The Ramsey Show - App - When You're Debt-Free, Fear Doesn't Own You (Hour 3)

Episode Date: September 9, 2019

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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. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Christina is with us in Maryland.

Hi, Christina. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Okay, so I heard about you a few years ago through Michael Cole, who is basically like a financial helper with those of us that do hair, so in the hair world and how we can make more money doing hair, and I learned about the debt snowball, but he didn't talk about the emergency savings fund, $1,000.

So once I found you and your podcast, when we were on the beach a few weeks ago for vacation, I got my husband on board. We listened to you for six and a half hours on our drive home from the beach. Yes. And we actually got a speeding ticket. So that kind of ruined our kind of ruined our budget at first, but then we got home and found out our mortgage company was giving us $4,000 back in overpaid taxes. So that helped with our getting our momentum started. Basically, my question for you is, when we come up with our budget for the month, it's a little difficult because I'm on commission. I'm the breadwinner, though. I make I'm on track to make about 100,000 this year.

My husband makes he's already at 33 for the year. So hopefully he'll be 40, 45. So when we do our budget, it's always different. You know, each paycheck, we try to do the minimum, like what we never make less than, but it's always wavering. So we go on the minimum and if we have extra, we put it to the debt. My question is, we built a house two years ago, probably way too much. But we're looking at it as like a good investment. We don't have to put any work in cause everything's brand new. We owe on our mortgage about 440,000. Our mortgage is about 3000 a month cause our taxes are very high. We pay city and County. Um, so we're supposed to, we should be making about one 40 this year,

um, up from one 20 last year and we're both steadily moving up in our careers. So that's all good. So I just wanted your advice because we're constantly looking at real estate, trying to decide what we should do or if we should pay off our debt, which is about $65,000. You should start working the baby steps, and you should get your debts paid off. Your house is high, but it's not crippling you you have a three thousand dollar mortgage and your take-home pay ought to be approximately

ten thousand a month and so that's thirty percent of your take-home pay i'd rather you be a little lower down around 25 but it's not enough if you told me your mortgage was five thousand i would say you're gonna sell your house right but you can make it on 3,000, and you'll still have some margin. You'll still have some wiggle room in that written budget. The trick is that the two of you have been just kind of working the system rather than working the system. And by that, what I mean is you've kind of said, okay, we're going to do this and this and this and this, and then we're just going to try to earn some more money.

And you try to out-earn your stupidity. And I tried to do that for years, and it won't work. You're going to have to have a detailed written budget that is unique each month before the month begins. So before the 1st of October gets here, you need to detail out what's coming in in October to the best you can figure out, not the low average, what you really think is going to occur in October, and every single one of those dollars has an assignment. When you get that detailed and quit painting with broad brush strokes, you're going to see a change.

You're going to feel like you've gotten a raise over what you've been doing. But your mortgage is not out of control. It's a touch higher than I'd like to see it, but I think you getting organized is going to give you a lot more lift than worrying about your house payment at this stage of the game. Hope is with us in Arizona. Hi, Hope. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show.

Hi, Dave. Thank you so much for taking my call. Sure. What's up? So I have kind of a little bit of a back story, and I'll try and keep it pretty short and to the point. So my husband and I moved to Arizona in January from Oklahoma. We each had jobs lined up whenever we first got here,

but neither of those jobs ended up working out. So long story short, we had to break our lease on our apartment that we had and move in with our mother-in-law, so his mom. So right now his – How do you miss two jobs? So, okay, so with the do you miss two jobs? So, okay. So with the job that I had lined out, it was like as an associate producer for like a smaller TV show, and they made it sound like it was going to be pretty easy to sell spots in the show. It was a commission-based job, and I'm not a salesman at all, and I just couldn't keep up.

I was only making like $ a month so what about him what was his job he didn't get so he's a welder and um he had interviewed with the job before he got here and whenever he got here they kept saying he they didn't have a machine for him and so they kept saying that the machine would be here on monday so it would be monday and then they would say oh it'll be here on wednesday So he was like, eventually he had to say, you know, as a family, I've got to get income coming in. So he finally took on another job. So that took about a month for him to get officially hired on. So combined, our income is about $50,000 a year. Now? Yes, right now. So both of you ended up getting jobs? Yes.

