The Ramsey Show - App - There Is Hope in the Midst of the Struggle (Hour 2)

Episode Date: February 21, 2024

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. I am Jade Warshaw, your co-host today. Dr. John Deloney is sitting to my right. We're taking your calls all afternoon about your life, your money. So give us a call. The number is 888-825-5225, and we'll chop it up with you.

Call about your life. Call about your money. Call about your relationships. The show is yours, and we are happy that you're here with us. So let's go straight to the phone lines. Kyle in Jackson, Mississippi. What's going on, Kyle? I'm going to Jackson. Hey, Jay, Jackson, Mississippi. What's going on, Kyle? I'm going to Jackson.

Hey, Jay, Dr. John. How's it going, guys? Going good. How can we help? Yes. So just to kind of give you a brief overview of what I got going on. I'm currently just in a situation that I'm trying to figure my way out of. Um, I'll kind of tell you what prompted it. Um, my wife and I are actually expecting our first baby here in a few weeks and it's just, it's got me thinking, you know, it's, it's time for a legitimate change. I'm ready to do it. Um, but I'm just trying to get some traction and I can't seem to do that. So, um, that's, that's where I'm at. And, you know, I'm excited, but I'm, you know, I'm getting pretty nervous, pretty scared and

it's coming pretty quick. What, tell me about the, your financial situation that's making you nervous and scared. And yeah, so, um, altogether, um, just quick math in my head um roughly about 400k that's including a mortgage um spread out i'm pretty much a kosher child of stupid but um that's 72 and student loans that's between my wife and i the majority of that is mine about 64 um two car loans. How much are those? One's 18, one's 29. Okay. What else? Um, roughly 15K across multiple credit cards. And then, um, just being conservative and saying another 1500, um, medical and miscellaneous.

Okay. Um, I think something that'll help is kind of separating your mortgage debt from everything else because when you tell yourself, I've got $400,000 of debt, that feels a lot more overwhelming with the mortgage included in that. And the truth of the matter is,

right now, your only assignment is to pay off the non-mortgage debt. So it's not cheating to kind of cut that part off and put it, you know, put it aside for later. So without that, you know, this goes down significantly. Let me just quickly in my head, 30, 60, 70, 80. So, I mean, you've got $160,000 of debt. Does that feel right? Yeah, it sounds roughly right. Yep. Okay. So how much income are you bringing in? $110,000 plus bonuses. I get about $6,500 a month or so. I haven't gotten my first bonus, but we're on track to about your $1,500 next month. Okay. So roughly you bring

home anywhere between $6,500 to $8,000 a month with bonuses. Is that fair? I would say $6,500 is fair. Okay. That's fair. And is this just your income or your wife's working too? I know you said she's pregnant, but does she normally work? She's a homemaker slash babysitter. So she was contributing about 700 a month or so but um that's about to stop okay and when so this will be your first child sorry i'm asking a lot of questions because i want to get my head around it so she has this first child do you think that is the plan that she'll go back to doing what she was doing before or pick up any sort of work or is the idea that she'll probably you know take home take care of the baby and not do any financial?

The intent is to stay home and take care of the baby to avoid child care. Potentially going back to doing what she was doing eventually. I don't know what postpartum and what that's going to look like. The intent right now is to avoid child care costs and have her stay home with the baby. Okay. Okay. So, okay. What that's telling me is, because when I think about child care, I'm just, I'm thinking out loud here. When I think about child care, you pay around twelve to thirteen hundred dollars per kid but for an infant it's more expensive so maybe you're paying fourteen or fifteen hundred a month if you're doing you know a mid-level to nice nicer child care do we feel like

she here's the way i i kind of think about that i'm like is she able to make fifteen hundred dollars or more a month could she bring in is she able to make $1,500 or more a month could she bring in is she able to bring in $3,000 a month because if she is that kind of answers your question yeah that means yeah she can work and we can have child care I'm not saying that you know you have to do it immediately but I do think that in this equation as much money coming in as possible is necessary and I also think this is the hard part of this equation. There's going to be some things that you don't like about it. Like I don't think there's any getting around.

