The Ramsey Show - App - There’s a Difference Between Doing Idiotic Things and Being an Idiot (Hour 2)

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

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Starting point is 00:00:00 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. Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author of the book Paycheck to Purpose, host of The Ken Coleman Show. He's my co-host today. The phone number here is 888-825-5225. Elizabeth is in El Paso, Texas. Hi, Elizabeth. How are you? Hello, good. How's everybody doing? Better than we deserve. What's up in your world?
Starting point is 00:01:05 Good, good. My question is just wondering if I should go back to work. I'm currently a stay-at-home mom, and just to try to help with the financial burden with our household right now. What's your husband make? He makes about 73, 70% of that being commissioned, so it does fluctuate. What's he do? He works at T-Mobile. He's a sales rep. Okay. How many kiddos you got? Two girls, two and four. Okay. And what would you be doing if you went back to work? I came from
Starting point is 00:01:44 the corporate world working in wireless. Before I left, I made about $110,000. It is very demanding on your time, so I was thinking about doing something like a teaching job at a Christian school that would allow me to also have my daughters attend a Christian school and kind of like have my kids and eat it too, I guess. Well, that's where I was going to go is how much is your childcare situation going to be? Have you run the numbers on what that would take? And I'm assuming that they have a preschool program where they could go free or heavily discounted. Is that the truth? Yeah. The childcare here isn't too expensive for two kids. It could run about eight to 900 a month. And that's at that school
Starting point is 00:02:22 or? No, that's just like a little kind of daycare, but at the school it would be discounted anywhere from 50% to 60% off, and that would be about $500 a child. How much would you make? Hold on. Yeah, that's not. But you said $900 before, and now you said $500 a child after the discount. No, no, no.
Starting point is 00:02:44 It's $500 with no discount. But at a daycare, it would be $800. For both? Yes. Okay, so the daycare is cheaper than the school after the discount. Well, after the discount, the school will be cheaper. Oh, $500 total, not per kid. Right.
Starting point is 00:03:03 Okay, I'm sorry. I got lost. I was in the same boat. I got lost. Okay, anyway, so $500 total, not per kid. Right. Okay, I'm sorry. I got lost. I was in the same boat. I got lost. Okay, anyway, so $500 or $900. But how much would you make teaching? You know, that's going to vary from $40,000 to $60,000. I don't have teaching experience.
Starting point is 00:03:17 So you save $400 on daycare, but you are making $50,000 less. Then if I were to go back to something in my career. Yeah, so if you're going to go back to work, go back to work. I mean, I wouldn't trade $400 worth of daycare for $50,000. Right. What do you need more income for? Give us the big picture. Why are you feeling this need?
Starting point is 00:03:41 The big picture is we moved to El Paso. We bought a house. Obviously, we paid off a little bit more than we can chew my husband's car broke down he ended up getting a car so we had an additional 400 payment i have a 300 payment and then on top of that our escrow is was short 400 a month so now we're so how much is your house payment uh it was 2200 and it went up to $2,500. Okay. We have $32,000 in savings.
Starting point is 00:04:14 How much do you owe on your cars? A total of $41,000. And $700 a month to both cars? Yes. Yeah. Okay. You did buy it off more than you can chew on the house. So unless your income is going to go up, you need to sell your house.
Starting point is 00:04:31 Okay. Okay. Yeah. Either your income goes up or you need to sell it because it's why you can't breathe. You quickly identified it. I mean, you can sell both cars, sell the house, and get you a couple of hoopties and a cheaper rent, and you'd have a great life. There's nothing wrong with that either, by the way, if that's what you choose to do.
