The Ramsey Show - App - There's No Silver Bullet To Poor Money Management (Hour 3)

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

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. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author, host of the Dr. John Deloney Show, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Kim is in Atlanta. Hi, Kim. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave and John. Thank you so much for taking my call. I watch you guys all the time, and I love you guys.

Thank you. I have a mortgage question for you. I'm 63, and I want to pay off my mortgage like you always talk about, but I have a 401K, and I have investments, but do I take that out and cash it in some of it to pay off the mortgage or do I just continue to try to pay over? What's your mortgage balance? It's 100k. Okay. And how much in your non-retirement investments? 127. Okay. And you have an emergency fund instead of that?

I've got, um, like 10,000. Okay. And how much in your 401k? Um, 500 plus. Okay. I wish it was more, but it's not. And I'm 63. Are you still working?

Yes. What do you earn? About 97 a year. Good for you. What's your, what's your career plan on how long you're going to work? I want to retire instantly. Well, I also have a booth in an antique mall. Okay.

How long do you plan on making 93 and adding to the 500? A couple years, I guess. Okay, 65. They keep downsizing 65 you're thinking 65 okay yeah they don't downsize me out okay so um if you have an emergency fund proper and um what you do and you take a hundred thousand out of your non 401k money uh you should have virtually no taxes on it there may be some capital gains depending on how that's structured okay uh and you pay off your home mortgage that leaves you basically with 500 grand agreed okay at 63 if you add nothing to that and it's invested in good mutual funds averaging 10 it'll be worth a million when you're 70. it's ultra conservative right now so i guess i need to rethink it because i was scared you know

i was like well everybody's losing money so i'm who's everybody i've made a killing this past year did you in a regular regular mutual funds mine then nothing you need to get with a good smart investor pro and have this adequately invested. I don't want you taking a bunch of risk. Get off the news. But get off the news and quit and don't listen to everybody. They're a bad financial planning firm. Yeah, let's do that. And so again, if you don't add anything to it and you're going to add two years more of 401k contributions to it, is what we're planning is today, right? But not counting that two years that you're going to add to it, which is going to be another $50,000 or so, give or take.

Then, which you could easily do if you don't have a house payment, right? So, load that 401k up for the next two years and then count on it doubling about every seven years the lump sum if it's invested in good mutual funds averaging 10 plus okay so again a half a million at 63 becomes a million at 70 at 77 is 2 million and uh that's if you're not cashing it out to live on and i don't think you will be so So I think you're in good shape because I think you'll probably create enough antique mall income to eat on and be leaving this alone and letting it grow. And so, and the house is worth what? About $350.

Okay. So you're about an eyelash away from already having a million dollar net worth. Way to go. Thank you. Well done to go. Thank you. Well done. Yeah, thank you for your advice. I was wondering, you know, should I just continue to try to, you know, pay on the principal, or should I take the money out and just go ahead and go for it?

I would go for it. And then the thing that I think that'll do is it'll probably do two things. Number one is I want you to start investing that old house payment immediately so you've got more investments to offset. we're not trying to increase your monthly cash flow we're trying to you know use the money that would have been going to a bank let's put it into your account now the second thing is and this will be weird but you can you can look back and write it down and look back five years from now see if it really happened I think that if they try to right-size or downsize you you'll

make a completely different decision or have a different discussion in the negotiation with them uh if your house is paid off than if it's not true it puts a little swagger in there to where you go you're gonna you you're gonna lay me off and I'm 63. You better get ready to write some checks, boys and girls. I mean, and you can toy with them a little bit, right? But if you kind of got a house payment hovering in the background, you're a little bit more mild, a little bit meeker. Do you have a – is it gut feel or is there some sort of matrix? Because I think about my mom who's in her 70s.

If she was to call with that same question, there's a balance between I want you to have the least amount of risk exposure, so don't have a house payment, versus you're going to have to pay bills ongoing. So how much money? Right? So you were saying there's a balance there. If she had $100,000 to her name, I wouldn't do it. Okay. So you wouldn't wipe yourself out. Not at $66,000 a quarter million okay is it 500 i just i want some kind of a substantial nest egg depending on her situation sitting there would you use four percent draw the

like no i don't use any four percent draw but uh but uh i i'm i i'm just saying is there based on the standard of living that this person is living in, what's their nest egg look like after we pay off the house? Okay. Okay. Now, if they're used to making $40,000 a year and the mortgage is $40,000, you know, that's a different standard of living than she's living. Correct.

