The Ramsey Show - App - What Should We Do About Our Older Cars? (Hour 2)

Episode Date: August 27, 2021

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Thank you very much. Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studio, this is The Ramsey Show, where America hangs out to have a conversation about your life and your money. I'm Christy Wright. I'm joined today by my good friend, George Hamel, and your life and your money. I'm Christy Wright. I'm joined today by my good friend George Hamill and we are taking your calls. We're answering your calls about money as always, but also life, business. Maybe you just need help making a decision. You want someone to give you a little advice. Always time management. I'm on this kick right now with my new book,

Take Back Your Time, The Guilt-Free Guide to Life Balance, which is in pre-sale, and you can get your copy at RamseySolutions.com, Amazon, anywhere books are sold. But we're here for you, so give us a call, 888-825-5225, and we're going to go to Miami, Florida with Louis. Hey, Louis, how are you?

I'm doing good. How about you? Good. How can George and I help? So I heard about Dave Ramsey about a year ago. And even though I wasn't fully on board with the baby steps and there was my wife, I was still able to change my mentality. And I was about $40,000 in debt. And a year later, we're only $15,000. Awesome.

But right now we're still struggling. We kind of like get back into debt a little bit and come right back out. But my question right now is I'm trying to get my wife fully on board with the baby steps, but it's been difficult. Right now we have the $15,000, which is in car debt,

and we have $2,500 in savings. And I don't really know where to go from here. Okay. What's your income, your household income? $45,000. $45,000 for the household? Correct. Okay.

Well, talk to me a little bit about the conversations with you and your wife. How do they go? How do you talk about it? What does she say? Give us some context here to this dynamic. So one of the things that I tell her is that, you know, right now we don't have a mortgage. We're blessed by God. Our parents, my parents gave us a house, so we don't really have to worry about that. So I tell her, you know, we could be debt free, you know, in just a couple of months, maybe a year or something like that.

And we can start thinking about our kids and their college fund and things like that. But she believes that if we put the money that we have towards the car loan, we won't have any security in case something happens. And that's the problem. She doesn't believe that putting the money towards the car is a good idea right now. What do you mean security? Like she wants to put that money in savings she wants that extra margin in your budget exactly exactly in case not

not for the budget but just so we have it in savings yeah she doesn't believe it's worth getting out of a car debt pretty much yeah well here's the thing lewis this this is one of the most common calls that we get on the ramsey show how do i get my spouse on board and it's one of the most common calls that we get on The Ramsey Show. How do I get my spouse on board? And it's one of those things that's delicate in the sense that you can't bulldoze your spouse and you shouldn't. It's just not good relationship best practices to bulldoze anybody or tell them what to do or boss them around. But you can and should have conversations that lead to you guys coming together. Now, one of the things that I think can be helpful in leading those conversations is you leaning on what you've learned from the Ramsey Show, from Total Money Makeover, from Financial Peace, anywhere that you're getting our teaching on the baby steps, because this path of the baby steps is the shortest distance between you and wealth. There are no exceptions. It's the shortest distance. That is security. So what would be

helpful, I think, Lewis, is as you guys are talking about this, is helping her in a loving, respectful, patient way, reframe what security is. Because you're actually not secure when you're in debt. You owe money to the car company, to the car loan. And so if she thinks of security as money in the bank, well, that temporarily and only if you look at that piece, but that money's not even really yours because you have this debt weighing you down. So for a short term, yes, just like we were talking about earlier, there is a sacrifice of you're going to live on as low amount as you can and take all your savings except for $1,000 and put it towards that car, and you can knock that out pretty quickly,

especially when you don't have a mortgage and you don't have that expense. But it's gonna take you guys understanding what security means, and it's not having a car loan. At the same time, for you guys to have this vision of the future, the vision being debt-free, for her to get excited about what's possible when you're debt-free, when you have no payments. That's real security. That's

where you build a real savings that makes you have that freedom of knowing if something happens, we're going to be okay. George, I know you hear this a lot because this is one of those common things that you typically have one spouse that's excited and on board, as we say, and other spouse that's more reluctant. I tend to think, I don't have any research to back this up, but I tend to think that there's a direct correlation between the spouse that won't get on board and the spender. Like I'd be willing to bet that never is the saver, the one that won't get on board. It's typically the spenders like, no, no, no, no, no. But, but what do you teach people when you get this question? Because this is so common. It is a very regular call we

