The Ramsey Show - App - What’s the Best Way To Budget? (Hour 3)

Episode Date: October 4, 2023

Девочка-пай Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create amazing relationships. I'm George Campbell, co-host of Smart Money Happy Hour, and of course, leading the charge on the George Campbell YouTube channel joined by Dr. John Deloney host of the Dr. John Deloney show you can catch all those shows on the Ramsey Network and a lot of other places as well we're pretty much

everywhere these days all over everywhere so give us a call at 888-825-5225 if you want to jump into the conversation if you've got that question about money life relationships whatever it may be we'll give you our best. And sometimes it's not great, but it's what you got. But it is free.

It won't cost you nothing. All right. Nick starts us off in Salt Lake City. Nick, welcome to the show. Hey. So, yeah, I've had a pretty big life change recently as far as income goes. About a year ago, I was making $2,000 a month working at a steel plant. And then my brother-in-law told me that he thought I could sell, and it turns out I could.

And my income has now been quintupled. I don't know. It would take me five years to do what I mean. It's an insane jump, and my wife and I are trying to manage it and I feel like we're hemorrhaging and we haven't saved enough considering how much we've made. Congratulations. Congrats. So what are we talking? Are we talking 10K a month?

Closer to 20. Whoa. Congrats. Is that your take home pay? And my boss thinks... Was that gross income? I'm not sure what my...'s the other thing i got to figure out taxes in this too and so i just oh they're not taking taxes out nope nope i'm technically a

self-employed 1099 okay so you better be putting away 30 of that every single month in a savings account i'm putting away so we save so we have between our taxes and then our church donation, we put aside about 45%. Okay. And then we live off of about, well, our budget puts us at 10%, but I feel like we're not doing that as what we're living off of. And then we try to save the other 45, but that's not what's been happening. How long has this been going on about six months okay cut yourself a whole bunch of slack okay yeah like you this is this rare air congratulations y'all had a fun run and now you got to go be adults and it's all good okay yeah don't live in the aw shucks ah because what you are experiencing is the upside of sales. What you haven't experienced is when our congressmen decide to throw tennis balls at each other

just for fun and shoot each other with Nerf guns and shut everything down, the other side of sales, right? You're like a farmer now. Yeah. And you farm, make no money, no money, no money, then crops, and then no money, right? So that's awesome. You just got to plan for the future. So six months, y'all had a wild time, good times, and now we've got to be grownups, right? Yeah. Okay. So give us a picture of your

financial situation. Do you guys have any debt? Do you have money in savings? So we have a little, the only debt we've brought on was on the advice of our accountant to try and bring our tax liability down. We bought my wife a new car. Before that, she had a little car that we had paid off, and I have a truck that I have paid off. Your accountant told you to go get a car loan? He told us to get a loan so we could, not necessarily a loan, but to buy a car so we could use it as a write-off. Oh my gosh. Dude, is Michael Scott your accountant? Like, how did you think this was a good idea? That was, it's what I've had a lot of people around me that they said that's what they did.

And so that's what we kind of thought we should do. You need different people around you. We're not drowning necessarily, but yeah. Okay, what's the car loan? It is $32,000. Okay. The good news is you have an amazing income and you can pay this thing off really fast. And it's now not too big of a portion of your world.

60 days. Got it. If you were making two grand a month, I would be like, sell this car today. 60 days. Yeah. Six zero. Got it? Okay.

60 days. You have to make very focused goals with your money right now. You're in baby step two. You have a thousand bucks in the bank. I assume you have a lot more than that in the bank. Right now we have about 15 in the bank. 15 in the bank. So this car loan can already get cut in half today. And then with the next few paychecks, it can be gone. 15 in the bank. I guess if you include, I won't talk about the tax account, but yeah, 15 in the bank. Okay. Tax account, that is untouchable. We don't touch it, don't touch it, don't touch it.

It does not exist until tax time. And they go, hey, you owe $60,000 in taxes. And instead of going, oh my gosh, you went, okay, yeah, we save for that. Great. So we're going to pay off this car as soon as possible. Then we're going to stack up three to six months of expenses in an emergency fund that we also don't touch unless there's a true emergency. Yeah, and that's what this money is for because we live off of about, including the car, about $2,500 a month because our rent is only $800. Great. So this will help accelerate you to Baby Steps 456. Now, are you in a home? You said you're

renting. You want to buy a home one day? We want to buy a home next year. Right now, the situation we're in, we got fortunate, I suppose. My wife's grandparents have a house. It's a 4-2 that they rent us. And so we're in a pretty good situation right now. For $800 in your Salt Lake City? No, well, we're close to Salt Lake. Nick, you all are winning life right now.