Okay. She's in a half million dollar house or half million dollars in savings, $350,000 house, and she's making $100,000. Okay. Okay. So I'm basing all of those things in there and i'm saying all right what's a person like that need in a nest egg to be pretty comfortable after we pay off the house well she's gonna have a half million left so she's fine right you know if she had 400 she'd be fine

she had 300 she'd probably be fine okay but if it gets down in there and she's at 200 is all that's left i'm kind of on the bubble at that point with her now if you're making 40 and you're paying off 40 000 house you got 200 left that's a lot that's right yeah you know so it's that that's the ratio kind of thing i'm looking at okay is the way i'm pulling that through but um and i always feel it's it's it's under appreciated on either side um yeah i want to tell a 70 year old dude if you don't have a house payment don't have a house payment like because no one can take it from you right you do you do want you want to get there and then on the other side of it is don't yeah don't melt everything because if you melt everything you're one of those people that's house poor right and you're digging up the bushes to eat

there you go but you got nothing to eat but you got to pay for a house right we don't want to get you there or you're completely 100 leveraged with social security which that's wobbly right that's real well i mean it's just not enough you get have to buy alpo to eat and so um yeah we don't get there either but that's she's done a really good job she's in really good oh yeah yeah kim's done good job kim so well done salute this is how you do it boys and girls so here's the thing that's the stuff you want to aim at because when you're 60 and she's 63 i'm 63 if your home is paid for your largest line item in your budget is taken care of for the rest of your life the expense is limited to almost to taxes and insurance for the rest of your life versus if you're a renter it goes up every insurance for the rest of your life. Versus if you're a renter, it goes up every year for the rest of your life.

Or if you've got a house payment, you've got a house payment every year for the rest of your life. So this is where we want to get away from, is this rest of your life stuff that's not good. This is The Ramsey Show. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Thanks for joining us. Listen, no one wins at anything by accident. Winning is a series of incremental intentional acts. If you want to get your body in good physical condition,

it's a series of incremental acts and none of them involve a big mac right i mean we know what we know that we know right if you want to have a good marriage it involves flowers there's a series of incremental positive acts it involves other things a lot more important than flowers but but it even involves flowers. My wife, who detests flowers, money being spent on flowers, because it's a complete waste, still smiles every time she gets the complete waste delivered to her front door. Okay, so shut up about it. But there we go.

So there we go. I mean, there's a series of – and money's no different. If you're going to win with money, we know that the people that win with money are the people that tell the money what to do instead of wondering where it went they have what's known as a plan they don't accidentally win that's why the lottery is such false hope and why it makes me so angry not from a moral standpoint but when i know that 80 something percent of the tickets on the lottery are bought from poor end ofof-town zip codes.

That's people that have been sold false hope by their government. In Tennessee, that money is used to send rich people's kids to college, which I think is just a wonderful wealth transfer from poor people to rich people. Take money from poor people and send rich people's kids to college and call it the lotto, and everybody's happy. That's what we did in Tennessee. It's gross. It's what they did in Georgia.

So that's how bass-ackwards the whole idea is. But winning with money is a series of incremental acts that are intentional with the money, and that's a budget. You've got to write it down. You've got to tell your money what to do. You've got to give every dollar an assignment and then make it freaking behave. Get a whip and a chair and crack the whip. You are a money tamer, like a lion tamer, if you remember the old cartoons.

Right? And we're going to make them get up on the little podium, the whole thing, make PETA mad. We're going to do every bit of that, right? And so make the animal behave. Make the money behave. You are a money tamer. That's your budget. Give every dollar a name.

That's why we named the world's best budgeting app when we started building it several years ago. Every dollar. Now, every dollar also is incrementally better. It gets incrementally better every month. And we're adding features to it. We're adding things to it that make it better and better and better and better and better. It is the world's best budgeting app. Tens of millions of people manage their money on this.