Something's going to have to take place here that nobody likes, whether it's you picking up a second job, because then the negative side to that is, oh, I won't be around the baby as much. And then your wife's going to be like, hey, you're never here. So no matter how you slice this, there's going to be a trade that takes place and it's not going to be comfortable. So I do want to say that out of the gate and you and your wife can decide what that trade is and when it takes place. But my screen says that you're on the path to bankruptcy.

So what I want to make sure that you know is I don't think that you're on the path to bankruptcy. So what I want to make sure that you know is I don't think that you're on the path to bankruptcy. I think you just have some really difficult decisions that you're going to have to make with your money and the way your lifestyle is moving forward. Fair enough? Yeah, that's fair. I'm willing to pick up a second job if I need to.

I'm just trying to get my head above water right now and figure it out. So the tactical side to this, so let's talk tactics. Tactical side is, do you have a budget? Are you working on a budget right now? I just started trying to give it a really good go this past week, and I don't know that it's in the best place. I probably need to see how it comes out. I did attempt to put my best foot forward on it and try it out, but I don't know how well that is right now. Okay, well, finish it because I think sometimes we start on it and we go

get busy with something else. Prioritize this this weekend. You got to get this budget set with your wife together. You guys decide on the amounts. And first things first, if you've never been on a budget before, and this is for anybody listening, your first job is just to figure out, can you live on your income? Like, don't make any big sweeping changes. Just be like, can I live on a budget? Can I make, can I write down a realistic number for groceries? Can I write down a realistic number that I think we spend? And can I live on a budget? Can I make, can I write down a realistic number for groceries?

Can I write down a realistic number that I think we spend? And can I just stick to it? Like that's for so many people, they quickly go to, I'm going to live on nothing. And it's like, I can't stick to this. So just get in a rhythm of you guys sticking to whatever number you put. Don't get too crazy. And we don't use credit cards. We were just living on our income. And then when you start feeling your footing with that, that's when you start going, okay, but now I can cut down groceries and I can cut back on takeout and I can cut back on, you know, whatever those different care categories are. And that's what that looks like. And then I want you to really start playing out and playing through some numbers and seeing what would it look like if our family lived on 80,000 instead of 110,000. And then I want you to start running the numbers on what would it look like if our family lived on $80,000 instead of $110,000.

And then I want you to start running the numbers on what would it look like if you found a job where you could make $2,000 extra a month. And I really want you to pull all of these concepts out of the air and put them down on paper and start working your way backwards and going, okay, what does it look like to get $2,000 extra a month? What does it look like for us to live on this number of a budget? And that's how you put this in real life. This is The Ramsey Show. Hey, you guys, health insurance costs are only moving one way, and that way isn't down. And if higher costs aren't enough, the wait times to see your doctor are longer, and it's harder than ever to get anything approved through the bureaucracy.

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So learn more today and join at chministries.org slash budget. That's chministries.org slash budget. You're listening to The Ramsey Show. Thanks for listening. Hey, if you love this show, make sure that you like, subscribe, and share it with the people around you. That would help us out big time. Obviously, it kicks the show up in the algorithms, and you're just sharing a really awesome show with the people around you, which that is a win-win. I'm your host, Jade Warshaw. This is Dr. John Deloney taking your calls all afternoon. So give us a call. The number is 888-825-5225. And we would be happy to give you our opinion on what's going on in your life. So we'll do just that. We got Justin in Seattle, Washington.

What's going on? Justin. Yeah, how's it going? I got a question for you. So I rent a house below market value, a full bedroom house and for about a thousand dollars a month. And I'm looking at, is it worth it for me to pursue buying a house knowing that the mortgage is going to be twice as much? Yes, that would be the big question is should I pursue buying a house? I have little,

I have very little debt and I just got a new job with a little more money. And I just got married two years ago. My wife wants a house, but I'm not sure if that's... I'm worried about the risk, I guess. How old are you? Or is there a risk of just running? I'm 45 years old. 45.

I mean, well, when you buy, you're taking away some of the risk because for most of us, the largest line item on our budget is our home, whether we rent or buy. And so when we rent, though, that becomes a variable cost, right? We have the ability for rent to go up. We have the ability for our lease to break and then we have to go someplace else. Whereas when we buy, it's just kind of a fixed savings account and we're putting money into it and we're building equity in that and it becomes an asset for us and it's fixed. So that kind of creates a stability in our life. So to that point, I would say most folks, really everybody should aspire to home ownership. But the real question for you right now is, is now the time to buy?

