The Ramsey Show - App - Where Do You Want To Be 20 Years From Now? (Hour 2)

Episode Date: January 20, 2021

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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 am Dave Ramsey, your host, Ken Coleman. Ramsey Personality is my co-host today. We're talking to you about your life and your money. Thank you for joining us. The phone number here is 888-825-5225.

That's 888-825-5225. John in Indianapolis, Indiana starts off this hour. Hey, John, how are you? Good, Dave. It's a pleasure to talk to you and Ken. You too, sir. how are you? Good, Dave. It's a pleasure to talk to you and Ken. You too, sir. What's up? So I've got a question about wills.

My wife and I had originally set up a will for us back when our oldest was originally born 17 years ago. And since that time, and it was set up where everything would go into it. If both of us died, everything would go into a trust for the kids. And they would start to get them at different ages, starting at like age 21 and then 25 and 27. They would get a portion of it. And now, since then, my wife passed away, And so it's just me and looking at the amount that is going to be in the estate at this point in time with insurance, it's,

it's going to be over 4 million. And I've heard you talk before about putting stipulations in that, you know, I don't want the last thing I want is to enable my kids to be trust fund babies and, you know, I want them to be working hard. And so, how do I go about putting in stipulations that they need to meet certain criteria, you know, as far as, you know, in general, I want them to be living for the Lord. I want them to be managing money well. But how do I go about actually putting that in, and who makes those decisions?

Well, you'd have to sit down with an estate planning attorney, and you develop terms of the trust. And ours has gotten, the larger larger it's gotten the more complicated it's gotten uh and and so you know it just depends on how much control you want to try to exhibit through this process and the more control you want to try to exhibit the more complicated it gets obviously and so you know uh we put ours in with the family constitution. There are three kids in the trust. And if any one of the three aren't abiding by it, the other two can, you know, cause the trustee to take action and remove them from the benefits of the trust. And then there's

a process by which they can come home if they're prodigal, you know, and that they could be redeemed and put back in as well. So we've built all of that in. And then, you know, you've got to detail out the timeline on that and try to, or not the timeline, but the guidelines by which someone could be exited from the benefits under what circumstances. Because, you know, what happens is that things go sour after you're gone, and one of these siblings uses it as a weapon on the other one, and then you've just got one of these things that's just a lawsuit that eats up all the money.

And we've seen that with lots of family stuff that gets in the news. And I can think of three different families right now that I know that are household, their businesses are household names, and the estate nastiness got into the news. And so you just want to be real clear. The biggest thing you can do is just handle all this while they're alive while you're alive i mean uh you know if you got one of them off the rails just go ahead and decide now you know that they're not they're not going to be in it and um you don't want to fund i'm not going to fund your cocaine you know i'm not going to fund your trust fund and baby activities you're going to be a productive citizen uh you're going to be walking with god

you know and i agree with you on those, and that's what we put in ours. But it's got, you know, it's very detailed. It was rather expensive to build because of the lawyer's time involved. And it's a little bit unusual what we did. But I'm just trying to cause the money to be a blessing and not a curse because it's a curse if it enables bad behavior, and that's what you're concerned about, right? Yes, absolutely.

Okay, so... How old are your kids? My oldest is 17, so 17, 15, and 10. Yeah, okay. Well, they're still pretty young. Yeah, they're a little young to know really how well they're going to be managing money. You'll know a lot more 10 years from now for sure so right you know i'd probably keep it pretty clean and simple right now and then as

the wealth increases and as they get older and you've got indications i might get more complicated then it's actually what we did um okay i mean uh the problem is i mean with the real estate portfolio and the size of ramsey and everything, it's hundreds of millions of dollars. And so it's not, you know, it's not a simple thing to say. When ours was four million, we were very simple. And that's not to say four million is not a lot. It's a lot. But the problem with hundreds of millions is you can run two generations or three

generations and so i got more and more paranoid about doing the right thing by my family as we've as it is grown so it is a challenge the way you set that up and i don't want to get into the the family business but but do you have a trustee, and so the children would, if one was misbehaving, the two would make the case to the trustee. Yeah. And so what happens if the trustee has a heart attack and dies? There's a substitute trustee. You have all of that.

