The Ramsey Show - App - When Should I Quit My Job To Do My Side Hustle Full-Time? (Hour 1)

Episode Date: January 6, 2021

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Music Music Music Music Music Music Music 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. My co-host today here on the air, Christy Wright, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author of the book Business Boutique. We are here to answer your questions about your life and your money. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Ron starts us off in Houston, Texas this hour.

Hey, Ron, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Sure, man. What's up? Well, I have a question. Me and my wife, we're on Baby Step 6, and we've got a high-risk investment that's worth about $25,000 right now. And we're getting it to the point where it's uncomfortable, where we want to sell the investment and cash it out. And I would like to spend about half of it on a vehicle that I've always wanted.

And she's uneasy about that, just spending that amount of money on something that's, you know, completely a luxury and not necessary. So I was going to see if you could weigh in and let us know what your opinion is on it. Well, I'm an expert on my opinion. Christy can weigh in also. That's fun. The thing that I have found is if it falls under the heading of wisdom, it generally is a small ratio. Toys that are a large ratio in your life, meaning they're a high percentage of your income or they're a high percentage of your net worth,

is a toy you shouldn't do. But one of the reasons we work is to buy some toys, and there's nothing evil about having a toy. And that's what this is. That's what you're describing. And you're talking about spending $12,000 or $13,000, right? Correct. Okay.

And what's your household income? We made $80, 000 last year okay and what are your other cars worth uh my car my i've got an old pickup truck in my wife's car they're worth about 20 000 combined okay well one of the rules of thumb we use is uh you're debt free everything but your house and we want you to be there the other rule of thumb we use is you're debt-free, everything but your house, and we want you to be there. The other rule of thumb we use is don't buy things with motors or wheels, all combined, that equal more than half your annual income, right? And so you're not doing that. It hasn't violated that. You'd be at 32 and you make 80, so you'd still be fine.

What are you talking about buying? Just curious. A BMW Z4 Coupe. Okay. All right. Cool. So a little mid Coupe. Okay. All right. Cool. So a little midlife crisis car. That's fun.

I like it. I like it. I've got one of those. I don't have that car, but I got a couple of midlife crisis cars. I live in a perpetual midlife crisis. When it comes to cars, that is. So, and how much do you guys have in your 401k? I'm 33 years old, and I've got just over $100,000.

Okay. All right. Ron, are you the spender? I am the spender. One of the reasons that we're in the position we're in is because my wife is so frugal, and she has a hard time spending money on anything. I have to buy her things most of the time if she wants to spend it on herself. Yeah, I would guess that just because like we teach all the time,

a lot of times in marriage there's a saver and a spender. My husband is the saver. I am the spender. So the conversation sounds a lot in our household like the conversation you're having, regardless of what it is and the situation we're in. But here's a couple questions I ask him whenever he is unsure about a purchase, because I will tell you, he is usually unsure about a purchase. He gives me the classic line that drives me crazy.

Let me think about it. Matt's a tightwad. Oh, a week later, let me think about it. He's a tightwad. Six months later, I'm still thinking about it. I'm like, oh my goodness. Here's some questions. I just ask him, Ron, what are you worried about?

What fears do you have around this? What are your concerns? And I give him an opportunity to voice those concerns. And sometimes they are things we can address and talk through together. Sometimes they're really valid and maybe a blind spot I didn't see because I'm such a spender. And I'm like, oh, that's a great idea. So that's what's so great about having these conversations in your marriage because you come to the best decision together. But I would just say, give her an opportunity to voice those concerns, to talk through those concerns, to actually nail them down. It can't just be, I don't know, I'm just scared.

Let's look, what are you worried about? What are your concerns? What would help you feel better about this decision and that type of thing? And so I think maybe asking some of those questions, giving her a chance to answer will allow her to feel more of a part of the decision either way. And then you're kind of moving forward together. But I just want to encourage you, if you open that door, you might be surprised at what she has to say, and it might lead to y'all coming together on this.

