The Ramsey Show - App - Was Going Back to School the Right Decision? (Hour 3)

Episode Date: April 2, 2021

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🎵 Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, it's The Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thank you for joining us, America. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality, best-selling author, is my co-host today here on the air. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Kelsey's with us in Minneapolis. Hi, Kelsey, how are you?

A little nervous. I'm doing well, though. Cool. How can we help? Yeah, so my husband. I'm doing well, though. Cool. How can we help? Yeah. So my husband and I, we bought our house last October. We don't have any kids. We really love the neighborhood that we're in. We're in a pretty big lot.

However, we love planning ahead, using your steps. We're in step three right now. I'm about to wrap it up. Anyways, in about five years from now, we will need more space, more than likely. And so we're just trying to get some information and understand what the dayway is. If we take out a new mortgage and move outside of the cities, or do we stay where we are and take out a construction loan instead and spend less money that way? Currently, we're set to pay off our home in full in seven to eight years from now using your program. But this need is coming up in five.

What's going on in five years? We currently don't have any kids, but we are starting to talk about what that looks like for us timeline wise and we have a limited number of bedrooms and we'd like to expand the house up and currently the housing market we're at the low end of the market we've got like the ugliest and cheapest house in the block um and so we're actually about 150, 200 K below the average price right now. Um, selling in our immediate neighborhood. Um, and so a comparable house that we're looking at would be even more than that, um, for what we're looking to, um, have in a number of bedrooms and all that.

Okay. Well, I would say a lot's going to happen in five years. And so I feel like you don't have to make this decision now. I would wait. And then once you have a baby, maybe you have another one, and you guys are like, okay, we want to move. Everything may change. You may say, hey, we actually want to be closer to the city.

Or you may say, hey, actually, we want to be in the suburb. Or, hey, I mean, who knows what's going to happen? So I just don't feel like this decision, I don't feel like you need to make it right now. I think you're okay to sit and wait and be patient, continue the baby steps, fund retirement, start, yeah, working that mortgage down. And then once you get to the point that you're like, okay, we want to start moving, then look at your options and see where you guys want to be. Exactly. And that's what you did. Yes.

You were in a house and, I mean, two babies come. The third one's on the way, and you all start thinking about, okay, where do we want to live? But the house you built that you and Winston just moved in about a year ago, at the location you built it five years before, you could not have possibly anticipated it didn't even exist the development i don't think i know but i mean the the point being and that's what i'm saying is like yeah you can't like just yeah make the make the call you can't you can't you can't know what you're going to do because you don't know what your options are going to be what your uh your feelings towards things are going to be and so it's uh yeah you don't you don't need to worry

about it yes i like the idea that you guys are planning ahead, Kelsey, and I talk about a lot just dreaming and thinking, okay, what are my goals? What am I saving towards? And your money helps fuel those dreams. So I think it's still fun to dream and say, yeah, what if we built a house? What would it look like? You know, just like have fun and dream, but don't feel like you have to make a long-term decision from five years to today.

Yeah, and piling up some cash and being debt-free puts you in a position to make a long-term decision from five years to today. Yeah, and piling up some cash and being debt-free puts you in a position to make choices when you – gives you options when you do get to the point that you're ready to make that call. Matt's in Greenville, South Carolina. Hey, Matt, how are you? Doing great, Dave. How about yourself? Great, man. How can we help? Well, I'm kind of in a catch-22 here.

I just recently went through financial coach master training back in March. A great program, by the way. Thank you very much for that. Thank you. And so I'm getting plugging away, and it's been going pretty well. And to a point where now I really consider this God's calling on my life as far as for my career. My question is, though, I currently am doing, I'm working in a restaurant kitchen making 13 an hour, and I was driving for Lyft as well on the side just to create some savings.

