The Ramsey Show - App - What's Your "Never Again" Moment? (Hour 3)

Episode Date: June 15, 2020

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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, it's the Dave 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. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thank you for joining us, America. It's a free call at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Jay is with us in Texas starting off this hour. Hi, Jay. How are you?

Hey, Dave. I've been listening to you since I was 15 and now in my late 20s. So, huge fan and wanted to kind of seek your advice. Well, I'm honored. How can I help? Yeah. Everyone, including my family members, church friends, and financial advisors are saying my wife and I should buy a house, but we just felt like it's best to continue renting at this point, and we just kind of wanted to kind of see your take on this. i mean to start with no one gets a vote except you and your wife unless you give unless you give them a vote but i wouldn't give people

a vote if i don't agree with their vote and so um you know if you have a financial advisor that's advising you to do something financially that you don't think is wise, then you have the wrong financial advisor. If your mom and dad have boundaries issues, then they have boundaries issues. If your friends can't keep their mouth shut, then, you know, they're just going to have to learn which topics you allow people to talk about. But I don't let people tell me what I'm going to do with my money. And you're a grown man. You don't either.

Now, is it let's look at the situation and i'll give you an opinion but even i don't get a vote unless you give me one you know you called and asked that's kind of giving me a vote but still you and your wife have to talk about it and go in light of this this is what we would consider uh you know i don't recommend nor do i believe you should rent your whole life right right right so why are you delaying buying what's your what's your wisdom on that so i mean our our belief is that you know like you said cash is king and you know i lived on the simple mentality if i don't have the money for it then i can't afford it and you know for me i really wanted to put you know 100 down um okay so you're saving to buy a house for cash and how long have you been doing that um we've been doing about for two years

or so okay and how long is it going to take you um probably three years more depending on three yeah three more years okay so you would be 31 and you would pay cash for a house is that what i understood yes how big a house is this um 700k 600k okay how much have you got saved now um well i currently have a,000 saved for the house itself, but my annual income will change significantly in two years. Okay. So you're going through a career shift or what? I finished my training. I'm in the medical profession, and I'll have a real paying job in two years.

In two years. Okay. So you're like in residency or something like that then, right? Yeah. Okay. so you're like in residency or something like that then, right? Yeah. Okay, cool. All right. Well, so you have a very clear vision for your life, a $700,000 paid-for house at 31 years old after you get out of residency.

Yes. And people's problem with that is what? They think you ought to buy something now while you're in residency? We technically have enough down payment money for a 20% down payment for a small lesser house and enough income right now for us between us for a 15-year mortgage. And what's your household income? It's currently 150k. And what city do you live in? We live in Houston, Texas. Will you remain there after your residency? That's the plan. Okay. So you have a hundred now, how quickly will you have 200? 200, well, so whenever I finish my residency, whenever I get my first paycheck, I should have

another hundred. Okay. And when do you finish residency? Two more years? So whenever I finish my residency, whenever I get my first paycheck, I should have another $100,000. Okay. And when do you finish residency? Two more years? Yeah, two more years. Okay. So you're going to make $500,000 in savings in one year? That should, I mean, the annual income should be $500,000 and my wife makes money too.

Okay. I don't dislike your plan what i was fishing for us kind of thinking about buying something a small something on the interim and paying cash for it still you know like if you could buy something that's why i was asking about 200 if you could buy something for two and it's probably tough to find something for 100 in houston that's much of anything i mean you probably find it but it might not be what you want i I mean, you may rather rent than that. And so do I think you are foolish for renting for three years while you finish residency and your income goes from $50,000 a year to $500,000 a year?