You've fallen through a glitch in the matrix, man. This is your chance to get ahead. Yeah, I mean, it's just... I mean, I just learned I have a talent in sales. I mean, I've broken every record this company had, and it just was... It's a lot to handle. But also, but six months, you can have a lot of talent, or you could

have just gotten real lucky. Yeah, there is that, too. I don't know if that's the thing. Right, both. So it's probably a little bit of both. And so, George, tell me if I'm crazy here. I almost sense a need for you guys, you and your wife, to roll back for maybe just say we're going to do a 90-day sprint,

but roll back some of the gazelle intensity remember what it felt like to be broke and get that laser focused yeah because if you don't you're gonna wake up in a mess yeah you're gonna buy a house that you can't afford you buy a house based on 20 000 bucks a month and then the builder is gonna be like what are you doing? Your income's going to keep going up, and you're going to buy a house based off $30,000 a month, and someone's going to tell you, you've got to get a car to write off too, and you're going to get a BMW, and next thing you know,

you're going to be Dave Ramsey and be broke. Yeah. So here's the deal. You've got to keep living like you make $2,000 a month for the next six months until you're out of this hole, you're in a great place, you have a financial foundation, you're investing 15%, you're saving money towards that down payment because you have like a fake life right now, paying 800 bucks a month in rent, making $20,000 a month.

Utilize this while you can instead of the YOLO vibes that you've been putting out, and you will be in such a great place financially six months from now. Me and George tried to convince people for three years. The government is not charging you any interest on your student loans. There's never been a better time in human history to pay them off than right this second. Your payments are on sale. And 1%-

My wife and I have zero student debt. I know what I'm saying. 1% of America took our advice. Oh, yeah. The other 99 are right now going, Oh God, what are we going to do? Similar to you.

If you for six months, pretend that y'all are broke and you get an entire, an emergency fund, you pay off this, a car, get a new accountant, go to Ramsey solutions.com slash tax, get a new accountant.

God sakes. Um, fire Michael Scott. But you do this for six months, you owe nobody anything, you have six months emergency fund built up and y'all starting a house fund? Brother, your whole world is different. And so is your marriage. Everything is different.

Congratulations, man. Never do it for the write-off. That's just life advice for you, America. This is The Ramsey Show. Hey, you guys. Health insurance costs are only moving one way, and that way isn't down. And if higher costs aren't enough, the wait times to see your doctor are longer, and it's harder than ever to get anything approved through the bureaucracy.

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CHM programs start as low as $98 a month. So learn more today and join at chministries.org slash budget. That's chministries.org slash budget. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Campbell, joined by Dr. John Deloney. And if you haven't heard, our first ever Money and Marriage Getaway is happening October 19th through the 21st, right here in Nashville, Tennessee, just up the hill from our headquarters at our brand new Ramsey Event Center. And I'm so stoked about this event. And I found out, John, I'm going to be a part of it. Did you know that? I fought hard. I made the lineup. To not have you on the lineup, but they're bringing you aboard. Well,oney and rachel cruz have uh notoriously

headlined this event for years now but this time it is a full weekend getaway people are traveling from all over the country to hang out and i will be talking about sex and intimacy which i'm excited don't misunderstand john they're excited to hear your your sessions or budgeting which is very similar yeah both have been known to cause great joy i'm pretty clear on the minute by minute i saw recently that i'm taking baby steps one two and three jade will be covering this is gonna be a nightmare and you will be talking about i love the fact that i said sex and intimacy and you were blushing well i was trying to think of a joke I could tell on air that was family friendly. We don't have, yeah.

So it was tough. But I will, can I tell you the name of my talk I'll be giving? Yes, spice it up. Pillow Talk, The Dirty Secrets of Budgeting. I was very proud of that one. And it involves pillows. So that's one reason. One of many reasons.