I just got a job as a caregiver for a special needs individual. Great. Anyway, so his truck is just astronomical. We've had it. We're pretty young. We're only 20 and 21. He's had his job or his truck since he was 18. It's actually financed through his mom and he makes the

payment but um so you're going to be shook when you hear it so it's $28,000 that we owe right now on it it's a 2015 chevy um and then my car that we have is $10,000 but that's in our name and then we just have small bets about $1,500 in total that we're planning on getting squashed in the next couple months because we have our income plus we just signed on with DoorDash as well. So basically my question is, oh, and also, sorry, I'm talking so much. My mother-in-law's car and his truck got stolen about a month ago, and we just got his truck back, and we were planning on selling it right before it got stolen. And we just got it back on Thursday or Friday. And it's pretty, I mean, it's not in the best condition as it left in.

It got drove from Phoenix to Odessa, and God knows what it went through during that time. And we came back, and the cables to the GPS had been snipped, and it has some dents and scratches. So it's not in the greatest... Did you turn it into the repairs to be turned into insurance to be the insurance you pay to fix it? So we had a deductible and after everything like got totaled out with like the um items that were inside because um his truck and my mom's or his mom's car were on the same insurance policy we ended up getting about 400 to fix anything wrong with his car and that's crap well get it fixed up and get it sold kiddo you know good and well that

truck's got to go it doesn't fit in your world. And then that gets you free to be able to go get your own place. It's really time for y'all to be like a married couple and his mom doesn't own your life anymore. She's not a bad person. She's trying to help. But you guys are time to stand up here. Making $50,000 a year. Let's get you a little beater, get rid of the truck, and then get you a little place to live.

Then we'll get started. 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.

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That's 800-356-4282. Tom is with us in North Carolina. Hi, Tom. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave. How are you doing? Better than I deserve. What's up? I only called to hear you say that, actually.

Okay. Appreciate the call. Yeah, short and sweet and to the point. So I have a question. My parents just recently retired, and they are 68 and 66 years old, and they have a nest egg of about 1.5 to 1.7 million dollars and um the issue is i'm i'm from a large family and i'm number five out of six my parents were basically i mean they're not rabbits but they're catholic so there's a lot of us and uh three of the older siblings are kind of using them to bankroll their lifestyle so i was talking to my mom the other day and basically she said they spent about, she could have been exaggerating a little bit, but about $350,000 in three years just financing, you know, whether it be, you know, down payments on houses, private school for kids, additions to houses. There's some weddings thrown in there as well. But they're just kind of rapidly

losing money. And I spoke with my parents about this. I told them that I was concerned. And they don't really not care. But yeah, in essence, they don't care if they go broke. They just want to see the kids happy. So I got nowhere with them. And then I tried to talk with my siblings about it and they were just saying how that's how my parents show that they care. It's their money. I have no business talking about their money and that I'm selfish basically. Even though I'd say I don't care about inheritance, I just want to make sure my parents are taken care of as they get older. So I try talking to the insane asylum and basically, you know, now I'm ostracized from the family just because, you know, I'm

looking out for my parents. What steps do you think that I could take to make sure that my parents have a stable financial future, basically. I think you've taken all of them, and I don't think you can do anything. Your parents are not incompetent. They're just codependent. Codependent is not that unusual, actually. And, you know, your older brothers and sisters are parasites and so and that's not illegal either it's just it's just distasteful uh to say the least um i don't think you're going

to fix this um i'm sorry i wish i could give you more hope than that um the only the only hope i would have is a couple of things and i'll'll give you a couple of ideas, but given the steps you've already taken and the resistance you've already met, I think you've lost your footing to have a discussion with any of these people. I don't think they want to hear anything else from you much. Yeah, I would agree with that. I mean, it helped one of the siblings. They said they weren't aware to the extent of the situation that it was in, but the other one, I don't know.

I mean, if you could ever circle back around, there's two options. One is there's a wonderful book called Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud. My wife is already making me read that. Yeah, and if you ever have the chance to leave that with your mom and dad, it would be healthy for them because they're not very good at boundaries and here's what it comes down to here's what the discussion might sound like after you let a cooling off period occur because right now things are pretty hot um yeah but at next time you know i don't know christmas or next spring or something you circle back around your mom and dad just the two just the three of you not your wife in the

room and certainly not your brothers and sisters. Okay. And just say, listen, y'all can do whatever you want. I don't care what you do. I just love you. And I was worried about you. And here's the thing. I actually love my brothers and sisters and you're not helping them.

Enablers are the kindest most generous people out there and they give money away to keep from facing difficult decisions and conflict and you think you're helping them but you're not helping them because what happens when they can't have your money anymore they're not going to be able to live like they live because they've never had the dignity of solving their own problems. And so you're actually causing your children to be weak, and you're harming them with these expensive gifts. And so while you think you're helping, the actual irony is, Mom and Dad, you're actually bringing great harm to them.

