The Ramsey Show - App - We Have $500k in Student Loan Debt

Episode Date: June 13, 2022

Dave Ramsey & Kristina Ellis discuss: Tackling $500k of student loans, Doing the hard work now to make it easier later (instead of taking the easy way out now and dealing with hard things later), Saving for an engagement ring while paying off debt. Want a plan for your money? Find out where to start: https://bit.ly/3nInETX Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts: https://bit.ly/3GxiXm6

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, 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. We help people build wealth, do work that they love and that matters, create actual amazing relationships. Joining me today as my co-host here on The Ramsey Show is Ramsey Personality bestselling author Christina Ellis as we answer your questions about your life and your money. Open phones here at 888-825-5225. We're going to start this hour with Portland, Oregon. Rebecca is with us.

Hi, Rebecca. How are you? Hi, I'm doing great. Thank you so much for taking my call. Sure. What's up? All right. Are you sitting down?

This is a big one, Dave. Okay. So my husband is a dentist. I'm a nurse practitioner. Our annual income is about $330,000 a year. In 2020, I opened up my own practice with zero debt because I'm a nurse practitioner. Our annual income is about $330,000 a year. In 2020, I opened up my own practice with zero debt because I'm extremely debt-averse. I drink the Kool-Aid, although I'm not good at following through. I wish I was better, but we'll get there. So

obviously, starting out the practice, didn't have a lot of income with that, so we really were relying on my husband's income, but now I'm starting to bring in an income for our family. So our house payment is $2,800 a month. We have over $500,000 in student loans. We have no other debt. We've already paid off over just $100,000, but it has taken us four years to get to this point. We were hoping that by four to five years after my husband graduated, we'd have it all paid off. But like I said, we're not so great with the follow-through. So here's the deal.

My husband's wanting to buy in. So let me just stop you for a second. Let me ask you one clarifying question. Okay. Your practice is now taken off. What does your husband make? So my husband makes, we were looking back. What will he make this year?

What will he make in a year, this year? What are you going to make this year? $330 is what we're thinking. Okay. And what are you going to make this year? $330,000 is what we're thinking. Okay, and what are you going to make now that the practice is moving? Well, I'm hoping right now I've been bringing home consistently for about the last three months between $2,000 to $5,000, depending on I just go off of a percentage of my practice.

What do you think you're going to make in the year? What do I think? I'm going to make $100,000. I think you are too. And then the next year you're going to make $150,000. Yes, 100%. Yeah, okay. I think you are too. And then the next year you're going to make $150,000. Yes, 100%. Yeah, okay. That's realistic.

Okay, so you have a $430,000 income in 2022. Yeah. You've never had that before. Never. So we don't need to throw you under the bus so much for not following through in the past. Maybe a little, but not so much for not following through in the past maybe a little but not so much okay okay i mean you you never really had an income above 200 but much before this year right no never no your income's legitimately doubled this year legitimate yeah okay good you guys are that's

that's are you ready the good news is you have a really big shovel while you have a really big hole. But here's the kicker, Dave. I need this advice because my husband and I are on different aspects of this. So he wants to buy into his practice. No, you're broke people. You don't buy into practice when you're broke people. Okay, thank you. Absolutely not. It's unwise.

I know. It's not just a Dave Ramsey thing. It's financially unwise. You can't walk around with your head in the clouds acting like you have a half million dollars in student loan debt acting like you don't have any debt. I know. This is a dentist disease. I swear to God, of all the doctors I work with, dentists go into more debt than all

of them put together. They go for, because for some reason a dental degree is more i don't even understand that it is but i mean i meet a lot of dentists that are 300 to 400 in student loan debt and then they want to go another three to 500 in and buy into a practice or build a practice from scratch and go buy all the equipment one of the two and try to do it all the same time and walk around acting like where do they teach you in dental school that a million dollars is a great thing to be in debt amount? No. No.

No, no, no, no, no. You've got time. But you need to lay a foundation. You're going to be very, very wealthy if you do this right. Or you're going to be walking around with debt hanging around your neck with a level of stress that you can't even breathe for the next decade because you just won't say no to yourself. Right.