But I had a car accident about a month and a half ago, and so it's kind of taken that income away. So my question is, how do i try to increase my income you know the support getting going uh with the coaching business to try to get it to where i can do that uh full time uh you had a car wreck or you injured no no what happened to the car uh the insurance company declared it a total loss so i I'm basically, we're a one-car family right now. Well, did you not have insurance? Yeah, we did. They give you a check, why didn't you buy a car?

Because we didn't have enough in savings to buy the car. Didn't they give you a check for the car when they totaled it? Yes, they did. How much was that? About $2,800. Okay okay and so you got that money yes sir won't you buy a car we're we're we're looking for a car right now okay well i mean and then you're back driving again right yes sir okay and and then your income comes right back. Yes, sir. Okay.

So you're looking, though, Matt, your question, you want to be full-time doing coaching and working on that. So, yeah, I mean, I would say focus some of your time on that and try to increase that business, and then by the time that you're able to, over time, have enough income coming in from that then you can drop the 13 an hour job or drop the lift job do what you need to do to cut those hours down to continue to coach and up that oh maybe i misunderstood i thought he was saying how do i

replace the income that i lost due to losing the car and i was going get a car and start doing it again that was to me, but maybe I misunderstood. Yeah, I took it as he wants to do coaching full-time. I know he wants to do that, but he said, until I get to that point, I need to create some income. And I'm like, well, go back and do what you were doing before. Get you a car. That's what I was thinking.

You may be right. I have no idea. I'm not sure. I'm lost now. All right. Open phones at 888-825-5225. You guys jump in. We'll talk about your life and your money.

What he's referring to is the FCMT. We call it Financial Coach Master Training. And we have that whole series online that you can go through and learn how to do one-on-one coaching. Some people do that as a volunteer item at the ministry at their church and that kind of a thing or just they just want the knowledge other people like in his case are wanting to uh you know that they coach for a fee and help people for a fee and we send them referrals as well uh once people call us in your city we don't have coaches all over we send them to someone who's been trained by us and uh then they can sit down and

they charge a fee he's just not been getting enough of that business yet to be full time at it but wants to be and that's cool that's cool he'll get there i'm sure very good good stuff this is the Ramsey Show. You know, I get lots of questions about ID theft since it's a huge problem. Most people just worry about financial fraud, which is a big mistake. Tax refund fraud, for example, is out of control. Last year, the IRS paid out over $10 billion in fraudulent refunds. Thieves are stealing your refunds. They're also hacking into accounting and tax preparer firms to steal your personal information and use it for all kinds of fraudulent activities that aren't detected by pricey credit monitoring and prevention plans.

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Dan is in Cleveland. Hi, Dan. How are you? Hi, Dave. Hi, Rachel. How are you guys today? Great. How can we help?

Cool. Well, Phil, I have a quick question for you. So I know that you have talked about the rock, paper, scissors when it comes to investing. And we're getting ready to start baby step four here. Good. And so I have a question because I have a full-time job. So I'm going to be setting up the Roth IRA. But I also work for my daughter as a health care provider, so I'm also self-employed and can do an SEP.

So I just never hear you mention that when it comes to rock, paper, scissors. I don't know where. I think the SEP is now available in a Roth or a regular. And all it is is a simplified employee pension plan. It works best for a solopreneur, meaning you don't have employees, which is your case. Yes. Okay, because if you have employees, you have to put the same percentage into their account that you put into yours. Right.

And so if they've been with you more than two of the last five years. So I started with a SEP, but then when I started adding team members i canceled i rolled the sep into an ira and started a simple so in your case you if you can't get a regular roth going and you can't get enough in your 401k with your match and it's a roth over at work if those two three things combined don't get you to 15 you could do the sep i wouldn't add the extra layer to your mess it gives you no real advantage unless you need it to get up to the 15 oh gotcha okay that makes sense and so i'm i'm a school teacher so the roth would be on my own because our 403bs at school actually are all annuities do Do they have a match? They do not. Okay.

Then they're traditional. So you probably are going to use a SEP then. You're going to do a traditional. You're going to do an individual SEP. Are you married? I am, yes. Okay. So you both do a Roth IRA maxed out.

