing my dilemma is um i have some money saved up and i don't know if so i i have more i have 100k saved up i owe approximately at the moment 65 000 on my home but i also want to move so i don't want to um reside in philly, so I want to move out of Philadelphia. However, on top of that, my mother inherited a house that she can't afford to pay inheritance tax on. I don't know if I should use my savings to cover the costs for the inheritance tax, knowing that the property would then later on go to me if i did that i don't know if that would be a smart way to kind of kind of park my money yeah i hesitate to do that i just know how much change happens and by the time this house gets

past you you may not even want it anymore right there may be a situation where um you may not even want to live in it and of course you could sell it and obviously get the proceeds from that which is um which is great but there's a part of me that i would use your money for your life and i think that you're so close to paying off your house which is incredible and you know just the the idea that you know you could sell your primary home, I mean, how much equity would you have in your primary home right now if you sold it? I would think maybe $100,000 maybe. Okay, so it's worth about $165,000, the house? Yeah, that's what I believe it's worth. And what's the inheritance tax?

How much and when is it due? Well, and that's the thing. I don't actually know what that tax bill is like because my mother can't afford it and she hasn't really done anything with it. She has hopes that she would leave it to initially to my siblings and I, but no one can honestly take on the tax bill except myself. So I'm the only one that can entertain it in a sense. Well, I'm worried your mom can't can entertain it in a sense well i'm worried your mom can't afford this house long term and it may not be the right spot for her well right now she has resided in that home for like she was a caregiver for my uncle that then passed away and left her the house um so to my understanding she would be able to live out the

house okay yep sorry monica we have a hard out right now. We have to go. I'm sorry. But yeah, I would keep your money and your savings for you. I wouldn't go and try to deal with this house and multiple siblings and all of it. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. So, George, you're going to be busy here. Yeah. Tell me about it. In the next little bit, you're doing a two-night virtual event with Dave Ramsey, May 21st and 22nd. And you guys are going to be doing a deep dive in investing. The event is called Dave Ramsey's Investing Essentials,

and it's all online. So you can be home and you can watch it and learn all about investing because you guys have really been asking, hey, we want a deeper dive, very specific. People have very specific questions when it comes to investing and you guys are going to address that, everything from the market to real estate and talk about the subject because it's one that people, they want to know about. Yeah, we're going to cover the foundation, the basics, of course, but we're also going to get into the kind of 201 and 301 content, stuff we've never actually taught before. I mean, Dave's investing strategy when it comes to real estate, his personal playbook, how he's built his wealth. What I've done is sort of the everyman to go from being broke to millionaire in 10 years. And it's a lot simpler

than you think, but there's also some nuanced pieces that we're going to dive into that are really interesting. So this is a very different event.'s virtual it's online dave and i will be live it's not pre-recorded but the good news is you can watch it after oh you can i was getting some questions about hey like can i what if i can't make it those two hours you're gonna have access for i think about a week and i think vip you have access for two weeks so you'll be able to watch it a few days later if you can't make that specific time on May 21st and 22nd in the evenings. But this is about four hours of content.

Tickets are 249 bucks. When you think about what you would pay to get investing advice to work with a coach, that's a great deal for the value you're getting and how it could set you up for your future. For sure. So go to ramseysolutions.com slash events and get your tickets for Dave Ramsey's

Investing Essentials event all online with our very own George Camel in the mix, which always will make it more fun. Always more fun. That's my job is to pull that out of Dave. Bring the fun. Pull the fun out of Dave as he's getting to the weeds. If he gets cranky, you just say, Dave, come on, this is fun. I know how to push his button. I'll I was like, I drive a Tesla, Dave. And he's like, blah, you know.

Unbelievable, unbelievable. You kids these days. It's fun. I used to drive uphill both ways in my gasoline car. My diesel. That's what he'd say. Yeah. He loves a diesel.

The louder, the better for that generation. I think he's scared of cars that don't make noise. They sneak up on you. Where'd you come from? Didn't hear you coming. All right, let's go to the phones. We have Cassie in Atlanta. Hey, Cassie, welcome to the show.

Hey, thank you so much for taking my call. Absolutely. How can we help? So I have a few collections that one of them is equaling about $3,000, and I'm trying to get paid off. It's been on my credit for about a year now. I have a car that I'm struggling a little bit to get paid off. But the biggest thing that's affecting some of my stuff is I have a car loan that was with my ex-husband.