That's how I feel. Yeah. I mean, you can tell. There's two types of dentists out there when it comes to our material, ones that love me and ones that hate me. There is no middle ground. Yeah. Because the typical model is what your husband is laying out.

He's going right down the dental school template. All of his buddies are doing the same stupid butt stuff he's trying to do. He's pointing out to me right now that he wants me to share with you that his income's going to increase to $502,000, the loan payment's $146,000, he'll make $357,000 a year, and that's an extra $37,000 a year that he'll be bringing home after he buys into the practice. Yeah, if he doesn't get sick or there's not a pandemic or one of the partners doesn't commit a crime and blow the whole thing up right i know the only way his crap works is if everything

works and you know when everything works in this world never never it's a freaking optimistic i appreciate optimism but that amount of debt is beyond optimism it's fantasy land so he can buy into the practice later or he can buy into another practice one thing about dennis is there's always one for sale you can always get another one it's like financial planners with a book of business you're they're always you can always get a book of business they're out there and if he can't buy into this practice he can buy into another one later please don't do this please please please please please please please listen here's the thing the reason i'm saying all this is not just because of dad or something like that the reason

the bottom line reason this whole thing is i truly believe after 30 years of doing this and obviously coaching a whole bunch of dentists in the process um that that 10 years from today you will be wealthier following what i'm telling you to do than following what he's talking about i really do believe that because i don't think he's factoring in any kind of risk in his equations and the only way his stuff works is if it works perfectly and it never works perfectly i mean you've, you've got crazy people in Washington, DC. You've got crazy people in the medical community. Oh, sorry. You got crazy people in, you know, I mean, out here with the COVID stuff and you know, you just don't know what suddenly we're just going to change the

way business is done in America. Why? We just decided to. No, this scares the crud out of me. It just, no, I'm, I'm so thankful you were not think about it think about if you were in this and the how much dentistry went on during covid none for three months we know yeah and you know what would have happened oh my god y'all are acting like they didn't just come through that i'm just wondering can this be like a three to five year goal yeah i mean like here's the thing you ought to be debt free in two years right because i'm like a 430 000 income you guys could live on 100k and still have 330 to put towards your dad yeah you got taxes out of that but i mean come on lower your freaking

lifestyle stay home yeah and work and knock this debt out in two years you should be debt free and then save up and pay cash i don't want to hear about a loan for buying into the practice. Just pay cash to buy into the practice. That could happen in five years. That's not a very long trajectory. And if these guys don't want to wait and they think you've lost your mind, then you probably have the wrong partners anyway, because they're all going to be in debt up to their eyeballs and run the thing into the dirt so uh dentistry is it's um it's as unpredictable as any other business or industry

right now so no please don't do that i'm afraid i can't talk him out of it but she was already talked out of course she's weaponizing the ramsey show but it's all right it's all right we we have to be good for something around here. Weapons? Weapons we can do. I think they can get there. Give yourself some time, though. God, you've got to freaking $250,000 a year in debt reduction. I mean, who can do that?

You can do that. Nobody else can do that. And you can be done in two freaking years. First World Problems. This is The Ramsey Show. Hey guys, George Camel here, and I'm so excited to tell you about the newest product from Ramsey. It's called Gazelle, and it's a digital banking experience that will help you spend and save the Ramsey way with banking services provided by PathWord NA.

You'll get a single spending account with no monthly fees and it's FDIC insured through PathWord NA. We're offering early access to our beta customers so you can help us make it the best experience it can be. Just go to ramseysolutions.com slash gazelle to sign up for the wait list today. The housing market is out of control out there. Kind of crazy. And rates are going nuts.

And people don't know whether to buy or sell. We have people saying, I'm not going to buy them. Why do the prices go down? I got news for you, honey. The prices aren't coming down. There's too big a shortage of supply and even with rates going up even with the economy slowing even with uh what may be some stagflation some inflation operating during a recession it doesn't matter you're still going to see

a shortage of supply and housing and so we're going to see price increases slow, but we're not going to see this go away. It's not going to have a dip like it had in 2008. We've had one time since the Great Depression that house prices went backward. One time. One time. And that was 2008. And this is not going to be one of those times. So don't be waiting to buy a house.