Okay. So $6,500 each. And then does that get you to 15% if you're not doing anything in the 403B? That would get to 15%. Okay, if it gets you there, then we're done. If it didn't, then you would do a SEP Roth before you did a 403B. Okay, and maybe I misspeak because I guess it wouldn't get me if i'm including my self-employed income then no i wouldn't be at 15 okay and your wife's income 15 of my teaching job

no she does not have income okay so we take your all your income times 0.15 the first thing we do is we're going to dodge the 403b because it's not a sep and it has no match. So it goes to the end of the line. It's to the front of the line. And you're going to do an individual IRA Roth for you, one for your wife. Okay. And what is your income? My income, my teaching job is $85,000, and my part-time job for my daughter is about $30,000.

Okay, so we need like $16,000, and my part-time job for my daughter is about $30,000. Okay, so we need like $16,000 going in, and if you do two $6,000 Roths or $6,500 Roths, you would be at $12,000, $13,000, so you're not there. You're right. So you do need to look at doing a SEP Roth. Okay. And you can do all of those. You can do your regular Roths and your sep roth all with your smart vestor pro and then those three things totaled up should get you to your 15 for your

baby step four i would do all of that before i did a non-matching traditional 401 403b especially when it's going into annuities is it common for 40 403Bs within teaching not to match? Yes, and it's also common for them to have crummy annuities as the investment because insurance companies got into the teaching world rather than investment companies with these government packages. And so there's a lot of teacher deals. Few of them, like in hospitals, you'll run into them too with nurses and that kind of stuff, the 403Bs. A lot of them are annuities rather than mutual fund options.

Yeah. And so even if they have mutual funds inside the annuity, it's still all watered down and commission-driven, and it's very inefficient. So they're generally not as good a plan. Some of them, some school systems do a great job of putting good options in there. So it's not the fact that it's a 403B. It's the fact of who's been serving the 403B and what kind of products they're putting in up under it. Right, right.

And that's what gets them into trouble. Sudhu is with us in Orange County, California. Hi, Sudhu. How are you? Good. Thank you, Dave and Rachel, for taking my call. All your financial advice. God bless you guys.

You too. How can we help? Thank you. We've been using the EveryDollar budget. It's worked out really well for us. We have paid off $24,000 over the last two years, and we are 100% debt-free. Wow. Thanks to you guys.

Congratulations. Thank you. Going forward, we are in the process of refinancing our house right now. Our lender told us that Freddie Mac will give us an appraisal waiver as long as the loan to value is just at 80% or above that charges a PMI and give us a credit. But however, if we pay down the principal and it goes down to below 80%, then there will be an appraisal needed. And then if we were to go with the higher LTV, then the PMI would stay on for two years,

even if the loan is paid out to below 80%. We were a little bit confused on what approach should take, whether to take the PMI with the credit or whether to go in for a formal appraisal now that we know the valuation from Freddie Mac. And Freddie Mac, so you're doing a jumbo loan. It's a large loan, right?

Yes. So the loan is for $710,000. Yeah. Okay. All right. We're right around 80.056%. So I'm wondering whether we can use the Freddie Mac valuation as a yardstick and confidently go in for a formal appraisal,

thinking that it will come out to be at least that much or higher. Yeah, and if you wanted to have a realtor friend of yours just run some comps, the same comps that the appraiser is going to find if he does a formal appraisal because a residential appraisal is not rocket science they find the three closest comparable sales in date and in attributes and so it's really not and they take the average of those adjusting for the differences it's really not rocket science it's a little bit above sixth grade math and so um then in other words, a residential good realtor can pull the same exact database that the appraiser is going to pull from and tell you very closely what that's going to be.