No, I do not. And you're paying cash at $31,000. And if you have an investment advisor that thinks that you're foolish and is shaming you for that, I would fire them. Gotcha. I think you're brilliant. I think you're quite the opposite of most doctors. And there are more broke doctors than there are broke musicians

because they all think they have a plan and they're so deeply in debt they can't breathe in most cases. We work with them all the time. Bro broke doctors are a stereotype in our world i'm a doctor or translation i have a lot of payments is what it usually means so uh you you're quite the opposite not all doctors are but i'm just saying there's a reason for the stereotype and you're quite the opposite of this i'm so proud of you i i i support your plan i don't think you're irrational um you you might be over here on the edge with me in the land of extreme uh but you're also going to make five hundred thousand dollars a year living in a seven hundred thousand dollar paid for house uh unless you're beating that plan you probably don't have a right to say anything to Mr. J.

You know, that's like people going, I don't think I agree with not borrowing money on real estate. Well, I own about $300 million worth that I paid cash for, so I don't really care whether you agree or not. You know, you don't really get a vote until you trump that card, right? And so beat that hand, and then we'll talk about your freaking opinion so you know that's you'd be nice to people but um you just smile and shake your head i mean we've all got friends and relatives that do crazy butt stuff i got relatives that vote wrong but i still love them you know and so you just have to kind of think that through and in your case i would just as dr deloney. John says, don't give him a vote in this instance.

And I know you don't understand, Dad, but this is my plan, and I'm going to stick to it. And I appreciate you. I know you love me, and I thank you for your input. But this is our plan, and we're going to stick to it. And I'm really not going to talk to you about it 73 more times. You're not going to hound me about it and i'd fire the financial advisor today and get another one if they're bugging you to go buy something because they think they got a doctor on the hook who's going to make 500 000 a year and they want him giving them a bunch of money to invest and they make a commission on instead of worrying about

you having a paid for house so their goals don't match up with yours wow impressive young guy congratulations doc you're not going to be a broke doc that's very cool this is the dave ramsey show This is The Dave Ramsey Show. No matter what time of year it is, focusing on your family's financial plan is always a smart move. I get questions all the time about where to start and what to do first. One of the most crucial and affordable first steps to take is to protect your family and get term life insurance. I know it's not glamorous, but all the other steps mean a lot less if something happens to you and your family has no financial protection. Getting term life insurance needs to be a top priority. I recommend 10 to 12 times your income and lock in rates for 15 to 20 years. This gives you plenty of time to get out of debt and build wealth. I've been recommending Zander Insurance for over 20 years and they

understand and live this strategy and will take the time to help you find the most affordable term life rates. Go to Zander.com or call 800-356-4282. It's not that expensive, it's not complicated, and you need to do it now. So for states that have been opened a while, it seems like a distant memory that there was an upheaval in the economy due to the coronavirus shutdown. For some of you, you're still trapped at home. And some of you are just beginning to make the transition back out into the sunlight. Either way, you have to look back and just for a second say, pretty much nationwide, there for a week or two, a month or two, we had an oh crap moment, didn't we?

People lost their jobs, some of you. Some of you were furloughed some of you were wondering if you were going to lose your job there's a lot of fear about the economy associated with the coronavirus shutdown the pandemic and i've heard for a whole bunch of you who the shutdown pretty well caused you to say never again. You know, we all have never again moments, don't we? This was a culture-wide, a country-wide never again moment. Never again am I going to be caught in this situation in debt and no savings. If you had $20,000 in credit card debt and $15,000 in car debt and no money in savings and this crap hit, you had a completely different experience from someone who had no debt and $20,000 in savings. It was a completely different experience.

The economics part of it, now different people reacted to the medical part of it with different levels of fear concern panic hysteria whatever and some of you just lost your minds or even mean to each other some of you were mean to us just because we were working oh my god people really so when you have a never again moment you say never again am I going to be caught in this situation. I'm going to control the controllables. I'm going to now do this Dave stuff. We were doing this Ramsey-ish. Now we're going to go full on.

