The Ramsey Show - App - What Do I Do With This Money? (Hour 2)

Episode Date: December 29, 2023

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. George Campbell, Ramsey personality, host of the Ramsey podcast, The Fine Print on Ramsey Networks, is my co-host today. We help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. We're glad you're with us. Open phones at 888-825-5225.

Thank you for being part of the program. Melissa is in Jersey City, New Jersey. Hi, Melissa. How are you?, New Jersey. Hi, Melissa. How are you? Hi, Dave. Hi, George. Thank you so much for taking my call. It's an honor to speak with you today.

You too. Thank you. My question is, my dad passed away a few months ago. He was your typical, I know, he was your typical everyday millionaire, had a net worth of about 1.3. Wow. After I split that with my siblings, obviously my share will be a third of that. One of the things he left is an annuity, and I'm just not sure what to do with my share of the annuity.

I don't know if I'm supposed to cash it out or roll it over or just like, I don't even know what to do with an annuity that's my question you are the one of the beneficiaries on the annuity i assume yes sir okay i would just take my money okay and then do with it wherever you are in the baby steps you don't want you don't need an annuity you don't want money in an annuity at your age unless you're in a very unusual situation how much money is this uh that's about 42 the annuity is only about 42 000 out of the 1.3 yeah where are you in the baby steps um well let's see i guess i'm four five and six i'm contributing 15 into fully funding my retirement. With this inheritance from my dad, I'll put away a big chunk for my kids for their college,

and then the rest, I guess, put towards my house. So you're going to use this $42,000 on five or six, and the same with the rest of it. Is the $42,000 before the split with the three of you is the 42 before the split with the three of you that is before the split okay oh so you're only getting 15 20 000 okay of the annuity yeah yeah okay yeah definitely definitely take the money just use that probably towards the kids college or wherever it doesn't matter it's free money you don't have any income tax on it you don't have any penalties on it uh you don't have any penalties on it. You don't have anything on it.

And I'm so sorry for the loss of your dad. So sorry. What a horrible thing to go through. Brian's with us in Chicago. Hey, Brian, welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hello, how are you? Great, man. What's up? Well, I'm divorced. I've been divorced for about five years.

And I'm currently paying, divorced for about five years and I'm currently paying, and for these five years I've been paying my ex-wife spousal support payments of about $2,100 a month. And that was based on my income at the time of $110,000. But now my income is only $60,000 due to a lot of COVID damage to my business and so forth and not able to make as much money. So I wanted to seek an adjustment to the spousal support payments, and it's kind of up in the air how much it could be adjusted because it's up to the judge. And, uh, you know, if we were getting divorced today based on my income, I would only owe her about $600 a month. But when you seek a modification, they don't necessarily apply that, that, uh, same principle. They leave it up to the judge and how much he feels it should be adjusted based on the change of circumstances.

Gotcha. How can we help today? Well, in the discussions of trying to get this modified, my wife has floated the idea of she'd be willing to take a one-time buyout. So, like, I'm scheduled to pay her for life or until she gets remarried or, you know, maybe when I retire it could be adjusted. But she's willing to take a buyout of about $50,000. And I'd be pretty much a one- done payment and would not owe her anymore. But due to my financial situation, I don't have that money. The only way I could get it is to take it out of my IRA. But I'm age 60 and I've only got about $70,000 in an IRA. How old is she? So she's 54. I mean, age 60, and I've only got about $70,000 in an IRA.

How old is she? She's 54. No, you can't afford to do it. Well, like I said, unless I take it out of the IRA. You can't afford to do it. If you take it out of your IRA, you're going to get charged a penalty of 10% plus your tax rate. You're borrowing money at 35% or 40% interest to buy her out. That's not a good deal.