Starting point is 00:04:53 But basically, to keep that house and those cars, you're going to put your kids in daycare. That's your choice. And either one is a fine choice. It's just you need to make the choice out loud. Y'all need to say say that's what we did because you you should be making uh you should be making ten thousand dollars a month take home pay to take that that house payment right and you're not even close to that yeah you you're in deep so um i'm okay with the other possibility of course is your husband realigns his career and gets his income up 50k i don't really care where it comes from but your income is going to
Starting point is 00:05:32 need to go up pretty dramatically or you're going to need to sell the house and you're already feeling that that's not me saying that the math is saying that why'd you chuckle when dave threw out that as an option is that just such an emotional out of left field selling the house that you can't even process it yep that's what i thought how long you been in that house um it's been about six months yeah see the last time your life was good was before you bought the house pretty much yeah and if you trace your steps back to the last time your life was good then it tells you where you went where you turned left and you turned left so yeah um so i i know plenty of people uh including dave and sharon including Dave and Sharon Ramsey who took on a lower lifestyle because it mattered to us
Starting point is 00:06:29 that she was at home with the kids and it's what she wanted to do but it means a different car and a different house in order to do that until the income comes up to justify otherwise and so we stayed in a super conservative situation after our bankruptcy losing everything and until my income came up then we could afford to do that because uh she could have gone back to work right after the bankruptcy and it would have made sense actually um but it was a choice that we made and we we said, okay, the tradeoff is a better house and better cars. Now, eventually we'll get them anyway because my income will come up and his income will come up, but now I want to trade that for time at home with the babies.
Starting point is 00:07:19 She said, I don't want to leave. Let's do anything where I don't have to leave. Now, if she had said, I don't want to leave. I don't want, let's do anything where I don't have to leave. Now, if she had said, I, you know, like if she had said, like, Rachel Cruz, I want to be in the marketplace. Rachel's in, you know, in Phoenix doing a book signing. So Rachel's out there, professional lady, speaking, writing, doing this show, and has, you know, has folks help with her children as a result. And so she chose that, though. And so you need to choose this because this is choosing you is the problem. The stress chose you the last time because y'all just thought there was no implication.
Starting point is 00:07:56 I just buy whatever house I want. Like you're in Congress or something. You spend whatever you want. And so you got to go back now. So tonight y'all need to sit down and talk about it. Elizabeth and say, all right, do we keep the house or do I go back now. So tonight, y'all need to sit down and talk about it, Elizabeth, and say, all right, do we keep the house or do I go back to work? Or what can we do to get your income to 120 from 70?
Starting point is 00:08:16 And that probably means you're not working at T-Mobile store. Probably means you're doing something else. So which of these three things are we going to do? Because sitting where we are is not going to work mathematically. The math is screaming at you. Not Dave and Ken, the math. This is The Ramsey Show. Hey, you guys.
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Starting point is 00:10:32 Completely free, no purchase is necessary. For more info, send teachers and teachers go to ramsesolutions.com slash teacher and enter today for your chance to win one of those vacations if you're a teacher up next is james in richmond virginia hi james welcome to the ramsey show hey dave how you guys doing better than i deserve what's up oh you're my wife okay jocelyn my wife uh we're 40 i'm 45 she's 42 um we've been stuck i guess and we're trying to figure out what's going on the i've been a business owner for 18 years not very good one apparently uh or that i was in retail she just retired medically from the navy uh two and a half years ago before she retired and we were
Starting point is 00:11:20 i was in business we were doing okay we bought house, you know, decent interest rate on it back when it was a few years ago with a VA loan and something we could afford. It was $1960 a month and we were making $85,000 to $10,000 a month, and then work dries up, and we've been stuck now for a year and a half, and it seems like every time we start to build, we were on step three for a while, and then all of a sudden something big happens and crashes us, and now we're seven, eight months pregnant and due next month, and we can't figure out what we've got to do. Congratulations. Thank you. On the baby.
Starting point is 00:12:05 Yes, not on the rest of the stupid baby. Yeah, yeah. So what was the nature of her medical discharge? She had a lot of things. She got almost 90% when they finished with her migraines, stress fractures, different tendonitis and some other things. They got her all on that. How's she doing with the baby then?
Starting point is 00:12:30 She's doing great with the baby. It was unexpected. That was completely unexpected. But a happy surprise to us last October. I'm sorry when we found out. But, yes, the baby's doing great. We don't know what it is yet we're not going to find out so your crisis it sounds like more than anything is income yeah our crisis and and we don't know what we want to do i've applied for jobs recently i've never haven't done that in 15 years
Starting point is 00:13:00 um but we're applying for jobs yes and we're uh're, uh, I'm trying to get, you know, we're down to the point now where we can't even afford to buy our lead service to get more jobs to come in for where we're at. And we're in $30,000 in credit card debt over the last two years, trying to just make ends meet. We're trying to get rid of them. We had them snowballed and she had almost 20,000 of them paid off and then snowballed, and she had almost $20,000 in the trade-off, and then we just got to where food was, and we couldn't even eat. Yeah, we need to get some income fast. Real quick, give me a couple snapshots here.