get here on the show. Yeah. Well, you know, for starters, you never see debt-free screams where the spouse is there and they go, yeah, I never got on board, but we made it here somehow, right? So at some point you have to get on board. And here's the thing. A lot of people go around yelling at their spouse and they say, well, Dave says, no, here's what it needs to change to. We said, and you know where that comes from? A why. You need to sit together and you need to talk about your why. I want you to talk about your dreams, your goals. Why the heck are you getting out of debt? And so once you do that, it doesn't become a conversation of Dave said we can't eat out. It becomes a conversation

of we said, this is a priority. We said that our future goals are more important than the things we have right now. So the why is where I always start. From there, I like to move to some math because math makes a lot of people angry. When you start to go, hey, how much is that payment every month? What would that be? Numbers don't lie. Yeah. How much interest are we paying? Goodness gracious, you heard Mariah in our debt-free scream talk about how that got her fired up, seeing how much interest she was paying and the loans growing. So start to do some math with them. And if the math doesn't work, what I love to do is say, hey, go sign up for Ramsey Plus, go through Financial Peace University, and you'll hear it over and over again. People say, what finally did it? We went through Financial

Peace University and we submitted to someone else's plan. That way it's not Lewis against his spouse. It's saying, hey, now we're both fired up. We have common language that we can use to talk about money, to dream about our future. And that to me is one of the biggest things. So Lewis, what I want to do for you is give you a one-year membership to Ramsey Plus. You're going to have access to Financial Peace University, our nine video lesson course that's changed so many families. You'll have access to EveryDollarPlus for budgeting. And I think those two things, going through that with your wife, she's going to get fired up.

And she'll have security very soon. Yeah, and just, that's a great point. So since we're giving you that as a gift, Louis, the conversation now is just, will you watch this with me? That's it. You don't have to convince her. You don't have to be the bad guy.

You don't have to be the dream killer. You don't have to be the security stealer. You just say, hey, will you watch this with me. This guy knows a lot about getting out of debt. He knows a lot about building wealth. This company has helped millions and millions and millions of people get out of debt and build wealth. Let's just learn from them. And then you approach it from that standpoint. And then if she's willing, which I hope she is, and she certainly should be, that's such a simple ask you're making. If she's willing to watch those videos, watch how the videos transform her and you don't have to. And here's what happens. And she asks

questions. You go, we're face to face, head to head. And all of a sudden you start to do these things and you start to look in the same direction towards the future, hand in hand, and then you're fired up. Yeah, that's good. All right, Lewis, that's what you're going to do. You're going to ask her to watch the videos in Financial Peace University with you, which you get. It's our course, which you get as a part of Ramsey Plus. And watch how that sets you on the right path and brings you guys together. This is The Ramsey Show. Hey, I'm Christi Wright.

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giveaway at ramsaystolutions.com. There's a lot going on and you guys ought to take advantage of it. Just listening to it, it's not going to change anything. It's when you actually take action. You know, George, I've been on this kick lately where I don't know where people came up with the idea of it's the thought that counts. No, it's not. No, it's not. Who told you that? That is a bold-faced lie.

Listen, you're not bragging to your friends about what your husband thought about getting you for your anniversary. You're not posting on Facebook about the grades your child thought about getting. This is a personal attack, Christy. Listen, it's not the thought that counts, people. It's what you do that counts. And if you want different results, you're going to need to do something different. Go to RamseySolution.com. Take advantage of these sales, y'all.

Get them for yourself. Get them as a gift. Get some new information that will help you take different actions which lead to different results. That's good. Is that in one of your books? That's really good. I'm going to steal that if not. I'll at least tweet it.

I'll tag you. Okay. I think you mentioned so many things you forgot the goal planner. I know. that's good is that in one of your books that's really good I'm going to steal that if not I'll at least tweet it I'll tag you okay I think you mentioned so many things you forgot the goal planner I know and the goal planner is on sale as well

that always sells out don't call me crying in January it's going to be gone by then but yes that's at RamseySolutions.com as well

you can set your goals plan your calendar manage your time we just want to help you do all the things manage your money your time your career

all of it we're here for you you can call me crying not Christage your money, your time, your career, all of it. We're here for you. You can call me, Kryon. Yeah. Not Christy. That's fine. I'll be your shoulder. Post on Reddit.