If you're thinking about buying a house and you're ready and you have the money and you're not in debt and you're buying the right price range and you can afford it and all that kind of stuff, waiting on house prices to go down is not a good idea because five years from now they'll be up. A year from now they'll be up. Just not as much as they were the last two years. So get in there. If you want to learn more about all this stuff, go to Ramsey Trusted Real Estate, and you can find it all out at RamseySolutions.com slash agent.

Get with a good real estate agent in your area, and they will teach you what I'm talking about. So, Christina, we were talking earlier today. I think we're going to do, I'll announce it officially after we get it all figured out, but I think we're going to do a quick stand-up. We're just going to stand up and do a a quick uh streaming event free streaming event for uh talk about the real estate market uh just because so many people are so concerned about it right now everybody's freaking out and

we need to just kind of put the facts out there here's what housing starts are here's what they were at the high point here's that they're a fourth of what they were and the you know populations continued to grow and everything else but i want to sidebar that for a second and we'll come back to it we'll let you guys know when we're getting ready to do that it'll be probably a month or so but there's a lot of people talking about it a lot of bad information about real estate a lot of fear out there about whether i'll ever get a house and all that kind of stuff right now we got to kind of get in there and talk about all that and what's the right way to do it.

Everybody calm down. But let's change gears. I'm going to go back to that last call. A hundred percent of the time, the advice that we give you here is based on common sense, biblical truth, and data. People that we know that have built wealth. And what we're always looking for that we want to lead you to is the shortest right way from where you are today to becoming wealthy. Now, the lie that has been told is that you can borrow your way into prosperity.

And the whole culture has believed that, and the whole culture is broke. You can't borrow your way into prosperity. It doesn't work. Instead, your most powerful wealth-building tool, until you have about five million dollars, your most powerful wealth-building tool is your income what you earn it gives you the power to build wealth and when you give that all the way to someone else in the form of debt whether it's a half a million dollars in dental school bills or uh she was pa so some of us probably on her pa school debt whatever it is or whether it's twenty thousand dollars in student loan debt or whether it's um an eighty thousand dollar car that you had to have a tesla or whatever the stupid butt thing you did was that's got debt on it then you've given up

the mold you've given up the power of your income because you've given it to someone else now they're getting wealthy with your money and um thus you notice the towers in the skyline of every city are what banks Banks and life insurance companies. There's hardly anything else there. Some hotels nowadays because you're giving them your money too. But that's about it. You know, I mean, you go into most major cities, that's the skyline was comprised of people giving away their livelihood

to someone else to get this. And so one of the things you learned when you were going through in high school and your mom sat down and said we don't have any money if you want to go to school you need scholarships you learn to delay pleasure to give because you're going to pay a price you're either going to be in pain now or you're going to live in the pain of mediocrity later yep i my mom basically said you're on your own. You've got to figure it out. She loved me. She wanted to challenge me to figure it out,

but she's like, you've got to work hard now. And I spent a lot of my time in high school just hustling, building up a resume to try to win scholarships and stand out in the application process. And in college, I worked a lot. I missed out on a lot of parties.

I had to really spend extra hours in the library studying, you know, off hours when other people were having fun. But it would have been easy to just go, hey, I mean, I have a single mom. We don't have any money. I want to go to school. There's only one way I can do this. I was forced, is the language people use, to go into student loan debt because it was the only way now that would have been easy that would have been easy but later it would have been hard because

then you have a phone call like we just took where you got to pay it back yeah short-term easy long-term hard yeah yeah easy is always hard yeah definitely i mean it's paid off so much in the long run because yes there was that season of sacrifice but now i graduated without debt so hard is always easy oh there we go there we go you're gonna pay a price to win just decide what the price is hard now is easy later for the rest of your life or easy now is hard later so easy is hard hard is easy well that's what i try to tell students with student loan debt. I think that a lot of students just think, oh, like this is the way to go.