Starting point is 00:13:32 What's your combined income right now? Well, I think I might have made $40,000 total with us last year, and she made her $40,000 total with us last year, and she made her... $2,000 a month, $24,000. I meant $24,000. So we might have made $66,000. We got an 18-year-old going to college next year. All right, let's reverse engineer this. Do you have a good grasp of your budget to know what's a number combined,
Starting point is 00:13:59 or you, that would give us a lot of room, or at least a decent amount of margin to start attacking this debt. What's that number? Is it $80,000? Is it $90,000? No. What is it? No.
Starting point is 00:14:10 Okay. We have a house, which I guess that's debt too. So we owe $360,000 on it. We bought it three years ago at $383,000. We owe $360,000 on it. It's worth $425,000 now. Sure. We've got two vehicles that we pay for. One is a truck that
Starting point is 00:14:29 we bought from my restoration company that we're not even affording. All right, let me jump in here. Let me try to fast forward this. What is the number one skill you have? Water damage restoration, mold remediation. Great, okay. And with that skill, you've got some other handy skills, my guess is, as well, correct? Not just the knowledge of that function, but you've got some other skills around being handy, I'm wondering? Yes. I can't take a lot of that in Virginia because of licensing, registration, regulations, and all that kind of stuff. So it has to be very particular what I do take aside jobs.
Starting point is 00:15:03 Okay. Tell me what you could do today. I know Virginia well. What could you do if I hooked you up with a couple of builders and stuff like that? What could you do without the licensing stuff? Just real work. Water, mold, fire, smoke, crime scene cleanup, disaster recovery. Okay. What else?
Starting point is 00:15:19 Tearing down buildings. I looked at a pressure washing job a few days ago for a large private school. It's a $17,000 bid. We'll see if they go with it. So we – but we're – Hold on a second. Can you swing a hammer? Can you do basic carpentry?
Starting point is 00:15:37 Yes. Okay. Let me just tell you this right now. I'm going to give you a snapshot. We have a shortage of carpenters in this country, a shortage of carpenters. It's all over the news you can look it up if you think i'm just making this up i'm not and and let me tell you something you need to be out working working working so the role mold remediation i got a friend of mine who
Starting point is 00:15:56 owns a company in that space the water remediation space they're making money hand over fist you know what he tells me but i keep running out of money. You don't need to buy leads. You need to go work for somebody. You don't need to buy leads. Stop buying leads. I think right now you need to figure out how to run the business later. I think you need to go work for somebody who's
Starting point is 00:16:17 crushing it. You need a good hourly rate. If you're making $25 to $30 an hour, that would be a raise for you. A big raise. Am I right? I just went to an interview last week with BNS Cat for the director of operations position. That was a hundred and something. Good job. Keep doing that. But my point is, let's not wait for it. I'm putting applications in. I'm putting them in every day. I know. But James, James, if you and I weren't hanging out in Richmond, Virginia right now, and I used to live there, I know where I'm talking about. And I know where I would get in a truck with you and say, James, if you and I were hanging out in Richmond, Virginia right now, and I used to live there, I know where I'm talking about, and I know where I would get in a truck with you and say, James, come on, we're going to go, and I'm going to be your agent.
Starting point is 00:16:50 We're going to walk on job sites, and we're going to introduce ourselves. This is a serious, serious, serious situation that you are in. You've got a baby on the way. You're upside down. You've got the waters right under your nose. You need to go out and work. And we're talking 25, 30 bucks an hour. Anything I can get, I'm going to go work for somebody in remediation who needs an extra
Starting point is 00:17:13 set of hands. I'm not going to work for myself because I haven't figured out how to do that part well yet. I'm not knocking you, but I just want you to get some air back. I think you can go make 100 to to $120 doing something in these areas. I do, too. Running a crew for somebody that's crushing it right now. And there are people out there crushing it.
