The Ramsey Show - App - We’re in a Financial Mess… (Hour 2)

Episode Date: April 24, 2023

Dave Ramsey & Jade Warshaw answer your questions and discuss: "We're in a financial mess, what can we do?" "Should I use a debt consolidation loan?" Pay off the house vs. investing, "How should I use my signing bonus?" "Should I pay off my $70,000 camper?" Selling stocks to pay off debt. Have a question for the show? Call 888-825-5225 Weekdays from 2-5pm ET Want a plan for your money? Find out where to start: https://bit.ly/3cEP4n6 Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts: https://bit.ly/3GxiXm6 Interested in advertising on The Ramsey Show? https://ter.li/s64ye3 Learn more about your ad choices. https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Pods Moving and Storage Studios, it's the Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Jade Warshaw, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today as we answer your questions about your life and your money. Natasha is in Atlanta. Hi, Natasha, how are you? Hi, good, and you guys?

Better than we deserve. What's up in your world? Well, my world has been upside down for the last seven years. Me and my husband have been very good managing money. I believe we both make good money. My husband works in the film industry, and we ended up moving to Atlanta, so he has a stable job here and income. And I am a teacher, so we make around $80,000,

and sometimes it could be all the way to $100 yearly. But it has been a roller coaster for us to be on the same page. And finally, we found your program, and we're trying to make the right choices. This next two months, we're going to be like negative zero. We're just going to pay all our, you know, regular utilities and our payments are pretty high. So we're trying to figure it out right now if we have to get rid of one of our cars, even though our cars don't pay as much. We have one car is $560 a month. The other is $400 a month, monthly. But we just don't know where to start right now. I'm going to do like a garage sale to make the $1,000 to start for our savings. We have zero savings.

We're just a mess. And we need to know how can we start something. Are you guys doing a budget? Well, that's the first thing we started. But right now the budget is ideally, but we have so much things that are like overdue payments that, you know, we're not going to even have enough money for the budget. We're going to have to catch up the next two months just doing payments and just doing payments. Well, I think that you're a little bit confused about how the budget is working. So what you're going to do, so what do you bring home every month around $4,000? I bring $2,800 and my husband brings $6,000. Oh, $6,000. Oh, okay, great. So you're going to plug

that into your budget. How do you do your budget now? Is it a spreadsheet? What are you using to create your budget every month? I just have a, it's not really a spreadsheet. It's just, you know, a chart that I created. And we have $8,400 for $100 as income. Okay. $8,400. And ourgo is 8180 okay well let's start with what your outgo actually is so you're gonna start with 8400 and you're just gonna go down the line and you're gonna spend all of that money so you're gonna start with your expenses and go through making sure that you're making minimum payments on everything not just your you, the expenses that you do every month, like groceries and things like that, but also your debt. And just to keep everything current.

I know that you said that you're behind on some stuff, but start out by making minimum payments. And once you've done that, I think you're going to find that there are things that you're spending money on that you don't actually need to spend money on because you guys have a great income. What kind of debt do you have, hon? Well, we have the two car loans. Car number one that you owe $400 a month on, what's the balance on it? Okay, that is $25,000. Okay, the one that's $160,000, what's the balance on it? No, that was $465,000.

So the $560,000 is $25,000, and the $400,000 is $12,000. Okay. All right. And what are your other debts? The student loans. How much? It's around $20,000. Okay.

What else? We also have medical bills, and they are already affected our credit board and how much i don't i don't know the number for that i think it's roughly around fifteen thousand dollars and you're paying monthly on these we're not okay so you're not paying anything on it you're not paying anything on that at all okay what else um well that's it like i don't what's your house payment we paid we don't own we rent what's your rent two thousand a month two thousand a month okay yeah all right what are you behind on right now we own three months of the car, and we also laid one month on rent.