And somehow magically, poof, it's going to resolve itself down the road. And it's like, no, no, no, this may be easy now. But this is going to be real income going to these payments later down the road. This is going to be hard. It turns out AOC is not the student loan ferry who knew you know poof it goes away it's not going away people it's still there and you're still going to end up paying it and it's still a problem so yeah you're either in in money stuff and in most of life really if you want a high quality long-term result it's seldom easy at the start

it's usually hard at the start hard is easy and if you want a low quality long-term result go ahead and go woohoo i'm gonna yolo you only live life once baby friday thank god it's friday oh god it's monday and you look up living your life like an emotional five-year-old, and 25 years later, you're 50, and you're still a freaking juvenile because you're still living with the emotional maturity of a child. Children do what feels good. Adults devise a plan and follow it. Hard is the easiest path.

Right. Well, if you look back at my story, so it seemed hard in high school. Oh, man, this stinks to miss a party. Man, this stinks to spend extra hours filling out scholarship applications. But when I look back, my average, I won over half a million dollars in scholarships. So I was making like $500 an hour, which it's like in the long run, like what other job can you get in high school making that much money? And so it's like, it felt hard but in hindsight that was super easy compared to giving away my money to pay off interest down the road so it definitely paid off here's the thing it paid off it paid off in in

lots of ways because you become through that process this impressive woman that you are and then you walk in here and we go hey we want that lady is to be part of the ramsey thing and but if you came in here and went oh well you know i just i just believe in student loans and i'm just going to keep them around like they're a freaking pet you wouldn't be sitting there you know so because of who you became through that process now you're now you're doing this that wouldn't have been open to you it wouldn't come up you know we've not hired a ramsey personality that you know what are you in charge of losing no i don't really mean we don't need one of those we don't you know what's your

specialty i lose all the time no i don't need one of those i need people to inspire people to be better and bigger and and do half a million dollars with a best-selling book before you came here that's what you become but you became that because of the hard, not because of the easy. Hard is easy. Easy is hard. When I love seeing the young generation doing that, we had a debt-free scream earlier, 25- and 26-year-olds.

Yeah. Hanging off their house, living on $20 a week for groceries. That is hard. You know what that dentist needs to do? He needs to pay them $50,000 a year to come live with him and coach him. Only that'd be such a pay cut for them. They couldn't afford the pay cut. They could afford it, but they wouldn't take the pay cut because they're making more than

the dentist. Oh, my God. Wow. Easy is hard. Hard is easy. You have to learn the magic word, the ancient word. It has great power. No.

It's a great word. This is The Ramsey Show. Thank you. Christina Ellis, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage. Scott and Lauren are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? Hi, good. How are you? Thanks for having us. Fatter than I deserve. Welcome. Where do y'all live? We live in Lansing, Michigan. Oh, fun. Welcome to Nashville. Thank you. And all the way down here to do a debt-free scream. How much did you pay off? We paid off $101,190. All right. And how long did this take? Two and a half years. Good for you. And your range of income during that time?

We started around $83,000 and then ended around $97,000. Good. What do you all do for a living? I'm a sixth grade math and science teacher. Good for you. I'm a geospatial analyst at the local university. Oh, okay. Very good.

Good for you all. Okay, so $101,000 of what? What kind of debt was this? So $11,000 was one car, about $15,000 was another, and then $75,000 in student loans. Oh, just kind of normal. Yeah. How long have you been married? Almost three years.

Okay, very good. So not long after you get married, you said, okay, something's got to change. Tell me the story. What happened? Yeah, so basically, we'd always kind of talked about our finances when we were dating. And I knew a little bit about, you know, the debt and stuff. The student loans are scots. So we kind of figured that out once we started dating.

They were scots. They're gone. Yes, they are gone. They are gone. So once we started getting serious about, you know, getting engaged and talking about marriage. We sat down and started really looking at the numbers of what we had to do. And I grew up, my family has been familiar with you and we've listened to your show on long car rides and things like that. So I was always familiar with Dave Ramsey. And then Scott would drive home from work before we were

married and he would call me and say, hey, I listened to this guy on the radio. And I'm like, Yeah, I know who that is. But then we started talking about exactly when we wanted to start this. So we got engaged and really hashed out a plan. And then after we got married, we really kicked butt on it. See, Scott, this is what happens when you marry a math teacher. Made a good choice. This is exactly what happens.

I might be the nerd. she might have a plan she might have a plan and she might tell you what your plan is like it that's awesome you guys thank you and so you sat down mapped out a plan together i'm joking around but y'all did this together yeah and you both said okay 75 000 and 15 000 and 11 000 has got to go. Yep. Okay, cool. So looking at how much y'all made compared to how much you paid off, y'all were pretty aggressive with your budget.