We're going to use common sense principles, God's and Grandma's ways of handling money. We are giving you, and we started this during the pandemic because a lot of you were quarantined for 14 days and in some cases we thought some of the areas were going to only be shut down for 14 days that turned out to be a joke so we started with a 14-day free trial to financial peace university we've continued it and it includes not only financial peace and all nine lessons it includes the legacy journey class the smart money smart. And it includes not only financial peace and all nine lessons. It includes the Legacy Journey class, the Smart Money, Smart Kids class. It includes the upgrade of Every Dollar Plus.

Everything is there in a free 14-day trial to a financial peace membership. Go to DaveRamsey.com slash FPU and sign up today. That's DaveRamsey.com. That'll get you going. Jessica is with us in Tennessee. Hi, Jessica. How are you? I'm good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up?

I had a question. I feel like I'm sitting pretty comfortably, and I'm looking at the point where I want to invest some of my savings for a good future for myself and my fiancé. And I guess I needed or was hoping to get your input on what you think I should do. I have a traditional IRA in place, but I was actually thinking about converting it to a Roth IRA, and I was hoping to get your help from that point on.

Okay, cool. Do you have any debt? I don't. Good. Well, I have my house. Okay, good. And how much do you have in savings for emergencies? About $38, good. And how much do you have in savings for emergencies? About $38,000.

Yes. Okay. And what would three to six months of expenses be? Is that too much or is that about right? That sounds high. What's your monthly expenses for you to exist? You're not married yet. What's your monthly expenses for you to exist? Close to under $4,000, I would say. A month. Okay, so three months would be $12,000. Six months would be $24,000. Okay.

So let's call it $20,000. And that means you've got $18,000 to do something else with. When are you getting married? In October of this year. Good for you. Hopefully. If Corona doesn't mess it up. When are you getting married? In October of this year. Good for you. If Corona doesn't mess it up. I hear you. Does your fiancé have any debt?

He does. How much? He probably got close to about 15-ish, but we are working on it. Good. He is working on it. You should not be paying his bills. Yes, we are working on it. Good. He is working on it. You should not be paying his bills. Yes, he is working on it. After you're married, we work on it.

But until we're married, he works on it. So first thing I would do is make sure you've got some money set back to pay off whatever debt after the wedding that he has remaining. Okay. Okay. And so let's say he's going to pay his $15,000 down to $10,000. You've got $18,000 to work with, so we're going to set $10,000 aside for after the wedding to be debt-free. Then you would be debt-free with an emergency fund as a couple after the wedding,

after October. So that would be my first investment, in quotes, air quotes, that I would do. And then beyond that, we've still got another $ eight thousand dollars in our little equation we're doing here i'm just making this up but this is how i would do it um then you start putting money towards either a house down payment you already own a home are you guys going to live in your home yes we are okay that's solved then and so now we're talking about the r IRA. How much is in your current traditional IRA? $14,000. Okay. If you convert that to a Roth, it is all taxable. What is your income? About $60,000. Okay. All right. And so you're probably going to have about 15% of that out in taxes if you convert it to a Roth.

And so $3,000 or $4,000 is what that's going to cost you in taxes to go ahead and convert it to a Roth now. That's not a bad use of some of that $8,000. And then you could actually do another Roth IRA for this coming year, this calendar year, of $6,000. And just put that all in good growth stock mutual funds. And you can click SmartVestor at DaveRamsey.com. It'll drop down a list of the SmartVestor pros in your area that we recommend. We're not in the investment business, but they'll be able to help you facilitate all that. So I think you'd have enough to do a Roth, pay off your fiance's $10,000. He pays it down to

buy five between now and October, and you'd have enough to convert the other thing to a Roth and pay the taxes. You want to set the tax money aside. Don't let that sneak up on you next April. I want to go ahead and have that money sitting there to pay the bill, and that's with a $20,000 emergency fund, and that's how a twenty thousand dollar emergency fund and that's how we've got all laid out you've done a really good job all we're doing is fine-tuning your already wise choices jacob's in pennsylvania hi jacob how are you well i'm good how are you dave better than i deserve how can i help all right thank you for taking my call. So just basically, my mom wants me to take out student loans because, well, we were having a discussion earlier and I said that I'm going to work as hard as I would rather wait that semester. And then she told me that she would rather me take out the student loans. And when I tried to explain that to her, it just got really messy and dirty.