That's a good point, because it might just let the steam off, might let the air out of the problem. But so by ratios what i'm referring to ron and for the sake of all our listeners as well i kind of ask myself when i'm dealing with someone who's wealthy or someone who's doing well financially you all are doing well financially if i put my that amount of money in your situation in the middle of the floor and i burned it would it destroy my life would it mess up my life would it set me back five years would it set me back a year would it would it would it do damage to where i mean

obviously we don't want to be that wasteful that's silly okay but but the point is if you if the car caught on fire the next day and burned to the ground and you had no insurance would you have ruined your finances and your future or seriously set them back uh or would you just not notice you know like i had a guy call me up one time that was making six hundred thousand dollars a year and he was all worried about buying a twenty thousand dollar harley and i'm like dude you could drive it off a cliff once a month and nobody would care i mean you know you're gonna be okay it doesn't it's going to affect because of the ratio to his income. You see what I'm saying?

So that's what, you know, and this is a big enough ratio that you would feel it, but it wouldn't mess your life up. And so that tells me it's a buy. If I'm in your shoes, I'm buying the car. Okay, so I got a question for you, Dave, on this, because in marriage, you do typically have a saver, have a spender. One of the things I've noticed, and i would say matt's not like this matt is cautious but he he will spend money on things that you know that he likes what about those type of people and i don't know that ron's wife is like this but what about those people that genuinely don't like spending money they just don't and so you've got this spouse that's going but this but we have the money but it's okay we've got this thing and they just they can't

they hate spending money and so it's really hard for them to ever say yes to a decision because they hate letting go of it how do you help how do you help them those savers open their hands a little bit you know rachel and i were talking about this a little bit yesterday on the air with the launch of her know yourself know your money book because she talks about the spender versus a saver and she talks about the seven tendencies and that's one of the seven tendencies. Are you a saver or are you a spender? And the thing that she so wisely points out is if you both, neither one of those are bad. It's not bad to be a saver.

You need a little both, yeah. But what is unhealthy is if either one go to the extreme. And what you're talking about is a saver that has gone to the extreme. They cannot get joy from the handling of money in their finances. They can never get enough to get a sense of joy in purchasing something. And usually what I prescribe for them is increased generosity. When you start giving more, it causes you to have more of a sense of abundance, more of a sense of I don't have to have this for my security. I'm not damaging or ruining my life by helping this person with this thousand dollar gift

or whatever it is. And when you start giving more, especially hand to, not to vague organizations, big buildings, but to just say this individual, I'm going to help this single mom pay her light bill for a year or something like that. Then that causes you to become a little bit less freaked out and you can move towards enjoyment of money yourself because it also kind of gives you permission to enjoy money because you're helping others. Yeah, that's good.

But you don't want to be too far on either end of the spectrum. It is toxic when you do that. That's good. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. If current times have shown us anything, it's that the least expected events can and will happen, and we have to deal with it. That's why everyone who has a family counting on them needs term life insurance. For over 20 years, the only company I've recommended is Zander Insurance. Not only because they search all of the top term life plans to find you the best rates, but over the years, they have constantly changed and updated their systems to make the whole

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I had a question about paying off an upcoming medical bill because we're expecting our first child beginning of February, and I've spent hours calling around trying to get the numbers on that and decided to go with an HSA plan because I had the lowest max out-of-pocket for a worst-case scenario. My wife and I saved up money last year to pay off her student loans, and the amount is probably about $1,000 difference between paying off the medical bill, the max out-of-pocket for the family, and her student loans. And so my question is, which one would you pay? And I know that student loan forgiveness is kind of a hot topic right now. And so I would hate to pay the student loans and then find out we get 10,000 reimbursed or forgiven. And so right now the student loan is $12,900. The max out-of-pocket for the family insurance would be $13,800. And you're going to max it? Yes. Everyone I've talked to said that I'm going to max out the

out-of-pocket for my wife and then for our son will be like $2,000 away. And so we were considering just maxing it out for worst case scenario, but also my wife wanted to have a surgery, get her tonsils out. I needed a sinus surgery. So we figured this was the year to just get that taken care of. Oh, and that's all in the 13th? Mm-hmm. Because after the 13,000... Because usually labor and delivery is not 13. Okay.

