The Ramsey Show - App - The Best Calls of the Year So Far (Part 5 - Hour 2)

Episode Date: November 24, 2023

Девочка-пай Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. George Campbell, Ramsey personality, co-host of the Smart Money Happy Hour is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Paul is with us in Minneapolis. Hey, Paul, welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave. Thanks for taking the call. I have another should we pay off the house early out of our retirement question for you. Okay.

Why is this one different? Well, my wife and I are both retired. I'm 61. She's 58. We retired with the mortgage. And I've got a number of differing opinions from our financial guy. I've got friends that work in the finance industry. I worked for a bank in 30 years.

I guess just looking for another opinion, maybe one with a little bit more credence than some of the others, I guess. Okay. So how much do you own your home? It's a $450,000 house. We owe $170,000. And how much do you have in your nest egg? What's that?

What's your net worth? What do you have in your nest egg? Net worth is about a million and a quarter. We've got just over a million. That is investment and retirement. If your house was paid off, why would you go borrow on it? We would not. Then what's the difference? I guess it's just, okay, let me rephrase the question.

Maybe a better question is if we decide to do this, is it a process over multiple years to ease the tax burden? Do we just bite the bullet and take the hit and do it once? Or how would I do it? I've been doing this 30 years. I've never had anybody call me back and say they were pissed off

because they paid off their house. Fair enough. So one shot? or would you... I'd write a check today. I'd be debt-free. I'd have been debt-free yesterday if I were you. And quit listening to all these idiots. There's a lot of idiots out there running around with an opinion about your money,

and you're a millionaire. What's your mortgage payment? All right, I'll... Go ahead. What's your mortgage payment right now? Mortgage payment is, what, $1,200? Okay, you'd free up most of that, which now you can invest. So yes, you'll lose some out of that investment account,

but you're going to still invest for the next 20 years. Dude, you're just going to sleep so much better tomorrow. I mean, we're both retired, so invest is rolling, not necessarily additional. You have almost zero risk in this situation because you could write a check at any minute and pay it off. If you got in a pinch, you don't really need the money in one way or the other. It's all about, you know, what is your end goal when you're 85? Do you want to have a mortgage? You know, why would you keep it? There's no reason to keep it. You wouldn't go borrow on a paid for house in order to have more money to

invest. And so write a check and sleep better tomorrow, tonight, pay it off tonight, hit the submit button. And then when you go and you get the mortgage release in the mail, make a copy of it, take your shoes off, walk into the backyard, have a mortgage burning party, and tell me that didn't feel good. I mean, there's just no downside to this. You know, you're a million, you're going to be okay either way if you don't follow our advice, if you follow those idiots' advice. But if I've got a financial person that's telling me to stay in debt, I'm getting a new financial person. Period. financial person period because george we studied 10 167 millionaires the number of them that told

us that they became wealthy because they borrowed on their home in order to invest was precisely zero none of them leveraged their personal residence to build their wealth none of them and so the idea that i continue to leverage my personal residence in the name of building wealth is an asinine based on the millionaire data well we're seeing so much more of this because people have their record low mortgage rates they don't want to let go of dave yeah why would i have my mortgage you know but i got your mortgage rate beat you know what my mortgage rate is zero i don't have one hello heck of a rate zero i got the best rate come on man so when it's up and down you don't have to worry about them because

you don't need debt anymore it's a great feeling instead of worrying about what the market's doing so yes it hurts to write that check and lose that much money lose quote unquote but you never really had it if you owed it to the lender in the first place paul pay it off son pay it off you're there's a bunch of intangibles that you're not even considering in this decision you're still acting like it's primitive math um or at least the idiots advising you are so you're gonna sleep different your wife's gonna look at you like a hero never never once have we had a wife said, you know, my husband borrowed deeply on our mortgage, and he's my hero. Never came up. I love the Kermit vibe she had, too.

That was great. Kind of a Miss Piggy meets Kermit. Well, it's the best I can do. It's the best I can do. Anna is with us. Is it Anna or Anna? It's Anna, I'm sure. And she's in Grand Rapids.

Is it Anna? Is that right? Yes, it's Anna. Hey, how can I help? So I recently paid off all of my student loans and am debt-free. Yay! Way to go! Thank you.

Yeah. So I couldn't have done it without you. But I have my three, six months of expenses. I just finished that up. And I'm wondering now if I should be investing my 15% or if I should be saving for a wedding that my boyfriend and I are planning to have in about a year and a half. So I'm wondering if I'm saving for that.

