The Ramsey Show - App - This Is How You Set Yourself Up for Success! (Hour 2)

Episode Date: January 12, 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 amazing relationships. I'm George Campbell, joined by the one and only Dr. John Deloney, and we're taking your calls at 888-825-5225. John, you ready to do this? I am ready to do this. Just saying for paying attention. Always.

Here we go. We're kicking it off with Ben in Atlanta, Georgia. Ben, how can we help today? Hey, I was hoping for some advice. So I'm in law school right now, and I'll graduate this May. And I've got this kind of impending, awkward financial situation where after I graduate, I have to take a few months to study for the bar and then take the bar exam. And that's pretty much full time. So I'm not going to have much or any money coming in, but I'm still going to have expenses.

And talking to people about how they pay for that, some people take out student loans, some people put it on credit card. I also have some Roth IRA contributions, I think that may be pulling from it. I was just wondering what your advice is to deal with that sort of situation. Ooh, man.

One, I would tell you, I was a dean of students at a law school for years. It's not kind of a part, a full-time job. It's a thousand percent. It's two full-time jobs and then a nighttime job. Studying for the bar, right? What kind of law are you going to do, man? Public finance, municipal bonds.

Good for you, man. Cool. Very cool. Way to go. Are you in any debt right now? Probably a billion dollars. I have no student debt. I've got a little over $3,000 in credit card debt. How'd you get through law school with no student debt? My undergrad tuition was free The state of Georgia Lottery paid for it And then

My law school has been cheap A little less than $3,000 a semester After scholarships And I worked in the summers and I worked part time Awesome That's amazing So you got $3,000 in credit card debt Anything else?

No And I'll say, so $2,500 of that $3,000 is interest-free until 2025. So I was kind of just putting off paying that until after I graduated. But that's, no, no other debt. How much do you have in the bank? I have in cash savings, I think $1,200. And then I've got my IRA. Okay. So until you have to quit working, how much could you save up if you just did nothing else but save up, stack up cash? Yeah. right now after tax uh i make um and after rent i i'm bringing home about 500 bucks a month um so how many hours is that that's after rent and everything yeah i i work about 15 hours a week um uh, uh, what was your other question?

You're saying your net income is 500 bucks. Are you saying after all your bills, you have 500 after, after running utilities. Um, and then, and then my, yeah,

so, so I, I, I could pay 30 bucks an hour. Uh, I'm able to work about 15 hours a week. So it's around 1800. Uh,

but then I'm, I'm a contractor. I have to pay self-employment taxes and then my rent is like $1,300. Let's flip it around this way. Between graduation, are you going to take the summer bar? I am,

yeah. Okay, so you need two to three months living expenses, right? Right. You basically have a five-month runway depending on how difficult your 3L year is going to be. Some folks set their second semester 3L year up to go ahead and do clinics, and it's easier. Some of y'all wait and pile everything up on that last semester, and it is a nightmare. What have you done? It's fairly light. I have two classes, a clinic and a mini course.

Okay. So I don't want to over-dramatize it, but it's really a math problem that you have four to five months to solve. And you're $30 an hour. Are you clerking right now somewhere? Yeah, at a law firm. Okay. You may have to, for five months, swallow your pride and deliver pizzas at night okay which sucks but

i would put a dollar amount what is it going to take you to survive for two and a half months is that six grand yeah four grand what's your rent expenses utilities and then can you put that money in a bank by the time you graduate okay i think this is very doable you got five months to save up a few grand you know say another five grand on top of the money you have and uh you can make if this is kind of a storm mode you could pause and make minimum payments on the debt but i'd rather just get this credit card debt out of my life and have all my income at my disposal do you already have a job lined up? Yeah, I have to start by September 1st. I can ask to start early, so I'll probably start sometime in August.

Okay. Is it a public service job or is it a billable hour job? Billable hour. What are you billing out at? I'm not sure exactly what they're going to bill me out at. No, no. I mean, what hours did you sign up for? Working at the firm?

Yeah. Yeah. How many hours did you agree to? 22? 21? They didn't specify in the contract. Oh, they haven't? Okay.