And if you want to download every dollar for free in the app store you can and then you should actually use it after you download it downloading it doesn't count it doesn't work by osmosis you got to open it up put your stuff in it sit down with your spouse and make it behave use the app store use the google play or go to everydollar.com and get started for free this is the ramsey show kendall is in charlotte north carolina hi kendall welcome to the show how can we help hey thank you so much for having me um so my husband wants to go back to pa school um which is gonna be like a hundred thousand dollars so i'm kind of just trying to figure out like i've just finished saving up our emergency fund and was kind of like getting ready to start paying down some of the debt that we have um and I'm just trying to

figure out like how to best prepare for these student loans we're going to have to take out like you know do I just keep trying to save as much as I can I don't he's also going to have to um leave his job in order to go back to school so we'll go down to one income so just trying to figure out how to prepare for that um well you're you're kind of new to this ramsey stuff and he obviously doesn't even care about this ramsey stuff so let's let's back up about 53 steps for a second here what's your uh what's your household income today um 110. And what does he do today? He's an athletic trainer, sports medicine. For what? Athletic trainer for sports medicine. Okay, all right. And what does he make? $50,000. Okay, and so you make $50,000 and some change, right? Yeah, I make about $60,000. I make a little bit more. What do you do? I'm also an athletic trainer. That was a great flex. I mean, I make 60. I make a little bit more.

Well, well done. Yeah. An athletic trainer that flexes. There we go. So, um, the, um, that's perfect. And, um, so how much debt have we got? So we owe $255,000 on the house. I have $20,000 in student loans, and then we owe $5,000 on our cars. That's it? Yeah. Okay. All right. So here's what I would tell you and the thing is this the way i answer answer questions is

what's going to put you guys in the best possible position in every part of your life 10 years from now and 20 years from now not 10 months from now right okay i really don't give a crap about 10 months from now if you're completely uncomfortable and you hate me 10 months from now that's perfect okay but if that makes you completely the best place you've ever been in your life 10 years from now in other words it's much like training um you're going to have some discomfort in order to build some muscle agreed the tearing and the lactic acid and so forth am i on to something there um yeah yeah my metaphor is working is all i'm saying and so yeah um the um so what i would say is being a pa is an excellent career choice completely endorse his dream there's not a chance in the heavens that I would go into debt to do it. No way.

Oh, I'm not kidding. It's not a laughing matter. I really wouldn't. Yeah. The best life you could have is for him to become a PA and figure out a way, if you'll listen for a minute, that we don't go into debt to do it. The first step is to pay off the debt that you have. The second step is to build an emergency fund. And then the third step is while he's looking for scholarships and while he's applying for grants and while he's talking to his employer who might need a PA, he's talking to some hospitals in the area who would hire him immediately as a PA, might even put him on now as an on-staff sports trainer, and they might have a scholarship program for employees.

Who knows? There's lots of ways to get people to pay for your education and or save some of it after you don't have $25,000 in debt. That delays him starting PA school, but it doesn't delay it a decade. It delays it two years or a year, depending on how many scholarships he can find and grants he can find. But the chances I'm going to tell you to sign up for $100,000 worth of hell called student loan debt is zero. Right.

That's zero. I love you too much to want you to do that. I don't want that for you that's living a dream in such a way that you turn it into a nightmare so so you're saying try to save up as much as possible prior to him going and then pay cash try and see and try and see where we can get the grants and some employment help yep Yep. And or future employment. Who's going to hire him in the future? Listen, there's such a shortage right now.

People want PAs, and PA's such a solid degree field that you can get some help. It's there, believe me. We work in this stuff every day. And, oh, by the way, where you become a PA, which school he goes to, does not matter. Right. The percentage of people that walk into your office when a PA and ask you where you went to school before you touch my body is zero. It's zero. How many people ask where you went to school before you did sports medicine before you stretched them?

Zero. None. They don't care about your dadgum little fancy school title all they care about is do you know your stuff right yeah i'm old i've been to dockers my whole life never asked one where they went to school john can you what's the range on pa schools john's got a phd in higher ed i mean you don't have to spend a hundred grand, do you? Conceivably, no. There's a million different schools. Does he already have one in mind? Yeah. So we're trying to do a local one. We don't want to relocate. So there's like three or four

he can apply to. And they kind of range from like 80 to 110,000. There you go. So you've already knocked off $20,000, which in y'all's life is a year of your life of saving money, right? So find the $80,000. And like Dave said, go beat the streets. Maybe he goes to a community college and gets a nursing certificate first, and then they'll help pay for the transition from nursing school to PA school. There's all different other avenues you can take to get here. But Dave's right.

Once you decide you're not going to borrow money and do it the stupid way, all of a sudden some of the smart ways start sticking out in front of you. It's amazing. Yeah. Scratch around and do this right, kiddo. This is The Ramsey Show. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is our co-host today. Thank you for joining us, America.