In the real estate business, they call it a comparative market analysis, but it's an appraisal. It's the same exact process. I've got a degree in that. So we actually took that whole world apart and put it back together a couple times so but yeah what i'm going to try to do is go ahead and get this thing appraised now and get rid of it if not you're going to be very close and i would be willing to pay the appraisal later to get rid of the pmi rather than get jacked on the other side so i like i believe it was option a the first option you had, where we're going to go with the formal appraisal.

It's not that expensive considering you're dealing with a $710,000 loan. And so the whole idea is what's the most efficient way to get rid of the PMI? And if you've got the valuation, the most efficient way is going to be the appraisal now or shortly or do it again in a year when the values come on up and you get the thing driven down. But that PMI on $710,000. For two years, yeah. It's a lot.

It's a lot. Well, and even after two years, there's an APY, interest rate adjustment. So you're probably better off just to do a pure deal, a clean deal with real appraisal and looking at the whole thing so to recap for those of you listening um if you don't put down 20 on a freddy mac which would be for a larger loan like that or a fannie mae a more traditional sized loan a conventional loan on a home they charge you pmi private mortgage insurance private mortgage insurance insures the bank if they have to foreclose on you it covers them against a loss so you're buying foreclosure insurance for your bank that pays them if they foreclose on you seems kind of weird to me, but they get away with it.

So that's what you're doing. And it's $75 a month, roughly, per $100,000 borrowed. That's a lot of money when you're talking about $710,000. So one reason we say to put down 10% to 20%, when you hit that 20%, there's no PMI. If you get rid of that 20%, it gets rid of that PMI. Exactly. This is The Ramsey Show. We'll be right back. Rachel Cruz Ramsey personality is my co-host today open phones at 888-825-5225 Blanca is with us or Blanca in Rockford, Illinois. How are you?

Good. How are you guys? Thanks for taking my call. Sure. How can we help? So my question is, I just recently started Baby Stuff No. 2, and I currently live with my parents, but the house that we live in, I actually own the mortgage on it. It's under my name. And I'm just wondering, I've been thinking about getting my own place, just a rental, but I'm not sure with me trying to pay off debt, if it's better if I just stay here. I am helping out with half of the mortgage currently. Obviously, if I left, they would take care of it from there, but I'm not sure what to do. To start with, I need a little bit of clarification.

Actually, they live with you. I guess so, yes. You don't live with them. It's your house. I bought the home for them, though, when I bought it a few years ago. Say again? When I purchased the home, I intentionally purchased it for them. To give just as a gift?

Because were they in trouble? What was the thought behind it? So their credit isn't the best, so they couldn't go off and purchase a home under their name. So I went ahead and did that for them. What's their situation now? How are they? Are they making an income?

Are they stable? Yeah, I mean, they're making an income. They've never been the best with money, but they'd be fine if I was to leave. They could take care of payments and stuff. Basically, though, you have a rental house your parents are renting for the payment if you move out. It's not

their house. Yeah, technically. You're right. I mean, there's no technical. I mean, you own the house. If I go down to the courthouse and look it up, it has not got their name anywhere on it. It doesn't have their name on the mortgage. It doesn't have their name on the title.

You own the house. And if something happens in the front yard, you're responsible. If someone gets hurt there on the property, you are the one that's liable if there's no insurance. Right? Okay. If the payment doesn't get paid, nobody calls your dad. Right. They call you.

So this is not technical. This is factual. Okay. I understand emotionally. That's what I was going to say. Emotionally, they feel like they own it. That you have allocated this house to them. I get that.

But you need to grasp that this is a real impediment, this is a real problem for your future, that you have this rental property with some semi-weak renters in it. Okay. That's bothering me. I love that you love your mom and dad like this, and that's all cool, but we've got to really say, hey, there's some real risk here for you. How old are you? I am 28 years old. And what do you make? I'm making

about $48,000 a year. And how much other debt do you have other than this home that your parents live in? I have about $32,000 in debt, mostly student loans. Okay. And how much progress are you making on that? I just started BabyStop number two, so I've only paid off about like five grand so far. Good. That's more than you've ever done. Yeah. Proud of you. Very good.