Wedding. Yeah, okay, perfect. Are you guys paying for this on your own? We think so. We don't really want it. We just want to plan for that and that if something comes, then we'll go for it. But, yeah, we kind of just want to plan on doing it ourselves just in case. Okay, I would set a very specific goal, a number you're trying to hit to save. And I would try to hit that before the year and a half is over

and then begin investing. You got that money set aside. You know, you're not going to have to go into debt for this wedding. That is the goal here. And so that's why we're telling you to save for the wedding first. Because what happens is you start investing 15%. The wedding was over budget. Now we got to put it on a credit card. sure yeah so what do you think you're going to spend um we're thinking maybe between i would say probably we're thinking between 20 and 30 depending on what rates are but um probably 25 is the goal we set okay well if you yes that that by the way that's about an average wedding in america right now so um you're not above average you're not below average you're right around there's 28 000 last year so the um the thing is having um three grown kids that all got married and i was involved in the budget because i was paying for it um or at least

part of it anyway on one all but one all of it but well anyway my part the bride's part and then my son we participate some have a detailed budget not a general goal lay it out okay this is how much we're going to spend on the photographer there's so much we get on the dress there's so much we spend on the reception and treat it i'm sorry but treat it like a project you're managing a project you are so you have a timeline you have a budget and you you know you stick to it what must be true well we can't have that we got to have this instead if you don't have a very specific thing then you'll line item you'll get into a mess there but that sounds reasonable i would say for the wedding first dr john deloney ram Personality, is my co-host today. Luna is in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Hi, Luna. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi, how are you doing? Better than I deserve. What's up? Can you hear me all right? Yes. Okay. So I'm going to try and make this as short as possible, but I'm 29. I have a fire under my butt to go back to school, and I'm currently one year through undergraduate.

It's going to be four years, so it's going to be really a useless degree unless I go to graduate school because it's for a veterinary doctor degree. And I'm looking at it and it looks like I'm going to be able to pay for it. You're going to hate this. It's going to be all on loans, but I don't even make over like the threshold to make, you know, pay taxes.

So I, I make next to nothing. My family all lives paycheck to paycheck, but the one saving grace here is like my grandparents, they have a trust and they say that I have 10% of it when they die. And I'm wondering like, is it possible to borrow from a trust or get it early? Or what can I do? Because I'm just looking to pay for my living expenses to college. What were you doing before you went on this adventure? I really tried to have a family life but they they all kind of left but who's they

your husband your kids yes i don't have any kids i've got cats but um yeah i i was married for a short time divorced but um my life kind of fell apart for a while, and I put it back together, and I finally have, like, a passion and a purpose, and like I said, I've got a fire under my butt to go back to school and make something of myself. But I'm just, you know, there's not a lot of money out there for students unless you borrow, and that's not a good option. Can I challenge something real quick?

Yeah. You don't got to go make something of yourself. You already got worth right now. Yeah. Okay. And I think that fire under your butt, honestly, is how burned you are because you looked at somebody and you said, I do. And he said, I do.

And then he left. Well, I mean, that's, that's not something that I'm really focusing on here in the future. That's kind of past is past. But now, like, I did. guess past is past except it's so caught up in your throat you can hardly speak that's right there's a great quote that says you may be through the past but the past isn't through with you and if you don't heal from that where you can talk about it and think about it without your body getting overcome then it's going to haunt you and what it's going to do it's going to shoot you like a rocket ship and do some life-altering decisions,

like getting $250,000 or $300,000 in the hole and not knowing what direction is up or down. And maybe not even finishing and getting the DVM. That's right. Not everybody that starts vet school finishes vet school. Not everybody that finishes vet school passes their boards and becomes a DVM. That's right. Not everybody that starts vet school finishes vet school. Not everybody that finishes vet school passes their boards and becomes a veterinarian. It's harder than medical school from what I hear.

It is. One of my friends that's a vet says, when you're in medical school, you only have to learn one set of anatomy. He said, I have to learn a whole bunch of them. So he makes fun of doctors and it's very difficult and uh intellectually difficult and uh and you love animals obviously it becomes an emotional process too um so luna the answer to your question is no you cannot borrow on a trust unless the trust has uh written into it the uh that option'm going to bet you that this one does not.