The reason I'm asking that is this. If you signed up for 2,200 hours a year, you just signed away your life. And so I'm going to tell you, I would get this stuff out of the way as quickly as possible and build in some margins so you can exhale between the bar and when you start. If you signed up for 1,700 hours, it's going to be a much slower pace. It's going to be a different kind of life. And man, you can go from the bar to a couple of weeks off to go see your family and then head right into work. See what I'm saying? That's what I'm getting at. But this, I don't overcomplicate this, man.

It's a, brother, it's a math problem. It's a math problem that you can reverse engineer and you got a pretty good runway and you're working hard and you have done the hard work on your first two years of law school. So to set yourself up for a perfect position and you're going to be the nerdy law school kid. Everyone's going to be like, dude, why aren't you? And because I'm not going to go into debt. I'm proud of you, man. Good for you. Good for you. You're going to be like, dude, why aren't you? I'm like, because I'm not going to go into debt. I'm proud of you, man. Good for you. Good for you. You're going to be in a very different place than your peers. By the way, George, can we just say this? The Georgia

Promise, I'm making up the name of it. I don't know what it is, but public school went for free then went to law school and worked really hard. You can't do that, bro. Less than three grand did you say? A semester? After scholarships. After scholarships. Yeah, worked real hard. Dude, you've done it the right way. I'm proud of that, bro. Less than three grand, did you say, a semester? After scholarships. After scholarships. Yeah, worked real hard.

Dude, you've done it the right way. I'm proud of you, man. That's awesome. You're living proof that you don't have to go 400 grand into debt to be a lawyer. Yeah. Yeah. Good for you, man. We believe in you, Ben.

You got this, man. Whew. Sorry, that was a lot of nerd speak there. Sorry. No, well, you come from the education world and you were at a law school. So I was excited to have your take because you've seen the inside and seen people make really bad decisions. And a lot of law positions, they don't pay these giant six-figure salaries. Yeah, yeah.

The average salary of a lawyer has definitely plummeted. And so the ROI to go to school and spend $ spend 300 grand for a law degree and then go and leave and make 60 it doesn't make sense well and i he's asking a great question and i think every grad student especially but every student should ask this question um you get done with law school and then they tell you oh well you got the bar exam everyone knows about the bar exam but they don't realize oh you can't you're not working and so then you people find themselves how am i going to eat for the next two months? More Monopoly money from Sally Mae.

Then it's, well, you got to take another loan just to cover that. And then who's going to pay for your bar prep course? All of this is a math problem that you got to solve on the front end if you can. Right. Absolutely. And so good for you, Ben. I'm proud of you, brother. This is The Ramsey Show.

Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Camel, joined by Dr. John Deloney. Recall at 888-825-5225. You jump in, we'll talk about your life and your money. Beck is in Denver. Beck, what's going on? Hi. Hey, thanks for taking my call. Absolutely.

How can John and I help? Yeah, so my wife and I started a business last year flipping liquidation pallets for major retailers. We generated about $180,000 in just eight months doing that. And at that time, my wife was working at an insurance company and she quit her job uh to focus on the business um but i have a full-time job at a software company working as a consultant and i make about eighty two thousand dollars there so my question is should i quit my full-time job at the software company

and focus my time on our business as well since we have this great traction going on right now? How consistent has this been month to month? It has been really consistent. Lately, it has been generating about $20,000 to $25,000 a month. Goodness gracious. And that's just net after shipping and all the fees that we pay on the e-commerce side. Wow. And how much time is this taking you guys? How many hours a week?

A week, I would say, well, I usually put in whatever time I have after work, and my wife puts all of her time into that, so I would say about 40 to 45 hours. Okay. And money aside, is this something you want to do? Do you want to get out of the software game and get into liquidation, flipping business long term? Yeah, absolutely. I love doing it. It just almost doesn't feel like work when I do it.

We receive shipments, and at the end of the day, I just have a little bit more satisfaction of doing this job where I actually have labor, while in my 9-to-5 job at this software company, it's just Zoom calls. There's really not that labor gratification at the end of the day. Okay. And you're doing this all debt-free?