Thank you. Okay. So here's what we need to do. Let's pan back. Okay. Five years from today, you'll be 33. Where do you want this situation to be with the house and with the debt five years from today? I mean, for sure, my debt paid off.

Eventually, I would like to purchase another home. So I guess I would have to see about the possibility of either transferring that mortgage to them. Yeah, they would need to be able to, if we give them five years and say, you need to get your credit in condition so you can refinance this loan into your name, and I'll deed you the house. Right? There needs to be an end to this that's positive, and the only way that happens is if we create careful steps to get there. So you're about to put mom and dad on a budget and walk with them to make sure they now get good with money so they can get a loan.

Because let's pretend you're 38 and you get married and daddy quits paying the bill yeah your new husband's not going to be real thrilled with this bill laying over here associated with your parents yeah and so this doesn't my point is this doesn't scale well it doesn't it doesn't project into the future well. Today it's all okay, right? You're safe. They're safe. Everybody's happy.

Nobody's mad at anybody. We're not trying to rock the boat. But I just want you to think about, okay, long term, and then what are the steps to get to where I want to be long term? Yeah, and I think having an out of the house, Blanca, is going to be really wise. And I think because it's something as large of a purchase like a home, like we're not talking about a car or anything like that, like it is a home. So giving them a few years out, I think is really smart because I

think you're going to look up eventually and what was intended to be such a gift and so kind on your end and really trying to help in turn may not be a great decision for you. And there's a point as an adult that you kind of have to create those boundaries and say, okay, this is my life and you're not being unkind to your parents by any means, but what is smart for me to do in this moment? So that way you get your stuff cleaned up so that you can help them later if you need to, but you just weren't in a great position to do it in the first place. You didn't know it at the time.

And again, out of the kindness and goodness of you, really, really thought that you were helping. And I think that the smoothest transition out is that communication and having a timeline for them to take over the mortgage. Yeah, it probably sounds like this. Mom and Dad, we're about to have a little meeting here. Love you guys. Did this out of the goodness of my heart.

We have to have an end game. We have to have an exit strategy. So I'm going to stay here for two more years and continue to help pay out of the goodness of my heart. We have to have an end game. We have to have an exit strategy. So I'm going to stay here for two more years and continue to help pay part of the bills while I get out of debt. During that time, you're going to get on a real tight budget. We're going to get your credit cleaned up because we got a five-year plan for you to refinance and let's get the house into your name. I want you to have the pride of ownership. I want you to not be living in a house your daughter owns. I want you not be living in a house your daughter owns i want you to be living in a house you own and that's going to be great for you and it's going to get

it out of my name so that i can move on with the next step of my adult life and i love you and we're going to work together to accomplish these things i'm staying for two more years nobody's mad at anybody but we are not going to just kind of wander off into oblivion and pray this all works out because it ain't it It ain't going to work out. And what that does is I think that puts pressure on the parents in a good way for them to get their dignity. This may be a time where you're like, hey, maybe under the surface you've been enabling some bad financial moves on there. And they're able to be maybe a little lazy. So they're not great with money.

And they've kind of had the safety net of you for the past few years with this home. And when you put that pressure on to make them actually behave and get on a budget and get on a plan, and they start to win if they choose those steps and become financially healthy. I mean, for them, that's helping them in the long run. That's a beautiful story to say. There's a lot more dignity owning your own place as you go into retirement than living in a place your daughter bought. I mean, there's just dignity to that. And that's a good thing for him, a good thing for her. So I'll tell you what.

Hang on, Blanca. We're going to have Kelly pick up. I'm going to sign all three of you up for Ramsey Plus. We're going to walk with you and show you how to do this. Okay? We'll put you through Financial Peace University, get you on the Every Dollar Budget, get Mom and Dad on that. We're all going to work this plan together. You're going to live there, so you can all do it together.