We're so glad you're here. We invite you to drop by and see us here at Ramsey. We are about 12 miles south of Nashville in a little town called Franklin, which is absolutely fabulous. And lots of people come by the Ramsey Solutions headquarters. There's a big lobby where you can have some homemade cookies and coffee at our expense. We love treating you. We like having you come in here, and it smells like mama's kitchen, not corporate America. And we want you to go through and see the stuff and hang out.

And we do the show on the glass from 1 to 4 every day, central time, Monday through Friday. And you're welcome to drop in. Dr. John does his show on the glass in the mornings a couple times a week ken coleman a couple times a week uh smart money happy hour is not done on the glass because they're out of control and we don't know what they're going to do next but um also in this lobby we built a little thing right here on the glass is that's a we call it the debt-free stage which is where you stand to tell us your debt-free story and do your debt-free scream on that stage is john and sarah hey john how are you guys doing better than we deserve cool where do y'all live uh we live up by green bay wisconsin oh very fun well welcome to nashville and how much debt have y'all paid? We paid off just about $102,000. And how long did

that take? All told about six years and two months. Six years. All right. And your range of income during that six years? We started out right around $45,000 with a little freelance. We got up to about $140,000 and kind of settled back down at $125,000. Gotcha. Okay, cool. What do you all do for a living? I am a brand and communications team lead at an IT services company. And I do prep at a coffee shop. Excellent.

Very cool. What kind of debt was the $102,000? It was a credit card, a couple of loans from family, and our mortgage. You paid off your house! You did. Wow! Looking at a couple of weirdos. Yep.

Way to go, you two. So proud of you. Very, very well done. So, good job, man. Good job. So, what started this whole Ramsey walk six years ago? Well, I had been familiar with Dave Ramsey like 15 years ago. We actually saw the book in a bookstore and we're like, we should do that. We don't know if we have enough money to pay for the book.

We didn't feel like we could afford the book. Yeah. So we kind of had a general sense of what Dave Ramsey was all about and paying off debt and those things, but weren't really on board at that point. And kind of were normal. We were living, paying all of our bills on credit cards and then thought we were being responsible by paying the credit card off every month. Of course, that is easier said than done. And inevitably, you get to the end of the month. And I was always concerned about, do we have enough money in the account to pay off the card? And towards the end of the year, often there wasn't enough. So we'd find ourselves carrying a balance and hope for a big

tax refund to cover the difference and wipe the slate clean. So this was really caused a lot of anxiety. You know, it was never, I never felt comfortable, never felt like we were getting ahead. Because you weren't. We weren't, we weren't. And we didn't have a budget. And I tried several times to figure out the whole budgeting thing on my own, but it was just a little too much for me to figure out on my own. So fast forward to about 2017, we had been living this way and I kind of just got to the point where I felt like I'm tired of feeling anxious and unsure all the time. Decided to look back into the budgeting thing and ended up doing a bunch of

Google searching and finding the Dave Ramsey show again. So I started binging the show and listening to other people's debt-free screams. And you happen to have the $10 sale going on. Now I can afford the book. So now I could afford the book. I love it. I bought the Total Money Makeover. I read it, told Sarah, I think we really need to do this for my sanity at least, but I think for our future as well. I said, fine, I'll read the book. And then I read the book and I said, I guess we can try it. Let's go. Yeah, so she wasn't fully on board at first,

but we got going and we tried the budget. And by the way, what you say about it taking three months to get the budget right is absolutely true. It was a total disaster the first month. First month was terrible. Yeah, yeah. Second month was pretty good. Third month was pretty good.

Yeah. And the rest is history. there we go so what's your home worth um well according to to zillow which i don't know if that's entirely uh accurate but probably close to 250 way to go you guys yeah wow that's gotta feel great yeah it does was it worth the struggle oh totally i would do it 10,000 more times. I mean, I shouldn't have to at this point. Right. Yeah.

Amen. Amen. Yeah, absolutely worth it. Way to go, y'all. Way to go. Excellent. Excellent. So what was the biggest struggle y'all had as a couple?