And can they release? Who is the trust? Your grandparents formed the trust for their money to leave to their grandkids? Their grandkids and their children, yeah. Okay. And how much is in the trust? I think it was down a little bit right now, but it was like $2.7 million. So your part's like $270,000, so it would fund you going to school. Okay, so if you talk to your grandfather, he could just choose to take you out of the trust

and take $270,000 and pay for your school. And you no longer would be in the trust, okay? He could choose to do that legally. You want me to tell you what I think is going to happen? You're not going to like it. Well, yeah, but that's why I called for the answer. I think your grandfather loves you, and he's going to see how fragile you are and that

you're probably not in really good emotional shape right now to go take on something like the battle of vet school it's going to take a lot more strength than you've exhibited in this call to do that and i'm not picking on you honey i think you've been hurt and you're still hurting and i want you to have some healing and be going at vet school from strength rather than from weakness and i gotta feel and your grandpa might say that does that sound like something he might say it may be but i also skipped over the part where i went to like therapy and i was in the hospital for a while doing inpatient and outpatient like and here's the thing i'm so sorry here's the thing sweetie I'm so sorry. Here's the thing, sweetie.

I'm pretty well balanced now. I've been a, I've taught doctoral students. I've walked them through their dissertation. I've worked with law students. I've worked with medical students. Like,

I need you to hear what Dave's saying. That probably the greatest gift you could give yourself is to get a one, if not two jobs where you are working really close with animals because it's what you love. And do that hour in, hour out, day after day, week after week, month after month, and make sure you love this.

And for two or three years, and let yourself have some distance because the lady we're talking to is having trouble going through the conversation, much less through three years of vet school. And this is two guys who both love our dogs. And we love you. We want great vets. We want you to win. I want you to win. I'm not trying to be a dream killer. I'm trying to be a nightmare killer.

And I got a feeling if your grandpa loves you and if he's wise, he will deny your request. Not because he's being mean, but because he's going to hear and see what we're hearing and seeing. That's my guess. Now, again, it's just a radio show. We've only talked to you for two minutes, honey. But you sound very hurt and very fresh and very raw in talking to you. And that's not saying you haven't done hard work already. But've got some more you got some more healing to do is what it sounds like and if we're wrong we're wrong you go do what you want to do honey uh you're a grown-up you're

allowed to do what you want to do you called us and we're going to tell you the truth because we love you here's a here even if it's not what you want to hear i'm going to give you this analogy um i've met with countless people over the years who are sick and tired of being overweight. And they say, today is the day that I start. None of those folks are going to be successful if the next day they start running a marathon. That's not how that works. They start walking around their neighborhood. They hire a personal trainer and slowly start lifting

weights it's a slow gradual process it's going to take time because you have to heal you have to change your entire way of doing life and to build your muscle tone that's right you got to build your body and so um i want you to hear me a day save say later not now yeah this is not you can't do this number not never not right now not right now and you're going to know a whole lot more about you and a whole lot more about this career path if you'll go do what john said and that's become a vet tech and just go in there and love animals every day and get paid and pay your bills and get paid and love animals and pay your bills and get paid and smile and get in the morning read your bible and sit on the back porch with a cup of coffee and watch the sun come up and know

that everything's going to be okay and you do that a little while longer and you know the past will be a little bit more in your rearview mirror and again i'm not discounting or putting down all the work you've done so far the hospital the therapists all that i'm just telling you reflecting back to you what we heard in three minutes on the radio, honey. And I got a buddy who. He's about as gentle as I know how to be. Yeah, who runs a vet clinic. And he's always talking about they're trying to hire good vets.

And so I can even see a scenario where you are a vet tech for a couple of years. And some vet looks at you and says, I'll help you go through school. I'll pay for it. If you sign a five-year deal with me or something. And so, man, you may figure something out there. Ding, ding. And the situation might change with the trust over time. If your grandparents passed, the 10% could be coming to you while you're doing all of this. And instead of you going up to your eyeballs in debt in this situation, and then maybe not able to play through. This is the Ramsey Show. Hey, you guys, health insurance costs are only moving one way, and that way isn't

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any credit score. So when you're ready to buy a house, you got to find a good lender like Churchill Mortgage who can do what's called manual underwriting. And that's where they personally review your financial history to approve you for a mortgage. Like we did before there was a FICO score. We actually made sure you had a freaking job and stuff. So, wow. What a concept. Yeah.