Starting point is 00:17:32 Here's the thing. You're spending a lot of your time beating James up, and you need to let old James up. He's not that bad a guy. That's right. You need to let him up. You've been beating the crap out of him on this call the whole time. Because you're getting ready to be a dad, and it's scary, and you feel normal people feeling up.
Starting point is 00:17:55 I remember when we lost everything, I felt like I was an idiot because I had done some idiotic things. And I discovered there's a difference between doing some idiotic things and being an idiot. And so you need to give my friend james a break he's a good guy he's getting ready to be a dad he's thrilled he's happy he knows how to do a lot of things and with a smile and a work ethic and i'll show up on time or early leave late not early uh you hire me you're to get the best guy on the planet because I'm a guy with a brand-new baby and I need to feed him,
Starting point is 00:18:28 and I'm going to take care of you because you're taking care of me. Man, I've got to tell you, in the world we live in today, that's a big plus. You're very marketable. So we're going to send you both of Ken's books, The Proximity Principle and Paycheck to Purpose. And I want you to go to KenColeman.com right now and for free start looking at all the different forms and processes Ken has on there about getting a position.
Starting point is 00:18:57 And it's all about face-to-face contact. It's not about filling out applications on the internet. That's useless. It's a complete waste of time nobody looks at that crap you know you get eyeball to eyeball with the dude making the decision he'll hire you that's right if you'll start liking you a little bit better this i like you y'all too this is the Ken Coleman Ramsey personality is my co-host today in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage Mason and Chelsea are with us hey guys how are you good how are you better than we deserve where you're from we are from about an hour south of Montgomery, Alabama. Oh, okay. L.A., lower Alabama.
Starting point is 00:19:46 That's right. I like it. Good for you. Welcome to Nashville. And how much debt have you guys paid off? We paid off $160,000 in about 36 months. Good for you. And your range of income during that time?
Starting point is 00:19:58 We started out at about $110,000, and then we ended around $140,000. Excellent. What do you guys do for a living i'm a math teacher ah and i'm a manager over a water authority okay did y'all sell some stuff that's a lot in 36 months i sold my jeep and my wake boat during this time so what did those two things bring oh it wasn't too much probably about 15 between between both of them and we had a little money saved up from before that how much towards it probably about 30 or 40 probably yeah okay so of the 160 almost 60 of it went out the door that way yes then you knock off 100 about 35 000 a year for three years yes very good that that works good for y'all y'all
Starting point is 00:20:41 been careful you got fired up didn't you yes so what kind of debt was the 160 it was our house you paid off your house you got rid of the jeep and the wakeboard boat to pay off the house how old are you two weirdos uh i just turned 28 and i just turned 29 and you have paid for house yes y'all. I love it. What's this house worth? Probably around $330, something like that. I love it. And you're not even 30 years old and a paid-for house. How you doing on the nest egg?
Starting point is 00:21:13 How's your savings going? We're getting there. We're slowly but surely, but we're putting towards it. Good for you. Well done, guys. Thank you. Congratulations. How long y'all been married?
Starting point is 00:21:25 We have been married, next month will be seven years okay so about halfway through the marriage ding ding ding something happened and you plug into this ramsey stuff tell us the story how'd you find us and what happened well when i i turned 18 i was working in the oil field offshore and it's the first time i was making money and uh he was going out the door as fast as coming in and i just did a google search and i found you guys we've been plugged in ever since and about three years ago we you know we built our house and then we just followed the principles and then we just wanted to pay it down as soon as we could we got we had two little boys in the three years too so we had some you know some reasons to do wow very cool good for y'all. Well done. So two babies, paid for house, and everything
Starting point is 00:22:06 was paid for before that. You just got rid of some of it because you wanted the house paid off more than you wanted the stuff. Yes, sir. That's right. Okay, and the savings too, some extra savings. Way to go, y'all. Way to go. Yeah, I've got to ask because there's an emotional connection to these baby steps. I mean, once you get to a place, you've heard Dave say you get sick and tired of being sick and tired. Sometimes it's different emotion, but I got to know what was the range of emotions you went through when you sold a Jeep and a wake boat all for the purposes of paying the mortgage off? Well, I tell you, Chelsea set a hard goal of the end of last year to be done with it. And I said it'd be the end of this year. And she said, well, we can get it done the end of last year.