Okay. So what that tells me is that you all are out of control on your spending because you have enough to pay these bills. I don't even know where you're getting to $8,400. I can't get there. You're not paying anything on these medical. You got $2,000 plus you got food lights and water and then you got a thousand sixty and or no you got 960 in credit card debt or in car payments

student loans on hold with biden yeah you're not paying anything on it you're not working a budget i think you're just guessing at the numbers every month and if you're not on a budget. I think you're just guessing at the numbers every month. And if you're not on a budget, you guys are spending like crazy, and then you're not prioritizing the things that you actually need to spend on. Who's the spender, you or him? This is what has been happening. I try to, or I'll still stick on a budget. Who's the spender, you or him? I think both.

I think we're both very bad spending and why does it say on my screen you're considering a divorce yeah why does it say on my screen you're considering a divorce you haven't brought that up in our conversation i did um sometimes the only escape that I feel I have from this situation is, you know, only my own responsibility. Well, that would be if it's his fault. But you didn't just now say it was his fault. You said it was both your fault. But it's hard for both of us to be on the same page.

It's just hard. For now, I explained to him that we need to close our personal accounts, and one of the things that you guys recommended is for those to have one account together. And he's like, okay, we can open one account, but we will still keep separate accounts at the same time. I feel he doesn't trust. Separate accounts aren't your problem. Your problem is you spend like you're in Congress.

Somewhere between the two of you. I'm sorry, what do you say last I said you spend out of control no number of accounts will stop that having a singular account's not going to fix that getting rid of him's not going to fix it if you're the problem so what we've got to do is you guys are going to have to lay out a game plan that the two of you agree to. And you guys are getting ready to head into bankruptcy because you're going to get evicted and repoed. You're not but one car payment away from getting into repo land. And you're about half a mortgage or half a rent payment from being evicted if you're my tenant. Because I don't fool around with people not paying their rent. So you guys got to get this stuff together.

So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to put you on hold, and we're going to hook you up with one of our coaches, and they're going to sit down with the two of you free, and I'm going to pay for you to go through Financial Peace University, and hopefully that'll save your marriage. But the two of you, it's time for you'all to look in the mirror and go, enough. Because the numbers you gave us, honey, you got to sell these cars. They're both ridiculous, number one. But number two, you actually could pay these payments with the income you've got.

It's doable. But you didn't even choose to pay your rent. Instead, you chose to go party somewhere. I don't know where your freaking money's going. Hold on, we'll help you. Jade Warshaw, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us, America. Our question of the day is sponsored by Neighborly,

your hub for home services. Don't wait until the AC or other home systems go out this summer. Neighborly is your key to staying on top of your home maintenance needs. Don't wait on emergencies. Find reliable home service providers like AirServe, Mr. Appliance, and Mr. Rooter Plumbing, lots of others at neighborly.com. Keeps your house running like clockwork. Today's question of the day comes from Harry in Georgia. He says, I have a budget in place and I'm using the debt snowball. Would you recommend consolidating all of the debt into one giant personal loan?

I also have a total of $50,000 between five credit cards, a personal loan, and an appliance loan. I also have a ton of equity in my home. So I was wondering about doing a home equity loan, which could give me tax savings on the interest. Should I just keep it status quo for now and continue the snowball or do debt consolidation loan? Overall, I'm just looking to expedite debt elimination.

All right. So the debt snowball, I would not call status quo. I think that it is the most effective way to pay off debt. And it's been proven. There's been some studies. I know Harvard published a paper about why the debt snowball actually works and that it works. It's the most successful way to pay off debt. So I would not recommend, um, Harry doing a consolidation or a HELOC. And I, it sounds like you're just like trying to think of ways to get this debt out of your life. And again, there's no easy button. You're going to have to list your debts from smallest to largest and work to pay this off. If you do a debt consolidation loan, there's a couple of things there. You're not paying it off. You're just clumping it all together, moving it all together. And actually, there are studies that show that when you do that,

your brain thinks that you have less debt and you go back into debt again because you've moved it all into one payment. You haven't actually paid it off. Not to mention when it comes to debt consolidation, they're doing for you what you can do yourself. They're making deals with these companies. You can do that yourself. You can set up payment schedules. You can do all of that yourself. You don't have to pay somebody to do it for you.