All trustee's always have a substitute trustee. That's what I thought. In all trusts. Okay. No attorney that's worth their salt will let you build a trust with a single person, that the whole thing stands on that person. And you can cause that trust to be changed out also. But they still have to serve that function.

Is it much like an arbitration situation where that trustee, I mean, there's minutes, there's evidence. Yeah, the trustee, I mean, it can be. They kind of determine it, how they want to run it. They have to build back up that they did, they have to go by the terms of the trust. Right. They don't get to make it up. Right. They don't get to make up their own rules.

And so there's not much left to interpretation here. If they don't go by the terms of the trust, they start being personally liable by the beneficiaries of the trust, which would be, in this case, the kids. But the big thing, once the kids are older now his are younger yeah but once the mine are all adults with spouses and kids of their own and so you're just talking through this stuff all the time it's not like they've discovered all of this was done after i'm gone we have this big dave is going to die this year meeting every year and if dave dies this year here's what it all looks like and we review every bit of this. So that one more time, they've got it dialed into their head what the intent was

and how things should work. It's got to be weird sitting in that meeting for you. Oh, it's a Monty Python meeting. I'm feeling much better. It's just a flesh wound. Are you like checking your pulse rate and you're kind of doing some medical exams? Really, just going, do I look okay? Is my color bad?

You know, it's like, yeah, it's strange. But I'll tell you what, doing a will is a strange thing. It is for anybody. For anybody. We're all going to die. That's the one thing we can't count on. Got to do a will. You got to get on mamabear.com, get your will done for sure.

Everybody's going to die. You got to get a will. And it's, but it's a sobering exercise. It reminds us of our mortality. 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,

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Laurel is with us in Richmond, Oregon. Hi, Redmond, Oregon. Hi, Laurel. How are you? I'm fabulous. How are you? Your phone sucks. Great.

What's up? Sorry. I invested some money for my daughter. Can you speak directly? I can't understand you. Can you speak directly into your phone, please? How's that? A little better, thanks.

I invested some money for my daughter to get when she's 35. She's now 35, getting the money, but the housing market seems to be not in a very good situation to buy a home. So my question is, should she reinvest the money that she's getting on the annuity or should she buy a home at this point? Why would it not be a good time to buy a home? The prices in Central Oregon are astronomical. They are everywhere. So do you just pay it

or reinvest it and wait for them to come down? I think you're going to have a long wait. Like never. Yeah. I mean, the market may soften and you may get a deal at some point if the economy gets screwed up or something. But I'm not going to wait around to buy a home at 35 years old. You buy it. Now, you don't want to go out and overpay in the sense that you just get in know, get in some bidding war or something crazy where you're overpaying for a property.

You want to be diligent about purchasing a property. But she's 35. It's her money. She ought to be able to make this decision. Yeah. You know, you can't sit there and try to time this out. You know, the market's hot. And it's all about supply and demand.

So all you do is look at your local situation and make a decision. At some point, you've got to buy. And you make the best purchase possible, and then you move forward. Yeah, my 35-year-olds don't ask me. Yeah, there's that. And I'm Dave Ramsey. I was wondering if we were going to address that. I mean, you know. You're 35.

She gets to do what she wants to do. Give her advice and then step out. You know, if they ask me, it's because they actually want my advice. What do you think about the market right now? And that kind of a thing. But I don't dictate to them when they're 35 years old. We see a lot of this. This is a helicopter situation where as parents, you've got to be careful.

You've got to, at some point, trust them and let them learn and give them some advice and walk away. Yeah, that point was a decade ago. Nisha is in Boise, Idaho. Hi, Nisha. How are you? Hi, Dave and Ken. Great. Thank you for everything you do.

Thank you. Dave, my husband and I are coordinating a SPU Classic Moment, and we have one participant who has been with our husband since she was 19. She's now in her 40s, and five months ago, her husband left her, and she's never handled any of the finances. She just got served with divorce papers, but she only has $1,600 to her name.