Yes. What did the journey look like for y'all? What did you do to get out of debt? We definitely used the EveryDollar budget app, and that was really helpful. I was a little apprehensive of it at first. I like things on paper and I was like, well, I don't want to use the online one. I want to look at it on paper, but got used to that. Took us a few months to really see. And when we started out, we were just wasting money and we figured out how much we were just throwing away at going out to eat or

just getting extra stuff at the grocery store that we really didn't need or didn't use. So once we looked at our plan and looked how much extra we had, we figured out how much we could really throw at the debt and how much we could really live on. When you lay out a budget, you always go, where's all that going? Yeah. You feel like you got a raise. Yeah, yeah. And I did after-school tutoring and ran like an after school science

club what do you get in an hour for after school tutoring um it depends sometimes like 20 or 30 an hour so yeah i did a few of those and then it's a good gig yeah i do it during the summer too so and then scott was coach basketball on the side yeah that's a good gig yeah so we'd go to basketball games and then i'd tutor and do all the things in between. Very good. What was the hardest part of your journey? I think it was probably like last year. When the housing market went crazy and everyone was saying, oh, my gosh, let's buy a house.

And we kind of thought we needed to do that. We had been in a rental, and we had a baby on the way. So we're thinking, okay, well, everyone else is getting houses. We should probably look at getting a house. And we almost went there. And then we said, no, we refocused and said, this is what we want to do. We want to pay off our debt. And we did that and did it before our deadline that we had even originally had. And you'll get a house. Yeah, we will. Yeah. And we're not worried about it now, but at the time it felt like something we needed to do.

Everybody around us was doing it. You know, all our friends and stuff were buying houses or talking about buying houses and asking us when we'd get a house. And so it was just saying no to a lot of that and no to vacations or new cars and other stuff that we saw people doing. Such a powerful word, no. Just being able to say no with all the temptation, no. Well, you have to have a big reason, and you can see the end.

You can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it's not an oncoming train. There's a way to do this. We're going to knock this out, and then we'll be free, and we'll get the rest of our lives. And once you get that down inside of you, you don't quit. No, yeah. The people that quit are the ones that don't have big enough vision, and they quit and they don't, they don't play all the way through. You

guys are impressive. Thank you. Very cool couple. Very proud of y'all. Who are your biggest cheerleaders? Um, definitely our families. Um, like I said, my family was familiar with Dave Ramsey. So, um, they would check in with us along the way. They knew we were on the Dave Ramsey plan and, um, knew we might not do all the same things or want to go out to eat a lot or things like that but they really understood and would check in on us um so that was really helpful and my friend phil we would uh catch up he was on a debt-free journey as well so we would just keep track of each other how we're doing and then keep on giving each other motivation in a way have a little private club of encouragement yeah that's good yeah definitely yeah because all the other guys around you are nuts. Yeah. And they're like, we're doing this. We're doing this.

Yeah. It was like that. Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly how it is. Very cool. Way to go, you guys. Thank you. Way to go.

What do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is? I think being persistent. And like I said, we almost stopped last year. We almost thought we needed to stop and get a house. But looking at your goals and being on the same page with our goals and having those motivators. I made little visuals for us, like, hey, let's cross off these little graduation caps every now and then for keeping track of the student loans going away. So just anything that you need to do to stay motivated, do it.

If it's little treats or little free date nights or something like that, do whatever you got to do to stay motivated every now and then. You guys are how old? I'm 28. I'm 29. You make $100,000 a year now and you don't have a payment in the world. No. Yeah.

That's pretty cool. It's wonderful. I'm so proud of you. How's it feel? It feels really good. Yeah. Very good. It feels nice going into the next step now looking for a house that we can really do

it without worrying about numbers. You can build a house with wisdom and you don't feel like you don't feel like you know like you're gonna wake up with a financial hangover after you do the house exactly yeah you're gonna have regret on that ugly taste on the back of your tongue yeah very cool stuff all right we got a copy of baby steps millionaires for you for sure that's the next chapter in your story and we've got a copy of total money makeover for you to give away to someone that you add to the secret club that'd be good and a financial peace university um one year scholarship to that as well one year membership to that and you can either go through that yourselves and finish up your journey or you

can send someone through it that you know and love and All right. Are we going to put the younger youngster into the debt-free screen? All right. Good. How old is she? Ten months. She's ten months. Ten months. And what's her name?