And a lot of times the interest rate when you get debt consolidation is no better because it's based on your credit. And if you have ruined credit, then you're not gonna have a better credit rate on that debt consolidation loan anyway, a better interest rate. So I wouldn't do that. And then talking about the HELOC, again, you're just moving debt and now you're moving it into your home mortgage. So you really want to put your home on the hook for your debt. I would

not do that. Home equity line of credit is what he's talking about for somebody who's listening the first time and you don't understand what that is. It's basically a line of credit that you pull out on your home and he wants to use that to pay off his debt. A terrible idea. You're not paying it off. You're just moving it into your mortgage. Not a good idea. Let's use the debt snowball. Again, list your debt smallest to largest, make minimum payments on all of the debt and then take any and all extra money that you can and throw it at the smallest debt until it's paid off. Got to go quickly. Got to use intensity for this. And then when that smallest debt is paid off, the money is freed up and you throw it on the next smallest

debt. And then you do that again. And before you know it, you've got a nice snowball going. And that is how you pay off debt. And let me tell you something. You want to do that. You need to do it smallest to largest so that you feel those wins, Harry, because when you feel the win of paying off that smallest debt, you're going to be like, wait a minute, wait a minute, I can do this. This works. And then you're going to go to the next one. And you feel that motivation once you begin starting. And once you start feeling the momentum that comes with the snowball. So just do it. Just walk yourself through the process. You're going to be better for it. You're going to allow yourself to feel the pain of your debt. When you do the snowball,

you feel it because you have to work to make it happen. You're not just rolling it into some other loan. You're not rolling it into your mortgage. You're not taking the easy way out. Harry, the thing you got to remember is this. You have a block of debt that's $50,000. If that block of debt is a debt consolidation loan, it's still $50,000. if that block of debt is a debt consolidation loan it's still $50,000 if that block of debt is a HELOC it's still $50,000 there's only one way to get rid of $50,000 pay $50,000 there is no none of these programs all they do is lower the amount of interest, and interest is not your problem. Spending more than you make is your problem. Not increasing your income enough to throw at the $50,000 is your problem. You need to come up with $5,000 a month for 10 months because you work so much that you can't breathe great place to go when you're broke to work the interest rate on your heloc is versus the interest rate on your debt snowball is not going to fix the problem no you need fifty thousand dollars that's the problem you're

concentrating on the wrong end of the iceberg the interest is just sticking up above the water there's a big iceberg below the surface it's fifty thousand dollars that's the problem and i want to write off the interest as having a heloc you're not writing off the interest you don't You're not writing off the interest. You don't write off the interest on a HELOC. You know why? Only 13% of Americans itemize. 87% take the standard deduction.

Good point. So you probably are taking a standard deduction, which means you don't get to write off the interest because you already took your standard deduction. If you are one of the 13 who itemize you probably are not itemizing this this anyway and it's not that big a deal i mean the interest let's say it's 10 on fifty thousand dollars it's five thousand dollars you know what that saves you in taxes twelve hundred fifty bucks twelve hundred fifty bucks isn't your problem right fifty thousand dollars is your problem quit trying to trick your way out of this come up with fifty thousand dollars is your problem quit trying to trick your way out of this come up with fifty thousand dollars that's how you do it and the debt snowball leads you through that process

and keeps you moving but you've got to concentrate you need five thousand dollars a month extra for 10 months or twenty five hundred dollars a month extra for 20 months that gets rid of your problem not a little bit of savings on interest or some faux tax write-off that you're not even really taking because you're taking a standard deduction. That's what's really going on. Tara's in Kalamazoo. Hi, Tara. How are you? Hi, I'm good. Thanks, Dave and Jay, for taking my call. Certainly. How can we help? My husband and I are about 35, and we have one kid and one on the way.

We have about $200,000 left on our mortgage, which is at a 2.375% rate. It was originally a 15-year. We have 12 left on it. We have no other debts, about $60,000 in cash. We have about $500,000 in investments with one 401k that we max out each year. We have $140,000 in short-term treasuries like I-bonds and T-bills. How much was your mortgage again? It originally was about $240,000. Now, what is it today?