You're buying all these pallets in cash? Yeah. So, I, well, both of us had about $15,000 starting off in debt and credit cards. And I started watching Dave Ramsey's show. And, you know, the debt is, you know, I just came to learn that it's not really good, so I ended up paying all the credit card debt. My wife has about $8,000 in student loans, but apart from that, we are pretty much debt-free. Yeah, I'd pay off all your debt, get an emergency fund, and at that point, you've got

some financial foundation under you to quit the software gig and go into this full-time. But you could pay off this debt today, probably. I'm guessing you've got some money in savings. Yeah, yeah. We have about $80,000, and that's my next question, is should I reinvest it back into the business, right? Buy more pallets, or, you know, lean less into the stock market. Let's separate your personal and business right now. So let's say you pay off all of your debt and then set aside three to six months of expenses. Let's lean six months of personal expenses. Then we're going to create, you already have a business bank account? You're doing this all through? Yes.

Do you have a formal, you know, do you set up an LLC or something? Yes. Yep. Okay. So on that side, you can have some cash reserves. And as you get money in there, you can then go buy more pallets and invest it back into the business and do it all with cash. I think that's really wise. Well, so you guys can do this. I mean, very soon you got 80,000 in the bank. I would use that to set up yourselves personally on a good financial standing. And then whatever's left over, we can reinvest in the business. What do you think, John? I don't see

any red flags here to jump. You guys have done it the right way. You're cash flowing this thing. It's making multitudes more than your day jobs. Why are you nervous to leave your day job? What's your hesitancy? It's just, I went to college for four years. My dad paid all my tuition, so I didn't have to get student loan. It's just quitting my job kind of feels like a slap in my dad's face. Just, you know, saying, Hey, I didn't end up using the degree at the end of the day. What did you learn from that degree? Oh, I graduated with a computer science degree, so I have, uh, you know, programming skills. Uh, and, uh, yeah. Are you making an extraordinary household income on e-commerce? Yes.

I would argue that it's connected to your degree. You're honoring your father by saying, Dad, you taught me a lot of skills. You allowed me to go get an education, some of which... Here's the big fallacy, dude. A lot of people are like, Dude, I'm not getting a degree because I don't even use that degree. Bull crap. You learn how to read.

You learn how to go do different projects for different professors, which were different bosses in college. You learn how to do different programs. You learn how to think do different projects for different professors, which were different bosses in college. You learned how to do different programs, learn how to think for yourself, how to get around and cut corners so you could get an A, even though you didn't want to do all the work, right? You learned a whole, whole bunch through that process. And so your dad's money's not wasted. In fact, I'm just telling you as a dad, if I paid for my son's school and he went and got a degree and worked really hard in that degree and then hustled and created a business on the side

that ended up making exponentially more money. And he came to me and said, dad, I'm going all in on my own business that makes a jillion dollars that me and my wife do together. I would be so overcome with pride for my son. I'd be so proud of him. I think he was, I would have thought the amount of money I put in college that he has ROI to create a life for him that I didn't have for myself. Dude, I'm just like, I would be beaming for him, but mostly because he took what the small amount I gave him and he's made it so much more. Now he can give in his community. He can be, he can build an amazing business to serve people. See what I'm saying?

Yeah. Yeah. I totally understand. And that's what my thinking has been is just like, I need confirmation on whether what I'm doing is right. I just want to make sure that security, yeah, that your hesitancy isn't, no, this has been like a fun, cool two years, and then an AI bot's going to come out and do this thing in one second, what it takes us a week to do, and this gig's going to be up.

Because if that's the case, dude, you had an awesome, fun ride for a few years, make a bunch of money, pay off your house, and then it was a cool ride. If you think, no, no, no, we've stumbled onto something for real, then, man, congratulations, dude. Congratulations. Awesome. Thank you. Hope that helps, Beck.

Thank you so much for those lines. Yeah, absolutely. And, George, I love that Dave tells a story all the time about his, I think it was his grandma, I used to always ask him, like, when are you going to get a real job, Dave? Oh, yeah. Right, because he was doing the Dave Ramsey thing. But when are you going to get a real job, Dave? Oh, yeah. Right? Because he was doing the Dave Ramsey thing. But when are you going to get a real job? And without ever understanding, like, oh, dude, I'm not working for a corporation.