Starting point is 00:22:47 And we sold some things and we did some hard things to get it done. But when we set the hard goals and we got it done, you know. Yeah. So was it worth it? It absolutely was. Absolutely. How's it feel to be completely free? Awesome.
Starting point is 00:23:03 It feels amazing. Wow. I like that you just dropped it and said and said no we're doing it at the end of the he wanted 12 month extension and you said no sir yes and wow yep it was it was tough and he he had to dial me back in a couple times well it's that's how it works it's a little bit of give and take i love that and stay on page together that's the thing yes well done you two very well done y'all are heroes and those little boys they have no idea how great their parents are appreciate it they're look at that oh they're beautiful they're they're sad i'm we're looking at the picture on youtube y'all yeah i mean wow wow they're set up their whole lives are different they are you ever know anybody that
Starting point is 00:23:45 by 30 had a paid for house it was worth 350,000 I didn't when I was your age I don't yeah I don't very strange it is weird it is a good kind of weird what do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is um my thing is to don't let yourself see the money in the checking account to begin with. Go ahead and put that money in savings. Go ahead and be paying stuff off because if you're anything like me, when you see it in the checking account, you want to spend it. But if it's not there, then you don't have to worry about it. You just got to have a plan.
Starting point is 00:24:19 Yes, exactly. Execute the plan. That's right. Okay. What about you, Mason? Anything to add to that i'd say just you know set hard deadlines when you want to get things done your goals you know it's just it's very important to me just to do that and then just keep on you know just keep on your plan start
Starting point is 00:24:35 one and then just stay with it and it's just you know that's that was the main thing for us yeah from the very beginning um we you know started a. We lived off of his paychecks at the very beginning, and mainly because I was still in college. And then whenever I got a job, it just made sense to just keep living off of his paycheck instead of spending mine too. So from the beginning, my checks were going either in savings or then once we got our house was going straight towards our house payment so it just made sense to stick to that and even though we got raises we still lived as if we didn't.
Starting point is 00:25:12 So who were your biggest cheerleaders? Probably our parents they they were behind us the whole time we had some friends that were behind us but we we did it. So your parents you grew up in a house that had common sense? Uh that way, yes, sir. They were at least cheering you on. They were. And that's what we talked about before. If they had known what we knew, then they would have followed these steps, too. Like they knew if they had known then. So they were definitely behind us cheering us on.
Starting point is 00:25:44 Yeah, very good. good for y'all well congratulations thank you very very cool thank you for coming all the way to nashville to share that story it inspires people so um that ken this is what i'm always talking about i'm constantly i was on fox business the other day and they said so what about this gen z generation and i'm like i love them yeah i think they're awesome what do you mean a bunch of deadbeats no they're not i mean there's some of them are but then i meet these like this here all the time and these there's good ones there's hope for this country people like that right there these are heroes man they take control of their life they looked in the mirror and said you're the problem and you're gonna fix it and man they stepped on it i'm so proud of y'all way to go guys
Starting point is 00:26:21 thank you way to go very very well done we've got a couple of one year subscriptions to every dollar for you one for you guys you can give one away to one of your buddies and get them started on the every dollar budgeting app as well so good stuff mason and chelsea from montgomery alabama or just south of there 160 000 paid off house and everything in 36 months minus a wakeboard boat. Making 110 to 140. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one.
Starting point is 00:26:52 We're debt-free. Yeah. Love it. Yeah, baby. Woo. This is how it's done, boys and girls. This is how it's done. Man, I'm telling you, if you're out there riding right this second you're driving in your car and you're listening to this that couple
Starting point is 00:27:12 drove up here so you could hear that story no question and that means that you i'm talking to you right now you're supposed to be doing this you're supposed to decide to get control of your freaking life instead of living thank god it's friday oh god it's monday and start putting this stuff down get the every dollar app loaded start laying out a plan a budget and because nobody plans to be broke they only plan to not be broke so lay you out a dadgum plan baby and get with it you can do this stuff anybody can do it ken we've seen people from every walk of life every region and state in the country that's right every race creed color national origin it this stuff knows no boundaries the only color that we're worried about here is
Starting point is 00:27:56 green yeah so get with it get with it we're here to help you we're here to walk with you and show you inspire you inform you so you go do this stuff and you can stand on here to walk with you and show you, inspire you, inform you. So you go do this stuff and you can stand on this debt-free stage and scream, I'm debt-free. Yeah, that's absolutely right. And one of the things I just took away from this too is you get the sense that they are impacting the generation ahead of them with their parents, that this is going to potentially change. They're young, so that means their parents are still young. And I love this. This begins to influence so many people around you. When you live this way and you live like no one else and you give like no one else, it becomes highly attractive.