We have $200,000 left. And you have $140,000 in I-bonds and $60,000 laying around in cash. Yes. Why do you still have a mortgage? That's what my question is around. We've seen rates climb with Treasuries about 5% now, so we're curious if we should take advantage of our current position, seeking funding low duration, like a 17-week T-bill, and put all of our 200,000.

You're not making any money on that stuff. If I were you, I would be mortgage-free today. You're not making any money on that stuff. You need to roll out the actual math that you're talking about here and how many dollars it results in. It's not spit. You're not getting wealthy with this yeah i mean you actually take 140 000 and multiply it times that i mean you can't even go out to eat it's not real money you're just playing a math game you're trying

to do this with intellect and and if you actually actually running out the nominal dollars that are resulting here, you're not arbitraging your house into T-bills and making any spread. The difference is a joke, mathematically. I mean, it's a couple thousand bucks. It's not going to make you rich. You're playing games with stuff that's not going to make you rich. You can pay off your house today. That'll make you rich.

Keep some money aside for three to six months. Three to six months of expenses and emergencies. No other debt. And liquidate everything that's non-retirement and pay this house off this week. That's what I would do. Definitely not borrowing on my home to invest in T-bills. This is The Ramsey Show. Jade Warshaw, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Christine is in Chicago. Hi, Christine. How are you? I'm well. How are you? Thank you for taking my call.

Sure. What's up? I'm currently a resident physician and I'll be graduating in six months. I recently signed my contract and received a signing bonus of about $43,000 after taxes. I currently have about $70,000 in total credit card debt and personal loan debt. And I'm looking for the best way to use my signing bonus, current income and future income to kind of get out of debt. That's great. What's your income going to be once you start working? $375,000. Oh girl, I love to hear it. That's great. Well, you know... What is it now as a resident? $70,000. When do you start? September. Good for you. Congratulations. You've worked a long time and you've worked really hard to get here. Congratulations. Thank you. I appreciate that. You know, if I'm and you've worked really hard to get here. Congratulations.

Thank you. I appreciate that. You know, if I'm you, I'm going to work through this. I'm going to work the baby steps through this because I want you to be able to enjoy that income. And I want you to be able to live that life that you've worked for as quickly as possible. Have you started working the baby steps thus far? I have not. Okay. So let's walk through that real quick. So the way we teach this, this is going to be the best, most effective way to manage your money and ultimately get to the fact to where you're hopefully a millionaire and you're living like no one else and being generous. So this is the path to get there. The first thing we want to do is we want to make sure you get a thousand dollars saved. So I know that you have that

43K of bonuses. Do you have any other money laying around? No, that's it. That's it. Okay. So we're going to take 1K. We're going to set it aside. That is your starter emergency fund. It's not meant to be the be all end all. This is just temporary, right? So that's thing one. Baby step two is you're paying off all of your debt except your mortgage. So in this case, we've already put $1,000 aside for the emergency fund. You've got 42K left. Am I right? Correct. So if I'm you, I'm going to go ahead and put that money towards my debt snowball. Now, as it stands right now with your current salary, you're paying your bills, everything's happening, everything's rolling, right? You should have even more money to put towards towards your debt snowball so what I want you to do as part of baby step two is I want you to get on a budget have you have you been using a budget thus far is that kind of a new

concept for you no I have a budget it it fails at times or I guess I fail the budget okay okay yeah I'm glad you said that next part because the budget I mean you make it right it's your plan that you're putting putting together and that plan needs to be on purpose and on par with what your life demands. So if the budget is failing, it's because we're not being detailed. We're not being realistic. We're not being flexible within our budget. So I want you to make sure that you are planning for every single dollar. And at the end of the day, it's you who's got to decide, I'm going to stick to this budget and I'm going to do what I've said I'm going to do. Here's the really cool thing.

You should be 100% debt free before Halloween. I know that's right. Okay. And because you're, you said you start in September, right? Yeah. Okay. you said you start in September, right? Yes. Okay, but between now and then you make $70,000 a year, and we're going to put $42,000 towards $70,000, leaving $30,000. Mm-hmm.