And I really wish you'd quit harming my brothers and sisters. Okay. And see if they hear that they probably won't okay so and leave them with a copy of boundaries that's one option a better option even than that might be if there's someone that has influence with your parents that you could talk to that would be willing to sit down and talk to them about this. For instance, if they really look up to their priest, you said they're Catholic. Yeah. If their priest is a man of wisdom and would sit down with them and guide them in this, and truthfully, if they're mass-attending Catholics, he probably would have great influence with them. Yes.

And he might look at them and be able to say the exact same things you said, but they might hear it from him where they didn't hear it from you because they powdered your butt. That's true, yeah. And so, but again, he may not be a man of wisdom. He may not be a man of conviction and willing to enter into a conflict situation he might rather just stand back on the side and smile and uh i don't know i don't know the priest some of them are very tough and very wise and some of them are wimpy so i just like preachers right

and so um you know that it but someone like that that would be in a position of influence with them that they could hear because they're harming themselves and their kids. And it's not devastating. It's just aggravating for everyone involved. And then if I were you after you did those couple of different things, I would just shut up and just move off to the side and just love them all where they are. They just is where they is. There's crazy in every family, my brother, every family. If any of you think there's not crazy in your family out there, it's because it's you. Ashley is with us in Texas.

Hey, Ashley, how are you? I'm good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? So the job I work for currently was recently purchased, and my position ends at the end of this year. And the car I own, I am upside down about between $5,000 and $7,000, and I'm needing about $3,000 to $5,000 worth of work done to it.

I wanted to know, should I get the work done on the car since it's kind of sort of less than what the car is? What's wrong with it? It could possibly need an engine mount, and the time tensioner chain is messed up, I think, possibly. Yeah, what's this car worth? I got an appraisal from CarMax for $4,000. You don't spend $3,000 on a $4,000 car?

Okay. You sell the car as it is and you go buy another car? Okay. That's about $4,000, but that is a good car that hasn't got a messed up timing chain and a broken motor mount. And there's lots of $4,000 cars in good enough shape like that that'll work that way. So what do you do for a living? My work and account's payable. Making what kind of money?

$19 an hour. How's your job hunt going? It's going. I just kind of, sorry, I have like a speech impediment. I'm sorry, darling? So I kind of have like a speech impediment where I kind of talk really fast and it affects me in interviews. So like I get really good interviews, but when I go into the interview, like I get really nervous and talk really fast. And people will mention like, you talk really fast.

Are you nervous? And I'll say, I know I talk fast. I'm working on it. But obviously, you but obviously i can't afford speech therapy and insurance doesn't cover that and like i'm also a contractor at my job so like i don't get a package when once the job ends so you need to get you need to get a job now uh not later okay hey here's the thing here's what's interesting you just talked to me in front of 17 million people, and you weren't talking fast.

Yes, I'm crying. I don't know why you aren't nervous talking in front of 17 million people. That's nerve-wracking. Hey, I think you can do this. I think you can do this, and I think you need to go get another job as soon as you can. Hold on. I'm going to hook you up with some of Ken Coleman's stuff, including the proximity principle book because that's what you need and then you can get this car straightened out once you get your job landed and because you're pretty scared right now hold on ken will

help you out this is the dave ramsey show Hey, guys. At the Dave Ramsey Show, we really value your input. It helps us to know what's important to you so we can deliver relevant content to help you crush your money goals. We just launched a brand new survey, and we'd love your feedback. It only takes a few minutes, and you'll be entered to win a 100 amazon gift card no purchase necessary take the survey at davramsey.com slash survey or text survey to 33 789 We'll be right back. In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage is Tyler. Hey, Tyler, how are you?

I'm great, Dave. How are you doing? Better than I deserve, man. Where do you live, sir? Dallas, Texas. Cool. Welcome to Nashville. And all the way over here to do your debt-free scream. Yes, sir. Good for you to Nashville and all the way over here to do your debt-free scream. Yes, sir. Good for you. How much have you paid off?

$27,000 in 26 months. Good for you. And your range of income during that time? Started at $40,000 up to around $50,000. Cool. What do you do for a living? I'm a sales manager for Marriott International. Oh, great. Good for you. What kind of debt was the $27,000? So, a little bit of everything. $11,000 in credit cards, $8,500 car loan, and $7,500 in student loans. Everything that I'd accumulated my last couple years of college. And then I cash flowed a move from Chicago to Dallas halfway in between.