And she basically said, so I promise you that if you call Dave Ramsey, he'll tell you that you should take out these student loans. And she doesn't really listen. Apparently, that's true. Yeah. She just started doing Financial Peace University through our church yesterday. Oh, is she going with you? Yeah, so we went together.

Oh, good. Well, that'll answer her question. I'm not entirely sure that she's on board though right now. Well, obviously. Obviously. Listen, just you don't have to have a big heated discussion about something that's not going to happen. You can just be kind and say, I'm not taking out student loans

and you don't have to decide that today. Go get all the other stuff done. So if you guys are in Financial Peace University, you know that, you already know I'm going to tell you not to take out student loans under any circumstances. There are no circumstances, zero times, that I would tell someone to take out a student loan, ever. So that wasn't unclear, was it? That was fun.

Hang on, I'm going to send you a copy of Anthony O'Neill's book, Debt-Free Degree, and you and your mom can have a discussion about that book most people's money problems come from not paying attention that's why before i spend a dime of my money on something i do the research and make sure it's going to live up to what it claims recently i got a great pair of sunglasses from a company called shady rays when you're looking for sunglasses it feels like your options are limited Name brand sunglasses cost too much and the cheap knockoffs are ugly and really don't protect your eyes. Discovering Shady Rays is a game changer. With Shady Rays, you can count on premium sunglasses that protect your eyes and are affordable. They give people the best overall value in sunglasses. They also replace your shades with a brand new pair if you lose or break them from day one of your purchase. And they guarantee your sunglasses for life.

Plus, they offer an exclusive for Ramsey Show listeners. Go to ShadyRays.com and use the code RAMSEY for 50% off two or more pairs. That's ShadyRays.com, code RAMSEY. In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions, Dalton and Hannah are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? I'm not hearing them, guys. Try one more time. How are you?

We're doing good, Dave. Now you're there. Where do you guys live? Here in Nashville. Oh, right down the street. Awesome. Well, thanks for dropping in to do your debt-free scream. How much have you paid off?

It was over $28,300. $28,300. And how long did this take you? About seven and a half months. Wow. Good for you. Very cool. And your range of income during that time?

It was $58,000 to $79,000. $58,000 to $79,000. What do you all do for a living? I work at a credit union for business development. I do interior design. At the time, I was working with another woman who owned her own business. Very cool. All right. And so it looks like, did you sell something or did you just buckle down and do rice and beans? Sold one of my old cars because I had

bought another car that I probably shouldn't have in the first place. Ah, okay. So you had an extra car because of that. What did the car bring? About $2,400, which paid off one of the student loans. Okay. All right. And the other $26,000, $25,000 you paid off yourself and just rolled up your sleeves in seven and a half months and got with it. How long have you all been married? A year and a half. Okay.

So a year into marriage, roughly. No, six months. Six months into marriage, you looked up and did this. Okay. So you've been out of debt a little while, a couple months. Yes. Okay, cool. So what happened?

Tell me the story. Why'd you decide to light on fire like this? Because you went crazy, man. Go ahead. Well, basically, I had ended college without any debt, and my parents really helped me set up that way. And then once we had decided we were going to get married, we started talking about our finances and everything. And unfortunately,

Dalton wasn't in the same area and he had some student loans and he had joined the military to kind of counterbalance that and use the grants from the military and everything. So he tried to work at that out, but he also had some other debt as well. So we decided, you know, it was really time to just kind of understand where our budgets were. I had no idea what we were spending and if I was even allowed to go and have fun shopping or anything. And so he started talking about really understanding what the whole budget looked like. And it just really made me feel more comfortable to be able to see where everything was kind of going. And it helped us in our marriage, too.