And that's really the question that most people, including yourself, need to be asking themselves. It's not necessarily, is renting better than buying? It's, is now a good time for me to buy? Is that fair enough? Yeah, I mean, I do, I've went through a divorce, so I don't have very much in retirement. Um, I do pay quite a bit in child support. So that's the other thing is like, should I just be holding my horses and kind of waiting for the interest rates to go down or, or, I mean, I feel like I've been waiting forever.

I owned a house when I was married a long time ago, but now I'm like to the point where I kind of got out of debt and I'm just kind of, I have a little bit from when I got married. My wife had some debt that we're paying off, maybe about $25,000 or so. But I just feel like I'm just trying to, I don't know, I'm nervous to do it. I know, I guess I get the point that I could, that my rent could go up,

but I've been with the same landlord for 12 years and he's, I don't know, I guess he could sell the house or something like that. But I feel like I'm pretty comfortable where I'm at. But maybe that's just kind of me being a little naive as well. Well, I mean, kind of going back to our initial conversation, there is value in stabilizing your lifestyle and I think as long as you rent there is more perceived stability than actual stability so to your wife's point she's the one that wants to buy so let's let's talk

about what it might look like for you to get to that point and I would say the first thing is I would want to be completely debt free so I'd pay off this debt that you have. It sounds like it's only $25,000. How quickly could you have that paid off? I would say within a year or two. Okay, so one to two years? She owns her own company that is kind of teetering back and forth. It's doing okay, and sometimes it doesn't do very well. And when I have a regular job where i make a decent amount of money i make about 135

and then bonuses can get it up there a little higher what does she make but on a on an average month yeah i would say on an average month she makes she played she right now she's breaking even and she's with her business maybe she'll make about three three or four thousand dollars a month sometimes and then sometimes she'll just how long has she been doing it like that um she's been doing that for i would say she's been doing it for before we got married so So maybe five, six years now. All right. I would challenge that. I think there's a point where a business is just a really great hobby and it's great when

it brings in money. But I'd want to get to the point after five years where the income is consistent and I can say I'm earning this money and this is what I'm taking in. That being said, and I'd want to see that, especially with you guys thinking about buying a house. So my keys to this would be paying off the debt. Let's save up three to six months of expenses. In this case, I'd probably say six months of expenses because her income isn't as solid as I'd like for it to be. And then I'd start saving up for a down payment. I'd start looking in your area and saying, okay, like what's feasible for us?

What can we get into? And I wouldn't worry. I mean, I say this very lightly because interest rates are real and what it takes to buy a house right now is not easy. And so this could be a long journey for you guys saving up to actually get something that you would wanna buy.

And I think that's okay. But I do think in this case, home ownership, we just know that it's a key component to wealth building. 67% of millionaires have paid for residences. So I do think that it's something that you should consider and should start working towards. John, what do you think? Yeah. Justin, can I use your situation as just a conversation on a larger, a bigger puzzle piece across the country? Is that cool? Yeah. So Dave in particular has taken, and I guess all of us by proxy, have taken a lot of hits recently. And I'm seeing it on social media.

I'm seeing it everywhere. That we're out of touch. That we don't care about people, that we want people to not spend money or ideas are impractical, they don't work. And so when Jade tells somebody who's thinking about buying a home, hey, don't owe anybody any money first. And make sure you've got some money to put down enough that you can get in that house and that you could get out of it if you had to. That you can get into that house and you're not going to immediately be underwater in a huge asset like that. When we tell people 25% of your take-home pay, what we get back is,

well, that's just unreasonable because houses have doubled. And here's the thing. I bought a house in 2020 right at the beginning before it got bananas and i'm shopping for a house right now it's it's mostly doubled it is madness it's heartbreaking and i dave pays me super obnoxiously well and math doesn't care about my feelings and what does that mean for me and my family? There are neighborhoods in Nashville that we would have moved in with our same income

and our same cash situation in 2020 that we're not doing right now. We can't because we can't afford it. I've got friends across the country that want to move to this state to keep doing this job, to live in this town. And they simply can't do it because the matrix of, I want this job, I want to live in this town. And they simply can't do it because the matrix of,