Yeah. Okay. Cool. So you got a degree in what? Business management from the University of Arizona. Good for you. And when did you graduate? May 2016. Okay. All right.

And when long after that you start this process? Wasn't long after that. I packed up. I moved to Chicago. Got my first big job opportunity. Thought I had it all figured out. And about six months into that, the bill started coming due on the student loans, the car, and the credit cards were pretty much maxed out.

I was to a point early in my career where I didn't really know I was going to pay for groceries this week. Because the paycheck wasn't coming until Thursday. Yeah. So that was the point where I was pretty scared, Dave. Yeah. I didn't know what to do at that point. And at that point in time is when I started to do Dave-ish. I guess I kind of had my I had it moment sometime before I had met you.

Uh-huh. And then my brother, who's actually a SmartV pro, had told me about the podcast because he was aware of my situation. And, you know, I said, oh, that sounds interesting. Maybe I'll check it out. Of course, I never did. A couple months went by. And he was always in my ear every couple weeks. Hey, you should check out the podcast.

You might like it. It might help you out. And, of course, I said, yeah, yeah, I'll check it out at some point. Another couple months went by. I still hadn't listened to it. I was still scared. Didn't know I was going to clean up my mess. And then for one day, one day for no reason in particular, I just decided to download the app, throw on the podcast, and took my dog for a walk around the block, and I heard my first debt-free scream. And it was in that moment where I knew I had found the information that I had been looking for to help me clean up this mess for the first time.

Wow. I felt hope. Very cool. Good for you. How old are you? I'm 26. Wow. Good for you.

And then you make a move to Dallas? Or you went from Dallas to Chicago? I went from Chicago to Dallas, halfway in between during this journey. Long story short, my girlfriend and I were dating long distance at the time. We wanted to get to the same place. And we just kind of picked somewhere on the map, and we said we both think we can get jobs here. And that's where we went, went to Dallas. Wow.

And you got a job. And we can get jobs here. And that's where we went. Went to Dallas. Wow. And you got a job. And we both got jobs. Uh-huh. And another great thing about having the opportunity to come out here is this weekend, you know, throughout this whole journey, this has given us the opportunity to get our families out here together for the first time to meet. Oh. And she actually became my fiancee here in Nashville a few nights ago. Oh, you got engaged while you're here.

Yes, sir. All right. Way to go. Where is she? Hey, get up there with him. I love it. Very cool. That is very neat.

I love it. Way to go, Nashville. Absolutely. I love it. And your brother, Nashville. Absolutely. I love it. And your brother is a SmartVestor Pro. Yeah, so my brother, he's a SmartVestor Pro. He had discovered you, I guess, a couple years ago. He worked himself out of debt as well, and he knew that it was what I needed as well because, you know, I had –

So what do you tell people the secret to getting out of debt is? Two things. Definitely got a budget. I was meticulous with my budgeting. I was looking at every dollar probably every single day. And then the second thing that was most important to me was just constantly learning new information, you know, listening to podcasts, reading the books, getting on the Facebook groups, just kind of submitting yourself to the process. That's what does it. learning new information, listening to podcasts, reading the books, getting on the Facebook groups,

just kind of submitting yourself to the process. That's what does it. Very cool. All right. Introduce us to your fiancé. So this is Alex. Hey, Alex. Hi. How are you doing?

Congratulations. Thank you. I'm very proud of him. Big, big trip to Nashville, huh? Yeah. We drove out here on Saturday, and it's been pretty good since then. I think. Hold the ring up.

Let's see it. Here it is. Give us the look. All right. I love it. Pay for it in cash, of course. Of course. Pay for it in cash, Dave.

Yeah, you better. I love it. I love it. Very cool. So who was your biggest cheerleader? Your brother? It was definitely Alex. Alex.

So you've known about this for a while how long have y'all been dating um a little over two years okay so a little over two years you've been working on this yes sir she didn't find out about this probably till a couple months into my debt-free journey because you know we got to get a little more serious that's when i had told her about everything and you and she was extremely supportive throughout the entire process. She didn't have any debt coming out of school, and she basically just stood by my side the whole way, made those sacrifices with me, so I couldn't have done it without her. Very cool.

So your older brother just went, well, I told you to listen to the podcast. Exactly. He knew as soon as I started listening to it, I'd go all in, and that's what he did. Very cool. Very cool. Well, congratulations, you guys. You've got a great life in front of you thank you this is going to be absolutely amazing very very well done very proud of you thank you excellent job excellent job how's it feel it's amazing i can't tell you how scared i was when i first came out of school

living in the big city not making a lot of money. And this has changed our entire life. So we're going to. Opposite of fear, probably hope. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Can do a lot of different things now. Yeah.