Yeah, very cool. Very cool. So how did you guys end up connecting with us? So way back, right after we had started dating, one of my childhood mentors took me out to lunch before I'd gone to basic training and sat me down and asked if we were getting serious and recommended going through financial peace a long time ago. Oh, wow. So about six years ago at that point. And then just in my back of my mind, I had that basically that Uncle Dave voice just telling me I should do it. And then it finally did it. And here we are. Cool. Which branch of the military are you in? I'm in the Army Reserve. Ah, well, thank you. Thank you for your service. Thank you. Very cool.

Well, good job, guys. Thank you. What kind of debt was this? Student loans and what else? Student loans, a car loan, credit cards, an iPhone, barbecue. Just normal. Random stuff. Just normal.

Yeah. Will you ever go back? No. No. I've got to say, since we were able to do this, the week after, she ended up leaving her job. And then a month later, we came out here for a visit right when the whole coronavirus started and got a job offer. So that's why we moved out here.

Oh, wow. So we moved during the whole coronavirus, but we wouldn't have been able to do that if we hadn't done this. Wow. Well, you're in complete control. Yeah. When you control the variables, it gives you options. Definitely. Yeah.

Well done, you guys. All right. So a young couple out there just getting married. They got the variables. It gives you options. Definitely. Yeah. Well done, you guys. All right. So a young couple out there just getting married. They got the barbecue. They got the student loan. They got the stuff. Yep. What do you tell them the secret to getting out of debt is?

Never get in. That's a good one. I hadn't heard that one this week. That's good. Yeah. And really just connecting with each other and um making sure both people understand what the finances look like and how to go yeah exactly so just working together you guys are just naturally intense about everything because you were really

tense about this or both firstborns i was gonna say that okay rule-keeping, get her done. Yes. All right. I love it. Me too. That's fun. That is so funny. I like that. So generally speaking, once the two of you agree on something, it's going down. Correct. Yeah, it's happening.

I like this. That's good. Very, very cool. Was it worth the pain, the sacrifice for that seven and a half months? Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. Did people make fun of you, some of your friends? They really didn't understand. So they'd just be months? Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. Did people make fun of you, some of your friends? They really didn't understand.

So they'd just be like, oh, whatever. Some people were definitely supportive, and we have some friends watching the show right now who are just rooting us on right now. Oh, good. Who were your biggest cheerleaders? My parents were the big ones. They're out in California watching right now as well.

And then our friends out here in Nashville that we ended up just hooking up with and becoming really close friends once we did the move yeah my parents were really excited for us also very cool that's good to have family that's supportive like that that's that's perfect that makes it a lot easier a lot of people have to swim uphill or swim upstream on that so well done you guys how old are you two i'm 25 oh man you got a you got a lot of time in front of you to become wealthy we got a copy of chris hogan's book for you everyday millionaires that's the next chapter in your story go on and be millionaires keep investing keep being outrageously generous and very very well done heroes we're proud of you thank you excellent job you took

control of your life and well like you said uh once you guys know how to, once you both agree on something and get after it, there's no stopping you. Thank you for your direction. Well, we're honored. Very honored. Thank you. All right. It's Dalton and Hannah from Nashville. $28,000 paid off in seven and a half months, making $58,000 to $79,000.

Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free! Woo! Yeah! That is how it's done. Man.

So you can have anywhere from $198,000 to $65,000 to $28,000 and pay it off. Those are the three figures that were paid off in the last three shows, to this show and the two before it, the two one-hour shows before that. So every hour. And we're a little bit behind on our debt-free scrims because coronavirus shut them down for a little while. only could people not come into the lobby but they weren't just they generally weren't calling in to do their debt-free screams and we were doing you know coronavirus central here or whatever answering questions for people who were freaked out about

pandemic stuff and now things are returning to more of the traditional rhythm of the Dave Ramsey show. But either way, you could be 24 and pay off $28,000. You could be 57 and pay off $198,000, and that'd be your house over six years. That was in another hour just a few minutes ago. Hmm. You know what all that means? It means that you, yeah, you talking to you that are listening right now, you've been ishing this stuff long enough. Ish, sorta, sorta, kinda.