Like both of you are showing some hesitancy. Was it because, you know, Sarah kept spending or John, you always had a scam and an idea, a spreadsheet? What was a spreadsheet what was it um i think it was just we didn't have the tools uh we found the every dollar every dollar app and it was life-changing and it was like okay it goes to both of our phones everything's joint we just you know we're all in it's there's no excuses to not do it at that point so yeah i like it that was really the big unlock for me, the EveryDollar app, to be honest,

because I had tried doing budgets before with spreadsheets and I'm just not a spreadsheet guy. And the EveryDollar app made it so simple and it laid it all out for us. And that combined with reading the total money makeover finally, I felt like this finally is a plan that i can follow i have steps that i can follow i can be intentional and proactive which is the total opposite of being

reactive and and anxious all the time so that was the the big thing well that was a sentence yeah that was like a thesis statement right there i like it very good very good excellent excellent good job you guys. All right. Both of you, what do you tell people when they say, how'd you pay off your house? What's the secret to getting out of debt? Just put your head down. Keep on doing it. Just every single month, do the budget with the EveryDollar app and just every single month, just like, okay, it's going to pay off in the end.

And it totally does. And it's awesome. It's just crazy cool. Yeah. I think for me, the key was the budget. And really closely related to that is being on the same page. And again, having the EveryDollar app and being able to go through that budget every month together, make a plan for our money. I had been the one handling the finances kind of on my own previously. So this was a huge change to be able to both be looking at the same numbers and understand what we're making and what's going out.

And then be able to dream about it and dream together about like, what can we do now that we actually know what our money is doing? So really making the budget and being on the same page with your spouse and talking about it and having the same dream what's it like i'm looking at your kids over here and my two kids look to be about the same age as your kids talk about what it feels like as the world's getting chaotic as schools are getting wonky as thank god we're entering into another political season right what's it like knowing they can't they're gonna be all right like they can't take your house right when it all when all is said and done they're gonna be very reassuring and we're very we're very religious people as well

so it's like God's got this we got this we're gonna be fine yeah I think it's really hard to put into words the amount of peace that that that brings knowing that we don't know a dime to anybody for anything and um yeah it's just uh it's just an amazing feeling very cool all right bring them up let's hear their names and ages and introduce them come on i want to hear this so they've been through all this too no doubt they got parents that are heroes that's for sure our oldest is jonah he's 14 we have silas who's our youngest who is 10 and we have ella who is our middle and 13 all right very cool very cool we'll welcome you guys beautiful family proud of you heroes well done very well done john and sarah jonah ella and silas from Green Bay, Wisconsin area. $102,000 paid off.

House and everything. Six years they did it, making $45,000 to $125,000. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Ready? Three, two, one. We're debt-free! Yeah!

Love it! Way to go, you guys. That's how it's done, boys and girls. That's how it's done. This is The Ramsey Show. Our scripture of the day is John 14, 15. If you love me, keep my commandments. Elon Musk said, When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not

in your favor. John's in Seattle. Hey, John, welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hey, good afternoon. Over to be here. Good to have you, sir. How can we help? I've been with you guys for probably the last five six years and um yeah i it's it's taken taking a lot for me to to come forward and and uh reach out to you guys um i am uh i used to be a well i i had a major spending addiction and I had gone through counseling to recover from that during my marriage and had just recently divorced and unfortunately relapsed in in that's when those spending habits and I am today I'm I'm renting an apartment which is quite expensive in this area as as you can imagine. And I'm sitting on top of $65,000 in debt.

Three of those are lines of credit that are in a bad status, that have not been paid for probably 70 days past due. And two of them are in good standing, which one is direct with my current credit union and the other is for my vehicle right now. What do you make? I make about $74,000 a year and I drive for rideshare programs in the area

and I have no savings. I had had to, before my divorce, I had had to cash out my 401k and eat through our emergency savings that was developed. How long has it been since you've seen your counselor about your spending addiction? It's been probably almost two years now. Why haven't you gone back? So, because right now I understand that the tools and the guidance that I was given, I understand that I need to pivot and turn around, which I have.

Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Stop. You got tools and guidance. That's cool. Yes. But you know the cornerstone of every addiction recovery program is sitting kneecap to kneecap of another person and saying, do you see me and do you still love me?