I called different doctors and whatnot and asked what they charged for delivery and added that all up. I'm sorry, you have a baby due in February? Yes. Okay. Well, here's the thing. I called all the doctors. Regardless of the student loan forgiveness issue, that doesn't enter into the equation for me

because I think it's so unlikely and it'll be such a long time before all that occurs that you're not going to see that relief anytime soon if you ever do see it. So I want you to pay your student loan, and I want you to pay your medical bills. Which one would I pay first you to pay your medical bills which one would i pay first i pay the medical bills first they're immediately due the student loan has terms to it medical bills don't have terms the only reason people get payments on medical bills is because they can't pay the bill it's due when they send it to you 100 and so you need to pay that bill or you're in default, and they'll put you on payments.

But I don't want you to get into default. You pay the whole bill. But right now, you're just saving up money until baby comes. We're not doing debt snowball. We're not doing anything except living on a budget, piling up cash. And when you get these baby comes and these miscellaneous small surgeries are done, then you pay your bill, pay your medical bill, and then you tear into that student loan as soon as you can.

Okay. Easy enough? Easy enough. Congratulations. We appreciate you calling. Yeah, congratulations. That's awesome, man. What a great way to start 2021.

Open phones at 888-825-5225. Abigail is in,ville, South Carolina. Hi, Abigail. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up?

My husband passed away about a week and a half ago. Oh, my gosh. I have $400,000 in life insurance coming in and $100,000 in a death gratuity that I actually got today. I have three kids. I don't work. I owe about $255,000 in my house with basically no equity and then about $25,000 in my car. I'm just trying to figure out what to do with it to make it last and be smart with it for my kids. My goodness, I'm so sorry.

How old was he? Thank you. He was 32. Oh, no. So you said $400,000 in insurance and $100,000 in what? In a death gratuity. It's from the military. Oh, so he was military.

He was, yes, sir. Oh. Okay. And you live in Greenville, South Carolina. Is that where you were assigned by the military? Here's a National Guard who is a recruiter for the Guard, so we kind of live where we want to as long as there's some of it in South Carolina. I see. Okay.

So the reason I ask is, is this where you would stay necessarily? Yeah, this is where all my family is. I mean, I could always move if I wanted to, but for right now, I'm in a new-build neighborhood, so can't really sell the house very easily right this second. So yeah, I'm planning on staying here for a little while. And you said you owe what on the home? $255,000. $255,000 and $25,000 on the car.

Mm-hmm. Oh, baby girl, I'm so sorry. Thank you. A week and a half, huh? Yeah. So you've got good support around you, obviously, your family. You've got a good church family you, obviously, your family. You've got a good church family you're in, I hope. Yes, yes, I have all the support in the world.

Good. Oh, my goodness. Well, what I tell folks to do is to try to make as few decisions as they can, especially the more major the decision, for the first six months to a year. Okay. Because in the fog of grief, I mean, you're still just trying to get your head around this actually happened. Yeah, absolutely. And so it's not, if something happened to my wife, I wouldn't be thinking clearly a week and a half later no one does and so you're thinking pretty clearly you

are very articulate here on the air it's amazing how calm you are but the um uh uh so i try to give people some space to grieve to make better quality decisions. Okay? Okay. So if I woke up in your shoes, what would I do? Probably six months from now or so or a year from now, I'm going to pay the house off. But today I'm not. Okay.

Okay. Today I'd go ahead and pay off the car if you're going to keep it. Would you sell it and keep his old car or sell his old car? No, the kids only fit in my car, so that's going to have to be the keeper. Okay, so yours is the keeper and we're going to sell the other one. I mean, both the other cars are completely paid off. Old cars, you know, they don't really cost us anything. Well, they cost you insurance and tags to sit there if you only got one driver but that's not a big deal you don't have to make that decision right now

either it's okay but yeah i'd pay it off if you're going to keep it i'd pay it off and i would set um obviously you've got some uh do you have he's military are they covering the funeral um yeah they covered it and then his parents paid rest, so I don't have any of those expenses. My only thing is I don't work, so if I'm going to, you know, I'm going to have to start touching this money within the next couple months. Yeah. And your $400,000 is not enough to not work. Right, right.