I want this job, I want to be in this town, and I want this home, one of those or two of those have to give. And so the big enemy here is how expensive homes are. The big enemy here is how everyone says it's okay to borrow a whole bunch of money and spread yourself out. And the heartbreaking part for me and for Jade, for Dave, for George, for Ken, for all of us is we sit with hurting people on the other side of this thing when it goes. And make no mistake, it will go again. It will go again. And so we love people. We want people to buy the nicest house you can afford for you and your family. I want everyone to do the job they want in the city they want in the house they want. Right now, housing is out of

control. It's so expensive. And that may mean that for most people, you have to rent for a while. And is it ideal? Nope. Is it reality? Yes. Or you have to move to a new state. You're gonna have to move to a new town, you have to take on a second or third or fourth job or whatever the thing may be. But math doesn't care what neighborhood I want to live in. Math doesn't care what school I want to send my kid to. Math says, if you don't have money in the bank, math says, if you go into your home underwater, it's going to bite you and it's going to cost you everything. And by the way, some super, super rich person's going to come buy that house from pennies on the dollar after I lose it. So it's heartbreaking, brother. But if you can't afford it, don't get into it.

But it is something worthy to build towards. Housing is out of control expensive. It's just reality. You're listening to The Ramsey Show. I'm your host, Jade Warshaw. This is Dr. John Deloney to my right. We're taking your calls all afternoon. The number is 888-825-5225. Give us a call. Let's go straight to the phone line, shall we, John? We shall. Let's talk to Matt in Pittsburgh, PA. What's going on, Matt? Hey, I am 23 years old and I am $157,000 in student loan debt. Yikes. And I just don't know how to get out of it. What'd you study, brother? I was originally engineering, but switched to biochemistry and therefore lost my academic scholarship.

And now I'm this far in debt. What do you do for a living now? I work as a medical lab tech at a hospital here in Pittsburgh. What are you earning? I'm sorry? What are you earning? Take home is about $2,600 a month okay do you have any other debt uh no okay um what's your living situation uh I'm currently running an apartment with roommate roommates okay so what are you paying in rent every month?

With utilities, $550. $550. Okay, good. Okay. Good news is your rent is in a good spot. What else do you have? No car payment, nothing like that, right? No.

Okay. So the good news is you don't have a lot of other expenses that are pulling away from your ability to pay this debt off um you know so many people find themselves and i just kind of want to paint this picture for you because it'll make you a little bit more grateful because so many people find themselves in this situation where it's like hey i have 157 000 of debt but i'm also married with kids and a mortgage and credit card debt and card car notes so it's really hard to make that traction because all of their money is just going away every single month the good news is you've got um at least half of your income should

be at your your disposal is that fair enough uh yeah with the minimum payments and the rent i don't have much wiggle room like with groceries and gas and everything what are you spending on groceries and gas for a single guy groceries i can get my bill to like 200 bucks a month and then gas uh probably about i want to say like $250 a month. Okay. And then does your job take out insurance and everything like that? Do you have that benefit?

Yeah. Okay. So what else are you, what's another big expenditure that you have going out every month? It's just the minimum payments for the student loans. Okay. So they're all broken up. How many are there? Well, there's four private

and the federal loan. So I'm paying $1,212 every month towards the private loan and about $250 for the federal. Okay. Jay, the big elephant in the room here is I don't see a possible way forward with him only making $31,000 a year.

Yeah, he's got to get his income up. Bro, what's your end goal here? You quit being an engineer to get a biochem degree. You're obviously a smart young man. What's the goal here? Well, my problem is that I feel kind of stuck where I am in my job right now because I'd have to go get a further degree in order to move up.

What I mean is you're better off right now going to try to get a manager's job at McDonald's or an assistant manager at Home Depot. And I know it won't have the prestige of going into a hospital and being a lab tech, but, bro, you are broke. And I'm saying that because I love you, right? I mean, you can't eat. $200, I mean, that's – I went to Chick-fil-A the other day, and it was like $19. I mean, it's out of this world expensive to exist.