Those aren't pillows. Excellent, George. We're going to have so much fun. This really is such a blast. And you and your spouse will be equipped with tools to cast a vision for your family, set goals, create a life you both love. And at the Money in Marriage Getaway, you will have the, get this, undistracted time to disconnect from everyday life and reconnect with your spouse. There's going to be interactive sessions. Rachel Cruz, Dr. John Deloney, Jade Warshaw, myself, we're going to be your guides to discuss money, communication, boundaries, intimacy, and tickets cost $7.99 for this multi-day event

for couples. So if you're out of debt and you've got room in the budget, please, please join us. We're going to have so much fun October 19th through the 21st. Come make it a party in Nashville, Tennessee. RamseySolutions.com slash events. We've still got some tickets left. That's the place to go. RamseySolutions.com slash events. It's going to be different than Ramsey events in the past for a couple different things. One is it's not just going to be us

doing keynote after keynote after keynote. Very different format. There's a whole lot of time of access. Here's what we do in our house let's have q a let's talk a lot of behind the scenes a lot of q a a lot of activity time let's figure this stuff out yeah so a lot of working this through the goal is is that um when we leave when all of us leave we have some tools to go home and make our marriages better and we have some time to practice this with experts and other people while we're there.

And there's going to be other people practicing too, so you're not going to be by yourself. And it's not going to be me and Rachel and you and Jade. Do what? It's not going to be me and you and Rachel and Jade. What'd you say? I thought producer James was talking trash. James is doing the sex talk.

That was my bad j james will be talking about sex intimacy okay but it's not it you're gonna come away having spent considerable time with us we're not talking at you we're talking with you we're all working on our marriages too so it's going to be something that we're all going to do together i'm pretty excited about it stoked on this event and at that point i will be the dad of a two-month-old so maybe i'll do a talk on parenting i'll be be an expert. You are an expert. You are an expert. So you had to change a diaper like you've never seen before. This is going to be fun. I bet your diapering skills are A+. I try and I'm a little OCD, John. A little? I try to get the ruffles out. I try to make the

little flaps even. It's all right. We'll get there. Let's get to the calls before James takes us off the air. Georgia is in Chicago. Georgia, welcome to the Ramsey Show. Thank you. Hello. What's going on? I bought a car the end of July, and I was lied to about the price of the car. It was from someone that I go to church with, and I signed the contract without looking at it because I trusted this man, and now I can't afford this car.

Okay, tell me more. What do you mean you were lied to about the cost? So they said it was a certain price, and you paid that price. Yes, they told me on the phone it was $25,000. Okay. I had gone to take a trip two days after I bought it to North Carolina. There were some issues with the car, and out of frustration I was looking at the paperwork I got from the sales

and noticed that they had charged me $7,000 more for the car than what I was told. Okay. I'm so confused as to how you walked out of there having paid $32,000. That wasn't a red flag to you? Like it came out, how did you pay for the car? I went to my credit union, but like I said, it was from someone from my church and I trusted him. So after we had discussed, you know, the cost and all the taxes and everything, and the $3,000 I was going to get out of my old car, I kind of figured it would take me down to about $22,000 for the car.

So after discussing all this with him and signed a contract without reading it, because, again, I trusted this man. So it was out of the frustration when I pulled the paper out of my glove box, I had noticed that it was $32,000, not $25,000. For the actual price of the car? Did they tack on fees, warranties? No. What made it $32,000?

That was the actual price. What did he say when you called him? He told me that they had had two other Ford Escapes on the lot and probably just got it mixed up. So what are they going to do to make it right? They ain't going to do nothing. I've contacted multiple. I bet you I have called 30 lawyers. And because I signed that contract.

No, this has nothing to do with lawyers. This has to do with, have you gone up to meet in person with management, not angry and not enraged, but say, hey, this salesman is a friend of mine. He told me this number. He admitted that they mixed it up. He admitted that they mixed up the cars.

I want the car that I discussed with the salesman because you all switched the cars on me. Yes, I did. And they still refuse to do anything about it. Even if the salesman would have told the manager that he told me that, they still refuse to do anything about it. Okay. And you've talked to attorneys and they say, sorry? Yes. Okay. So if you have a legal professional telling you their ethical duty is to not take your money

because you don't have a case, that means you don't have a case. And sometimes they'll tell you, we don't know that you have a case, but we think we can win this. Let's figure something out. And what they've all told you is, honey, we're not going to take your money.