Her income is pretty limited. My understanding is that there's a lawyer that she can hire for $5,000. That is the so-called pitfall that would get her everything she needs, or she could hire another lawyer for fifteen hundred i know idaho's a 50 50 state when it comes to divorce but what's your advice for her and how would she how would she create the five thousand to hire the

best lawyer why has she not gotten her income up during the five months he's been gone? She's been a stay-at-home mom for a long time, so I think that's the best she can do right now. She does have two jobs. One is actually in a school, so I think it's limited income just because of the school year. But here's my point. He's, wait a minute,

is he like, do they have a lot of money? Is he wealthy? He's definitely better off than she is. He's, it sounds like he's being quite manipulative

at the moment and holding all the money back that would be theirs. Yeah, but what is all the money? I mean, how much money does he have? Because let me tell you, if he doesn't have like hundreds of thousands of dollars,

this pit bull for $5,000 is not going to create money where there's not money. Right. I would have to say he works for the federal government. I would have to say he's got quite a bit set aside that she doesn't know about because she's never had anything to do with the finances in all the years that they've been together. Okay. But you don't really have any indicator of that except that he's had a decent career and he hides and manipulates.

Right. And, you know, he just bought a brand-new Mercedes. He's just getting ready to build a new house. Okay, I'm going after him. Okay, I'm getting there now. So what are her two jobs? What are the two jobs that she's been working? These are two part-time jobs, I'm assuming?

Yes, well, one's in a school, so I guess it's only eight months out of the year. And then the other one is an evening job that she does after she's, you know, got home, fed her and her kids, and then when the kids go to bed. Yeah, she's got two young kids. They're a little older. They're 18 and 14. Oh, good. Okay.

Okay, so here's the deal. She has a broken heart, and her confidence, what she had, has been crushed. Yes. And that is the bigger crisis here than anything else. And so we've got to get her eyes on the 10 years from now at 52, she's a successful dot, dot, dot. Fill in that blank. Very successful. Making more money than he makes now

and she's going to she's going to be a she's going to be a caterpillar that becomes a beautiful butterfly how many people are in your group how many people are in your group that you're coordinating we're only a group

so there's just myself and my husband and three other people. Okay, but that's a start. That's a base. So one of the best things you can do for her is playing off what Dave just said is remind her of that and say, hey, we're going to come alongside of you in this deal and we're going to help you get a better job or better two jobs. Because if you just take the amount of people that the three couples know and you expand that out And you begin to help share her narrative and share her story. Because the other thing that she's dealing with is she's been a stay-at-home mom for so long. And I get these calls on the Ken Coleman Show all the time.

And they think, well, life has passed me by. And that's not true. The fact of the matter is she has tangible hard skills and soft skills that she can use. And if it were me, Nisha, you said, what should we do? Let's help her get a better job, a better paying job that's going to give her more money, which is going to give her some breathing room. It's going to give her some momentum and some confidence. And that's how she saves for the $5,000 pit bull.

But I would walk with her on this. And on top of that, you tell her to sit down with the pit bull and say, I got $1,500. I'll have the $5,000 later. Or you can take it out of his side if you'd like. That'd be great. How about a piece of their action? Go over there and get some of that money, and I'll give you your $5,000. That's right.

By the way, those guys, if he's really a pit bull, he'll respond to that. He'll like that. Yeah. Yeah, and you do want that guy. You want the one that wants to take a chunk out of the guy's butt. Right. Yeah, that's how I was leaning also, yep. Yeah, I think you get him going, but you're going to have to jack him up.

She's not going to have the $5,000, but more than anything, what the fact that she has not got her career moving better than it is over a five-month period of time tells me that she's still under the blanket of the depression of this toxicity of this marriage. And we've got to get her wings out of this cocoon and get them out there where she can flap them. Because she's going to need income regardless of the divorce, regardless how much she gets from the guy. She's got to have a beautiful, better life. And so she needs Ken Coleman in her life big time.