So this way you get to avoid the whole credit score game where you borrow money to raise your score so you can borrow money so you can raise your score so you can borrow money so you can raise your score so you borrow money so you can raise your score so you can borrow money so you can raise your score so you borrow money so you can raise your score so you borrow money sounds like fun if you're a bank or a dog chasing its tail that one too which are usually dizzy no pun intended it might sound crazy to some people but the best plan for your future is avoid debt get a real estate agent it will help you find a house you can actually afford get it paid off as

soon as possible. And we recommend agents who are Ramsey trusted. These are agents that are high octane, high protein. They didn't get their license last week, and they're not your Uncle Charlie who's guilt tripping you. This is your freaking house. It's the largest asset you have. So you can buy a house without a credit score and you can work with an absolute professional and you need to ramsey solutions.com slash agent to get a ramsey trusted real estate

agent ramsey solutions.com slash agent nathan in oklahoma city how are you i'm doing well how are you dave better than i deserve what's up well just got a question for you. So I'm 28 years old and I just hit baby step seven about seven months ago. Boom. Wow. Thank you. And I'm currently like rebuilding my emergency and stuff because I deleted my accounts for being debt free. And I'm just kind of curious where to go now because I'm kind of lost with the whole like where to invest my money right now. What accounts did you delete?

Well, I like my checking and my savings. I cleared them all so I could be debt free, pay off the house. And now that I'm 100% debt free, I've got my six months emergency saved. And now I am investing in my, well, I have two Roth accounts, one through work and then a Roth IRA. And then I, and then I do, uh, 10% in my TSP. Um, and apart from that, um, I'm just, you know, kind of saving money and living life every day, really. But I need a goal, and my goal is to get more money, but that seems really kind of boring, honestly. I mean, just to do it that way.

And I'm not 100% sure that that's doing the right thing. You're in danger. Nathan, you're in danger. Okay. You're in danger of messing all this up gotcha because the fastest way to get rich is boring and if you go screwing around with get rich quick trying to be cool you're going to lose all of the progress you have made. And you got, you know, one of the things I ran into when I first started coaching wealthy people years ago was they had this latent guilt.

Like I've got $2 million, but I don't feel like I'm doing it right. Like there must be something sophisticated. These smart people are doing stuff I don't know how to do. And they're the ones with the $2 million and they're doing very simplistic primitive basic things and they got wealthy but they you know they certainly did not buy crypto right you know they certainly are not doing nothing down tic-tac real estate you know they're they're not trying to get rich they're not trying to get rich quick. They're not trying to do a double helix backflip family partnership that they read about on Instagram because it's a sure-fire way to lose your butts, what it is.

You know what I mean? Come on. So just slow, you know, the tortoise and the hare. The hare was the sexy, cool one. He lost the race. The tortoise was ugly and steady and predictable and boring. Please be boring. Well, now, Dave, all of us tortoises don't have to be ugly now.

You done got personal, Dave. Yeah, no. ugly now you done got personal dave well yeah no and and seriously but the uh i mean the point being the plan yeah is all all of your smart friends who are broke but wear clothes they can't afford drive cars they can't afford and go on vacations they can't afford all of your smart friends will make fun of your tortoise. That's right. That's right. But they're the sexy hairs. They're the ones that the rabbit that's cool. They let all the look, you know, they look like they got it all together and they got nothing, nothing, nothing.

It's almost like got a headache. That's all I got. It's almost like we want there to be like this secret of the wealthy that only a few people can get their hands on and then i really wanted that because i'm really smart at math and so i knew if it was complicated and difficult i could do it that must be it that i would be able to do it and so just show me the complicated double back flip barrel of fish hooks yeah i'll get it i'll be able to do it pride comes right before the fall right before it nope any any joe can do it you just got to be steady boring you know now what you can do is you can pay very close attention to your accounts

and just go okay yeah i'm going to be steady but i'm also going to make sure that sucker's maximizing that's right that is not going to be steady, but I'm also going to make sure that sucker's maximizing. That's right. That is true. I'm not going to be ADD. I'm not going to take my hand off the wheel, hand off the wheel, hand off the wheel. I'm going to drive straight through, but I'm going to be very diligent and go, okay, this accounts for this, this accounts for that, and I'm goal-oriented.