Well, I don't think there's a penalty because at 59 and a half you can – Oh, that's true. You're 60. Okay, so you're just going to pay your tax rate. But no, I'm not going to clean out your – Right. I don't know. Okay, you don't have a financial advisor, do you? Well, I do, and I talked to him and um he wasn't totally against the idea because

when you compare that wasn't what i was asking what i need him to do is i need him to do a net present value calculation for you on 2100 a month for 20 years yeah and what is that going to come out? That's $24,000, $25,000 a year for 20 years. Yeah, $50,000 is probably not a bad offer. Right. I mean, it would really, you know, help me out because there's no signs that she's going to get remarried or anything right now, and I could be paying her indefinitely for many, many years, and that's a tremendous strain on my finances to pay her. Yeah, what are you doing to get your business back? Well, you know, I've done all sorts of marketing and advertising.

I've done some networking and, you know, online stuff, and it's just very difficult. It hasn't been working, so I'm really struggling. Okay, I want your financial advisor to do a net present value calculation on this and tell you what your rate of return is because there's a thing called a discounted value or in other words a stream of payments is not worth the total 25 000 for 10 years is not worth 250. But it might be worth $50,000. Okay.

And it probably is. It probably is. That's probably a very low discount rate or high discount rate. And so you can have your financial advisor explain that to you and tell him to run a calculation, Dave said, on net present value. And I think it's going to be north of $50,000 value and I think it's going to be north of $50,000 so I think that's going to make this a good deal. Now what you've got to do then is you have to take the $2,100 a month

that you don't have anymore as a bill and you have to get down and dirty about rebuilding this nest egg ASAP. Yeah. George? Yeah. I mean what I'm seeing here is you can see what the adjustment is but I don't want you to limit your income because you now have this new payment where you go, well, I don't want to make any more because they're going to adjust it again. And so I'd rather you get this income up

and do what Dave's saying and see if we can fix this thing once and for all instead of paying this for life. I like being rid of the bill and her. She's the ex. Both of these are good things. And I like every bit of that. And so it's not a bad thing. I just want to make sure the calculation's right, and I can't do it in my head right now. But I'm thinking what I am doing in my head is leading me to north of 50. So, God, that's a big alimony payment. This is The Ramsey Show. George Campbell Ramsey Personality is my co-host today here on the Ramsey Show. I'm Dave Ramsey. In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the Dead Free Stage, Austin and Laura are with us. Hey

guys, how are you? Fantastic, Dave. Welcome. Where do you guys live? About an hour south of Kansas City, Missouri. Okay. What town? Butler. All right. Welcome. Good to have you guys. And all the way down here to Nashville to do a debt-free scream. How much have you paid off?

Paid off $146,885. Way to go. And how long did that take? Four years and nine months. Love it. And your range of income during that time? We started off around $92,000, got up to about $101,000, and then ended around $95,000. Okay, cool.

What do you all do for a living? I'm a district operations specialist with Syngenta. I work in sales and marketing, and I'm also a Ramsey Solutions financial coach. Oh, wow. Very cool. Thanks. What kind of debt was the $147,000?

Our mortgage. Woo! Looking at weird people! Way to go, go you guys that's pretty incredible how old are you i'm 31 i'm 32 and a paid for house what's this house worth uh between 250 and 300 it's a house shopping a little bit of land man look at you guys it's all yours it's all ours no payments in the world not a one And you're 32 years old. Oh, my gosh. We're seeing a trend here, Dave, and it's a good trend.

It is a good trend. Young people paying off their homes. You, them, yeah, young people paying off their homes. This is incredible. So four years, nine months. You guys really went for this thing. What caused this journey to start four years and nine months ago for you? Yeah, so it actually started a little bit before that.

I actually got on Dave's plan about eight or nine years ago, kind of had a wake-up moment, got on his plan, and was able to pay off my existing debt, save up $12,000 and pay for an engagement ring before I ever got married. And so I had a really good start going into the marriage. Yeah, and I wasn't really familiar with Dave or the financial piece or anything until Austin came into my life. But was fortunate to get a good job. Didn't have a whole lot of expenses.

Had a company vehicle and things. So was a little bit shocking to me at first. Whenever three months before we got married, he made me start keeping track of all expenses and teaching me budgeting and whatnot. He just sprung it on you, huh? Yeah. That's strong words. He didn't tell you ahead of time that's part of the deal.