So you're going to have to come up with a career plan too long right and my goal is to my goal is to get my master's degree um and stay home with my kids until they're all in school which is like three years from now if possible okay master's degree in what and why um in counseling it's been something that i've been passionate about for a while and just kind of solidified the decision yeah okay well 400 is not going to go very far um right it's um i don't want to be melodramatic yeah pay off your car park the 400 in a money market account and set yourself on a really tight household budget. Because I don't think you've got three years with $400,000.

$400,000 will produce about $40,000 a year max in income, and you're not going to have quite $400,000 after everything happens here. And you can't live in perpetuation on that and do the things you're talking about doing. So we're probably not going to pay off the house is what we're saying. We're probably going to end up investing this money and using it to get through this two to three years and get your master's and then get your income up. And once you get your income up to survival level, either before or after the master's, then I would talk about paying off the house later. But for now, let's just park this money, but treat it like you don't have any money. Okay.

Much. I mean, because if you get off into grief spending, Miss Future Counselor, and you spend all this money, you're going to blow this whole thing up. And so park it to the side and act like it's not there after you pay off the car. Live yourself on a real tight budget. And we're going to put you in Ramsey Plus, put you through Financial Peace University to make sure you're taken care of. Because we always help widows here, and particularly widows in the military. Oh, my goodness.

Hang on, Kelly. I'll give that to you free. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. We'll be right back. Christy Wright, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Her best-selling devotional, she is now leading through an Instagram Live every morning. It is 40 days long. It is called Living True. And you did the first one this morning. It is 40 days long. It is called Living True, and you did the first one this morning.

Yeah, I'm walking them through each section because, as you know, Dave, this is organized by four sections. You need to know who God is, who you are, where you are, and where you're going to get back to you. So it's a 40-day devotional, and I'm kicking off each section with them early in the morning to have a nice discussion, and it's kind of like a free online Bible study. So it's just a fun way to start your day and start your year with Scripture and getting back to yourself. So yeah, it's been fun. It's amazing to see the testimonies already coming in from how this Devo is helping people. So I'm super grateful.

Living True, 40 days to get back to you. It is a bestseller. And the first devotional that Ramsey Press has done, our publishing arm, and I'm very, very excited about its success. This coming Tuesday, we are doing our largest ever live stream. It's completely free. It's called Reset. Rachel Cruz, Chris Hogan, me, and Craig Groeschel, Pastor Craig, from LifeChurch.TV. We will be doing this live from Oklahoma City, from their stage at LifeChurch.TV, January the 12th at 7 p.m. And spend an evening with us.

From 7 p.m. on, we're going to walk you through how to reset. Not only how to put together a step-by-step game plan to win with your money, because you need to reset after last year, right? But also, Rachel's going to cover some of the Know Yourself, Know Your Money, Know Yourself, Know Your Money materials from her new book that just launched yesterday. And Pastor Craig will be doing a talk on discipline, which all weaves together to help you reset and get yourself going again. If you want to watch the event, it is completely free. You need to text the word RESET to 33-789.

33-789, text RESET. If you're in Oklahoma City, there's a handful of tickets left. It's a very limited audience because of spacing and so forth there. It's only $20, but we do want some folks there while we're doing the talk. We'd love to have you. Just go to DaveRamsey.com slash events, and you can make that part of your evening if you're in that area for this coming Tuesday. And again, we'd love to have you at all of these.

Open phones at 888-825-5225. David is in Grand Rapids. Hi, David. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Well, hi, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up?

Well, my wife and I are worried about retirement. So we're trying to figure out how much we need to put away and where to put it. Okay. And we have a household income of $80,000 to $90,000 a year. We both have 401s at 15%. And this year we just started a Roth. Good. How old are you guys?