Tell us how you feel. George will be the only one that reads that. I'm the only one hanging out there. I can guarantee you that. All right. Let's go to Renee in Alexandria, Virginia. Hey, Renee. How are you?

Hi, Christy. Thanks for taking my call. My husband and I are 44 and 41, and we're kind of stuck in 3B, 4, and 5, all at the same time with life happening and not really sure where to give our focus. Okay. Well, tell me about what's going on. What are your goals and what's going on what are your goals and what's kind of the situation you're in so we have about eight hundred thousand dollars in retirement um we make two hundred and thirty thousand dollars a year we have about seventy dollars in savings seventy dollars house i'm sorry seventy thousand dollars renee that feels like a small amount for the numbers you're giving me. Go ahead. Yeah, $70,000 in saving.

And we don't own a house. We've lived here for four years, and we are not interested in buying in the area that we're in. The houses here are extremely expensive. But we still want to be saving for a house because I feel the pressure of being 44 and not having a house and knowing that I need to be on a 15-year fix at some point. So there's that. And then I only put 10% into TSP. Sorry, my husband, I work for the federal government. So I put in 10, he puts in seven. And honestly, I don't feel like I have more money to put in at this point. So I'm kind of doing step four. And then step five, we're cash

flowing my husband's master's degree, which he will finish up this December. And we just had a son enter junior college and he wants to cash flow his college as well. I'm not as much on board. That's a whole other story. So we're kind of in three steps at the same time. And I'm not really sure where I put my focus. And I, and I feel broke all the time. I feel like I'm back in my baby step one days when I was, or baby step two, paying off debt because I'm pulling myself in so many different directions. I'm not really sure what to do. Yeah. Well, first of all, you're not broke.

Let's just start there, Renee. You have $800,000 in retirement. You're almost a millionaire. Your household income is over $200,000 a year, which is well above the national average. You're not even close to broke, not even like a little tiny bit. Do you all have any debt? No debt. Okay.

So here's one of the things that's difficult, can be difficult, about the later baby steps. That's a little different than one, two, and three. They do happen simultaneously. And in your case, saving for a house is kind of lumped into this latter part of the baby steps. So they do happen simultaneously. The good part of this is, unlike when your gazelle intent is getting out of debt, you do take your foot off the gas a little bit because this is a marathon, not a sprint. It's ongoing. This is going to take a much longer period of time to do these things to pay off your home, fund college or investing for the long haul. These are things

that are ongoing. So that's the good part. The downside is because you really have multiple goals going on at one time, you can feel like you're not making progress in any of them just because it is maybe a slower progress divided. And so one of the things that I think would be helpful for you, aside from the thing that you mentioned about, you know, the funding your child's college, which is a different question, like you said. But I think one of the things that would be helpful is if you set micro goals, if you set smaller goals, how much do we want to have in our house fund by Christmas? How much do we want to have by March of next year, by August of next year and start to set these smaller goals that are almost by quarter, there's several months, you start to get some some mile markers here, where you can see your progress in the house savings department.

And then with the child's college, if you guys get on the same page, whatever you decide to to do there you can do the same thing in terms of how much investing is not as much of an issue number one because you have eight hundred thousand dollars number two because you don't have a home so we're almost kind of backtracking a little bit to to uh get some savings to be able to buy a house in in your case but what's interesting renee is research show this psychological psychology research shows this that nothing is more motivating than seeing progress made not money not rewards not applause not affirmation it's seeing oh i saw i lost five pounds that makes me want to go work out more oh i saw i paid off a credit card and cut it up that makes me want to pay off the next one so when you begin to see your progress in saving for a home, it's

going to actually motivate you to make more progress. I think you're not seeing your progress because you're not tracking it and you're not setting these smaller goals. And so that's one of the things that will help you continue to make progress in each of these areas because they do happen simultaneously, but actually feel like you're making progress there. George, you hop in on this one because the baby steps four, five, and six, especially when you're saving for a house, that can be a little different. It can get tricky. So like Christy said, Renee, you're doing an amazing job. And I feel like you've got a lot of stress and I feel it in your voice. There's just a lot going on. But I want you to take a deep breath and go, we have done really well. And we've worked really hard. I don't even

know how you guys have $800,000 in retirement. I mean, it's incredible at 40. So here's my thing. If you want to feel progress, there's nothing wrong with pausing that investing right now because you're doing so great and then just stacking up that down payment. Focus on one thing right now. Depending on the college situation, I want them to cash flow. I'm with your kid on that one. I want them to cash flow because I heard too many heartbreaking stories hosting the Borrowed Future podcast to hear about that. So pause it, get that house down payment saved up to focus on a goal, go back to investing and make it 15% and then start funding the college and get that house. You're going to do great. You guys have already done great. It's going to feel a little weird to you, Renee, because you've been investing so well for so long to pause that.