And those are things that you are, Nathan, that are very good. And obviously, I was being a little bit dramatic to make sure you got the message, but you've done very well. Now, I would also say in his situation, we recommend everybody work with a smart investor pro or somebody with their investments. But a guy like him really needs that accountability to not get like, oh, the market's being weird or I feel like my guy told me about this thing over here. I need to be trying.

He's not going to function in fear. He's going to make bad decisions out of greed. Even still. That's what I was stopping him on, because I know that guy because I was him. Yeah. Because I'm smart. This is too slow.

And that's about the time you're about to step on it, so just get something on your shoe. Jonathan's in Lexington, Kentucky. Hey, Jonathan, what's up? Hi, Dave. Thank you guys for taking my call. Sure. How can we help?

I'm getting my way through these baby steps, and I'm trying to think of ways to get through faster. I've also developed my career goals and educational goals, and I just wanted your opinion. I have a project car that i've had for about three years now i haven't been able to get much done on it and i'm wondering if i should sell it um so just wondering what you guys think i'm not sure but i think in the 30 seconds we've been together you told me your goals have changed um what do you mean what like from the time three years ago when you bought

this car you had a goal of doing a project car and i think today you don't have the same goal you have other goals that are a priority over the car yeah i absolutely love this car um i didn't ask that i just said your goals have changed i probably love the car but I didn't ask that. I just said your goals have changed. I probably love the car, but I don't have a goal of owning it because I don't even know what it is yet, but I probably like it. What is it? It's a 1986 Z31 Nissan 300ZX. Really?

Yeah, it's pretty. Yeah. What are you doing? What are you supposed to be doing to it um well it's pretty solid mechanically but um ever since i've owned it i've let people drive it and it's gotten pretty dinged up and depreciated um so basically just i wanted to do a rebuild but i'm trying to pay off this debt yeah but it's a it's a body rebuild. Okay, yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I think the car served its purpose. I thought I heard you say that in between all these other things. I have new educational goals. I have investment goals.

I have these other goals. When I bought the car, I didn't have those goals. Now I've got some competing goals, and the car is further down on the list. Did I hear that? That's it. Your priorities changed. Car went down the list. Is that right, Jonathan?

Yeah, and also the time and effort it would take to get it done. I'd rather be working on my educational goal. There's your answer. I see what you mean. Yeah, I thought I heard that in there.

There's project car on every corner. Most people drive project cars. Yeah. there's project car on every corner most people drive project cars so yeah uh sell it just because you'd rather do other things i think this is the ramsey show rachel cruz ramsey personality is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Ashley's in Nashville. Hi, Ashley. How are you? I'm good. How are you guys?

Better than we deserve. What's up? So I just wanted to get your all's opinion. I have a friend that does your all's program as well as I've been doing it since 2020. I'm still in baby step two and we've discussed it a few times but I'm just not sure of my decision. So in 2019 we adopted our son and then a year later our marriage fell apart and we split up. So fast forward to now, we've been to court two times over custody issues. A lot of nonsense, really. His dad's just really hard to get along with.

But in those two times, it cost me around $20,000 to $25,000 in court returning fees and everything else. So I'm trying to just gain some traction on maybe preparing for that in the future because I feel like it's not going away and still being able to pay off my debt. I really just don't know what to do. I'm sorry, Ashley. That's really, yeah, that's a, that's a really hard situation. Um, how much, how much money do you make a year? Um, so I work as much overtime as I can. Um, I tried last year, I made around a hundred, a hundred thousand. And then, um, this year it's probably going to be between $80,000 and $90,000. Okay. What do you do?

I'm a nurse. Good for you. Thank you. How much debt in general do you have? Altogether, it's probably around $90,000. It's a mixture of vehicles, well, my vehicle alone, and then I have some credit cards and a line of credit at the bank. What do you owe in your car?

$25,000. Okay. So you have $90,000 in debt and $25,000 25 of its car and then how much of its credit cards um around 9 000 okay so the rest of it is what um i have a line of credit which is around $20,000 that I opened up to pay for court fees. And I'm not sure. I can't think of anything else. That's only $45,000. That's only $54,000.

So I have another vehicle in my name, but I don't pay for it. So that's another $48,000, but that's not mine. What in the world? What is that? It's his truck, but he makes all the payments on that. It doesn't cost me anything, but we went in together to get it. So your name is on the, is it on the deed? On the loan?

On the title of the truck? Yeah, yeah. But the divorce decree gave him the truck, and you're supposed to pay it, or he's supposed to pay it. So that's not his, no. That's my fiance that I have now. I'm sorry. Oh, so you have a, so you're engaged. I bought a truck for your fiance for $50,000. So we went in together.