I'm 53 and my wife is 50. Okay. And how much is in there now? Between the two of us, approximately $300,000. Good. Okay. Got a really good start. Okay. What's your fear? You're not going to have enough? okay well we teach folks to invest and i personally invest in four types of growth stock mutual funds and i put a fourth in each growth growth and income aggressive growth and international i'm a little ahead of you i'm 60 but i've been doing that for most of my working life and uh you know putting 15 away and then later when everything was debt-free, I just max out everything that I'm allowed to do, whatever I'm allowed to do, Roths and 401ks and HSAs,

anything I can put money into to keep the government's hands off of, I do. And I put it all in those four types of mutual funds. The stock market since it began has averaged 11%, a little over 11% actually. And so if you're invested in decent mutual funds, you should be in that 10 to 12 range. And so if you retired and you had a million dollars and you wanted to pull off 8% while earning more than 8% on your money, hopefully, that's what you would have been doing all these years anyway, then that would be $80,000 a year. Okay. If you're invested at that rate, if you're invested in what I'm talking about, you can take your lump sum that you have now,

and it will double every seven years approximately. So seven years from today, when you're 59, you'll have 600. Seven years later, when you're 66, you'd have one, two. That's if you add nothing else to it. To retire a millionaire would be awesome. That's, yeah. So if you work till 65 and you keep putting in 15%, you're probably going to have two to three million dollars if you're invested like I'm talking about. Now, if you're probably going to have $2 to $3 million if you're invested like I'm talking about. Now, if you're putting it in a bank IRA making 1%, then no, you're not going to do that.

But I'm talking about making the 10% to 12% range that the stock market has averaged in decent mutual funds, okay? So you need to align with that to hit those goals, but that 300 will double once and then it'll double again by 66 if you're 52. That sounds wonderful. Yeah, so you're on track. You don't have anything to wring your hands about, but you do need to watch it, be diligent, continue to do the investing, and make sure you're invested in those types of things.

And if you're not, you may want to sit down with one of our SmartVestor pros. You can click SmartVestor at DaveRamsey.com. These are the people we recommend. They don't work for me. I'm not in the investing business. I personally use a SmartVestor pro to help with my retirement. I'm sure you guys do too. We do. And what's so interesting, even in his question, I hear this a lot whenever I'm hosting the show with you, Dave, is the unknown is so scary to people. As soon as you laid that out for me, he's like, oh, well, great. Okay. It's like the confidence goes up. I can see how it's possible. I know what I need to do. But sometimes things that are technical, difficult, or just even unknown can feel really overwhelming and really scary. And

that's why I love the SmartVestor Pros because they walk you through it and show you exactly what you need to do and show you the path and the numbers. Or even something simple like Chris Hogan's RRQ tool. You plug in the numbers and you see what you need to retire. Whatever it is, just being able to see it immediately helps you just, okay, okay, I see what I need to do. It's, I mean, for me as a nerd, it's easy to understand. But what you're saying is numbers, when they're accurate, can relieve stress and give you hope. Yeah, yeah yeah when you know what they are i'm gonna go okay i have a hundred thousand dollars in debt i make 150,000

oh wait a minute i could put 50,000 of that a year on it and i'll be debt-free in two years those are numbers yes i could be debt-free in two years when you can see it you can do it and that's why we love giving people a plan but you know even as you said that i thought gosh i remember when i was in debt and i remember this was in my late 20s and I did not I would pay my bills but I never looked at it all at one time if you would have asked me at that time Chrissy how much debt total you have I said I don't know because I didn't want to face it it was so overwhelming and scary but actually when I sat down and listed out my debts it was like oh okay I can handle this because now I know it's not unknown anymore it doesn't have that power over me,

and I'm able to see this is what I need to do to take control over it. It's amazing when you open the closet door and turn the light on. There's no monster in there. There's no monster in there. We all have the monster under the bed. It might be a little gremlin. It might be a mouse, but it's not a monster. It's not something that can't be slain, that can't be dealt with, that's going to eat you alive.

It's just you can deal with it, but you do need to lay it out and do some projections. And, again, having some people in your corner, like a SmartVestor Pro, I mean, I teach this stuff and I'm probably known more than anybody in America for teaching this stuff. And if I passed away today, one of the second or third phone calls Sharon would make would be to our SmartVestor Pro because she's going to want to be reassured again that she's okay. She's been reassured.