Lucy. All right, Lucy. You have no idea how big a hero your parents are. What she has done, what they've done for you, kiddo, they've really changed your life, and she doesn't even know it. Very cool stuff. All right. Scott, Lauren, and Lucy.

Lansing, Michigan, 101,000. 000 paid off in two and a half years making 83 to 97 count it down let's hear a debt-free scream three two one we're debt-free you have no idea i mean rachel was that size when we filed bankruptcy and decided we were going to live like this and then she walks in here at the commercial break and stirred up trouble so i mean you know it's just it's what's it's a family gift but the uh yeah but the you you know, it's just a family gift. But, yeah, but the, you know, I mean, it's the, she always says when she sees these, she goes, I was that little kid. You changed your family tree. You know, you changed your family tree. It's so cool.

And, folks, you can do this stuff. Yeah, that's amazing. Seeing that beautiful little face out there. Y'all are amazing. She's got great parents. Yeah, good stuff. Good stuff. Life is good.

Life is good. This is The Ramsey Show. Thank you. Our scripture of the day, Proverbs 24, 16. The righteous fall seven times, they rise again, but the wicked stumble when calamity strikes. Peter Marshall said, We long for life without difficulties. Remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds, and diamonds are made under pressure

hard is easy easy is hard there it is we all kind of know this but it's human nature to always want the shortest easiest path and that's okay to have that desire but don't let that desire cause you to go for a shortcut because the old saying is there is no shortcut to any place that's worth going. Christina Ellis Ramsey, personality, is my co-host today. Open phones here at 888-825-5225. Quentin is with us in South Bend, Indiana. Hi, Quentin. How are you?

Good. How are you? Better than I deserve. How can I help? All righty. So I have a $13,000 car loan, and I've been dating my girlfriend for about four years now, and we're looking to proceed with the future and start our marriage. Cool.

How old are you? I'm 18 right now. So you've been dating since you were 14 yes sir wow okay it's a middle school love affair i love it oh yeah cool so you're both out of out of high school now uh yes sir yep graduated last year cool what do you do for a living sir um i work at a stair company it's called view rail i make stairs what do you make what kind of money you making um about 25 an hour so 50 a little bit under 50 a year good for you okay you're working hard yes sir okay so you're thinking about popping the question after all these years. Correct, yes. So with that loan, I am on Baby Step 2, but I'm throwing all my money towards my car loan. Yeah.

But I also want to save for that question. We're looking about a year and a half. Yeah. So I was just wondering what do you think the best is if I just keep throwing money towards it? You live at home? I actually own a house. I have two roommates renting out for me. They're paying my mortgage.

You own a house? Yes, sir. Wow. What's the house worth? Right now, it's probably worth $175,000, $180,000. You're doing all right. Well done. Yeah. All right.

Yeah. Head of the game. And what does she do for a living? I'm sorry, what was that? What does she do for a living? She works at a factory? What does she do for a living? She works at a factory. What does she make? About $1,500 a week.

Okay, good. All right. Well, so rule of thumb on engagement rings is the jewelry store at the mall will tell you three months of your income. I'm going to tell you this three months too much, or two months too much. I would back it down to one month of your income, max. So in your case, $3,000 or $4,000. Okay? Okay.

Max. And you obviously are a guy who studies things and develops a plan. You're way ahead of the curve at 18 years old. The questions you're asking the way you're asking them. So do the same thing with diamonds. Go ahead and learn about them a little bit. Talk to several different people in the business. If you can find an older friend in particular that knows a little something about diamonds that can help you,

diamonds are one of the most overpriced things in retail. You can buy them for half of what you can pay at a store two doors down if you go to a broker versus a full retail establishment. But you need to learn what you're getting and not overpay for a bunch of hoopla because they do not go up in value. I bought a bunch of them. My wife has too many of them, and they don't go up in value. They just make a good birthday present. That's all.