I was a cosigner on it, but it's about $45,000. And I really don't know how or what I need to do to try to help my situation and get that off. Is he paying on it or is this in collections? So he's paying the full amount every day, but you need to get off of it. So you would need to refinance that loan and get your name off. Well, you need to contact the lender and he needs to be able to sign off on it. I mean, you guys co-signed on this and the only way out is for you to... Do you have an attorney that could contact the attorney that he worked with during the divorce or anything? Is there a way to have like a third party go at this too?

When we did the divorce, we didn't have any um attorneys involved we did it all ourselves um but that was my next step is if i didn't have have any way of trying to figure out how to get out of it i was gonna look at getting an attorney yeah i mean i probably would i mean for i mean you would be liable for some reason and the fact that you don't even know um you can't get in touch with him means who knows what he's doing right i mean, like he could turn up tomorrow and not pay starting tomorrow, right? And then you would be liable for that $45,000. So yeah, I would look into that. Yeah, I would talk to an attorney.

And again, if you know maybe where the, if you have the documentation still of where the loan is being held and to contact them and they may be able to get in touch with him too. But you'll need to apply for something called a co-signer release. And the problem with co-signing is that there's a reason that you were required to be on that because they didn't trust him to pay. So if he's got a good track record, they may do this co-signer release, but you need to contact them and see if they're willing to do that.

Otherwise, you need to refinance the loan. Okay. And so the debt that's in collections, Cassie, is it just the $3,000? Yeah, so the in collections is $3,000. And I was making payments on it before, but then I stopped because listening to Dave talk back and forth about not giving them any of my bank information, I closed that bank account. But I have been trying to listen and see if ways to get things settled. But the collections is kind of new still. So I wasn't sure if I was able to settle, if it needs to be on my credit for a certain amount of time. They probably won't negotiate or settle much if it's a pretty fresh debt and collections. But you can always try and say,

listen, I simply don't have the money, if you truly don't, and say, I'm willing to give you $1,000 if you're willing to settle this and call it paid in full and get that all in writing. And again, don't give them access to your bank account. You can write them a money order, a cashier's check, something like that. Okay. But they may not be willing to.

And if you have the money, just go ahead and get it out of your life. Yeah, do you have any savings, Cassie? Yeah, I do have my $1,000 emergency savings. Okay, okay, that's great. So you have the $3,000 in collections, and then what else besides the car with your ex-husband? With him having that car, I had to get my own car. Okay.

I am pretty upside down with it. So I bought the car February of last year at a buy here, pay here, and bought the car for $15,000, not thinking anything of it. I did the Kelley Blue Book to see what the value of my car was, and it's only worth $5,000, and I still owe $12,000. Oh, man. What's the interest rate on this? 18%.

Oh, man. Okay. I hate those places so much. I know. How much money do you make, Cassie? About $53,000 a year. Okay. Okay, well.

If you can get out of this cosign loan, knock out the collections, and just leave you with that 12K car loan, we can knock this out within the year. You can be in a very different place even six months from now. And do you have the ability to get a side hustle like at night maybe like three three nights a week um i work pretty late some nights during the week um but i have been looking to try to find someone on the weekend for sure okay yeah i would do that honestly because even with 53 000 i would want to up that while you're doing this i think that that'll just give you some power. And it's really encouraging. I was in, where were we? I think it was Dallas last week and had an Uber to the

airport. We started talking to him and he does it on the side. He's like, yeah, I work. I can't remember how many days, but he brings in a thousand bucks a month extra. He's like, and it wasn't- Just doing it for fun. Yeah. And it wasn't this crazy amount of hours. I wish I could remember now, but I think it was like maybe three or four days. He's like, can I just drive and make a thousand bucks? I'm like, well, that's awesome. A week. So all that to say, or a month. So yeah, I mean, there's, there's some things out there that you really could do to, to bring in, bring in some cash. Cause I think that's going to help you in all of this too, since all this is a little bit new as you start to navigate it,

just to give you some fuel and to see that momentum really start. Have you, Cassie, have you taken Financial Peace University? I have not. Okay. So if you stay on the line, Christian and Taylor, they're going to pick up and we're going to give you, yeah, FPU. So you can do all this online and it's our nine lesson course. And it really will give you the basis, what you hear on this show, but in more of a learning format. And with that will be EveryDollar Premium, which is our budgeting app. And that way you can connect that app to your bank account and you can really know exactly where EveryDollar is going. You can track your spending in it. There's a paycheck planning tool within it. And it really will help

you kind of get this foundation under you as you start this process. Because I really think, yeah, I mean, even though that debt is in collections, to George's point, it's a little bit new, so they may not negotiate. And if they don't, though, it's a good win for you to be like, yeah, I paid off that three grand and I'm going to keep moving forward. Yeah. And if you can do it at lump sum, they'll usually take it down a notch, but make sure you get it in writing. Yes. These people can be scummy. That's right. Yeah. Sometimes when you get stressed out and kind of weighed down with the emotion, it helps

to look at the math and go, okay, if I can find two grand a month in this budget, I can be debt free in six months. Yes. Sometimes that basic math actually gives you hope when you see a way out instead of going, oh, this is going to be years of paying it off. Not if you do it our way. That's right. Yep.