And fear doesn't own you anymore. Money will do that. Money will do that both directions. It will cause the fear, lack of it will, and push a little of the fear back. Absolutely. Very good. Well, congratulations, you guys. What a great week for you all.

Absolutely incredible. We're honored we got to be a little part of your story. We've got a copy of Chris Hogan's book for you, Everyday Millionaires, because that's what you're going to be. No doubt about it. I mean, your brother's a smart investor pro. You have to be. It's like a rule. Exactly.

All right. i love it well i'll tell you what alex you got to join in too because this is going to be your debt-free scream as well tyler and alex uh it's really tyler's but they're engaged so we're calling it uh from dallas texas 27 000 paid off in 26 months, making $40,000 to $50,000. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free! We're debt-free! I love it.

Boom! Yeah! I don't know if you're like me, but I could really feel his story when he was talking about it. When you sit down, I remember I was probably about his age, only I was married with a couple kids. And I remember going in to balance the checkbook, which was something we used to do back in the day before the digital world. And you would take your written checkbook register, this little thing that you kept. You wrote your checks down, what you'd spent on, what the check number was. And then you had to reconcile it with the actual checks that came in the mail and the bank statement that came in the mail.

You get them both out, all hard paper laying there on the table. And I go through and I realize I had not written down a check and that I'm getting ready. I just hadn't gotten the overdraft notice yet that I'm $100 and something upside down. I don't have money for food. And I just couldn't breathe. Sweat on your upper lip. Sweat in the palm of your hands, hearts racing.

You don't ever want to be there again once you've been there. Way to go, brother. Proud of you. Very well done. Very well done. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. Our scripture of the day, 2 Thessalonians 3.13. Strength does not come from winning.

Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength, Arnold Schwarzenegger said. 2 Thessalonians 3.13 is, And as for you, brothers and sisters, never tire of doing what is good. Never tire of doing what is good. Lewis is with us. Lewis is in Mass. Hey, Lewis, how are you? Hey, Dave, I'm doing pretty well. How about yourself? Better than I deserve. What's up?

So I just found out about you about a year ago and, um, I went through, uh, Financial Peace University earlier this year and I've kind of just been doing Dave ish. Um, I'm 27 years old. I'm single and, uh, I have about 35,000,000 in debt. About 12 of that is in credit cards and then the rest is student loans. Okay. How can I help? Well, I got my associate's degree in business administration and I've kind of just been trying to figure out what to do career-wise. I was most recently a salesperson at a Toyota dealership, but it wasn't really a good fit for me. And I've basically just been doing grocery deliveries in the meantime. Okay. So what are you going to do?

So, well, I got hired for a part-time retail position, but it's hourly, and it's 30 hours a week. And then I figured I could do that and then do the grocery delivery on the side, try to get maybe 40 to 60 hours a week. Yeah, it's still going to suck when it all adds up. What's your career goal? Where are you going, man? You need to decide what you're going to do. Yeah, that's a good question um i've actually i i got saved in 2015 from a party lifestyle and so in the future i really

do want to uh be a pastor or or preacher um but i'm just kind of trying to figure out how to get there i need i don't really have a game plan and that's kind of been the struggle i don't really have a game plan, and that's kind of been the struggle. I don't have a plan. Okay. All right. Well, that's the trick is to determine where you want to go and then ask yourself what has to be true that's not true now for me to be there. So if I'm talking to the 40-year-old you, and the 40-year-old you is highly successful and is really just knocking the ball out of the park every time he comes up the plate, you're just having a great day every Monday, you need to think about what that 40-year-old you is doing that's making you smile

and making you make a really nice living for your family and making you one of the better people that does whatever that thing is. What is it you've got to do to get to be that guy? And first we have to identify what that thing is, what is it you've got to do to get to be that guy? And first we have to identify what that guy is. And, you know, that's what Ken Coleman helps a lot with, is with the proximity principle, is to start to identify that. It may or may not be the ministry. You may want to sit down and talk to your pastor

and have him begin to pray with you as to whether this is a call on your life or just a reaction to, you know, to who much is forgiven. You know, they love much. And so I'm in that case. I was a hell-raising, beer-drinking, hillbilly, crazy man. And when I met God, it changed my life. And so I want to serve God.