It's awesome. And you can, you know, cheer each other on, on some wins, and be able to head towards some positive goals. But there needs to be a catalyst, a little shock, that changes the direction of what's been going on here you've changed your direction let's change their direction with it so that it doesn't hold you back and so they get their dignity of home ownership as they go forward so that's that let's work together on all that hang on kelly will pick up we'll get you signed up for all of that

good rule of thumb when you're making a decision like this, where you're helping out somebody, don't look at it in the moment only. Ask yourself, how's this going to be working 10 years from now? Because most of the time, it's not. This is The Ramsey Show. We'll be right back. Thank you. Our scripture today, Proverbs 1.5, let the wise hear and increase in learning and let

the one who understands obtain guidance. John F. Kennedy said, leadership and learning are indispensable to each other darren is with us in minneapolis hi darren welcome to the dave ramsey show hey dave thanks for taking my call sure what's up well i feel like i'm kind of running out of time to become a millionaire but i've got i'm 48 and i'm trying to decide if I should take my savings of $260 and put that down towards the mortgage, or if I should save some of that and put it towards my retirement right away, and then have a goal to pay off the mortgage in like two to three years. How much do you owe on your mortgage?

About $220. Oh, so you could just pay it off? Yes. What's your household income? I net about $140,000. And you have nothing in retirement other than this money? About $25,000. And this money is not in retirement?

Correct. Where did it come from? I had a career transition in the last two or three years, and I've just been saving like crazy. Good for you. Okay. Okay. So the good news is you have learned how to save. Yeah.

I was going to say, Darren, you're not going to have a savings problem because you're pretty good at it, considering how much you saved in such a short period of time. So you almost could pay off the house today, continue that savings habit for a little bit, build up your retirement. Yeah, you'll be back there super fast because you've built that muscle. And with no payments in the world, what I would do is pay it all off. I would set aside an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses, and then I would load up every possible retirement account. You got a 401K at work? No, I'm looking into getting a SEP because I'm self-employed.

Okay. You got employees? Not yet. Okay. SEP will work great until you have employees. You want to do a Roth. You might look into the Simple IRA. It's a 401K for small business.

In addition to that, you can do a Roth IRA. Are you single? Nope, married. Okay, you can do two Roth IRAs. Does she work outside the home? No, I was thinking about hiring her to do book work so we can get write-offs. Not worth it. Yeah, it's not worthy.

That way you can do a Roth IRA for her anyway. You don't have to create an earned income for her to do that. And the taxes that you'll pay bringing her in on payroll and everything else won't make it make sense, so don't do that. I looked at it. I almost did it several times when I was your size in our business, and I just could never get the numbers to work out. But you can do two Roth IRAs, one for her, one for you, $7,000 each at your age.

And then you can, oh, no, you're 48. No, I mean, when you turn 50, you can do seven, six now. And then you can do the 401K, a simple IRA, which is a 401K for small business, or do the SEP, either one. Do all those, load them up. And then in addition to that, you're just saving in the wild, wild west out in mutual funds. I'm probably just using some good growth stock, probably a S&P 500 or something like that. Sit down with one of our SmartVestor pros. They can help you map all of that out.

But I think when you run the numbers out without a house payment, you max out everything in retirement, and you save over and above that, invest, not just save, but invest over and above that, you're going to be right back where you are in about 20 minutes. It's going to scare you how quick you got back to 240, and you will have had a paid-for house all that time. Which adds to the net worth as well. Big time. Yep. Big time. Two major components to retiring with dignity a nest

egg and a paid for house and we found those in every virtually every millionaire we found in the millionaire next door or not millionaire that's the everyday millionaire study millionaire next door of course is tom stanley in 1992 that inspired all of us by the way but the uh yeah that that uh the study that we did we found the typical millionaire with $1, $2, $3 million net worth, about a third of their net worth was their paid-for house. About two-thirds was their loaded-up retirement accounts. And so you've got a million-and-a-half-dollar net worth, $500,000 in the house, a million dollars in mutual funds and 401ks.