Starting point is 00:28:33 And so think of this as not just financial freedom for you, but maybe your family, extended family. And I'm really blown away by that. It means you guys have done it well. Yeah. Classy in how you did it. Very well done. Very well done. Even how you answered the question.
Starting point is 00:28:45 Yeah, that's right. This is The Ramsey Show. Well, it's book launch week here at Ramsey Solutions. Rachel Cruz's new book, For Children, I'm Glad for Where I Am. The second in the series comes out tomorrow on April the 16th. Those of you that have pre-ordered, it'll ship. And she's going to be around doing signings in several of your markets.
Starting point is 00:29:12 We'll be letting you know about those this week in Phoenix and Dallas and Los Angeles and Atlanta and so on. So we'll let you know where she is and make sure that we get you out there for that. Also, Ken Coleman's new book, The Get Clear Assessment, Find the Work You're Wired to Do. We've been selling Ken's assessment that our team built with Ken here on the website for a while. So almost 100,000 of you have taken that assessment.
Starting point is 00:29:38 And we decided that it'd be a good idea to do a book explaining exactly how to interpret the assessment. Right, Ken? That's exactly how to interpret the assessment, right, Ken? That's exactly right. So the assessment answers the question, who am I? We're talking about as a professional, meaning what are you good at and what do you love to do? And then the book comes along almost as a coach. And we wrote this short, takes you about 45 minutes to read, but it only is effective if you've taken the assessment. The good news is, Dave, you get an assessment with the hardback when you pre-order it, and then you're going to get an e-book with another assessment code and the audio book with another assessment code, all of your pre-orders. So essentially three books, three codes, which means it's the gift that keeps on
Starting point is 00:30:18 giving. And again, as a professional, if you want to make more money, more money is all about your ability to grow as a person. And I like to say it this way. It'll help you get better so that you can get a bigger paycheck, right? The bigger the paycheck is always about how much better you are, improving yourself. We know this. And so that assessment in the book is going to answer the big questions. Who am I?
Starting point is 00:30:40 What do I want to do? Where can I do it? And the book comes along and helps you get there. And that's a game changer. As you know, 96% of millionaires loved their work. And, oh, by the way, they were good at it, too. Yeah. Well, it's hard to be good at something you hate, number one.
Starting point is 00:30:55 That's right. Except for golf for me. Yeah. It just depends on which holiday. That's a separate problem. on which holiday problem but the uh the uh but the thing is this um you don't have to necessarily change your whole career that's correct it could be you're just doing it in the wrong place in the wrong way it could be just some personal growth it's absolutely landing in a different location it could be a complete change of direction could be either one's fine but sometimes people mistake
Starting point is 00:31:23 and say oh well what i need to do is just quit my job and go to school. That's right. No. No. You need to find out where you are and figure out if school's required to get where you want to go. Yeah. You know what the superpower is, Dave, for all successful men and women? Self-awareness.
Starting point is 00:31:37 And we're talking about awareness in what they do really well, what lights them up. And they find a way to get in that spot. And when they do it's when greatness happens megan is in chicago hello megan are you there hi hi hi ken how can we help yeah i uh i've been davish now for a while and i'm wondering how do i pay off $79,000 in debt? It sounds like you know. Stop being David.
Starting point is 00:32:14 Well, I mean, what you're saying is you're doing some of the things we teach, sort of. I am. So I'm a single mom of two kids, and I've off and on over the last several years, worked on my finances, and I feel like every time I'm making progress, something happens or there's something that I do wrong. Can you give us one example? Give us a recent example of you were going along great, something happened, and then you didn't make a great decision. Probably a year ago, I had a washer and dryer breakdown, and I used a credit card to buy a new washer and dryer, and then at the same time needed to replace the flooring because it had rotted where it leaked.