I'm creating one. I'm building one. Well, the older generations, you know, they're used to a traditional career. So when you tell them, John's like, I am a YouTuber. You know, like, they don't know what that means, you know? And so I think that's the hard part is just helping parents understand what the heck this is you know if I told my parents I'm running an e-commerce liquidation business my mom's head would spin she would have no clue my sweet Middle Eastern Arabic mom was like what did what did that mean

you know and so I think that's part of the problem is just explaining to our parents the newfangled career paths that are out there today right um which you know that's a fine problem to have we can solve that in a conversation i've i flip things on amazon mom okay cool that's great i don't know what that means because what they really care about they're like i make 250 000 doing this mom they're like oh yay you know how walmart buys things from the uh the distribution house and then marks it up and sells it to you at their store, I just do that. I just do it at my house. Booyah. And I make a lot of money. Ta-da! Every parent just wants their kid to be

successful. Not every parent. Some parents want them to fail. You will be a lawyer. Oh, yes. Well, see, I come from a Middle Eastern culture, and so when you head into those Eastern cultures, there's a lot of pressure of like, if you're not a lawyer, an engineer, or a doctor, I don't know what you are and I don't care because you've disappointed me. That exists. Let me call that out. But I think a lot of people were forced into that path,

hated it, maybe even are successful at it and hate it, which is somehow even worse because they're like, I can't leave this. And that's a hard thing to do for the reputation of the parents because they can't go to their friends and go, what does your kid do? You can't you can't say he's a doctor you have to say he's in the liquidation e-commerce business he flips half uh empty pallets but then you go wait he's making more than a doctor without going to med school sounds like he's winning at life bro and then they'll high-five you and say good job dad and then you'll get get to get to beam a little bit. There it is. So drop the reputation, parents. I just want a successful kid with great character at the end of the day. And Becca's proven that.

This is The Ramsey Show. We'll be right back. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Campbell, joined by Dr. John Deloney. If you want to call in with your question, you can do that at 888-825-5225. Jeremy's up next in Atlanta, Georgia. Jeremy, what is going on? Hey, George, can you hear me? I can.

Hey, I'm nervous, so bear with me. Dude, it's just me and John. It's just us girls here. I'm sitting next to George Campbell, dude. I'm nervous also. bear with me. Dude, it's just me and John. It's just us girls here. I'm sitting next to George Camel, dude. I'm nervous also. I'm at both of you in October. I came to Dr. John's book signing, and I already bought your book for me and all my siblings, George.

Oh, that's so kind. Thanks for being a fan of ours, man. We're a fan of you. Thanks, brother. What's up, man? So I'll get to my question, and i'll give you some backstory so how do i help my dad who is dying in front of my eyes um me and my mom watched the live stream last night and instead of watching it we basically i'm a ramsey we're both ramsey followers and so instead of watching it we

actually just ended up talking about life and i found out some stuff I never found out about my dad. And I am my dad, so I understand who he is. And he's in a really dark place. He's 59, retired military. And my mom has tried to help him for decades um and she turned and asked me if i would i guess take on the burden to help him um he he has is that yeah that's kind of the backstory so dude i just want to like hop right in here dude. Two important things for you to hold very tightly to your chest. Okay.

Okay. Number one, you are not your dad. Part of him is inside of you. Right. But you're not him. You are different people, different experiences, different life and all that kind of stuff. So you can feel like, no, I know what he's going through. You don't.

Okay. That's number one. Okay. what he's going through you don't okay that's number one okay and hold that very loosely because if something happens to him um and you start trying to get into his head inside his body and say no i know i know it really shuts off a dialogue between two people okay so he's his own man and you are too you have very you might have some similar traits y'all might have some similar traits. Y'all might have some very similar whatever. Half of him is you. But there we go. Here's number two.

I'm going to walk you through how you can love your old man right now. But quote unquote handling the burden is not your job. You're his son. Okay? And if you walk into this as he's a project, he'll smell it 100,000 miles away and you'll never get close. Okay. If you decide,

Dad, you're 59 years old and I want to start spending some time with you. I love you. And I don't even know you that well. Could we start going to coffee once a month? Could we start fill in the blank? Could we do this? I want you in my life.