You're able to look out and see. Dr. John Delaney always says that. Facts are your friends. And they are. When you're able to see a plan, it does give you that power and that control, which is so key when it comes to your money. So thanks, Cassie, for the call. We are cheering you on. This is The Ramsey Show.

Welcome back, America. We are taking your calls at 888-825-5225. And today's question comes from Spencer in Utah. Here we go. Spencer asks, my social security number was compromised when I was 18. It was caught pretty quickly and I haven't had any problems since that one incident. I'm 25 now and I'm wondering if it would be smart to get identity theft protection. I don't know what all that covers, but I'd like to know what I can do to protect myself both now and in the future.

That's a good one. Yeah, that's scary too. That's a scary thing. I've had identity theft happen when I was 23. You've heard the story many times, Rachel. It's a good one, though. It's a juicy one. You should tell America. Essentially, I got. It's a good one, though. It's a juicy one. You should tell America.

Essentially, I got a call from a debt collector and they're like, hey, you owe us $1,700 on this AT&T account, $1,700 on a Verizon account. I was like, why would I have two cell phone accounts? What monster? I'm 23. I don't have any of these accounts. And it turns out someone used my social security number, an old address in Nashville, my name, all of that, and opened up these accounts. Never paid a dime on them, racked up bills. I don't even know how you rack up $1,700. How do you do it? So anyways, it was a nightmare. Luckily, I had Zander ID theft protection through Ramsey at the time. Dave covers it for all Ramsey team members, and they helped me restore my life back to its former glory. But it was so much time and paperwork to just deal with and weren't they like two old women that you found out i did some sleuthing because it turns out the

police are not going to dedicate their life to this mission but i did so i thought they were went all the way george i still got my eye on them i'm always watching figuring it out but all that to say there's some things you can do that are important. And number one is freeze all of your credit with your credit bureau. So this, I'm not talking about debt and credit cards. I'm talking about the credit report with the bureaus, Experian, et cetera. And so I went on there, froze all of my accounts so that no one can open up new accounts. That's right. Yep. So that's an important piece to do. And then having Zander ID theft protection, it's a great product. We sort of look at it almost as a type of insurance because of how it protects your information.

And so they'll notify me and they'll send me an email if any of my information was compromised. They have restoration services to get all of your stuff back and making sure that you're protected. So that's an inexpensive way to protect yourself to start. But at 25, as long as you're not going into debt, you don't need to open up new accounts. You're going to be fine to just freeze your accounts and good password protection, all of that. Don't leave your debit card info on a bunch of sites. Just be kind of cautious of where your information is. Yeah. But ID theft, it's so the insurance side of it.

It's so inexpensive that it's one of those just to to get you guys can go to zanderinsurance.com because it um again it's not that expensive and they and they just take the time the amount of time that it takes to unravel all of this if your identity is stolen it's exhausting and they do so much of that for you so uh it's definitely definitely worth it so make sure to check some of the things they cover uh home title monitoring up to two million dollars for stolen funds and expenses, personal and financial monitoring, VPN encryption, antivirus, 24-7 customer and recovery services. So there's a lot that is included and it's very inexpensive. We're talking like seven bucks. I mean, you can get family plans for 12 bucks. So these are cheap things you can do

to help protect yourself and sleep better at night. But it's a huge worry as we get into into a more intrusive, data-driven world. There's only going to be more of this happening. That's right. All right, let's go to Emily in Greenville. Hey, Emily, welcome to the show. Hey, thank you. How are you? We're doing great. How are you? Doing great, thanks. How can we help? So we own about three acres of land and we have some debt from mainly from our business that we own. And I was wondering if it would be a good idea to sell, we were, someone was looking at our property, about half of it, an acre and a half for, um, 150,000. And I was wondering if it would be, could be better off keeping the land and paying on the debt or if selling it, you know, would be a better option. How much do you guys owe, uh, on your business debt? So it's, well, business debt, total combined is almost right at 150.