So your debts, when you list them smallest to largest, what is your largest debt? The largest one is a $12,000 credit card. Okay, so you can pay everything but that. No, no, no. What's the next largest one? The next largest one is a $6,000 credit card. So you've got a bunch of ankle biters.

You've got a lot of little ones. I do. Okay. So you've got a list of things that's probably 20 long, and you're going to get rid of the majority of that list with this signing bonus in one fell swoop boom that's going to feel really good and the good news about those little ankle biters is you're going to be able to feel wins very regularly right because you're going to knock out those first several with this chunk of money and then

you know every couple weeks you i want to see you paying something off every couple of months you know you're paying off these little aid and one thousand dollar things and two thousand dollar things you're gonna be feeling those wins uh how long has it been since you've used a credit card for a purchase um this week this last saturday yeah i thought so okay there you go dave there's where your budget's going because you've got you got a pocket full of credit cards you're used to using these things so here's your painful experience when you get off the phone uh are you you're not studying to be a surgeon by chance are you i am here's your to practice. I want you to have plastic surgery when you get off the phone. I want you to chop up every one of those credit cards into little bitty pieces,

and then every time you close, every time you pay off one, I want you to close the account and never reopen it. Make sure your bank, you get on the phone with your bank today and get a debit card if you don't have one on your checking account and anytime you get ready to purchase something from this point forward use a debit card you got amazon prime i sure do jump on there and change out for your debit card take the credit card off of it okay are you gonna do it christine i am okay that's gonna help you do the budget it is because what's happening is it's too easy for you to fall off the wagon yeah because you got fake money laying around you got extra make it hard extra fake money yeah make it hard to spend money you don't mean to spend if you're going to spend money on purpose that's fine i've got i mean we've got amazon prime at the ramsey house and it's just

got a debit card attached to it but i know when i click that button sharon knows when she clicks that button that real money just left a real account it's not fake money and that credit card money is fake money it'll catch up on you it's not emotional so okay so you're going to have an emotional experience that's positive in a whole bunch of ways you're going to feel this weird transformational thing when you chop up all your credit cards get the debit card on amazon prime get the debit card on anything where you used to have a credit card get out of the credit card business and you're going to take this check and clear through more than half of your list yeah all these little 100 200 500 things are just going to go out there like a hot knife through butter

you're going to knock off a whole bunch of them and then you're still going to be staring at a pretty decent list but every time you get a check-in bunch of them, and then you're still going to be staring at a pretty decent list. But every time you get a check-in, now you're more under control of your spending, and you're going to be able to attack it. This is so cool, Christine. I'm so proud of you. It's great. I got to highlight the fact this is going to feel countercultural to what you think security is. Counterintuitive. Thank you.

Counterintuitive. You thought security was having credit cards is something to fall back on you thought security was maybe i can have this signing bonus i'll just hold on to it it's a nice little cushion even if i have debt and we're telling you to do things that are opposite of what security security comes from you taking control that's right you telling your money what to do instead of wondering where it went that's right you're going to get a sense of power like you've had you remember when you the power christine when you start working through the syllabus to get to be an md yeah yeah you know and you started i knocked that class out i knocked that class out i knocked that i'm that much closer i'm that much

closer i'm that much closer i'm running a half marathon i'm at mile nine that's right i've got i've you know i've got four and a half to go. Here I go. 4.3 to go, right? So there we go. I mean, that kind of stuff. So you're clicking off the miles. You're clicking off the traction. And you've never done that with money. And so you're going to get this positive feeling.

But it is also, it's a transformational thing. So it's going to be uncomfortable for the first 90 days that you live in this. She's proving the concept. Exactly. So I just wanted her to be emotionally prepared for that. comfortable for the first 90 days that you live in this she's proving the concept exactly that's so i just wanted her to be emotionally that's prepared for that but she's doing right she's doing it right she's doing it right so good because you know the thing is the weird thing folks is y'all think that these doctors that make a lot of money are rich most of them are broke. I mean, MDs are as bad as pro athletes. They're just horrible with money.