And so you're not making an investment, and there's no correlation between the size of the diamond and the success of the marriage. As a matter of fact, there may be an inverse correlation so um meaning that too big a rock could mean awful things but yeah um so anyway are you thinking you said a year and a half are you saying a year and a half till the debts paid off or until you propose uh that's when we want to get married so i think we're planning on um getting engaged this year and having our wedding uh next year who's paying for the wedding um so i know her parents are going to throw a lot of money towards it um my parents will throw about five thousand and so i'm not sure how much out of pocket i would need to be you're not you're not gonna put anything out of pocket if you got five

from one and the other one's throwing some money at it you're going to be fine that's your wedding make that the budget and that'll be enough and you but if i were in your shoes what i would do is stop paying extra on your car for a couple months and save up three or four grand and then start going diamond shop and then get back on the business and knocking your car debt out as soon as possible okay um and don't ever borrow money on a car again yeah i know all right yeah i know yeah you knew before you did it too but you did it anyway yes yes sir i did my other question is i have about um four grand in my name in my bank account that i was waiting to throw in my car but i have uh my real estate

test coming up this saturday um and i know they're starting fees up for that it's about like two grand to get um all started up so do you think i should throw that or like save that and uh put it towards i would just sit on that foreground for right now and use that to get your startup and get that moving. Yeah, that's probably pretty close. You go to that part-time while you stay at the steer company, right? Correct, yep. Yeah, good, good.

Because I got my real estate license when I turned 18, and I will go ahead and tell you from a guy who's been there, it's tough to get people to buy houses from an 18-year-old. Right, and I expect that. I mean, you can do it. I did it. I sold houses, but the first one I sold was from a buddy of mine from high school because he was as dumb as I was.

But he didn't get ripped off. I mean, I did a good job, but he paid $42,000 for the house, and it's worth $842,000 now because that's how long ago I was in high school. But not $842,000 800 it's probably it's probably worth 500 but yeah anyway the uh yeah so just give yourself some grace on that and you're gonna have to be really really good at that profession to have credibility to be able to get people to transact their home with a youngster and that's not to say you can't do it it's not to say you're not capable i'm just saying how people are going to perceive you because that's how I was perceived.

Right. And then you'll have a great story to tell when you're old. So you're going to be great. You're doing good. You're a sharp young guy. Let's get the car paid off. Save up and pay cash for the diamond. Then get the car paid off.

Lay out a budget for the wedding. Execute on the budget. If you don't have a budget on the wedding you'll pay double for it because the wedding budgets grow based on the emotions of the mother-in-law i mean uh the bride i mean your mother i mean your dad wants people on the guest list i mean yeah there's a lot of people seem to have a lot of fingers in your life when you're building a wedding so you need a game plan that you're going to stick to, and it doesn't get out of control. I'm very impressed with you, Quentin, though. You are so intentional at this age and just really are just keeping your act together, and that's just impressive.

Way to go. Thank you. Yeah, you're way ahead of the curve. Now, just don't stumble and, you know, go crazy on this stuff. But, yeah, learn about clarity and carrot and learn about cut and learn about the flaws. And a little flaw in a diamond is a good thing. Bigger rock, less money. And nobody's going to – if they get their eye down real close to the rock, you just punch them.

So, you know, you don't need to be looking with a glass at your girlfriends or your fiance's rock i mean it's just crazy so that level of intentionality though is just so impressive and we're talking about the couple the 25 year old couple earlier this 18 year old he's paying off his debt and it's like this is hard now but then the 25 year old couple they've got 75 years of easy they're in baby step seven just living their lives without a payment in the world. Well, they love you predicting they're going to live to 100. Speaking life over y'all. Speaking life.

Christina Ellis, speaking life. Yeah, that's good, though. You're exactly right. I mean, you got the rest of your life. You know, no discipline seems pleasant at the time, but it yields a harvest of righteousness. So the theme for this hour has been easy is hard and hard is easy. I think that's called being a grown-up. 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. Have you been inspired to make a change with your money? Want to know where to start? Take our three-minute money quiz to get a plan you can follow. Go to RamseySolutions.com and search for Get Started to get a plan for your money.