I'm not serious. All those people had that moment too. I've had that moment. Everyone's had that moment. But you have to reach a point where you say never again. Never again. When you reach that point, it changes everything. It does change everything. Jeff is with us. Jeff is in South Dakota.

Hi, Jeff. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? I first ran into you in 2006. I read your book, Total Money Makeover, and I remember thinking that if I could just tweak the system, it would be perfect. And then it was like the Lord spoke to me and said, Jeff, you've managed to get one person out of into debt and David gotten millions out of debt. Who do you think you are? So but that started and changed my life.

I loved your baby steps and it changed how I started working with churches. And now I work with a denominational office. And I was wondering your take on what would be the baby steps for a church that is ready to change the way they're going. They no longer want to be slowly losing money, and they want to start running finances well. Well, to start with, you put a team on the budget, and the team teaches benevolence and teaches stewardship to the whole congregation, which will cause giving to go up. A lot of churches do a church-wide financial peace university, as an example.

And then, of course, we set back retained earnings, a small percentage of the revenue for retained earnings, to take care of bumps in the road like we've just had. And then all the rest of the money that we can squeeze out we pay off debt the church that i go to paid off seven and a half million dollars after a merger in 14 months but that's all they did it was the focus of getting out of debt and now they're free hey folks father's day is just around the corner if If you're looking for the perfect, unique gift to give dad, I've got it. Grip 6 belts. If dad's like me, he's not a fan of traditional belts.

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My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Failure is success if we learn from it, Malcolm Forbes said. Failure is success if we learn from it. Josh is with us in Arizona. Hi, Josh. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. It's an honor speaking with you today. You too. What's up?

I have a question. I'm on my last debt for Baby Step 2, and it's a credit debt collector, but it was student loans. So we currently have a verbal agreement to pay $200 a month on this loan. And $200 a month, you know, only $50 gets applied to principal. It takes 64 years to pay it off. To negotiate with them, would it be best to quit paying them a monthly sum? Yes. What kind of a student loan?

Is this a private student loan or a federal? It was a federal student loan, but it's totally out of student loan status, and it's just with a debt collector now. Maybe. Was this a Sally Mae loan? What debt collector is it with? It was originally with, I'm sorry, it was my wife's student loan before we got married 10 years ago, so I'm asking her real quick.

Who was it with, Bill? Who was your loan originally with? Was it a Sally Mae loan? Was it a Sally Mae loan? No, it was not. Okay, this is probably a private loan then. What's the balance on it? The current balance is $19,151.69. Okay.

I would just call them up and say, we're going to stop paying on this. What will you guys take as a settlement? Okay. And see what they say. They're probably going to flop in the floor and foam at the mouth, and so you'll have to stop paying on it for a few months. But right now it's already dinging your credit anyway because it's already in default.

And every day it stays in default, dings your credit. So you're not doing anything to your credit by letting it sit there a little bit more, and let's get their spirit right on this thing and see what you can turn around on it um that's going to be your best bet and just see if um you know they may just say you know do you have the money saved um i don't have we don't have the 19 uh what do you have a year and a half well we have about uh three oh well you can't you can't make them a reasonable offer anyway right so uh when will you have more to make them a reasonable offer with

um we're stacking up pretty quick since this is our last one. I'd probably just leave it alone for right now until you get $10,000 or so, and then just call them up and say, I've got $10,000 here. I can offer you that as a settlement. We're going to stop paying. Right, and we know the original debt was $13,000. Okay, yeah, so $10,000 would be an excellent offer then, $8,000, $7,000, anywhere in there. But $ eight seven anywhere in there but three's not three's not going to settle this okay now i'm that's all assuming it's a private student loan it's not a government insured student loan nor was it ever