Business debt would be, let's see, you know, about 80, 90. Okay. And what's the other debt? So 20,000 is the land that we have. Okay. We owe 20,000. And then the other is student loans and credit card debt. Okay.

And it all, so that's about 50. That includes all of that. I think it's one, let me add it up. So it's 40 plus 40. So that's 80 plus 20 is 110. So 140 is what we owe total. So selling this one and a half acres would clear all of your debt

and give you partially an emergency fund. Yes, yes. How much do you guys make a year? So our gross is a lot more than what we actually pocket. What do you guys bring home a year? We bring home about 90. Okay. What were you going to use this land for if you didn't sell it?

So we don't actually use it for anything. We live on some of it, and then we have the other half. We don't really do anything with it. We did want to eventually build because right now we actually just have a modular home that we live in that was actually given to us for free, but we had to remodel it. So we don't have a loan on that really so much. But you could build on the remaining land that you would keep and still be happy and fine?

Yes, we would probably just move this modular home or sell it, move it out, and then build our house. Well, if this is a going rate for acreage in your area, I would personally sell it because of your financial situation. Have you guys run comps and stuff, Emily? This isn't something that someone's just offered you. Like, what is it worth? Do you know?

So I don't know. I don't have like a actual like appraisal on it yet. I do know my husband's grandmother is a real estate agent and she has sold like an acre just right around the corner of like 80,000. So this is, and for us, it's like, we do love our property. So we're like, not like, well, here's what I don't want to happen is I don't want you guys making what could be a long-term, you know, idea with this acreage for you guys and long-term wanting to build on it. And like, this is a dream. And then you guys shortcut it. Don't get what you want long-term

in order to pay off this debt. So, so the question is, yeah, I mean, there is some assets and we do say, yeah, when you're getting out of debt, what can you sell and all of it? But but I would look for for you guys and say, OK, you know, what has gotten us in this position first? Obviously, some unwise business ideas because you're 80,000 in the hole there. Student loans, credit cards. I mean, you guys have been, and I say this kindly, Emily, as a friend, a little sloppy in this area, right? You're just normal, but you just keep kind of racking it up. And so what I don't want to happen is that this one move erases everything, but you guys haven't really felt the sacrifice and the real change that will keep you out of debt long term as well leapfrogging and getting a shortcut which is totally fine but rachel's saying is your behavior has to change so you don't end up back where you are definitely

and the equipment the business debt is on equipment actually too so okay i don't know if that is relevant or not but um but we do have equity. Well, we kind of do separate. I mean, your name's on it, so it is personal in a sense that they would come for you, but also separating business and personal too, I think can help in some of this equation too.

If you just look at the payments on everything you're paying right now on your debt, freeing all of that up by selling this land and what that could do for you guys in the future and getting to other financial goals. I think if you want land down the line,

you can do that. But I would let go of this right now to get you in a much better financial shape versus set you could sacrifice for the next three years

and pay down 50K a year. But I think when you have this land and someone's willing to give you the money for right now, I would do it. So obviously,

after doing your homework, get the appraisal. Yeah, and it's still an acre you the money for right now, I would do it. So obviously after doing your homework, get the appraisal. Yeah, and it's still an acre and a half. I mean, that's pretty good. Yeah, exactly. And it's like we don't really use the other side of our property. Yeah.

And if it's a dream to live on more land and all of that, that's just going to be a dream, you know, maybe for the next decade that you guys look into. It may not be something that you can do right now. Exactly. And like this land, I you can do right now. Exactly. And, like, this land, I don't think we plan on staying. This is our, like, forever place, you know.

So we're going to move on eventually from it. Well, I think you sell it. Yeah. It doesn't sound super sentimental. It doesn't sound like you'd miss it all that much. But, man, that $150,000 would literally change your life. Yep. That's amazing.