But that's the reason that baby step comes before three comes before four is because we're assuming there you're going to buy a house before you start investing. So you have that that money for the down payment. You've been doing it. So it may seem counterintuitive deposit, but it's actually going to give you more money to fund the house when you find the house you want, and you're ready. And then you can ramp it back up. By the way, you almost have a million dollars there. You're doing great. You're doing great. This is The Ramsey Show.

Picture your life one year from today with no debt payments. If you're living paycheck to paycheck, worried about money and chipping away at debt, I know how hard it is. Right now, debt is. If you're living paycheck to paycheck, worried about money and chipping away at debt, I know how hard it is. Right now, debt is stealing from you. But when it's gone, you free up your money for what matters to you. You get the security and options you've always wanted, and you get there faster than you think with Financial Peace University. It's our step-by-step plan that teaches you how to save and spend wisely and pay off all your debt and how do you put this plan into practice with every

dollar our premium budgeting tool look with focus hard work and the right plan and tools you can and will be completely debt-free get access to everything you need only with a ramsey plus membership to start your free trial of ramsey plus text trial to 33 789 text trial to 33 789 I'm Christy Wright. George Campbell and I are taking your calls today about money, life, and business. Give us a call, 888-825-5225. We love talking to you, and we love hearing your questions. We could process it with you, give you some advice, help you think through tough decisions, or maybe you just need another perspective.

We're here for you. 888-825-5225. Find out for yourself why Blinds.com is the number one online retailer of custom window coverings. You get free samples, free shipping, and with the new promo codes they run every month, you'll save even more. Use promo code RAMSEY to get the best deal today's question comes from ben in pennsylvania ben asks i have enough money to buy an engagement ring but including that amount i would have enough money to pay off my auto loan the only other debt i have is a student loan buying the ring keeps the car debt around for a few more months, but paying off the truck essentially puts off a wedding for a few months.

Should I buy the ring or pay off the car loan? Yeah. That's a good question. Well, you know, the interesting thing is we're talking about a pretty short time frame here. It's a few months. My gut, I mean, you can make an argument either way, honestly, like if you want to get your wedding going, whatever. But if I were you, since we're talking about a few months and you're not just dying to get married this minute, I'd pay off the truck. It's one less debt you're going into your marriage and engagement with, and you've got

that money. Yeah, it frees up a payment. And honestly, with how things are going right now in the world, I think putting off the wedding for a few months may be a safe bet. It may actually help you. You just never know. So maybe that'll buy you some time. It'll help you cash flow this wedding easier. You're going to free up a payment with that truck, which means you're going to save up for that engagement ring really fast if that money's going to go towards that.

And as long as your future fiance is on board with this plan, I don't know what the conversations have been like around this, but make sure it's not a huge surprise where they go, oh my gosh, I already set the date and now this is throwing everything off. So I like the idea of paying off the truck if it's not going to slow down this wedding by a huge amount of time. Because of that freed up payment, you're actually going to gain income by paying off the truck, whereas buying the ring won't do anything for you there. Yeah.

No, I think that's the right thing to do. The other thing is, to your point, George, we don't know all the context around it, but if there have been any type of communications or expectations that something's happening in a certain time frame, definitely talk to your fiance about it. You don't want her getting her nails done every week thinking the ring's coming any minute and you've pushed it back a few months. It's so stressful. Yeah, it is so stressful it's funny though because when you're in that season of life every day feels

like an eternity of like everything feels like such a big deal and gosh i look back on when matt and i got married i'm like oh we were babies like that just feels like forever ago it's all just in the moment it feels so urgent and yeah you you want to get married you guys are excited of course but a few months that's one less debt you're going into your engagement with. And to your point, George, you've got that payment that you're putting towards the truck now to save even faster for the ring. Way to go, Ben. I'm excited for you guys. Congratulations.

All right. Let's go to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, with Tom. Hey, Tom, how are you? I'm good. How are y'all? Good. What's going on? So I just started listening to y'all, and I bought the Money Makeover book about a month ago.