He waits until we're about to get married and he goes, this is the deal. Well, and I joke that there's actually five gospels for Austin. There's Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Dave. My theme for life is if Dave says it, I do it, I do it. Plain and simple.

Oh, wow. Wow, that's dangerous right there. I'm telling people to jump off a cliff. That's power I don't know if I can handle. But we actually then did take Financial Peace University right after getting married, and we've led a couple courses. Thank you. I learned the process pretty quickly after we got married. He brought me along.

Now you're teaching it, for real. Right, exactly. Well, I feel like we're kind of the poster child for the house buying process because it went through FPR after we got married. We bought the house a year later. We had a really nice down payment. We went on the 15-year mortgage.

We planned to pay it off early. We set everything up to do exactly like you recommend. So we were very excited in that making that plan take place and it went even better than we hoped it went even you know even better than we anticipated by following your exact plan and process and that was kind of our guiding shift through the whole time as we made that purchase happen and got ready to pay it off early yeah and i mean along the way every single extra dollar that we got went towards paying the house off. We were focused in on that's our goal.

We're going to get it done. We're going to get it done early, just as quick as we possibly can. And now you make $100,000 a year and you don't have any payments. Exactly. So now you can do anything you want to do. And I mean, we had things that could have set us back. Our basement flooded within the first year of living there. But we had the emergency fund, we were able to take care of everything, and then get right back on track on paying off the house. We had transmissions go out, we actually bought vehicles with cash while we're doing this, we cash flowed two kids' birds.

So we were doing a lot all at the same time when this all happened. And whenever I kind of factored everything in, whenever we bought the house, I've been self-employed for the vast majority of the time, so I had variable income I was dealing with. So I said, okay, we're going to make the payment based on your income, what we know we can do. Everything I can make, we're going to throw out an extra. And so there was months where we didn't have the $1,000 a month extra we really wanted to put on,

and there was months that we had some nice bonus or some nice checks so we could put another $2,000 on it. And just that ebb and flow really made us just focus and say no to a lot of things but know that this is where we want to end up being and we're going to do whatever it takes to get there. Wow there's a lot of intentionality rolling around in here how much money do you guys put down on the down payment? We have about 40% down. Wow just like the last debt-free screen I'm just seeing a trend here Dave and you said they planned. A big down payment with a 15-year fixed, and they're sitting here, you know, 28 or 30 years old. It's not an accident.

Their case, 32, right? And this is the last two in a row. So you guys listening, I mean, what this means is you can do this. And you guys are just, like you said, poster children. And the thing is this if you find a a system that is proven work the system and that that's you know we can joke and call it the gospel day that's a little bit blasphemous that's pretty blasphemous right there we may all get struck by lightning but we can joke and say dave's rules we can joke and call george rules we can call it

whatever we want to call it none of that really matters all that matters is it's a proven you got to have a system and you got to work the system and it's a proven system so you don't need to fix a system that's broke that's not broken so you guys are incredible i'm so proud of she's kind of got a funny story so whenever it came time where we were actually going to pay off our house austin came into the house and he says i got something really crazy that i want to just run by you. And so this last year, we had a lot of things happen in our life that kind of threw us off course and honestly questioned if we're going to be able to get it paid off in time or not based upon where we were going.

And I was driving down the road one day from our farm and God just kind of put it on my mind. He goes, you need to think about this debt payoff. We were on track to get it paid off in about seven, eight years. And all of a sudden I realized how much our loan balance was. And we had extra money sitting in savings. We had money. We had actually started investing for some land in the future. And we had some money that we had just been budgeting to pay off on the mortgage from our normal jobs. And I factored all those numbers together and it came to within $100 of the exact amount of our loan balance. So I came home, I said,

honey, you want to pay off the mortgage tomorrow? And I think my eyebrows raised and I was like, you're crazy. There's no way. We don't have the money to do this. And then just sitting down and doing the math is like, actually it is there. We can do this.