If you have that conversation with him, now we've got a whole different ballgame. Okay. But if you go into it as he's a project and I've got to go save him, unless he is going to hurt himself, right? If he is suicidal, then yeah, I'm getting all in that mess, right?

But short of that... It's more he goes through the motions and he mopes around and he commits financial infidelity, stuff like that, is what he's struggling with. So if you come after your dad with, hey, I heard you're cheating on mom

with your money and stuff like that, that's not going to go well. Okay. When's the last time you said, hey, man, I'd love to just start doing something regular with you? Probably never. Exactly. okay when's the last time you said hey man uh i'd love to just start doing something regular with you um probably never exactly and hey here's here's what's really scary about this he might look at you and tell you no that's a possibility hey dad i'd love to have like a weekly coffee with you i'll go into work late and i just want to hang out. What? Why? Why?

Dad, because you're my dad and I miss hanging out. And I don't even, I want to hear some stories. I want to get your take on what's happening in the world. And I just, you need to get out of the house. Mom needs a break from you. And you pay for the coffee every time. You pay for the breakfast every time. You don't meet once a week and he might tell you no.

And then maybe at that point you say, I love you. And I want you to be around for a every time. You pay for the breakfast every time. You meet once a week and he might tell you no. And then maybe at that point you say, I love you. And I want you to be around for a long time and I sure would love to hang out with you. I don't think I've ever heard him tell anyone he loves them. When's the last time anybody told him? I don't know.

I mean, I've never done it either today's going to be the day tomorrow's going to be the day I was can I give you a suggestion so I'm not I'm better at writing my feelings down is that okay if I write him a letter

and read that letter to him you can it's very very effective but it's not as effective okay okay yeah i'm just worried about him yeah and his decline and it's not uh does he have any hobbies jeremy like what is he doing all day yeah okay so right now he um so he owns a small business um that's a hobby store so like miniatures and um like magic you gathering pokemon cards or this is george camel paradise yes and but the i think his um his passion project that turned into business has turned into a nightmare. Yeah. And that's turned into more shame and guilt.

And then he just makes bad decisions, asks family and friends for money, doesn't pay back, and then he just cycles into more shame. And then I don't even know if he enjoys it anymore. He works 50 hours a week, doesn't pay himself a dime because he can't afford it. What has the conversations been with your mom and your dad? What are they talking to with each other? Like, is she addressing this with him going, hey, honey, we can't keep spending like this? Yeah.

Does she have a vote? So I think she has given up on him. She's tried her whole life from her perspective. And now she, I think he and her mind has lost his vote because he makes bad decisions and she feels the, she has felt the burden of being a working mom and raising three children. And she's still working full time.

Yeah. Yeah. She's working full time, getting her PhD. Um, she's a working full-time? Yeah, yeah. She's working full-time, getting her PhD. She's a boss woman. And he kind of just... I mean, she's even told me she's thought about divorcing him when we were teenagers.

Here's the part that's hard, and I don't want to cut you off, but here's the part that's hard as a son, okay? All of the things that you're hearing might be 100% true. Mm-hmm. And if your dad was to really open up with you, he might tell you, son, 20 years with a woman that wouldn't let me breathe. Mm-hmm. You see what I'm saying?

So there's always going to be another side to this, and that's why I wouldn't get into the I'm trying to save you because you've got one side of a story. I'm not getting into the dad. You've got to just ship up and get right. I would get into the, you're my dad. I would like to spend some time with you.

You see the difference here. Yeah, for sure. And I dad, you're with my dad. We're funny. Like we were pretty sarcastic with each other and we always have been, but I would tell my dad,

dad, you're old and you're not going to be here forever and um i'd like to still be able to talk to you when you're before you before you don't even know what i'm saying so let's set up a weekly conversation i got a lot to learn from you and then maybe you can look him in the eye and slip in there and i love you okay i mean i've lived at home for health reasons as an adult and I don't even know him. And I've been at home for 29 years and I don't know him.

And it just broke my heart last night that I don't even know my own dad. Yeah. And maybe there's some shame that his 29-year-old son still lives at home and he wishes that he didn't have health problems. He wishes he was able to afford for him to have his own. There's so much here, man.