Cool. And my wife and I are on baby step number two. She's more the free spirit, and I'm really tight on my budget and strict with money and everything. Sometimes it gets or starts arguments between us but um we recently got rid of a thing to be cool because we had two of them and i put down a big second change to be able to pay it off and sell it so now we're down to one vehicle and we're having a little issue now to where we think we need a second one and And because of my work schedule, I find myself needing a vehicle during the week while she's gone. And so the question is, should I trade in

the vehicle and try to get two loans for, I guess, two vehicles for, I guess, around the same price or same loan amount every month for this one, or just keep this vehicle and put money down that I have in savings on a used vehicle. So we have a second one. Give us some more information. How much savings do you have? How much money do you make? And how much debt do you have?

So right now, I make about $89,000 a year. And then that's with my work and disability. And then the debt we have is around $252,615. What kind of debt is that? Home and the truck. Okay, without the house. Take the house out of it. What kind of debt do you have? The truck is $31,530, and that's the only thing we have.

How much is it worth? I got it appraised at a dealership for right under $31,000, about $30,500. That's what they would give you for a trade-in? Yes. Wow. You could sell it for private party more than that. And used cars are going for crazy prices right now. How much do you have in savings? I'm getting four to put down about nine,

but right now we have about $11,000 in savings. $11,000 in savings. Okay. George and I will tag team on this one, but we're going to tell you the same thing, and it's not to take out a loan. It's to get you two used cars that get you around in cash. And you've got the cash to do it.

You could sell that truck private party and pay off that debt and use your savings. You could use everything but $1,000. Let's just think about this for a second, Tom. Just go with me here. I know it's not what you asked and I know it's not what you want. But just go with me anyway because you called and you're going to get the truth from us. If you were to sell that truck private party, pay off your debt, you leave a thousand dollars in your emergency fund and buy two five thousand dollar cars, which you can do that are good,

dependable, used cars. You are not going to be in those cars very long before you can save up and pay cash to upgrade that car. You make a good income and you will be debt free in that one decision. If you do this, you will be debt free instantly. And then you can upgrade your car soon and not have to be having this payment dragging around. George, am I missing something here? Yeah, Tom, this is what I'm feeling out of this situation. Like Christy said, absolutely not. Don't get alone. If you go to Carvana.com, Vroom.com, CarMax.com, a local dealership, just go through all of those and see what you can get for this truck.

And with that money, I want you to get two used cars that are decent, and you could pay $10,000 or $15,000 for each of those. And with your $11,000 in savings and making some money out of this deal, you could be 10 or 15 for each of those. And with your 11K in savings and making some money out of this deal, you could be at baby step four. You might have a fully funded emergency fund with no payments in the world other than that mortgage to tackle. And you'll be investing 15% at that point in baby step four. And if you've got kids or you do in the future, you can save up for college. And then we're going to look at paying off the house early. So I love this because it's an easy decision for me. Now, it might be a difficult one

for Tom because I know some guys out there like their cars, and it's emotional, and it's sentimental. And you go, I don't want a car that I don't like to drive. And like Christy said, this is temporary. Down the line, you can save up and pay cash for a $30,000 car if you really want it later on. But right now, you've got to clean up this mess. What I love is that you could do it today. That's right.

We have some people call Tom and they have, you know, they are going there at the beginning of a three year journey of paying off their debt. You could have this fixed this week. I mean, you're in an awesome position. It is going to require some sacrifice, a different mentality to say, okay, short term, I'm going to give up this awesome $30,000 car for a $5,000 car. And so my wife can have a car. The great news is you have the savings. So you have, it's not even setting you back for very long because you're going to,

you're going to drive this car for, I don't know, six months or a year, maybe. And you're going to be able to save up pay cash for a nicer, newer car whenever you're ready to. But the truth is the car that you have, because it's on debt, you can't afford it. If you could have afforded, you would pay cash. So all you're going to do is just sell that and buy something in cash for the short term. And then from here on out, you're buying cars in cash and you're going to be in such a better position whenever you do that. Then you don't have those payments and you're moving into baby steps four, five, and six,

like George said, where you're investing, you're building wealth, you're paying off the house, and you're not paying all the interest that you're paying right now in this car. And so that's what we would do. You can do what you want to. That's what we always say.