It would be unethical for us to take your money what does that mean you found yourself in a quandary and so i want you to do me a favor okay as hard as this is going to be i want you for a while to forget about that man that you said you trusted because that doesn't factor into the situation that you found yourself in now okay did he Did he do you wrong? Yes. Did he lie? Yes. Did he not protect you? Whatever. But you said the words, I kind of figured, and then I signed a contract. And that's, that is you as an adult have to say, I also signed a contract without looking at the final numbers. I did take his word, but I didn't do my due diligence also. And here I sit with this thing and now I got to figure out what to do. Is that cool?

Because here's what you're doing. That anger and that rage that you have, however justified and right it is, he's off doing his thing. It's only poisoning you, right? Yes. So let's do our best to set that down. However righteous and unjust it is,

you've got to deal with a car that you can't afford. So when you say you can't afford it, what does that mean? It's actually, the price of the car was $32,000, but by the time I attach a warranty on that, I'm up to $38,000 now. What is the loan amount? If I wait seven years, $48,000. No, not if you wait seven years. What was the loan amount you took out?

$38,000. Okay, and what is your income? It's $3,100 a month. Okay, and what is the car worth today? I'm going to guess around $25,000. Okay. Here's the deal. You bought too much car anyways,

even if it was $25,000. And so here's what you can do. You could probably get rid of that warranty and they can refund you for that. You can leave Yelp reviews. You can call the local news and get them to do a story. But at the end of the day,

you've got to realize, I've got to pay a stupid tax. I played a giant role in this conundrum. And you might have to sell it and eat the cost of that and come up with the difference to get rid of this loan and get a reasonable car. But you sure learned your lesson. You're always going to read the fine print of every single thing you sign for the rest of your life. And I'm sorry that you had to learn it a hard way. We're hoping for the best for you, hoping this can get resolved from this dealership, Georgia. Thanks for the call.

This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. Hey, if you enjoy this show, please consider doing something that costs you very little time or money, and that is consider subscribing to the show, leaving a review where you're listening, and sharing it with a friend. It's one of the best ways to share the show. We have a marketing budget of close to zero because you guys are the marketing budget, because you're naturally talking about this, sharing this. Hey, you got to check out this clip. You got to listen to this episode. I listen to the Ramsey Show and podcast.

Wherever you're listening, tell people about it. It helps a ton, and we so, so appreciate it. We want to spread this message to as many people as possible in the next year. All right, let's get back to the phones. Sean joins us in Durham. Up next, Sean, welcome to the Ramsey Show. Howdy. Thanks for having me. Sure. What's going on? So my wife and I have an impasse on some financial decisions. And since we got ourselves in the clear using Ramsey Solutions 20 years ago, we figured we'd call y'all to try and help us with this dispute. All right. I'm Team Sean, George is Team Wife.

Let's go. We'll defend both of your honors. So we've got a daughter that's finishing up high school, um, looking at college career field that she's looking at. It's probably a graduate school type thing. Um, and just looking at the schools and looking at the cost of housing. Um, I'm looking at it and I'm thinking, you know what, I'd rather just buy her a place and, you know, build on an investment. And my wife's looking at that decision and suggestion and going, we don't take out any more debt until our own home is completely paid off. And, you know, looking at the baby steps, looking at all the advice through the years,

we're just trying to figure out if we're in the same place or if that's something we should be considering. Man, John is regretting choosing your team at this point. I am too. Dang it. We are so close. Man, your wife's right, Sean. Your wife's right. So you're seeing this on paper, right? You're looking at it on paper going, man, we're going to spend a thousand bucks a month for the next four years, six years.

Might as well get some ROI out of this. Is that the idea? An ROI, but also possibly a place you could live in long-term. Where is she going to school? It's an investment in my kids. We're looking at North Carolina, Wilmington on the coast. Okay. So a few hours for you guys? How far is that? It's about two, two and a half, maybe three hours on a bad day,

which most days are bad days when people want to go to the beach. Okay. So let's say HVAC goes out at this place. Are you driving three hours to go fix it? No, we're hiring someone to take care of that. Okay, so that's going to be something to think about. Yeah, team Sean on that answer. What kind of question was that, George?