And hang on. Kelly will pick up. We'll send you a copy of Ken's book just for her. Ken Coleman Ramsey Personality is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Cheryl is with us in Canada. Hi, Cheryl, how are you? Hi, thanks for taking my call. Sure, what's up?

I have a question regarding, my husband and I are debating about whether we should sell our 1995 tent trailer and upgrade to a used travel trailer. We're in our mid-30s. We have a family of six that loves to camp. We're debt-free, including our home, and we have cash to pay both for the trailer and the tow vehicle that we would need to pull it. But I'm really concerned about the steep depreciation and the other costs, the storage, the maintenance, the insurance. So we want to get your opinion about whether it's wise to make this purchase. Okay. What's it going to cost? Depending on the age, if we get a five-year-old trailer, it'd be about $22,000.

If we go back to a 15-year-old trailer, we're talking maybe $10,000 less, $12,000, but it could need more maintenance as well. Okay. And what are the costs associated with owning it? We're estimating it would cost about $3,000, including the depreciation of storage, the insurance, but that's not including depreciation on an SUV that we would buy. That includes the depreciation? Yes.

What's the cash out of pocket to own the thing after you own it, not counting depreciation? Yearly, it would be about $800 for storage and insurance. What's your household income? About $200,000. Okay. What's the other vehicles that you own? What's the value on all of those? So we have a

I would say about $20,000 together. We have a car and a van. I would buy it. You would buy it? It just is a very steep depreciation and it just feels like a toy that my husband would really love to get. It's a complete waste of money. That's exactly what it is. Yes. Except for the fact that you're going to use it for making memories with your family, and you're going to get enjoyment out of it.

Are you planning to flip it anytime soon? No. Of course not. That's my point. So, I mean, the depreciation is almost like a false narrative in this decision. Well, the thing is this. Here's how I decided that, okay? Here's the decision-making tool I mean, the depreciation is almost like a false narrative in this decision. Well, the thing is this. Here's how I decided that, okay? Here's the decision-making tool I use, Cheryl.

It is, you will have $50,000 or less tied up in things that are going down in value with wheels and motors. You make $200,000, okay? okay if we set fifty thousand dollars in the middle of the table in your financial situation and set fire to it you're still okay yes it would be unpleasant but you're still okay and so the problem with toys is if you told me all that and then you told me you made 50 grand i would be going you're out of your freaking mind you cannot absorb depreciation on 40 or 50 thousand dollars worth of stuff when you make 50 grand because it is all going down in value you've accurately assessed that but you're a hundred percent debt-free house and everything you make two hundred thousand dollars a year you got great control of everything you've researched everything

to the t you've really know your stuff you're not wandering into this undisciplined you're not wandering into this on an impulse you've thought this through you even called to ask an expert's opinion this is how much detail you've gone into and the numbers 10 years from today in your overall wealth building tool are irrelevant. And that's how you decide if you can have a toy or not. Right. That makes a lot of sense. I think we're just real savers.

Yeah, I think you are. I think you're tightwad. You're very disciplined. But again, $800 is what you've estimated it's going to cost you an upkeep. And I don't think that's a willy-nilly number either. So you've just got to play that out. What does $800 mean to you in your budget? It's nothing.

It's peanuts in your current economic situation. Most people are buying a biscuit. Yeah. I mean, there could be maintenance costs that could really add up as well. So there are a lot of question marks. You could forget to pay the insurance insurance and the thing rolls off a cliff and you lose the whole thing and you still, it's $22,000.

You're all right. In your world, $22,000 does not destroy your world. If you spent $22,000... Let's try it this way. If you spent $22,000... You remember back when they had these things called cruises if you spent twenty two thousand dollars to take your family on a cruise and came home with nothing but the memory you can afford to do that right you can afford that we could yeah another element of this equation is that i'm self-employed. I'm a contractor, and while my husband brings home the bulk of the income,

and I'm part-time working from home, my income does fluctuate. And so we could be down $30,000 from that average from last year. Cheryl, you're having trouble enjoying the fruits of your labor. It's a new skill you need to practice you're you you enjoy saving and you enjoy planning and you enjoy analyzing but you're getting paralysis of the analysis it's a 22 000 purchase and in your world it's not a big deal and you're you're making a whole lot bigger you're trying to find something to worry about here darling and go get your trailer and enjoy it take your kids camping out in the woods you're making a whole lot bigger. You're trying to find something to worry about here, darling. Go get your trailer and enjoy it.