I mean, there's some pro athletes that do a good job with money, and there's some MDs that do a good job with money. But stereotypically, you know, we always think of the doctor and the lawyer or the rich people in town, especially old people like me. That's right. It used to be in the 50s, you know, the people sitting on the Chamber of Commerce were the rich people in town, especially old people like me. That's right. It used to be in the 50s, you know, the people sitting on the Chamber of Commerce were the rich ones, right? And that's just the doctor, the lawyer,

the college professor. And these are the wealthy people in the town, the little town. And the weird thing is these doctors, a lot of them do very well on their income side. That's right. But they've piled themselves up with debt. Christine's not that bad.

She's only got $70,000. But your income is not your net worth. Exactly. Your income, you can make hundreds of, you know, several hundred thousand dollars a year. You can make millions of dollars and be broke. We hear it all the time. Well, we've done the studies on millionaires, and we see it's teachers, engineers. And these people, they're not making hundreds of thousands a year.

They're not making $300,000, $400,000 a year. Now, that's interesting. 33% of the millionaires in the study never made over $100,000. One third. One out of three. Something to think about. This is The Ramsey Show. Jade Walshaw, Ramsey personality, is my co-host let's face it taxes are confusing we hate them

and if you buy into some of the tax service ads out there you'll believe you'll never get a grasp on taxes and you shouldn't even try and so let us take care of you or they'll suck you into offers that won't help you win with money and here's a here's a good tax tip for you today a tax refund is not a bonus it's a re fund it's your money that you paid in too much to the government and then drunk uncle steve sometimes known as uncle sam sends it back to you with no interest so if you get a big tax refund, it's nothing to cheer about. It means you calculated your withholding wrong. That's all it means.

You loan them money interest-free all year, and then they send it back to you. Santa Claus, I know him personally, does not live in D.C. Not there, baby. There's your tax tip. All right? So if you hadn't already filed and you're ready to work with a service you can trust got complicated taxes get a ramsey trusted tax pro on your side they'll walk you through it if you got a complicated return if you got a basic return

use the ramsey smart tax software it's really cheap really easy to do boom and we're not going to try to sell you a credit card like turbo tax um you didn't disguise that very well dave i didn't i thought i was coughing there but um yeah they're owned by intuit and um i sell you a credit card and try to get you a loan on your refund so that you're happy you got a refund so now you got a loan with them instead of just doing your stinking taxes all this crap around doing your taxes smart tax ramsey smart tax just does the taxes you don't do nothing else it's kind of boring so ramsey solutions.com slash tax check out our ramsey trusted tax pros and the ramsey smart tax software depending on whether you got a

complicated or a simple return we can help you either way and and no hidden gotchas. We have no other agenda. We just want you to do this. And no more refunds. Jeez, people, come on. RamseySolutions.com slash tax. Get her done. Chad's with us in San Antonio. Hey, Chad, welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Hey, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Sure, man. What's up? So I'm a fairly new listener and um recently i just took a traveling uh job and we we moved from arizona and we we travel uh throughout the country um and who's we i'm oh me and my wife okay she works remote so she's able to work. That sounds like an adventure. Cool. It's great. So, um, rather than staying in hotel rooms or Airbnbs or short-term rentals, um, we decided to purchase, we sold our home and purchased a, uh, a travel trailer. So, um, we have a note on that of approximately $70,000.

And, um, my question for you is, do we let the bank float that and continue to make payments or is paying something like that off, um, a priority? We don't, we don't have any kids. I'm 35. Um, no, actually we i mean how much money do you have four thousand i've got about ninety thousand dollars saved but we're trying to have kids this year so it doesn't cost ninety thousand dollars to have a kid either sell the trailer or pay it off today okay if you're not willing to pay it off you need to sell it okay you want to know why you want to know why you want to know why i want to know why

this stupid thing's going down in value like a rock would you pay for it uh 130 and you bought it new yes sir you know it's going to be worth in five years, don't you? About what I owe on it, yeah. No. In five years, it's worth 30. Lower. You lost $100,000 over five years. That's what this did.