You just can't do that on 31. So whatever you want to do down the road man i'm all for you once you go to med school if that's what you want to do or pa school or chem school if you can get a master's in chemistry whatever it is i'm all for it but right now you can't eat dude and that means you're gonna have to break some hearts and everyone's gonna be like oh my gosh you got these degrees and they didn't yeah right now i gotta go make a bunch of money yeah does that make sense like i yeah it makes sense you're calling us like i wish i could just be like all right jade and i

we bestow it upon you we i mean you just got to work and go earn that money and 31 000 annually is a big math problem it's a t that's you're digging a swimming pool with a spoon brother yeah makes sense what would that look like i mean real talk what does that look like for you is this just a matter of applying for different jobs did you kind of apply for one you got it and that was good enough well yeah i was applying for because i graduated in december of 22 and i I was applying for about six months, and I was working that entire time too. But, yeah, I finally got this job in June of last year.

And I've still been looking for other stuff that pays higher, but, yeah, I can't. Can you work four hours before your shift in shipping? And then after you get off your shift, can you work another four hours as an orderly? I know those are two positions that are hard to find in hospitals. Or can you go over and work in the gift shop? I'm just trying to say I understand that draw to be in that ecosystem. You worked hard to get in there. This is what you're passionate about.

It's just not pay the bills. And so the other alternative is I'm going to cobble together a couple of two or three jobs inside this system. And by the way, in five years, when you've earned some more money and paid this stuff off, you'll know how a hospital works, right? And that will set you up for whatever you want to do next. But there's not a way that you're going to get through this without a lot of pain and a lot of sacrifice. Either going to work at McDonald's and then working at Subway at night and then loading Bosca's at Walmart overnight. Or doing a whole bunch of jobs at the hospital. Yeah. Your goal right now should be to 3X this.

Yeah, 3X. Okay. And people are going to say, oh go make ninety thousand dollars no we know there's not just they're not handing out ninety thousand dollar jobs this means you're just going to work seven days a week 12 hours a day for a couple of years piecing together some jobs okay because think about it right now in your situation right now you're paying off uh thirteen thousand dollars fourteen thousand dollars a year on the way you're going maybe that's maybe what you get so if you if you two exit now you're paying off thirty thousand dollars a year and if you three exit now you're paying off forty five thousand dollars a year

so sixty thousand dollars a year so let's that's that's where we're getting to and it's going to be a journey but i think think you can do this. I don't want this to take you, mess around and take you seven years to pay this off. Yeah. And what's annoying for you, my friend is Jade and I both had this about this much or more. And both of us worked a whole bunch of jobs, did a bunch of wild things and missed a lot of fun times with our families

and our friends for an extended number of years to get this stuff knocked out so we've been there we know it's the worst it is and it's what's got to happen yeah how are you feeling i feel like you know i think sometimes people call in and they're kind of hoping that we can you know pull out that big red button that kind of like gives them the free pass like i don't know i i feel like we just loaded you up how are you feeling yeah it's uh just kind of relieving to like hear somebody else say uh get into another field or like go get a different job because yeah it's it's stressful to like to put all that time and work and realize like this isn't going to be able to pay off anything. Listen, I think you're finding the reality in the dream that we all believed. You know, so many of us, we went into college with that thought of, listen, my degree is going to ROI.

Like I'm going to do this thing. I'm going to go out and get a job and I'll be able to pay for it. Lickety split. And so many of us, you're not alone when you wake up and realize, oh my gosh, and you feel just so disenchanted by the whole system and realize this might be four or five years of your life spent kind of making up for it and that's a very real feeling but the hopeful part of it is you're definitely not alone and there are millions of people who have walked through this before you and they can verify that the pathway is clear and it actually does work if you you can get your income up, if you can get on a budget and you can start making those payments using the debt snowball. So that's the hopeful side of this, but it doesn't make it any more easy, John. I like your idea, James. We got to get a red button and once a year, we just hit

it and pay off somebody's everything. That would be awesome. That is amazing. All right, James, get your bank account ready because it's going to take a lot of money. This is The Ramsey Show. You were supposed to pop in there, James, and say something. I'm speechless. This is The Ramsey Show. You're listening to The Ramsey Show. I'm Jade Warshaw, your co-host today.