I'm just going to suggest to you, brother, stay out of it. Stay out of it and just tell your dad I love you, and I'd love to spend some time with you. And over time, that's the shot you've got. That's the shot you got. Man. It reminds me, I was watching Mike Birbiglia's special. He's a comedian.

Yeah, one of my netflix special one of my favorites he talks about how his family never says i love you and they say take care that's their line it's like it's different he's like i say i love you and they say take care yeah and there's i think how much would that solve in america if we all just said i love you and hugged each other a lot Three simple words that are so hard for us to say that cause so much discord and cause so much chaos. Yeah. Yeah. Man.

It's tough. You talk about this a lot, just this lack of connection that we have. Here's what I can tell you. I've sat with a lot of people who would do anything for 30 more seconds before their person passed to just say, I love you. So say it, say it, say it, say it, say it. I love you, John. I love you too, George. This is The Ramsey Show.

Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Camel, joined by Dr. John Deloney, host of The Dr. John Deloney Show. We're taking your calls at 888-825-5225. Jack is up next in Hartford, Connecticut. Jack, what's going on? Good afternoon, gentlemen. How are you both? Doing great.

How can we help? Fantastic. I'm a fairly new listener, but I've already picked up one pretty key piece of wisdom, which is to pay down debt. I'm very fortunate to be working a well-paying government job that I really enjoy. I have some cash and some investments, but I also have some student loans, and I'm looking at the interest rates on everything and weighing whether to pay them off aggressively now or to make minimum payments, save more aggressively, and wait for that public service student loan forgiveness program at 10 years to wipe away the debt.

How far are you into this 10-year program? Yeah, I'm about two years in. How old are you? 24. Okay. So let's fast forward to 32-year-old Jack. Where is he? What is he doing? You know, if things go well, probably

about what I'm doing now. I'm making good money. I like the work, and it's government, so I can't really be laid off, which is nice in times of economic stress. And what do you make? I'm making about $120,000 now, and that goes up somewhere between 5% and 10% a year. Awesome. So, hey, hold on. You said a bunch of awesome things. You're 24, right? Yes, sir.

All right. I got two decades on you. You 100% can get laid off, and you can get furloughed. When the government starts throwing tennis balls at each other in the sandbox and they won't pass a budget. And so they let things default and they keep getting paid, but you guys don't. It feels like, oh, I got security. Not necessarily. Okay.

More security than most. And that's why you make less money because you could probably make a lot more money out in the open market um and the perception is you'd have less security but yeah dude it's it's hold on with all of your heart to your optimism um you'll become disillusioned soon enough i'm proud of you thanks the other factor in here jack is we're going to have two more presidents before your debts are paid off does that not blow your mind that's kind of crazy yes and who knows what the heck's going to happen between now and eight years and if there's a pandemic and what i just want to be free faster you make 120k i mean how much debt do you have so that's kind of the mechanics of the question is I have about 27,000 in debt, and I have about 30,000 sitting in cash in checking and savings accounts that get about

5% return, which is a higher percent than the interest rate on the debt. It varies between 3% and 4.5%. But doing the math on that, on the spread you're making. I mean, it's pennies compared to your actual income. Definitely. What you're making in savings versus what you're paying in interest, and I'm making $40 a month spread. That's $480 a year I can make from this while carrying the stress and the weight of this decision. I mean, it's the fact that you're calling into the show. It's weighing on you. You know, I think it's more like if I have the cash at any time, I can pay them off, right?

And if I'm making more on the cash than the interest rates on the loans, should I just wait for the 10 years? And if, you know, God forbid I get laid off next year, I can just pull the trigger and pay the loans off right away. But am I crazy to kind of sit and wait and see if i can hit that 10-year mark you're not crazy you're just normal which is crazy to us in here everyone says we're crazy because we're like oh how would you want debt dude you have the money pay it off be free and i know some of these things have changed but depending on who's

in office next year is depending on whatever promise they're going to make to you and i had i i mean i was the dean of students at a public law school and had a lot of really brilliant students who decided to not go do um big firm work and decided to be a public servant to help out their communities because the government's going to pay their loans back and yes it's some of them have ended up coming through, but for a long, long time, none of them got it. They'd apply. They'd apply. They'd apply. You promised. You said, Hey, where is it? And they're like, yeah, we're not doing that anymore. And so here's what I'm telling you, just for me and my family, I put zero, none in the hands of the government 10 years from now solving whatever mess that I made for myself, which is borrow a bunch of money.