You can do what you want to. That's what we would do if we were you. And that's going to be the quickest path to you getting out of debt, stop losing money on all this interest and actually building wealth. Take your cash, buy two cheaper cars, sell that car that you have, get rid of that debt. You're going to be debt-free this week if you do it, Tom. Woo!

Debt-free. No payments. You can do this. I think you should. This is The Ramsey Show. I'm Christy Wright. George Camel and I are hosting the Ramsey Show today for you. And we love hanging out with you guys. We love

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I'm like, let's just call it. Number one, How TurboTax is Screwing You. Okay. Well, that's pretty clear. I'm like, let's just call it. Number one, how TurboTax is screwing you. Okay. Well, that's pretty clear. I love a good clear title. And number two, the true cost of credit card rewards. Both of those are out now. Listen to them wherever you listen to podcasts.

Support George. And also just get some great information that you need that's going to help you break free from stuff that's holding you back with your money, which is what we're here to help you do. Also want to remind you, my new book, Take Back Your Time, The Guilt-Free Guide to Life Balance is available for pre-sale. And if you order your copy before pre-sale ends, and it ends in just about a week or two, you're going to get all this free stuff. You're going to get the ebook, the audio book, a ticket to my live event in September, which by the way, you can join us here in Nashville in person, or you can join on live stream. You're going to get access to a private Facebook group with me where I go live and coach you between now and then. We want to give you all of the bonus items, all the free stuff to say thank you for pre-ordering because

it helps us with our marketing. We're not trying to hide anything. We just tell you it helps us. That's why we do pre-sale. Ken Coleman's new book is also on pre-sale and that's why we do it that way is because it helps us and then we help you when we give you all that good free stuff you can get all of that at ramsey solutions.com and by the way we're running a sale today if you order a copy of take back your time in addition to all that stuff i just said you also get a free copy of Take Back Your Time, in addition to all that stuff I just said, you also get a free copy of my devotional, an e-book of Living True, 40 Days to Get Back to You. You get all this stuff.

It's a lot of stuff. You could give some of it away for Christmas gifts. Just get your copy, then give out all that other stuff for Christmas gifts. I'm helping you Christmas shop early. Look at that.

And save on your budget because you get it free. Oh, yeah. All right, we're going to go to Jacob in Nashville, my hometown of Nashvilleashville tennessee where we are hey jacob how are you good how are you all good what's going on well first thank you so much for taking my call um so in about eight days i'm getting married congratulations thank

you so much we're very excited. She has been awesome. She's got a great job. She's paid off all of her debt. She actually just paid off her car. She's got at least three months of expenses saved up. I tend to be on the other end of the spectrum. I just graduated from PA school, got a job, but with that came about $180,000 worth of student debt.

And so combined, we'll be making a pretty great income. We'll be bringing home about $200,000 a year. And so we'd be able to pay on my debt pretty quickly, and we both want to do that. But I also wanted to call and say, because I've been looking at the baby steps, and given that we will be making so much money, and my minimum payment is only $2,100 a month, which we're going more than that. That's more than my mortgage, man.

Just a small $2,100. Go on, Jacob. I'm with i'm with you well yeah i didn't mean to say it like that but yeah um we were thinking you know taking the extra income that we'll have on top of already paying over on my student debt and jumping to one of the later baby steps and saving 15 or going ahead and making sure that we do have our three months expenses, you know, saved and doing that. And I just wanted to get your thoughts on that and see what your opinion was. Yes. So the short answer is no. That's the very short answer to that. The reason is, Jacob, for over 30 years and millions and millions of people, the baby steps are in that order for a reason. And it's because it's the shortest path between you and wealth. When you have debt, any type of debt, any interest rate, any time frame for your

payments, it doesn't matter. I don't care what the fine print is on your debt. It's always a risk. It's always stealing your income and stealing your future. So our number one goal is to get it out of here. Our number one goal is to get rid of any type of debt at any amount at any interest rate. So should you fast forward and skip baby steps? No, never, not ever, not ever in any situation. What we want to do is you're going to be making $200,000 a year. You've got $180,000. $180,000, yes. Okay.

I want you to live on nothing for that first year or two, and you can get this knocked out really quickly. And then you can save up your emergency fund, and then you can invest, and you can do so with unbelievable momentum and progress and margin and control and no risk and no worries and no payments. And that's the way that we want you to do it. And I don't want you to feel bad about getting married and bringing all this debt in because with that debt, you're going to work as a team and get it paid off.