Well, it's a possibility. People don't want to pay the property management fees. And what is the cost of rent out there? Let's say she lived on campus. Does she plan on living on campus um i mean i'm we're we're weighing the cost right now because mike my fear is what if she gets some FOMO and is like man i'd love to live on campus next year and you're like no i bought you a place you have to live there and now you're renting to random college kids well and almost every

college i know of has a freshman live-on requirement. Is that right? She won't technically be a freshman because of the number of credits she's pulling because she's doing college while she's in high school. Ah, okay. So let's back out of this and look another direction. Dude, I've lived that life. I know the room and board is astronomical, particularly the boarding. The colleges make a significant amount of money off the board plan with their markup. I know, too.

There you go. So you know how that game works. And so let's do the – well, what college do you work at? I work at North Carolina Central University. Okay. We could talk offline about that. Sure. So what do you owe on your house? We owe a hundred grand. We've gotten it down to a hundred.

How long would it take y'all to do a sprint and get that sucker paid off? Our best scenario, for about five years, we've been chunking like about 20K into it every summer off of my wife's seasonal income. So we've been hitting it hard for a while. Our best scenario is three to five years. Okay. Yeah. And that's not figuring into the scenario of, you know, we plan on bankrolling her education. That was the other question is, is this college completely paid for, for sure?

We're going to basically shift into pounding down the house into paying for college. Okay. So I'm going to say something that's never a fun conversation, but it's unfortunately one I've had to have probably 10,000 times in the last 20 years. I way overstated that, but such it is. You're a professor. Your child has said, here's what I want to do. Probably going to end up in grad school. That makes sense. That's the path her dad took. It may even be the path her mom took. Both me and my wife went to grad school for a long time. Both of us have been professors, all that. And you and I also both know that every year, millions of people enter in as freshmen with very clear plans. And millions of students every year change plans, meet somebody. I met a girl at a church camp just a few weeks before school started,

and I turned down a full ride to go somewhere else. So it's all over the place. What I would hate for you to do, if you told me, hey, I've got cash, I want to buy a condo and whatever, I would say, buy it right now. Awesome. But if you're saying, I'm still trying to pay off my house, we're going to shift paying off the house into helping cashflow college and so we're gonna take out a second mortgage on a place man that you're leveraging your family and i hate to say it like this but you know i'm right at the whims of an 18 year old and that's a i would tell you i wouldn't tell you to do that just for you and your wife if y'all wanted to have a airbnb or whatever but even more so man that makes me nervous that from knowing how many college students i've worked with over

the years that have great plans and then mom gets sick boyfriend moves my professor quits they shut down the program any number of things happen and suddenly you've got you got a house payment to make and you have a child who's like, well, dad, I'm just going to come back home and I'm going to go to Central. And all of a sudden you're like, well, what are we going to do now? You see what I'm saying? Right. I just wouldn't do it. Yep. Yep. And I know how hard that board plan is to, God almighty, how hard that board plan is to pay for. Jeez, man, that hurts. It's just, yeah, I look at all the hard work we've done and looking at what would be half of what would possibly go into our house

is just going out the window. Well, I mean, it's providing her a place to eat and it's a place to sleep. I mean, it's not going out the window, but I see that you're not going to, you don't have what you project might be a return on this down the road. Yeah. Seeing that they're, for a lot of it, like if you're going to Duke, right, you'd be required to live on campus. Correct. So, yeah, there's no option.

There's just so many variables here. And if one thing goes wrong, this whole plan falls apart. And at 7% interest on top of your current mortgage, it's going to add more stress than it's going to be a blessing. And I'd rather see her go get a part-time job while she's in school. She needs to help pay for some of this. I like that plan a lot. I think kids are resilient. Part-time's an understatement with my daughter.

Yeah, I think full-time's good. You're a great dad. I don't think this is the move. I kind of love you, man. I wish Sean was my dad. Sean, buy me an investment condo, please. I like my dad, but I do like your you, man. I wish Sean was my dad. Sean, buy me an investment condo, please. I like my dad, but I do like your heart, man. And I just tried to think through all this.