So if you're going to keep it, you've got to pay it off. Was it a smart option to do this other than to stay in Airbnbs? I just felt like that was throwing money out the window. I don't think it would have cost you $100,000. Because you're paying payments plus losing $100,000. Right. No, it was not a smart move but you're there now i'm not i mean you know so here's the thing you're getting ready to have kids sometimes you're probably going to sell it and settle down the sooner you sell it and settle

down uh the less financial damage you've got so were i doing this over if you really were bent on what you're doing i probably would have bought the thirty thousand dollar used one and towed it around and let it turn into ten fifteen thousand dollars and that would have been much more palatable you bought a freaking bentley to took behind your truck 130 grand our our lifestyle we've been we've been camping and traveling and and doing off-road sports so it kind of made sense you're not even listening if you well you lost a hundred thousand dollars chad that's what this you overbought you completely stepped in and it's all over your shoe and shaking your shoe at me he's not going to get it off no it's still there oh my gosh so these trailers it's just like with a car they're losing 60 of their value within the first boats and trailers go down faster than cars

and you know and rvs are the worst they're the worst of the worst. So whatever you put into a boat, a camper, or an RV, you need to be able to set that amount of money in the middle of the floor and set fire to it and it'd be okay. Because that's basically what you're doing. Now, I have a couple boats and the same situation. But I can afford to set fire to that much money and it not affect my life. Chad can't afford to lose a hundred thousand dollars so chad if i were in your shoes if you're going to keep it and i don't think you're going to

get rid of it based on talking to you for two minutes you're probably going to keep it um because you're really sold out on this whole idea uh i i would pay it off at a minimum at least then you've admitted what you've done and you feel it okay and you don't have the payments anymore so now we take the payments and you start rebuilding your money so that you can buy a home and settle when you have kids because you're um and the sooner you do that the less this is going to go down in value because i'm talking five years out that 130 is going to be worth 30. oh that's painful and uh so i mean that that's where we are and and but if you if you sell it now you probably could sell it for what you owe on it yeah but uh but you're probably going to run this plan

for a little while longer i doubt one phone call to dave ramsey's going to change all this so um that that's the plan but yeah that's what i would do if I were in your shoes. The good news is you have the money in the account, and you can pay it off. Oof. Ouch. Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch. Annie's in Phoenix. Hey, Annie, what's up? Hi.

Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? I have a question. So my job that I work at, they give us stocks, and they've been giving us stocks for the last five years that I've been giving us talks for the last five years that I've been working there I've never really done anything with it they just announced they're not gonna give us stocks anymore so I'm okay I should do

something with it I'm wondering if I should just sell them and then pay off my car and then just like from there snowball into my credit card debt or if I should just ignore it and leave it and let it grow, or I'm not sure how that works, to be honest, and sell my card to pay off my credit card debt. I liked your first idea. If I had a bunch of company stock, I'd probably liquidate it in order to pay off debt, only because it's single stocks, it's not your long-term play for investing. And I don't know what company you work for. I don't know how stable they are.

But if something were to happen, you know, with the company, the value of the stocks could easily go down. So that's what I would do. Yeah, sell it. And if you got enough to pay off your car and your credit card, it's great. If not, pay off your smallest debt to your largest debt and then take any money that's freed up and any money you can squeeze out of your budget and finish off the rest of the debts

you want to have a goal annie of being debt free as fast as you can because your most powerful wealth building tool is your income and the faster you're not giving it to someone else for buying stupid stuff with money you don't have to impress people you don't really like the faster you're going to become wealthy. And that's the process. So, yes, definitely liquidate that today. And it's a bonus money. You've got a bonus at work.

You've got a bonus at work. What are you going to do with it? I'm going to use it to get out of debt. That's what I'm doing. Good question, Annie. Thank you for the call. That puts this hour of the Ramsey Show in the books. Dave here. You can find all of our shows with the Ramsey Network app on your smartphone.

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