Starting point is 00:33:00 So rather than find some salvage washer and dryer or hand-me-downs, I bought new with a credit card. And then being Davish, what would we say a washer-dryer going out, what would we call that in our world? An emergency, right? Yes. Because we've got to wash clothes. They both went out the same day? Well, the dryer had been on the fritz for a while and the washer uh leaked all over the floor um for several weeks and caused
Starting point is 00:33:34 the damage because i didn't have the funds exactly i didn't have the funds to do anything about it as a single mom of two you know that thing right behind the washer where it has a faucet handle yeah yeah that cuts the water off if it's leaking yeah for several weeks yeah you don't have to have funds to go lefty righty to be smart yeah okay i'm just uh okay so uh not picking on you i'm just, okay, so I'm not picking on you. I'm just saying that what happens is that we get in these situations and you get scared and you add drama to it. I do this, and you've done it. I heard it. You add drama to something and turn it into something a lot bigger than it is.
Starting point is 00:34:32 My point being, you could have just turned the water off the first time you saw a leak and then said, okay, I'm going to go to the coin laundry for a little while until I can save up some money. And then you wouldn't have had a rotted floor, and the dryer was already on the fritz, so that wasn't new information. So we took all of these things and we added them together, and a catastrophe was created in your head.
Starting point is 00:34:53 And that's what we all do. But what it is is anytime there are problems, the more we avoid them, the worse they don't get better. And the washer and dryer is almost a metaphor for that. So, uh, how long have you, uh, were you divorced or widowed or never married or what? Never married. I have two children, two separate fathers. Um, I do receive child support on one.
Starting point is 00:35:18 How old are the kiddos? Um, they are 13 and eight. And what do you make a year? Um, I bring home, I mean, a monthly I bring home $2,500. Okay. All right. What do you do? I work from home in insurance.
Starting point is 00:35:38 Is that sales or customer service? Authorizations. Yeah. Okay. So you're 40? 37. 37? Okay.
Starting point is 00:35:52 Mm-hmm. All right. I have a mortgage and a car payment. How much is your car payment? It is $440 a month. Okay. All right. your car payment um it is 440 a month okay all right so um what i think i'm hearing and if i'm wrong you just tell me okay but i think i'm hearing a lady that for a little over a decade life has happened to you you've not happened to life yes like you're you're not crying and you're not whining victim
Starting point is 00:36:28 but you've also not been on the attack you've been on the defensive correct yeah and so let's flip that script a little bit and start saying okay your job sucks you don't make any money yeah and so we got to work on that. And we got to get Megan where she's proactive rather than reactive on everything, including money, including her kids, including her job, including everything else. Because you fell backwards into this job. You are not hunting going, gosh, I hope I can do phone work for an insurance company from home. I sure hope I can do that for for an insurance company from home i sure hope i can
Starting point is 00:37:06 do that for thirty thousand dollars a year and starve to freaking death i hope i can do that that wasn't what you're doing you just took something because you were hungry am i right uh yeah i work in health care so it was the best fit during covid to work from home so it just works out that way. Right. But here's the point. I'm going to give you. No, it really wasn't.
Starting point is 00:37:30 Oh. No, it really wasn't. Because you're hungry. You're broke. So that's not a best fit. It's what you chose to do. Yeah. Okay.
Starting point is 00:37:41 Are you a nurse? Are you a nurse? No, no. chose to do yeah okay well are you a nurse actually are you a nurse no no when i when i took this job i increased my income because i was working as a medical scribe in a cancer center okay then then that was a better fit it's a better fit than what you had but the job before really sucked then because you're not making any money girl yeah so what's going on is is that you have to do two things you You got to decide. You're going to find a way around debt when something breaks next time because you'd find a way to feed those kiddos if that's all that you had to do. And then secondly, hang on the line.
Starting point is 00:38:14 I do want to give you the Get Clear Career Assessment in the new book, Find the Work You're Wired to Do because you're worth double. You're worth double. You need to make it twice as much as you're making right now. And that'll solve a lot of problems. I didn't say you suck. I said your job does. That's why, because I don't think you do. I think you're awesome. You're a warrior princess. Now it's time to go to fight instead of being beat on.
Starting point is 00:38:35 This is The Ramsey Show. Thank you.

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