You're going to have a great income. Both of you are going to work as a team and get it paid off. You're going to have a great income. Both of you are going to have great incomes. And in eight days, you are becoming one, which means your bank accounts are becoming one. Your goals are becoming one. And so I know sometimes it can be hard for the person coming into marriage that has the debt to feel like, oh, my gosh, well, I just need to pay this off on my own.

There's this temptation of like, I don't want to drag you down. You're going to drag you both down if you don't work as work as a team. You got to combine y'all's income, y'all's goals, y'all's effort, y'all's focus to get this knocked out. And when you do, y'all will both make progress faster. You will make so much more progress than if you try to do this separately, individually, any kind of sneaky skipping baby steps leapfrog. We don't do that. This is because this order works and we want to get that out of here as soon as possible. Yeah, absolutely. In 30 years of doing the show, I don't think I've ever heard Dave say, you get to leapfrog the baby steps. And Jacob, I'm sure you're uniquely created by God, you're special, but you're not special when it comes to the baby steps. You're not that special,

Jacob. Christy gave you the why and the heart behind it. Let me give you the how and the what and the tactical here. You don't make $200,000. Starting today, you make $50,000. And after taxes, my guess is you guys bring home $150,000, right? So you're going to put $100,000 towards this debt, and this thing's going to be gone in under two years. And if you have any savings, we're throwing that on there except for $1,000 for that starter emergency fund. And here's what's going to happen. You're going to start to believe that you can get rid of $180,000 for that starter emergency fund. And here's what's going to happen. You're going to start to believe that you can get rid of $180,000 in under two years. And you know how I know it can happen? Because you have an amazing income and you have an amazing wife who's going to be on board, who's going to get fired up with this about you, with you. And then guess what? In less

than two years, you guys have a giant pile of money to throw at the emergency fund, and you'll be investing in no time. Jacob, stay on the line. I want Kelly to give you and your fiancé a membership to Ramsey Plus. This is our proven course. We also have our budgeting app inside there, Financial Peace University is inside Ramsey Plus. We've got all this content and teaching. And what's going to be cool is in the next two years, which is a marathon for you, while you're tackling this debt together, it's going to keep you inspired. It's not just going to give you the tools to do it, which you'll have that, which is

great. It's also going to keep you motivated and inspired. That'll give you some of the language to talk about when y'all have your budget meetings and to, you know, even as a newlywed couple, just to get on the same page with your finances, whatever your finances are. It gives you something to talk about. It gives you some language around it. It's going to give you that motivation. So get on the same page with your finances, whatever your finances are. It gives you something to talk about. It gives you some language around it. It's going to give you that motivation.

So stay on the line. We'll give you that as a wedding gift and congratulations. Listen, if you do this, if you do it like George and I are telling you, if you knock it out, if you live like you're living on $50,000, you know, if you live on hardly anything, you've got so much margin to put to that and then you are going to have so much money when it's gone. If you let it hang around, you will not have so much money. You will make a really good income and continue to feel broke. And you're not broke. You're just choosing to let that stick around. And we don't want that to happen. And so knock it out. You can do it. And then give us a call in less than two years when you're debt free. And you do that debt

free scream and George and I will be celebrating you. George, when Matt and I got married, I did not have any debt. I paid off my last final debt, my car payment, right before he proposed, the week before he proposed. I didn't know he was proposing that week. It was just great timing. But I didn't bring any savings into our marriage, and he had savings. And I remember feeling a sense of guilt because we had to pay for our wedding and some stuff by ourselves. And so I didn't have the debt I was bringing, but I had the lack of

savings. And sometimes when there's an inequality, you can feel like the bad guy. You're not the bad guy. You made bad decisions. You're a different person. You're doing things differently. And Matt, of course, was filled with grace. But man, when you bring your money together and you work as a team, it changes everything.

Everything. That's such a good call out. Everything. All right. I want to thank producer Ben Hill and associate producer Kelly Daniel and my co-host George Camel and You America for hanging out with us. This is The Ramsey Show. Hey, it's Kelly, associate producer for The Ramsey Show. This episode is over, but if you heard about an event, product, or service and didn't have a chance to write it down, don't worry.

We list everything you've heard about during this episode in the podcast show notes section or head to theramseyshow.com. Thanks for listening.