We've shown her the numbers 26,000 times. Right. But she's going to want it again. Right. I know that. And so I've got that little list of phone numbers. Here's who you call, you know, the coroner. And then you call this and then you call that right but i mean and then the smart investor

pro is going to be one of the right there because she's gonna because if she can go that's right it's gonna be okay yeah and it gives you a sense of control when you list out your debts see before when it was unknown they had control over you but now you're like oh i have control i'll see what it is i can tackle it same thing with your retirement goals when you list it out it's like oh i've got control now I can do something about this. And people do their every dollar budget when they jump in Ramsey Plus. They have the same experience. They go, oh, wait a minute. Where's all that money going? That's right. This is silly. I can do this. That's right. And then you get this sense of power like you got a raise. That's right. Yeah. It's just being out of

control versus in control, having knowledge versus not having knowledge, having options versus not having options. This is the Dave Ramsey personality is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Matt is with us in San Antonio. Hi, Matt. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi. Thank you, Dave.

And thank you, Christy, for taking my call. Sure. What's up? So the question is, well, a little background, I guess, beforehand. My wife and I were on baby step two. We have about $35K left, household income right around $100K. With buying back my military time, I work for the federal government currently, so that equals about $12K. I have about nine years left

and I could retire from that. Um, my, I also own a business that I opened in 2016 and I do that part-time obviously after, uh, the government work. So my question is actually transitioning from a government job to running my own business full time. I don't know if I want to finish out the nine years, mainly because of the work environment itself. I guess you could say politics behind it. And then also the commute's kind of pretty rough. It's about an hour both ways. So with that, how much money should we have set aside before making that transition? And then what are the best practices and best steps to kind of make that transition as smooth as possible? What's your business?

Dog training. Oh, okay. Best job in the world. What is it bringing in right now, annually? Annually, it brings in right around $30,000 to $35,000. $1,000? Yes. Okay.

And what do you make of the government job? I only work, I make $70,000. Okay, so your wife does not work outside the home? Yes, sir. What do you need to live on? Right now, we're living on about, well, I guess around like 75-ish, 75 to 80. Oh, and you're in Baby Step 2, right? You said you've got some debt to pay off?

Yes, ma'am. That's right. Well, I'll tell you what's so great about this side gig generation, starting a side hustle, is you have an opportunity to grow this thing small. And it's already doing well, $30,000 a year, I think is what you said. You have that opportunity to grow this thing while still having the stability of your full-time job. Now, one of the things that we tell people all the time is you want to build this thing up on the side so much that it can support you. Now, because you're in baby step two, you know, everything's bonus because you're going to pay off your debt faster. But you're building this thing up so that it can support you.

You don't want to make this huge, terrifying leap where you just hope the business will support you. Now, the great news is you're, you know, you're doing great. Like you're already making a good, stable amount of money there. But I would continue to build this up to where you're getting it to some of those numbers you're talking about that you need to live on. And then what's so great is it's the next logical step. It's not a terrifying leap whenever you leave the government job. But if I'm you, Matt, I don't want to do something I don't want to do with a bad commute for nine more years. I don't. I want to really pour my life into this business to where it can make 70, 100 or plus, get yourself out of debt. And then you're doing something you love to do, you know, full time.

But it's one of those things where you want to make sure the money is actually there. You don't just hope it's going to be there. You want to build that business up so much that it can support you whenever you're ready to make that transition. Yeah. What Christy and I always say when we're talking with small business owners and side hustle folks is get the boat close enough to the dock so that you can step into it and not leap and hope you hit it. Yeah. And that's – so what it amounts to is you're on your way. Yeah. So in your case, I think if I were in your shoes, I would set a goal that sounded like this.

When I have three months in a row of $4,500 or more, and I feel confident that that's going to continue, that puts you in the high $50,000, up close to $60,000, be $55,000 a year, okay, which is less than you're making now. But see, you didn't pull the boat all the way to the dock. You weren't making $75,000 when you gave up a $70,000. You don't need to do that. But go ahead and have a really troublesome year because all you do is work between your day job and the dog job.