We can live without this. We just had to change the name on the account from the land account to the mortgage reduction exactly yep wow wow you guys are amazing that's it and now you're free and now you can just pile up cash like crazy and go do the land and go do whatever you want to do exactly that's our plan yeah so good good job guys well done well done well we've got a copy of Baby Steps Millionaires for you. You probably already have a copy, but we'll get you another one because it's definitely the next chapter in your story for sure. You're on the way to do that.

Very young, very sharp, very well done. Extremely well done. Copy of Total Money Makeover for you to give away. I'm sure you'll run into somebody to do that. And you guys are incredible. Thank you so much for everything you're doing. And you're just an incredible example. And brought the kiddos what are their names and ages yes we have hayley who is three and reagan is one all right this is the family tree that was

changed by mom and dad's courage to decide to address the issue that nobody likes to talk about in america Money. Debt. And now here they stand completely debt-free, house and everything. You're incredible. Austin and Laura, Haley and Reagan, $147,000 paid off, house and everything. Four years and nine months, making $92,000 to $101,000 to $95,000. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream.

Three, two, one. We're debt-free! Woo! Yeah! Look at that. Those kiddos, man. That's awesome. Beautiful family.

That is absolutely awesome. So fun. I love this. It never gets old. It does not get old. What I love is there was a decision before the decision. They pre-decided that we're not going to do things this way. We're going to save up a giant down payment. We're going to pay it off early.

They decided all of that before they ever went about paying off the home. Yeah, it wasn't like they woke up in trouble and then had to go get themselves out of trouble and then got out of debt. Every step was intentional. Every bit of it from day one. Amazing. Wow. The power of this stuff

especially when you start early and especially when you pre-make the decision that's a good way of saying that george very well done this is the ramsey show george camel ramsey personality is my co-host today. Open phones here on the Ramsey Show. It's a free call. Some say the advice is worth exactly what you pay for it. 888-825-5225. In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions, on the debt-free stage, Kyle and Jessica are with us. Hey, guys.

How are you? Great. Welcome. Where do you guys live? Austin, Texas. Austin. Very cool. How much debt have you paid off? Austin, Texas. Austin. Very cool. How much debt have you paid off?

$175,000. Woo-hoo! How long did this take? It took us three years and one month. Three years and one month. And your range of income during that time? We started at $72,000 and right now I'm making about $160,000. That's a nice jump.

Yes. Like, what happened to the income? I got to ask. Just different job opportunities and saying yes. Like somebody wasn't working, now somebody is? No, that was just me. No, both of you just went way up. I'm a stay-at-home mom for our two kids, about to be three,

and he just got some great job opportunities. What do you do for a living? I'm a software engineer. Oh, okay. Okay, okay. Way to go! And a good one, definitely. That's amazing. What's the kind of debt? Was this $175,000? $25,000 was car loans and the rest was student loans. Whoa. $150,000 in student loans. What's your degree in? Computer science. At least this one's paying off, huh? Yes. Yeah, you're making some good bank with it, and pretty quick.

How old are you guys? 26, both of us. How long have you been married? We are coming up on five years in a couple weeks. Okay. Wow. So a couple years into marriage, you're making 70 grand. You got a $175,000 monkey on your back.

Ouch. This doesn't sound fun. Not at all. You're 24 years old at that point right oh my gosh this doesn't sound this sounds like it was awful yes it was a lot we um whenever he graduated from school it was all student loans on his end and so we sat down and looked at the numbers and we were really intimidated um but we'd heard about your program before and we sat down and looked at it and we just it made the most sense and so we decided to start um it didn't start right away because we were making so little whenever um he was finishing up school and i was working um but around a year and a half into marriage

whenever our daughter was born we started paying off and then three years later here we are i love it wow well one thing about a software engineer, when they see a system, they work it. Yes. That's it, man. It's like you're a process guy. You saw the process. Ding, ding, right? That was it. Yeah. Wow. So what were your payments? Do you remember all the debt added up? What were those payments every month?