And when you have the ability to have an asset like that, that you can just sell and keep moving, that's incredible. But Emily, you guys, you and your husband, I would encourage you guys to sit down and be like, we will never be in this position again. Cut up the credit cards, like make a pack though. No more business debt. We're paying cash for everything. That's right. Move at the speed of cash, even when it comes to your business. And I mean, there's power in that, Emily. So you guys really buckle down and do this. But what a beautiful gift, in a sense, that this is such a head start for you guys. So good luck. We are cheering you on. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I am Rachel Cruz hosting with my good friends and co-host of Smart Money Happy Hour,

George Camel. And we've had some fun episodes come out. We have. We just met a fan out there who really loved the last episode when I dogged you and I tricked you by mentioning blinker fluid. I said, Rachel, would you even know how to replace blinker fluid? And I'm like, no, I bet Winston does, but I don't. And I got her so good. It took her about three minutes to figure out what happened. I came right around. So yeah, we, uh, we sip on a cocktail. We talk about current events and money and it's, it's more of a, you know, it's a fun show. It's a great show for those friends who are like, they don't want, they're not going to listen to Ramsey show. It's a little, you know, deep in the Ramsey well,

but this is a good sort of just dipping your toes. Yeah. And even some of you deep in the Ramsey well, but this is a good sort of just dipping your toes in the water. Yeah, and even some of you that love the Ramsey well, you probably will have a good chuckle. We laugh a lot on that show. We do, and we have some talented team members that help us pull it off. That's right, yes. And I wanted to let you guys know that I'm going to be in Atlanta this Friday from 1 to 2 at the Barnes & Noble at? Mansell Crossing. So make sure to come, and I'll be there with my new kids book.

I'm glad for where I am. And I – hold on. Let me grab it, George. Yeah, this is fun. You actually had the illustrator. There it is. Lauren was at the signing. Yes, the illustrator came to L.A. for the signing,

and the signing in L.A. was really exciting. So, yeah, make sure to pick up your copy. And, again, if you're in Atlanta, come say hi from 1 to 2. We're going to do a little story time, bring the kids. There were about 75 kids that came to the Dallas one. Wow. Were they rowdy or were they well behaved? They were so great. I love kids. They're funny. Kids are just

hysterical. And a wide range of ages. We hang out and chat. What's the target demo for a kids book these days? Is it like a 2 to 6? Yeah, from this one I would say for sure. I'd say, yeah, 2 to five. Once they hit six, seven, eight, they can actually read it. I get some Instagram stories of some older ones, elementary school kids actually reading it to the other siblings, which is so sweet. That's really cute. And to be fair, I loved it. And I read it to my daughter, Mia, but it's truly just for me. It is. I'm glad for

I am all about gratitude. So make sure to check it out. All right. Up next, we have Lynn in Houston, Texas. Hey, Lynn, welcome to the show. Hey, guys, thanks for taking my call. Absolutely. How can we help? So my question is, when do I know that it's time to walk away from my hustle job? Obviously, the answer is when I'm done paying debt, but I'm not done paying debt. So that's why I'm calling you guys. Um, I still owe my husband and I still owe $40,000 and we are just trying to kill this debt. So, um, I am a stay at home mom. I homeschool my kids, so I can't just work a nine to five. What I usually do is I have these multiple streams of small incomes. So I just hustle and, you know, just try to get as much as I can throw it at the deck. So this month I made $2,000 and, um, 500 of that is from a martial arts school that I, um, I teach

and I manage the school. I don't own it, but I manage it. And I really, really love my job. I love teaching kids and I love, um, even just the administrative work of it. So the part of it that I don't love, and that's why I'm bringing up the question, is my boss, even though we get along really well, he is a hot mess when it comes to finances. And that is starting to trickle down to his employees. So he owes me about $3,000 in back pay. Oh, crap, Lynn. Oh, boy. Well, and he's also been writing me weekly checks, which is trying to cover some of the back pay,

but at the rate he's going, it's going to take him two and a half years to catch up. Is the business struggling, or what's behind him not being able to pay you? So he runs two businesses. Not very well. Right. I create the budget every month for the martial arts school.

Our budget on paper shows that we should pay all of our bills. I don't write the check to pay the bills, though. So by the time it comes time to actually pay the bills, they don't get paid. And I thought that this was just something that I was dealing with, but I've heard from his other employees, even his other business, that they're dealing with the same issues that I'm dealing with. Well, it's eventually going to close. I mean, eventually enough people are going to say,

well, enough people that work there are going to say, I'm not getting paid. I can't pay rent. I can't work at a place that I don't know if I'm going to get paid. It's not, you know, it's not a ministry, right? We've seen some of that. And I am in a position where, you know, my husband pays all the bills. This is just my hustle money, right? Like, this is just the money. Yeah, but you guys have $40,000 of debt. Like, you're not rolling in it. No. So I would quit. but the concern is like man five hundred dollars you know if i make two thousand this month five hundred that's a pretty well how much time

are you how do you know you're gonna even make that next month he may not even pay you well yeah that's true he pays me he just pays me like very late and it's always like hey can i deposit this check today and it's like um just wait a minute. Let me pull up my account, see if there's any money in there. It's like he is all over the place. And I can't fix that. I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do it. I think you can love.