I didn't necessarily buy it for him. It's something that we just done together. He needed you to co-sign it? No. No, I mean, he's doing good with his money. No, he's not. He took out a $50,000 truck loan. He's not doing good with his money. No, he's not. He took out a $50,000 truck loan. He's not doing good with his money.

Why are you on the loan? Because we're getting married, and I just don't know. When are you getting married? Hopefully within the next year. Okay. hopefully within the next year okay in the whole story that you told us that has a lot of uh tragedy and sadness this thing then jumps up as super stupid and crazy right like a fifty thousand dollar truck while you're fighting and don't have the money to pay and you have to take out a line of credit.

And the best idea y'all got is to go in debt for 50 grand on a truck while you're trying to keep a dadgum child in a custody battle ongoing with a crazy ex? Yeah. This truck is crazy. Nuts. Crazy. Yeah. Yeah.

So, all right, so you're getting married when, did you say? Probably within a year. Okay. Why are you waiting? Honestly, because everything's just been so crazy with my ex for the past two years, and I've dealt with anxiety and depression. My son has a lot of issues he was born with. None of that's changing in a year. I'm sorry? None of that is changing in a year. I know, yeah. We've just not, I don't know, just anxiety and depression on my side and

my main focus being my son. That's just not been at the top of the list, I guess. Okay. You called and asked us for help and we love you and we want you to win and we're sad that you're having to fight to keep your baby. Okay. Now, then I'm going to tell you some hard stuff. Are you okay with that?

Yes. Okay. sell the stupid truck get married now or don't but don't wait around on some mythical island to come sailing up some mythical ship to come sailing up to your island when everything is going to be right because the things you've been facing part of your anxiety and part of the things you've been facing with mental health stuff is not just your ex it's this pile of stuff on you and all of these un untied knots knots that need to be tied okay right you don't have closure on anything all these open-ended things or there's open-ended this open-ended that open-ended this there's no that need to be tied, okay? Right. You don't have closure on anything. All these open-ended things, or there's open-ended this, open-ended that,

open-ended this. There's no closure anywhere, and that creates angst. It creates anxiety. So, yeah, you've got to get some predictable order, not chaos. The more areas of your life you can get non-chaos in the the faster your anxiety is going to drop i'm not a mental health professional dr john deloney is i've just heard him say that so

i said it okay but that's the truth okay so and these you know and the debt and the pile of debt you guys have you have and now you guys with this fifty thousand dollar truck is part of where your anxiety is coming from because you don't you feel trapped and now you're with this $50,000 truck is part of where your anxiety is coming from because you feel trapped. And now you're worried about the next time the crazy ex comes at you, how are we going to cover that? Meantime, I got a $48,000 truck note. Okay. And I know he takes care of it, Ashley. I don't care.

But the truth is, though, if he doesn't, it's on you then. And so you're carrying this around your neck. You feel it between your shoulder blades. You feel the weight of it. And that's part of the anxiety. You can't keep from doing that, by the way. It's just how your body and your mind and your spirit works. So, yeah, if you were my little sister or my daughter, I would tell you, get married and sell the truck by the weekend,

or run this guy off and sell the truck by the weekend, but paint or get off the ladder. Right. Okay? That's what I would tell you to do if I loved you, and I do. So I want you to do that, okay? And then we want you to take this wonderful income you have, and you have a fabulous career choice because you'll always have a job and you can always make money when you're a nurse. It's just a great job.

And, Ashley, I would sell your car, honestly. I would get any level of traction for $25,000. I'm like, you can get a used $10,000, whatever it is, but just I would get out of that. How hard would you work? How crazy would you go to have $20,000 in the bank and no debt? So next time Crazy X comes around, you can punch him in the nose with a lawyer. Right. That's what I thought I was doing this last time.

Exactly. But you didn't. You went over the car lot with your goober fiance and bought a truck. Right. Okay, so you went the other way. So I want you to sell everything in sight, work like crazy people, live on beans and rice, rice and beans, get married. Get the credit card debt paid off.

I mean, all of it. Start getting some traction with that debt payoff, Ashley, and I think you're going to start to feel more in control. Because you are. That's why you'll feel that way. Because you're going to run the chaos off and drive order in and build a war chest to go to war. And then you can fight for this baby.

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