That's fantastic. Absolutely. Well, John, that reminded me. On this desk, a team member of ours got this, a letter for his daughter from Discover. The Discover it student cash back card. She's 18, debt free. This man lives by the Ramsey principles. And she's getting marketed all this very

bright pink garbage and it's amazing, John, how they market to these college students. Hey, can I tell you, when I saw the envelope, I thought you were going to embarrass me with like a money marriage love letter. I'm not kidding. I wish. Nope. What is this? Here's the love letter, John. Save money while you build your credit history. Enjoy 0% intro

APR on purchases for six months and then it says, after that, your standard variable purchase APR applies currently 18 to 27%. You know how many 18-year-olds know what that is? Less than.01%. They're not looking at that. All they see is 5% cashback on Amazon

quarterly. No interest? And here's what they market. A good credit history could help you buy a car, rent an apartment, and more. Start building yours by applying below. Goodness gracious. Predators, man. This is disgusting. Predators.

But hey, the cards are pretty, John. Hey, that should be the... That should be a segment on the George Campbell Show, to catch a predator. Ooh. And you should read... The fine print from credit card companies? Credit card... Oh my gosh....ads that are preying on certain groups of people.

Military folks, elderly folks, 18-year-olds, everybody. Yeah. Hey, parents, do yourselves a favor. Intercept this junk mail and shred it, light it on fire, and then explain to your kids why they should never sign up for a credit card at 18 years old. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show, our scripture of the day, 2 Corinthians 4.18. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen. Since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. Al Reese said, you don't have to focus on everything to be successful,

but you do have to focus on something. Good stuff there. Addie joins us up next in Anchorage. Addie, welcome to the show. Hey, thank you. What's going on? All right. So me and my husband are in baby steps four, five, and six. This is a question that if whenever I was paying off my $100,000 in student loan debt, I would have rolled my eyes at because we're in a position now where we can financially afford to get our vehicles fixed. However, it feels like this week has just been one thing after another. We have $60,000 in our savings and a mortgage of $280,000.

We have two paid-for cars. And one is what I would say like a beater. We got it and we shared it for a year. It has $1,000 worth of things that need to be fixed on it, but my husband believes that he can handle that. And so that is our Trailblazer 04. And then we have a 2017 Hyundai that we paid for in cash in 2021. It was kind of in the, I'm sorry, in 20, yeah, 2021.

It was kind of in the incline of like the appreciation of cars, used car value. We're a wet mess. We paid $16,000. Yes, we paid $16,000 for this 2017 Santa Fe Hyundai. And it was Kelly Blue booking for around $21,000. So we felt like we had a good deal. We had a mechanic check it out. And it has been a good car for us for the past two years.

Since then, we've added two kids. And this week, I have been in the car auto shop place for over six hours with two children under two. And so I'm frustrated. And we have, um, today I was told that in order to get the, um, Hyundai fix, the one that we have the most invested into, it's going to be $5,700. Now I understand that this is just one person's quote. However, I don't imagine that that number will fluctuate too much going to a different auto shop in our area. And so me and my husband are presented with the issue to be able to decide, are we going to put in $5,700 in order to get it fixed? And it's not like a cosmetic issue. It's more of like an engine issue. I hope it's not cosmetic for that much. That's wild.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I don't care. You should see our trailblazer. And it's like, we didn't even know Alaska had radio until we got a new car. And so we piled through our debt and moved up here to do that. And so we paid off $100,000 in a couple years. Way to go. So we're in a good position financially, and we have the savings in order to just go out and buy. You said you had $50,000 in savings? We have $60,000 in savings, and $20,000 of that would be our three to six month emergency fund, our expenses.

And so we just put, like literally last week, put up the pay off the house picture in order to shade off room by room. And then we get hit with this. So we just trying to decide, would you put in the money to fix the Hyundai, which is, Kelly, we're looking around $16,000 right now. Is that with the repairs that need to be made? It would not. That would include if it was just fine and ready to go. Okay, so if you paid this $5,700, you could sell it for $16,000? Yes.

Okay. And if you don't, you're selling it for $10,000 or less? Yes. Got it. And you're wondering, do we do this, or do we just upgrade the car and sell it as is for the $10,000? Right. So let's say you sell it for 10 and you buy another car with 20 that's 30 you can put towards something, but they would just hurt emotionally?

Because either way, this sucks. Yeah. It's not like there's an amazing shortcut. How do we move past this? We actually have money in order to upgrade or to fix, but we are feeling like, I guess, the pressure of just like, we don't want to think another. Listen, there's no pressure.

Any pressure you feel is imaginary. Anytime I get desperate or I get frustrated, I make stupid choices. Stupid, yes. You just spent six hours in a mechanic shop with two little kids. You should make no decisions. None. Not even what's for dinner for 72 hours.