And you skip that part. That's the shame part. That's the part you got to do. You can have all the tools in the world, man. You can Google how to lose weight. You got to sit with somebody. It's hard. You can Google all these other things. You're avoiding that hard part. How come? Did this divorce beat you up? The divorce definitely was unexpected but I guess the reason why I didn't think that I needed

to go back to the counselor is because I understood that I needed to pivot immediately. When the credit lines had stopped receiving payment, that's when I decided to completely stop touching any of those things, start paying when I, that's why I decided to completely stop touching any of those things,

start paying. I got myself into this employment and into this consistent income and decided, okay, now I need to get myself caught up, make sure that I have a stable home and start to see how I will take care of all of this debt, which again, I have not touched at all since. Okay, so let me recap just a second, and then we'll make sure we try to answer your question, okay? Okay. So you had a spending addiction. You went to see a counselor, and after the divorce, you relapsed.

When was the divorce? I'm sorry, when is the divorce? Yes, sir. It had started last year and concluded. Okay, so since the divorce and since the relapse on the spending, you've not seen a counselor? No, sir. Okay, that's what I was trying to get to. Okay, so, John, there's two possibilities here.

And, Dr. John, the data that I have seen is old, and I don't know how accurate it is today, but we have a culture that talks about every misbehavior as an addiction. And every misbehavior is not an addiction. Sometimes it's simple immaturity lack of self-control those are not addictions it's not addictive behavior that's just other things that that the that the general public struggles with the last data i saw had about two percent of the public with an actual spending addiction that's a akin to an OCD type behavior. Does that sound right to you?

I hear it very, very rarely. Yeah, it's very unusual. It's not in the diagnostic manual. And so, I mean, that's just, there's a 12-step program called Debtors Anonymous that you can plug into that has to do with debt, and it usually is full of people that have just had, did not have the ability to control spending for whatever reason and so they were labeling an addiction the um rightly or wrongly i don't know but that's what i had read the definition of addiction if you ask me is it's a behavior that i

cannot compulsively stop that that i continue to do despite its nefarious consequences and that's what this guy's doing here yeah okay all right so and and if that's the case then if you're dealing with something that is at that level and it's not simply stop it you're being stupid okay because addiction stop it you're being stupid doesn't work okay addictions you have to they're shame-based and you have to meet with somebody and get a coach get a counselor and walk your way through it and so that's why john's recommending that and the fact that you've not done that is at the core so if we're going to put you in the bucket if you're going to put you

in the bucket or we are this says you are an actual person who's struggling with an actual behavior type based addiction then you need to see a counselor you're not going to self diagnose your way out of this no matter how much i'm going to be honest the language he's using is very addict language now i've got it figured out i seem to solve this i need to move this over here and i need to take care of this every person i've ever met who struggles with any sort of addiction always has a plan and they seem to work the plan it's all good and it never works yeah right so you've got to get some help dude if that's you if it's simply john's being a baby and john needs to straighten up and so forth that's different that is different than an addiction and i can't tell and we can't diagnose you on the phone but you're using the

language to john dr john's point of an addict so So I would tell you to sit down with that. Now, I did promise you that I would actually answer your question, too, rather than just sit here and diagnose you. So how can we best help you today, John, do you think? Well, I completely understand, and I'm very open to what you guys are saying. I take full responsibility for every one of my decisions here. No doubt.

How can I best help you today? We're up against the clock. In parallel to that, in parallel to the help that I need to do to the addiction is that I wanted to know from you guys on your advice on how I may best

tackle my debt. I had spoken to my credit union about either taking a personal loan or they had Okay, you can't borrow your way out of it. Your first step is to get your income versus your monthly budget needs, your income higher than your basic budget needs, so that you can get current. Once you're current, then I'm going to list the debts, smallest to largest, and I'm going to pay minimum payments staying current on the larger ones while I'm attacking the very smallest debt with a vengeance. And then, of course, you've got to remove any type of debt product from within

arm's reach of you, okay? An alcoholic can't have a bourbon collection, okay? So you can't have a credit card collection. You can't have access to all these things. You can't do this. So, you know, you've got to separate yourself from the access to credit lines, access to credit cards and so forth, make it hard to get them, get current, then increase your income. And all you're going to be doing for a little while is work, which is actually cool because you, if you're working all the time, you haven't got time to spend. You're too tired and you're working all the time. You're busy. You don't have time to do it. some of the worst spending i do to this day is if i'm bored and and so that that's a devil's playground so um yeah that's what i would do is anything you

can do that's legal and moral to increase your income and then start chunking on there like a wild man and if we can help you further brother you call us anytime we're on your team we love you we want you to win and i'm sorry you've been through everything you have. Appreciate you joining us. That puts this hour of the Ramsey Show in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus. Thank you.