I'm joined by Dr. John Deloney. and we are taking your calls all afternoon long so give us a call we'd love it the number is triple eight eight two five five two two five call in hold on hold on like we got to we get we're just talking off air and we i think it's fair to have this conversation okay um it's it's kind of a continuation of when we had earlier. I think it's important just to call out homes are outrageously expensive. Oh, yeah. The last I looked,

and again, don't hold me to this statistic, but it's the lowest inventory is supply and demand. There's just none of houses. Yes. And some of these big Wall Street firms

are coming in just buying them, writing checks for them and buying up neighborhood. Like there's new competition on the ground that has never existed before that's right housing has just gotten insanely expensive and that means for the young couple who's 26 and 27 and she's a teacher and he's a youth minister she is a nurse practitioner he is trying to get a small business going. Y'all going to be renting for a long time.

And that's not because people hate you. It's because to get into a house, it's half a million dollars on the low end. Yeah. To get in a dream home or a really nice place. It used to be 500. Now it's a million dollars. It's just gotten bananas, right? All across the country. I mean, I think now more than ever, we're, we've been, we're part of the debt-free message. Like we're always telling folks to get debt-free. And I think now more than ever, it's so important if you're at the cusp, right? Like you're just starting out, you're considering student loans or you're talking to your kids about college. It is so, so, so important for, for those of us who got in debt, you know, shoulda, coulda, woulda, like we're here now, but for everybody else who's right at that cusp it's more important than ever because

this journey that you're talking about john to home ownership is longer is longer it might take you seven years it might take you however long to get there you definitely don't need to make it longer by having to pay off debt right so what i'm kind of likening that to is when sam and i uh when we first started out of course we had a bunch of debt it took us seven and a half years to pay off that debt once we realized hey we need to pay it off so really we were nine years in to marriage by the time our debt was paid off and we rented for 10 years because we were like we're not going to buy a house when we still have this debt our more our debt was our mortgage right so i know what if i know that feeling um to say hey you're not gonna buy a

house for 10 years but can we call this out this is important i was at you and sam's house like there was my wife and i there's a whole group of us over there yeah yeah for a holiday party yeah you have two little kids yep your house is extraordinary it's beautiful thank you right it's amazing and i think it's hard when you're you're 32 it's hard when you're 26 it's hard when you're 40 and the math isn't adding up to not be able to just exhale and see the other side is if you'll wait and do it right yeah there's a lot of laughter in that home there wasn't a lot of angst that's right there's a lot of joy there's a lot of fun there's a lot of laughter in that home. There wasn't a lot of angst. That's right. There was a lot of joy. There was a lot of fun. There's a lot of,

I wonder what other house we could get, right? It's a different ethos than I borrowed half of the 1% down. Cause I got this special loan program and from my brother and then my, this other guy. And then I got a bonus from my work and I was able to get into this place. Nobody moved. Nobody breathed.

Yeah. You don't, that's not that home owns you. You don't own that home, right? It's just a different way, but it's thinking through like, because I was there too. I mean, just, I remember walking around

being like, I'll never have a family. I'm never going to have a home for our family. I'm always going to be this, like begging the place where I work for help with. And it's just different now. Well, on the other side of it. The temptation, I think, John, is when you are in that headspace of like,

is this ever going to happen? Like feasibly, could this ever happen? You start, and I think that's the way a lot of people feel right now is the way these prices are and the way my income is and what it takes to even get a $400,000 house or a $300,000 house is astronomical. And so you start to feel like the gap getting wider and wider and if you start feeling hopeless then the reaction is well who cares like whatever i'm just gonna live my

life and next thing i know i'm seeing you out at applebee's and at chili's and you're buying up the bar and i'm like listen you're just making it worse don't don't lose hope because when you lose hope, it's like you just widen the gap even further. Or you make quick, unthought through decisions when you feel hopeless, right? Yeah. And that's when you just go by the house. That's right. And then in seven years,

when there's a market correction and your adjustable rate mortgage goes way up, a really, really wealthy person is gonna buy it from you from the bank at pennies on the dollar and you just help that person get even richer than they already are right yeah because you just yeah and it's heartbreaking to me and sometimes it's one of those things like people ask me in interviews like what would you tell 22 year old you and i just laugh and go nothing because that guy was an idiot he wouldn't listen and so um i feel like sometimes we're just talking to a wall because I remember being 27 and thinking this is