Every nerve you have. It's like getting, like you just have like four root canals just unfilled right now. Right? I would rather fly to Alabama on a plane with those two

than sit in an auto. All day long, yes. Shots fired at the state of Alabama. So listen, there's zero pressure. That's where we're from. Oh, there we go. Listen, you have $50,000 in the bank. You have no pressure here.

What you have to decide is how you want to solve this problem. But you have the tools to solve it. So any pressure you feel, I would say, slow down a hundred percent chance. Get another opinion on this. That's a really high. I totaled my car, totaled it. And they said the repair, um, was going to be about 6,000 bucks. I don't know what they're repairing on a Hyundai for, for what is that? Five thousand, six to six thousand bucks. Who knows? Maybe they got to replace the entire engine,

but it's, I feel like you could get an entire engine for $6,000. Right. Here's the other piece I want you to think through. I can't think of a climate that would beat up a car more than Anchorage, Alaska. And I don't know, you keep calling these cars.

I've invested this money and you are not, you're putting money in a depreciating asset. There is no investment happening here. So you keep spending money on your vehicles, which is great. You have the money, you'll work hard and you're kicking butt. I would not personally spend a whole bunch of money on brand new cars in a climate where half the year the roads are salted like crazy where i'm getting rocks and snow and they're frozen i wouldn't i wouldn't invest that kind of money in a really nice car for sure and so i think that y'all need a nice dinner and some time away from this for just a second because what's going to happen is you're

going to go we have to get a brand new fifty thousand dollar car because remember that time we were in the shop for six hours it was awful so you need to give yourself a little bit of space before you make a terrible financial decision and maybe even this you know what i i know on the ramsay show we're like just make it and then move on i can see if if let's say this you're my wife and we're having this conversation and we both agree, let's just bite the bullet and pay the money and fix this car. If I'm your husband, I would go get the car detailed, super nice, get the carpet shampooed, clean it up, maybe get to put a radio in it. I'm going to do something so it feels a little bit not like that old car that just cost you an entire day of your

life and $6, more dollars, right? There's a little, that's a nothing, it's a token, but it is like a, it's an olive branch towards, Hey, we got bigger goals. And our bigger goal is we paid off a hundred grand and now let's buy ourselves a home. And let's just don't have one pissed off, awful kids screaming diapers everywhere day in a mechanic shop, and then spend $30,000 on a depreciating asset that Alaska is going to destroy. Right. I know that's so fun. I don't think we were helpful at all. No, take a breather and either way is going to be okay.

Listen, you have $50,000. Hear me say this. Any anxiety you feel is imaginary. If you called me and said, I'm a single mom of two kids in Anchorage, Alaska, and they told me I have to have $6,000 and I have no money, then I would be scared to death for you. That's not your situation.

I'm in a position where I need to change my mindset of we are out of debt. We are free. We are not in this stress anymore, and we have the position to make a decision rather than just let life happen to us. Yes. Now what you're doing is you're transitioning from this is an emergency to this is super annoying. Just an inconvenience.

Super annoying. Man. Because we want to do something else for that $6,000, like anything else other than fix this car. But here we are. I'll tell you one story john life hack we were going to buy my car my wife upgrade her old car it was going to be like 18 grand for like a mazda suv this is back in 2020 and instead we found one that was way older but it was eight grand and i was like how about this i'll put carplay in it so i spent like $700 and got the thing upgraded with CarPlay and it felt like a brand new car.

I drove it the other day. It got a detail really nice. It was awesome. It was fantastic. But there's always that thing in your mind where you're like, we need that new car, John. It's so much more reliable. No, you've got to get over it.

It's mostly for ego at that point. Just bite the bullet, pay the money, and then do one little nice thing to make it super nice. We both destroy our cars. Yes. And I've seen your car, John. You personally destroyed it. I've pushed your car down the highway, so there's that.

That's a true story. We don't talk about that. We don't talk about Bruno or my Tesla. That puts this hour of The Ramsey Show in the books. Until next time, spend wisely, save intentionally, and give generously. Hey, it's George Camel. If you like what you heard in this episode and want to know more about getting started on the Ramsey Baby Steps, go to ramsaysolutions.com and click on the Get Started button. We'll help you figure out the best next step for you based on your specific situation. That's ramsaysolutions.com and click Get Started.