It's going to feel like you're working two full-time jobs because you are. Yeah. For a season. Yeah. For a season to get through. But let me ask you this day so is your job seasonal matt is it do you have like real dog training i don't know is it like way busier in the summer and like falls way off in the winter to be to be uh honest with you like the whole 14 to 16 hour days is yes it's getting along i actually am able to take off uh the month of july to spend with my

kids and then also uh december so that's like you're not even working those those two months yeah well i don't want you to do this on a wing and a prayer i want you to prove it to yourself and so if i were in your shoes i would want three consecutive months of 4500 and i really don't care if you're tired. Wah. Okay? Because you're not going to do this for very long. What we're trying to do is escape the drudgery of the day job, but we don't want to do it in such a way that we run out of the haunted house and get hit by a car.

Right. I guess what I was trying to bring up with the seasonal thing, though, is I don't want you to base your decision on three consecutive months of $4,500 in a really busy season, and you've got a really slow season coming up because that's not indicative of what you can expect. We want you to plan based on what you can expect. But what he's saying is the only reason he made it seasonal is because he just took the time off.

Yeah, yeah. So one July and one December. But if I'm in your shoes, I don't care. You pick the four months or the three months. I want to prove to myself and my wife, my family, my kids, that we can eat off this thing and uh you're not there yet 35 000 doesn't do it for me you're going to take a pay cut of 65 i don't think so to go from 100 to 35 i don't think that's a good plan uh but i but i would

take that 36 you're already making 3 000 man i mean let's get that up 1500 more let's increase that and and prove to yourself some level of stability and then give your notice and go live your dream and then have a plan for training dog trainers so that you have a whole school going and you're making 300 grand not 150 i was gonna say 1500 i mean that's just one. You have a dog for a month. It's about $1,500 if they go send them off. Is it really? Yes, about $1,200, $1,500. At least here in Nashville, it's up to $2,000. You send a dog for a month.

They stay with the trainer for the month. They come home trained. Ask Ayo. He did something similar. So that's one dog. Well, Ayo pays all kinds of stuff for stuff like that. Get you one dog, Matt. Get you one more dog.

One more dog. That's all. You're one dog away, Matt. If you're charging right. If you're charging right. that's a whole nother subject if you're charging right that is so great yeah i was on a pheasant hunt and that guy's he trains up 15 or 20 dogs and takes them yes on the pheasant hunt and sells them off and so he'll sell all those dogs for i don't know you think you're selling them for anywhere from 5 to 15 grand to $15,000 a dog. But he had poured into them like that. That's right.

I didn't have any idea what they charged to do that. Those dogs could climb a tree, though. They were unbelievable. They did everything. Yeah. They were amazing. Well, for busy people that don't have time to train them or take them once a week to train, they're like, just send them off, bring them back when they're trained.

Wow. Wow. Can you do that with kids? I know, right? I've got three candidates. I've got three candidates in my household i'd like to send off if that's the case please the christmas is over all the fun's over let's we're back to work help me out help me out oh two thousand i'm so cheap i've never trained a

dog so i mean i've trained them but i haven't i haven't paid anybody to do it so i didn't i've had dogs smarter than me but but that's a low bar, so. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, I think you're one dog away per month, per month. So that's what I would do if I were in your shoes, Matt. I want to get the boat a little closer to the dock. You're jumping, and I'm afraid you're going to get one leg wet, or you may miss the boat completely.

I don't want you to. And so I want this thing to be a thing where you did it without, with wisdom, without a ton of stress, and you're going to be a little tired between now and then. But by the way, when you start a business, you're always a little tired. I had two years of 16 hour days in this puppy before I hardly even made a living out of it. And that was a few years back. I don't want to do it again, but I'm not afraid of hard work,

and I haven't not done what I'm telling you to do. I have done it. It's a season. It's a season. It's not forever. And I worked like I was unemployed. I mean, I worked like I was doing it again during COVID, trying to keep everything running.

I was back in here again for a month and a half, two months. It's 16 hours. So just whatever you have to do to run a business, that's what you do. But usually those are ebb and flow. It's not forever. It's for a have to do to run a business, that's what you do. But usually those are ebb and flow. It's not forever. It's for a period of time to get there. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, it's Kelly, associate producer and phone screener for the Dave 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 over to DaveRamsey.com and click Dave Recommends. Thanks for listening.