But what I do now is a ministry, but it's not a traditional ministry in the sense of I'm not in a church in terms of I'm not a pastor. And so you need to think that through and say, okay, is this just a reaction to my gratitude to God for changing my life, or is this really a call to be a pastor? There are two different things there. And so your gratitude can just lead you to live well and to minister and to serve in whatever your career field is. A call will lead you to being a pastor and will lead you to some formal education probably in that area. It wouldn't hurt anything. It's not required, but it wouldn't hurt anything. And so I would meet with my pastor if I were you.

That would be one of my proximity principle things and begin a process of praying and determining the difference in those. Is this gratefulness for the forgiveness that I received, which would be natural and is a good thing, or is this a call? And they are different. They are different. Hold on. I'll have Kelly pick up, and we'll send you a copy of the proximity principle, and I'll love to hear where you land after all of this. Our question of the day comes from blinds.com.

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Today's question is from Michael in Arizona. I recently began a new job and I learned that I have a stock loan program. Basically, they loan you X amount of dollars to purchase company stock at the strike price and then they do automatic payroll deductions to pay it back over the next three years. Do you think this is a worthwhile loan to take?

No! This is combining two stupid things. Buying single stocks, which are high risk, and buying them on a loan, which triples the risk or quadruples the risk. No! Hope I wasn't unclear. Robert's with you. Robert's in Canadaada hey robert what's up hey dave thank you for taking my call sure what's up um so my question is i may be moving to a different city in the next few months to take over a family business and so and in that

i would be selling my house in the current city, and I'm wondering what to do with the equity. I'll get about $100,000. So should I walk the baby steps through two and three and be in 3B slash four and rent for about a year? Yes. Or roll it into a new home? No. Rent for a year. Yeah.

Let's get debt-free, and you've got the opportunity to start fresh. The other thing that'll do is take a lot of the pressure off of your finances while you're making this career transition, too. Yeah. Family business going to pay more or less? It'll start out less than what I'm making until while I'm being mentored and kind of get my driver tickets and all that stuff. And then once I take over, it will be dramatically more than what I'm currently making. Driver tickets. That'll be about, well, it will be dramatically more than what I'm currently making. Driver. That'll be about, well, it's a trucking company,

so I'll have to get my semi-truck license and all those licenses. So you're going to be a driver. Well, I'll be an owner of the company, and then, you know, if you can't find a driver, then I'll have to make the odd run type of thing. Okay. You know, there's about 15, 15 20 employees all truck drivers and delivery drivers so so when was the i mean when will you quit driving a truck and become the owner well it'll uh like the spring it'll be like a four or five month window where i'm being mentored and kind of doing the odd roles here and there. So that's where my income will go quite down. Okay.

And you're going to be given the business as a gift? Yeah. Okay. All right. Is the business in debt? No, no debt on the business at all. Okay. Nice gift.

Yeah. Yeah, very cool. Was this your goal all along to be in this business uh no no uh just kind of was talking to my grandpa he's the owner of it and then just kind of snowballed from there and then we're going to explore the opportunities and i mean like the finances and everything has to work out for me obviously and just the way the company is it all has to be good you'll meet with an accountant and sort all that out, and then if everything looks good to me and, you know,

I'll probably be able to make a really good go of it, then this will all kind of go on. Okay. All right. So you've got a little bit more due diligence on the details to do before you make the final decision. Oh, for sure, for sure, yeah. Okay.

All right. Very cool. Well, good for you. Yeah, research it out and make sure that what's Oh, for sure, for sure, yeah. Okay. All right. Very cool. Well, good for you. Yeah, research it out. Make sure that what's going on, and good for your grandpa for putting himself in a position to be able to give you this and still exist on his own. It's one of the problems with small family businesses is handing to the next generation without putting them in debt to do it, and it's very difficult to do that.

But it sounds like he's got that part figured out. That's a good thing. Very well done. Very well done. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Christy follows me on Instagram, like about a million six of you do. Should I use my mutual fund account to pay off my line of credit? If it is not in a retirement account, yes.

We use all monies while we're in Baby Step 2 to clean up all debts except your home. All monies that are not retirement monies. All monies that are not retirement monies. All savings down to $1,000 are cashed out and put on your Baby Step 2. That puts us out of the Dave Ramsey Show on the books. Our thanks to James Childs, our producer, Kelly Daniel, our associate producer. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. 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. Did you know you can now listen to The Dave Ramsey Show on Pandora and Spotify? For all the ways to watch and listen, check out our show page at DaveRamsey.com slash show.