And that's where you're going to be pretty easy. And your income great darren as well that's going to add to that so yeah you'll be yeah you'll be good excellent excellent excellent very very well done proud of you man all right zach is in kalamazoo michigan hi zach welcome to the dave ramsey show hi how are you doing great how can we help? So I wanted to know if I made the right decision to go back to school. So a little bit of background is I'm 24 years old and I had left school due to some addiction issues I had. I went and handled that. And my grandfather seems to think that I'm an idiot and going back to school doesn't make any sense. And it's going to cost me 40 grand to finish my degree. And I have 105K liquid assets. And I wanted to know if I made the

right decision to come back to school. What are you studying? Finance. Okay. What are you studying? Finance. Okay. What do you want to do? I want to work in a bank and help people with their investment accounts and really grow and become financially independent. What was the nature of your addiction? So I had a cocaine issue.

Okay. And how long have you been clean? Two years. Way to go, Zach. That's very powerful. That's very powerful. That's a very tough one to kick, and you've been clean two years. That's a beautiful thing, brother.

Proud of you. And it took my dad. Oh, no. I'm so sorry yeah so your grandpa's your grandpa's opinion means a lot then yeah he was you know after my dad died i got into the same drug my dad died from and my dad my grandpa was my dad growing up and um he means the world to me. Yeah. So why is he calling you an idiot for going to school? So because in the past I wasn't focused on school. So he doesn't think you can do it.

Right. So it's more an environmental thing that he's worried about, less about the education. Exactly. Yeah. He's worried about the cocaine on Exactly. Yeah. He's worried about the cocaine on campus? Yeah. And, you know, no matter how many times I tell him

that I haven't spoke to those people since before I went and got sober and no part of me ever wants to go back to where I was, like he still sees all the mistakes I made, all the false promises and everything else. Yeah. And, you know, he runs my trust fund because I had won a lawsuit when I was younger, and I'd spent so much money, like, wasted so much money, and, you know, and I wasted a good amount on school.

Okay, so let's clarify here for a second then. Your grandpa doesn't think you're an idiot for going to college he think he's afraid that you're going to get hooked up with the wrong crowd again that's what he's worried about yeah and the way he expresses himself might be wrong might be more like me but uh okay that's fair so i think you talked to him about what you could do to grandpa in what situation i think education is important to do what i want to do how can i go about getting that education in a way that you would uh endorse maybe a different school yeah yeah or even small things living off campus or you know what mean, a living situation that's different.

Do you live with your grandpa? No. I actually just moved out. And so back during my addiction, I was living off campus. And what I decided to do this time around was live in the on-campus apartment. Yeah. Oh, there you go. So it's the opposite.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. That's good. Well, I think you just talk through with him some of the things you're doing to protect yourself and ask him if he thinks there's anything else you can do to protect yourself um he's had he's lost a lot of people to white powder so i don't blame him for being sarcastic and blame him for being um worried worried fearful a lot of fear and so i don't blame him for that i don't necessarily

think he's right but i don't blame him for that. I don't necessarily think he's right, but I don't blame him for doing that. Well, and on the financial side, Zach, yeah, taking that $105. Yeah. And going and spending $40 and getting your degree. Yes, I would do that. Which is great. Yeah. The whole trick is to do that and navigate the post-addiction mentality.

And that's where you need to be. So I'm proud of you, brother. You call us anytime. We'd be honored to help you as you do walk through this. You're a sharp young guy. Rachel, good job. Thank you. Thanks for having me on.

That puts this hour of The Ramsey Show in the books. Thanks to James Childs, our producer, Kelly Daniel, our associate producer and phone screener. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. We'll be back 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.

This is James Child, producer of The Ramsey Show. Did you know The Ramsey Show is one of the most popular podcasts in the world? Subscribe or follow today wherever you listen to podcasts.