You can make 500 bucks elsewhere and actually get paid on time. Yes. I think you can love the place, love the people. And it would be really sad. But for you guys, you're just not in a position financially to have such a gamble with your time and your money you know like and that's not you being selfish it's it's the fact that he's not he's I mean to a degree I mean it's not that he's being immoral like on purpose but when you don't pay your people I mean he owes you three thousand dollars you know so like it's just I don't know I I guess my other i guess my

concern too is that if i walk away am i also walking away from that money that i worked really hard to earn um because i i can't say for sure that oh yeah he'll get that money to me if i'm not there every week asking him like where's my paycheck so i might be walking away from three thousand which for me and my work and my ability to work three thousand is a lot of money totally yeah you can eat it in writing an agreement that he's going to pay you this money, regardless of if you're employed or not. It's still owed to you. Okay.

So I would fight for it. Yeah. Even if it hurts the relationship, it doesn't sound like he was a lifelong friend. Because at some point, if my friend was this incompetent, I would have to stop being friends with him. I'm sorry. George, you can like the person. That's what I just said you can leave and like the guy. He just sucks at running a business. Yeah. And I brought up like, hey, man, you know, you want to put your money on paper?

You want to try to figure this out? And he just kind of smiles like, no, that's OK. Because I think at one point he was he has a lot of fun, expensive toys. And I think at one point he was making a lot of money. He was very lucrative pre-COVID. Yeah. And I think at one point he was making a lot of money he was very lucrative pre COVID yeah and I think it doesn't just kind of destroyed everything and and he's still kind of living in that world but that's the income's not matching and so it's trying to be like hey guy you can't you can't live like that anymore you know that's been and he's much older than me too so it's almost like I'm trying to talk to my father about yeah it just kind of feels toxic I just don't yeah I just I don't know I probably I I probably, I would be out. I would be out. But I would put in writing to George's point

that you're owed that money. I mean, you did the work. So he does owe you that. So I would bring that up. That's not being unkind or mean or unreasonable. That's fighting for what you've worked for. And again, like you said, I mean, unless like he just doesn't pay

and you want to get a lawyer involved and all that, which you probably don't want to do, because that's going to cost you more than three thousand. You know, you may not see it. That's a good point. But also going forward, there's a gamble that you may not see the money that you're working for tomorrow. And so the unstable environments is I don't think it's worth it for your time and your stress load. I mean, that's a lot even from the administration side to deal with. And if people start coming to you because they're not getting paid, sometimes in that position, George, people can take a ownership that's not even theirs to be like, I just feel like it's my responsibility now to like hold this place together that, you know, you end up being the glue. And it's unfair at that point too, that that's, it's not your business and you're not running it like that. No. So I would look at how much time you were putting into this. You said you were making 500 a month. Let's say it was 25 hours a month.

Well, that's $20 an hour you were making. So if you can try to replace that and go elsewhere and make 20 bucks an hour doing literally anything else, you can easily replace that income. Yeah, for sure. And I bet she's putting more work in than she's actually worth into this job considering how much she's doing. Yes. Yeah. If you're great at that admin function, you know, things like virtual assistants, I mean, there's admin work that can be done even virtually from home that you get paid on, right? Maybe you just do a couple hours a week. It doesn't have to be a ton, but you can find some things to get some money in it. And again, it's a long road. You know, we always say with debt, you can wander your way in,

but you can't wander your way out. So there is a one foot in front of the other day after day grind that's real. And it's for a season. Maybe you don't do everything forever, but who knows? Maybe eventually you go, here's what I really love to do.

We're out of debt now and I can choose. I have more flexibility. Yeah, that's a big part of it. For sure. And with side hustles too, you know, finding what you're naturally good at, I think is the key because you're naturally going to be able to do it more with ease than trying to like learn something new, right?

That's true. We actually have a new side hustle quiz that's free. georgecamel.com slash side hustle. We built a tool to help people find the side hustles that are right for them. Brilliant, George. I just remembered that. So Lynn, go check that out. Well done. Well, thanks Lynn for the call. Thank you that are right for them. Brilliant, George. I just remembered that. So Lynn, go check that out. Well done.

Well, thanks, Lynn, for the call. Thank you, America, for listening. Thanks to everyone in the booth. My great co-host, George Camel. We'll be back. Thank you.