Oh, my gosh. She still feels it. I can tell her. Yes. I'm trying to think it was minimums were about 2,000 a month but we always paid extra for the most part on those so at least 2,000 but we usually paid quite a bit more or two thousand dollars a month richer yeah oh it's amazing it's like it's quite unbelievable oh the I mean we feel it every single day I don't think we've forgotten about it since we paid it off. I mean, you can feel the weight off of your shoulders.

You physically can feel that. Oh, yes, every day. Oh, my gosh. And you guys are 26. I mean, you must have a lot of friends, probably other software engineers, who are sitting there with another $150 in loans going, well, I'm just going to pay this off until I die. That's the only way.

Yes. Yeah, we figured we were already pretty broke college students, and so it wasn't really a big jump going to, because we, even though we were making more once we graduated, we just pretended like we were still those broke college students. So all that extra money that we were making, we just put towards loans and kind of forgot like we had. So we just lived as frugally as we could in the meantime. Wow. Wow.

Okay, so people find out you paid off 175 000 this impressive y'all are studs this is amazing this is you guys are power couple man this is so cool so proud of you thank you when they find out you did this they say how'd you do that what are you telling them well one thing that was helpful for me was just having that vision of what you want life to be like in the future and just every sacrifice and everything you have to do to make that happen. If you hold that vision, it helps it be more real. And I think just being a team, because we are always on the same page from the beginning, and that made it go so much quicker. And just realizing that we could still have a great life

in the meantime, we could still have fun together. We just found a lot of free activities. Like, we would go hiking with our kids all the time and things that didn't cost extra money. And we just learned to live and enjoy life in the moment. So we learned to make it fun even when it was really hard. Now, it was three years is a long time, but in the scope of your life, it ain't spit. Exactly. You know, you live like no one else. You got the rest of your life to live and give like no one else.

And, man, you got the rest of your life to live and give like no one else and man you are you're you got you got a great career choice so you'll be able to make good money and you you know control a lot of your own destiny here you guys are really this is this is impressive thank you this is impressive you guys accomplish this in three years i'm like what are you going to accomplish in the next 30 i'm i'm scared you guys are going to do so unbelievably well we can't wait we're excited as well we've been dreaming big so yeah what's the next big thing um buying a house yeah yeah yeah take some trips and buy i saved that down payment up and get a house now very good very good how many kids you got we have uh two daughters and then we're pregnant with our boy right now so that, yay! Woo-hoo!

That's the Ramsey lineup. Two daughters followed by a boy. Yeah, that's good. We're excited. Very good. Well, you ought to be. It's great. Good times.

Good times. Well, congratulations, you guys. We're proud of you here. Thank you. You're the kind of people that we love helping, and you're very impressive. Thank you. Very impressive. You're heroes.

You took control of your life, and just beautifully, beautifully done. Gives me gives me hope for this generation dave you know it turns out they're not all bad oh we knew that we knew that here that we see it all the time yeah very cool very cool all right we've got a copy of the baby steps millionaire book that comes out next week an advanced copy and uh because that's the next chapter in your story you'll be there before you know it at this rate bing ding man you're just zooming right on zooming right along very well done and a copy and because that's the next chapter in your story, you'll be there before you know it at this rate. Bing, ding. Man, you're just zooming right on. Zooming right along. Very well done.

And a copy of Total Money Makeover as well, so you can give that to somebody, disturb their life, help them get on the same track, teach them the system you used, because they're going to ask. They're going to ask, because you start to walk different and smile different when you don't have almost $200,000 worth of monkey on your back. Pretty stinking incredible. You guys are amazing. Very, very well done.

Kyle and Jessica, Austin, Texas, $175,000 paid off. Three years in one month, making $72,000 all the way to $160,000 during that three years. Nice jump. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. All right, three, two, one. We're debt-free! Yeah!

Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo! That is how it's done, boys and girls. Oh, my goodness. The future's looking bright for that that couple yeah well here's the thing we see continuously in all of the millionaire data from baby steps millionaire and from the ramsay research on millionaires all the data that we've got that people who have a tenant who are in industries that are process oriented have a have a chance they have the best chances so the number one most likely career field to become a millionaire in all the millionaires we've

studied is engineer software engineer here right okay the engineers are process driven one plus one equals two we don't have to have an existential argument about it by god one plus one equals two accountants number two teachers number three and if you know anything about putting together a lesson plan or running a classroom full of animals that's called teaching then you know they are process driven people number three uh managers and entrepreneurs number four lawyers if you've ever dealt with lawyers they're process driven human beings the number five the five top career fields of people who end up being millionaires are all process driven now that's not to say that if you're an artist you don't have a shot you have a shot but you need to understand that there's a correlation between being following a freaking process and becoming wealthy that's why

we wrote the baby steps millionaire it's a process to become wealthy and you have to submit yourself to a process not try to be an artist with it it's it's a science it ain't Yeah, that's a great way to put it. And you're right. There's this level of you can't just wish for it. You can't just hope for it. You have to put the behaviors in play to make it happen. But, you know, those of us that have a creativity binge, you and me included. Yeah, I've got I'm a process guy, but I've also got a creativity binge, meaning that I always question everything. i have to go well i don't care about your baby steps i want to make my own you know i'm i'm the same moron out there that some of you are that are listening right now don't go make your own it's painful you know follow the

plan you know that guy did he never even questioned it he just did it he just did it. He just did it. This is The Ramsey Show. George Campbell Ramsey, personality, is my co-host today. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Max is in Corpus Christi. Hi, Max. Welcome to The Ramsey Show. Howdy, Dave. Thanks for taking my call.

Sure, man. What's up? So I'm a midshipman, second year midshipman at the United States Naval Academy, and I'm just kind of trying to figure out how I want to set up my outlook going forward. So I'm going to graduate here in two and a half years with no debt, or I have the option of

doing that, or I can take what's called a career starter loan from USAA. Well, it's a.75% interest loan. Okay. The idea was to cover your car and home. No! You're not covering your car.

You're borrowing money for a car. Fair enough. That's what my brother-in-law said you'd say. That was easy. Hold on. So you said the other option was graduate debt-free? Yeah. Or you can go 50 grand in debt, right?

32. Yeah. What's wrong with the first option? Somebody ought to smack those people for doing that to you guys. You guys are serving your country. Thank you so much for who you are, young man. Thank you. Please don't go falling into a ditch.

Okay. Because all the financial investors are like, well, most people that do it beat the interest of the year in the stock market. Hey, let me tell you what they are. They're full of crap. Okay, and let me tell you why I know that. I'm not just making this up. We studied, Max, 10,000 millionaires,

the largest study of millionaires ever done in North America. Do you know how many of them told us that they borrowed money at 1% interest and invested it in the market, and that caused them to be millionaires? Precisely zero. Zero. Zero! None of them very well and they weren't trying to get a commission off of a young midshipman to get him to borrow money at the freaking credit union to put it

into his mutual fund you need to run from those financial people because they haven't got your best interest at heart you are a sharp young guy you're getting ready to go i assume you're going to be an officer correct yes sir you're in the navy of the marine corps i'm hoping to fly for the marine corps yeah oh you're gonna fly oh even better wow good for you man that's amazing and so your your future in an aircraft a military or non-military later is bright your income is bright everything is there don't saddle yourself with these kinds of problems all in an effort to accelerate your wealth building process because there's no data points to back it up that makes sense okay man i just i appreciate who you are and i really don't want you to do this. I hope you're hearing me loud and clear. I'm not just being a smart aleck with you.