Very reasonable. I appreciate that. Listen, I'm also looking at a pension plan and I've got a rock and everything, but any parting words to a 24 year old who's still figuring out the world of personal finance? Well, number one, run the other way. You're so glad you called us, aren't you, Jack? I opened the book with this quote, my new book, Breaking Free from Broke. It's from C.S. Lewis. When the whole world is running toward a cliff, he who is running in the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind. I think the hardest part about the Ramsey plan is this gnawing feeling that you're going a weird direction

that no one else is going, and it's so much harder to swim upstream, and everyone's making fun of you, going like, dude, you could make a spread in your savings account. Why would you pay off that low-interest debt? You're an idiot. That's what most of culture's telling you on TikTok, right? That's right.

And we're telling you, what if you could just have peace and freedom today, and every dollar you make stays with you instead of going back out to a lender? And you make different decisions when you don't owe anyone anything and you're not worried about the spread and an interest rate and instead you're just focused on your life and your family and your career. That's the life I want for you. It's way beyond math, which is hard to explain on paper or I'm getting a vague sense of it it does sound pretty nice let me like in a more concrete way because you're a very very smart guy really like a brilliant guy George and I will never we were just talking about personal finance conversation that we're having both in our lives off air interest rate never came up

because neither of us care about it neither of us care about it i may have to move or i may end up moving and i may have to take a mortgage out on a house so we're talking about the rate part i don't care about could care less about it because it's i'm not trying to play a rate game as though somehow I can win a completely rigged system. If I put my toe back in that world and I get a mortgage for me and my family to move to a different community, then I'll hit the gas with all I got to not have that mortgage.

I could care less because it's not about the interest rate for me. It's not about the math win or loss. It's about freedom for me. Nobody will own me and my family. And right now, I want you to think about it this way. You are in indentured servitude, servanthood to the government for a decade. For all of human history, that was a catastrophic punishment. And this is one that you are really trying to work hard to talk yourself into leaving. You see what I'm saying?

I do, yeah. I see where I've kind of gone astray. The government owns you for the next decade under this plan. Otherwise, you've got the money right now. You could be free this weekend. Nobody owns you. And then you're going to save up some money because you make 120 grand. You're going to save up some money and you're going to get that 30 grand back filled up.

And you're your own bank. So you don't care what the interest rates are because you don't borrow money because you're your own bank. If you have an emergency, you just pay for yourself. Who cares? And now you're off to the races, building real wealth. Phenomenal. Well, thank you both so much for your time. I'll have to look into that book. Really appreciate it. Yeah, Jack, I'm going to read you this as we close this hour. This is from the student loans chapter of my book. June of 2022, the PSLF forms submitted were more than a million and a half, and 12,500 were approved. That is a failure rate of 99.26%.

Put another way, it's a success rate of 0.74%, not even 1% were approved. And I saw one teacher post this really depressing viral video, John. He said, I didn't get approved because i used a slash instead of a dash for the date on the application and they said nope you didn't fill it out according to our terms so we're not going to forgive the debt this is the bureaucratic game we're playing we're waiting 10 years all to find out a slasher dash was the game changer and by the way those 10 years they're um making money on the interest, right? If you're paying these things in the meantime. Yeah.

So people's loans are ballooning. The balances are going up over time because they're making minimum payments, doing income-driven plans, thinking this is the path. Someone's going to figure this out. I'm telling you, you got to solve for freedom. Be free, dude. Be free. You can be free today. There's no sacrifice involved here. Hang on for freedom, man. Be free, dude. Be free. And you can be free today. There's no sacrifice involved here.

Hang on the line, Jack. We're going to send you George's new book, Breaking Free from Baroque, and you'll get it when it releases next week. Love that. That puts this hour of The Ramsey Show in the books. I'm George Campbell. He's John Deloney. Thanks for listening. Thank you.