never gonna happen yeah and that's just simply because I didn't know what it was gonna be like yeah you know the time's gonna pass right I mean I keep saying I mean I feel like I'm on repeat saying that the time's gonna pass anyway put the work in put the work in it makes me think of that scripture Dave quotes it all the time hope deferred makes the heart Put the work in. Put the work in. It makes me think of that scripture. Dave quotes it all the time. Hope deferred makes the heart sick. And a lot of us, our heart is sick because we're like, man, I had this hope,

but it feels like it's never going to happen. But if you can just strike up that desire because it says when desire comes, it's a tree of life. So if you can have enough desire to go, I'm going to see this through. I don't exactly know what the path looks like. I'm just going to keep being smart with money.

There's something to be said for staying the course. I'm going to keep, I'm just going to keep being smart with money. There's something to be said for staying the course. I'm going to keep budgeting. I'm going to keep being smart with money. I'm going to keep setting money aside. And you will look up and you will have a nice stack of money that you've saved up. Who knows how long it's going to take, but you will look up and what used to be a mountain turns into a hill and what used to be a hill turns into a little, you know, just a little swoop

and you might be in a different state you might have different friends in your house that's right you might have a different job when i was 27 yes youtube didn't exist podcast wasn't a thing that's right john and so who knows what's what's coming down down the way exactly just take the next right step and that's such a good point i'm a believer belabor this any a little bit longer because i do think this is probably helping someone who among us can look 10 years ago and say i knew exactly where i was going to be 10 years later no one like you don't know where you can guess and you can pontificate about it and say well in seven years i will be here and i'll have this job and i'll live over here with this many kids but you you truly don't know. And so- Especially now, if you're seeing the AI stuff coming out in our field,

it's all going to be different in seven years, man. I mean, but the point is, you make these plans, but you don't know what's on the other side of time. And all you can do is be consistent and do the things that you know to do. Don't grow weary in well-doing because at the right time, you'll reap a harvest of blessing. That's really what it is. And that's really what we're getting to is just don't give up. Keep going. We know it's hard.

We acknowledge it's difficult. I look at the numbers and sometimes I'm like, just that. Like, I don't know what to tell you. It's tough. You just got to be consistent. There's nothing to say, but it's similar to the grief is similar to sitting with somebody who's just lost a loved one yeah you had a dream you had a dream that you were going to drive a car that you felt safe in that you were going to live in a nice home and it was going to look like the hgtv

generation homes that you grew up watching right you had this picture of what your life was going to be and now it's different And so I'll sit with you. It's the worst. Yeah. But it doesn't change the math. Just as similar as I've told people who have lost a child or a parent or a loved one. They're gone. And so now what are we going to do?

Right? It's that heartbreaking moment. Here was this dream. I was going to be of this and this. It's gone. And because this is, we're looking at the numbers. The numbers are what the numbers are. The interest rates are bananas.

The houses are expensive. There's very few of them that are out there. And if there is a good one at a reasonable price, it's war. I'm in that war right now, right? And so it just is what it is what it is. I'm not going to give my integrity over. I'm not going to give over my frustration. I'm not going to make

a rash decision that puts my family at risk. I'm going to choose an own reality and this is it. And then I'm going to make the next right step I can given that set of truth. Yeah. I love that. I keep thinking like tactically, we're feeling this, what can we do? And it just came in my mind there's i love the social media handles that focus on everybody's home is not aesthetic everybody's life is not aesthetic and i love following those accounts because it makes you realize okay like i can be content where i am like everybody's cabinets aren't bright white with you know white marble countertops for micah won't kill you exactly linoleum won't kill you. Right.

And I'm like, at the very least, one of the things we can start doing is bringing more reality into our daily life and just finding ways to be content with where we're at and making sure that we're not comparing our current state with someone else's social media highlight real estate. Because if that's what you're reaching for, you are going to come up short every single time. Let's be honest about that. So anyway, John, this has been great chopping it up with you. Listen, I hope that conversation was helpful for you. And I'm so grateful that you're here. We're going to do our best to help guide you guys through this because this it's not easy. The mortgage market is not easy right now. Thanks for hanging with us. This

is The Ramsey Show.