I am being a smart aleck with the morons around you, though. Oh, my gosh. What a great young guy. Yeah, anyone who's selling him on the benefit of $32,000 in debt is not looking out for him. So let me just kind of walk this through, George, for a second. It's important because it sounds like we don't know how to do math to people like those people that are advising him. So for you morons out there that are teaching you some young guy stuff like

this, here's where you're wrong. Okay. At $32,000 and he can borrow the money at 1% or so. If he invested in mutual funds and he made 10 or 12%, does he not make the spread yes he does he does make the spread however what you need to understand is that your formula that you have used is a naive and incomplete b short-sighted let me explain naive and incomplete

means you have not factored in risk let me show you how i know you have not factored in risk let me show you how i know you've not factored in risk it didn't bother anyone that this young guy's going to borrow 32,000 at one percent so let's just put some x's on it if 32,000 at one percent makes him profit if he could do 3.2 million at one percent should he no what's the difference it's a bigger number the bigger number makes your heart measure the risk you feel it some of you just got tight in the chest or your stomach raised up just a little bit even when i suggested that the young man be 3.2 million dollars in debt but if the math works at 32 000 why wouldn't the math work at 3.2 because at 3.2 you finally physically it felt in your chest the risk but you didn't feel it before so you thought you were some kind of b.a with your math you left out risk you left out risk risk is math and you have to insert risk

in the process and otherwise you get your freaking head taken off and so just because the risk feels small doesn't mean it's not there and doesn't mean it's that you so your your your formula one percent versus ten or twelve percent spread is incomplete because you left out risk number two it's naive because you didn't take into consideration the fact that you have a young man getting into the cockpit of a fighter jet some of the most sophisticated equipment on the planet where you can kill someone over the horizon and never see them or be killed by someone over the horizon and never see them uh it is a bizarre set of technology the world's best in humankind history and you have a young guy in

his early 20s getting ready to climb into that cockpit oh and let's go ahead and put in the back of his mind that he has 32 000 worth of debt and act like that doesn't matter of course it matters the number three cause of dishonorable discharge in the military is financial irresponsibility. They lose their security clearance and they lose their battle readiness because they're preoccupied with crap in the back of their mind because some moron financial advisor suggested there was a spread between one and ten. There's more to this stuff folks than meets the eye that's my point yeah and you also have to wonder how much payments beget payments where he goes all right

well i've already got the surge 2000 why not go get a car loan uh and why not go get payments over here and payments over here and run up a credit card and it just becomes normalizes it normalizes it exactly and i gotta tell you man these guys preying on the military people, it pisses me off. You leave a military base and, you know, if you go to a military town, you leave the military, you leave the gates of the base. As soon as you leave the gates of the base, there is stupid on each side of the road for about two miles. Every dumb human trick you can do is on one side of the road or the other for about two miles they are set up like a bunch of freaking piranha to feed on these guys from payday lenders to uh whoever else out there and this is a innocuous kind of a loan he's talking about there's nothing

to this loan but i mean the the horrible financial products horrible deals on cars horrible behaviors they can engage in none of which are good for them none of which are good for their battle readiness none of which are good for their military career and it's just it's it's it's sad that that that these people are preying on the very people who are young people are not making a lot of money in most cases and they're here to serve us yeah what what do you think makes them more vulnerable to these kinds of decisions well it's the same you know it's they're the same age as a college student who went and got you know got a degree in beer pong you know you got stupid outside the college as soon as you walk off the college campus for two miles you got stupid on each side of the road too it's the same thing

they're preying on the young that are inexperienced at life and think that i want to try all these new things that look like fun and will bring death death to your finances death to your relationships death to your future relationships uh i mean it just it's it's a problem man it's a problem and so i'm not suggesting legislation to protect it but i am suggesting that that you know the military really ought to do some orientation just like a college should do an orientation it's not just about what's happening on the campus it's about what's happening just off the campus that'll kill your butt and mess you up and set you on a trajectory that takes you 10 years to recover from.

And you're turning a guy, 18 gal, 18 years old loose with their first paycheck unsupervised. And the first thing you do is drop them in a pool of piranha. And it's just, oh my God, man. It's the best stuff. my God, man. Stop. Pisses me off. Can you tell? I can tell. I mean, we just love the military, and we've worked with them for so many years.

Got a big heart for Service Center. With Financial Peace University. And the vast majority of them are young, very young, and are susceptible to this kind of thing. And it's harsh. It's really harsh. Hey, it's Kelly, associate producer and phone screener for The Ramsey Show. If you would like to do your debt-free scream live on the show, make sure you visit theramseyshow.com and register.

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