because they don't quit being government insured at any situation they do hand them off to collectors sometimes but they are still government insured in which situation they do hand them off to collectors sometimes but they are still government insured in which case you're going to settle this for no less than 13 plus the interest if that's if it's a federally insured student loan if it is a private student loan it's just like a bank loan it's just a personal loan then that's gone bad many years ago and you're trying to settle that that's very much settleable for 50 cents on the dollar, you know, whatever. So, you know, $8,000, $10,000 will probably settle this, but you're going to have to work it a while

and put up with an amazing amount of whining off of them in the process. All right, Sabrina's with us in South Carolina. Hi, Sabrina. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hello, Mr. Ramsey. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up in your world? I've been listening to you since I was in high school, and I'd just like to say that you are my role model, and I highly respect you. Well, you're very kind.

Due to your show, I've been obsessed with financial planning and paying cash for everything that I buy and I have no debt and I have a full scholarship so I have no student loan debt but I plan to apply to medical school once I graduate and I'm about to start my junior year of college and my fiance and I just got engaged and we want to get married and buy a home once I graduate and the thing that I'm worried about is paying for a wedding, a home, and starting a family and taking out student loans all at the same time. And I'm not sure how to go about that without drowning in debt. Okay.

Who's taking out student loans? I would be whenever, if I can get into medical school. Okay. I would delay everything in order to take out no student loans, number one. Then number two, I would just make a list of the other things and say which is first. I guess the wedding would be probably next. Buying a house would probably be next, and probably having kids would be next. That's generally the order.

And you just decide which one you want to do you can't do them all at once you don't have the money right yes yeah and so you just got to decide which is the priority and how you're going to do that so uh when do you when do you anticipate med school hopefully in august of 2022 okay so two years all right and um uh and you've gotten no student loans thus far none good good okay so i'm going to start looking for scholarships looking for med schools that are less expensive uh since you don't have the money to go, and trying to find a way to limit this mess so that you don't come out and be one of these doctors with $200,000, $250,000 worth of student loan debt from a couple of years of med school. And once you get out of med school, most people make $50,000 in residency,

and so you can definitely support yourself on that once you get through med school. Look at the MD-PhD programs that are out there and look for scholarships from hospital companies. You can consider some military service. You can consider a lot of different things in order to get through med school without the traditional $200,000 worth of student loan debt. Because it's a bad thing to start $200,000 in the hole in any career. Doesn't matter what you're going to make. That's just a bad idea. So you know from listening to me that I'm going to say that. That's not a surprise to you.

Along the way, if you want to have an inexpensive, very inexpensive wedding, you certainly can work that in. If you want a little more luscious wedding, a little bigger deal, then you're going to have to do some other things to be able to get to that. But my goal here, my first goal, would be a super cheap wedding so that we go to med school debt-free. If you don't do anything but those two things until you get out of med school, you've done great. And then worry about buying a house, and then worry about starting your family. It'd be highly unusual to start your family while you're in med school.

So I'm not saying it can't be done. It'd just be highly unusual. Something to think through. Hey, thank you for the call. We appreciate you joining us. Open phones this hour. About puts this particular hour in the books. We appreciate you guys hanging out with us.

This is the show where we get accused of being simple. You know why we get accused of that? Because we are. Some of the most profound, life-changing things you will learn are simple to understand. But they're hard to do. When I discovered that the problem with my money was not that I didn't have some kind of sophisticated double backflip family partnership. The problem with my money was not a lack of academia. The problem with my money was the guy in my mirror. The guy I shave with.

If I can get that guy under control, he can be skinny and rich. But he's got issues. And controlling that guy is a big deal. See? It's simple. You know how you build wealth and be outrageously generous? Live on less than you make. I told you. Easy to understand.

Hard to do. That puts us out of the Dave Ramsey Show and the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus. This is James Childs, producer of The Dave Ramsey Show. Once again, you made The Dave Ramsey Show one of the top four most popular podcasts last year. To get your daily dose of motivation and inspiration from the Ramsey Network, subscribe or follow today wherever you listen to podcasts.