Take your kids camping out in the woods. You're going to have a blast. You've lived like no one else. Go out there and just sit back there and get you a cup of coffee and a smile and a camping chair. I mean, the maintenance on that is not going to be that much. Unless somebody's walking around that thing beating it with sledgehammers, then we've got real problems. But the maintenance on this, they can absorb that.

Well, again, set fire to it and get you another one that's right it's not it's not the end of the world right and so the good news this is what happened what's what's happening with her happens with all of us yeah it's happened to me it's happened to you as we progress in the math our emotions don't always keep up that's true there's still a part of when i get ready to buy something today today sharon ramsey will oftentimes say some sentence and you've actually you and stacy have been sitting there sometimes when she'll say it i've seen it yeah and but it the the sentence has nothing to do with her present reality it has to do with a 28 year old version

of her who's in bankruptcy court with a starving with a baby wasn't starving but with worrying about feeding our babies and that that person still lives inside of her inside of me yes and we all have that whether you've been through bankruptcy or not but this these folks have been saving and progressing and their their reality has progressed so much beyond their emotional grasp of it. And that happens to all of us. Everybody. I mean, we spend more on copier paper and coffee in this building than I used to make in a year. Yeah, I've heard you say that.

And I can't get my head around the checks I write out of Ramsey. How about this building? I mean, it's just... You had to blow your mind when you wrote the checks for this building. We paid cash for this one. It becomes surreal. It becomes kind of like you're playing monopoly right or something with somebody else's money but that's the the but we've often talked about inside the business and in our personal lives

that as we have become progressively wealthier and and more successful in general our emotions still remind us of the other stuff it's it's a good check and balance because you don't really good this keeps cheryl or people all of us who are in stuff. It's a good check and balance. It's really good. This keeps Cheryl or people, all of us who are in Cheryl's situation, from overspending. So she's being very wise. This is not to pick on her at all. No. And, you know, the best part of her story is she is a detail fiend.

I mean, she's on the research. You know what this was about? This had nothing to do with details. This was, Dave, please tell me that we're not being careless. Yeah. It's the psychology of the money, and that's what you've been describing. That's what changes. Yep.

You know, when you and Sharon, you talked about it in staffing the other day, you know, the way you had to change your life and the way that to this day, but you said the other day, you still give Sharon envelopes. Oh, she still has envelopes. She's on envelopes. Yeah, there's a whole, it's a lot bigger envelope. Yeah. Probably a lot more in it.

A little thicker. But the fact of the matter is is that life change comes with psychology first because you're surviving and you're just buckling down. Yep. Then you get into thriving but the habits and the way you see money,

it's still there. Mm-hmm. And it feels so weird. You're like, oh my gosh, this is a ridiculous amount of money to spend on a trailer for our kids.

Or you're getting ready to buy something that when somebody else bought it years ago, you looked at them and said, I would never. That's right. I will never spend that on a car. $22,000 on a depreciating asset instead of going, never. We've lived like no one else. Again, this is saying you're smart, you're wise. Yes.

You're not going to blow it. You're not going to blow it. You're not going to blow it. Trust your instincts. But the only advice I've got for you is just push against it a little bit and embrace the reality of where you are, not where you came from. Yes. And that allows you to enjoy generosity. Yes. And it allows you to enjoy being generous to yourself

in the process. Buy a huge box of marshmallows the same day that you buy the camper. And some graham crackers. That too. And some chocolate. Gotta make some s'mores. That's right.

Ken Coleman Ramsey personality is my co-host today host of the Ken Coleman show where we talk about careers he's America's leading career coach on 70 radio stations across America plus podcast plus Sirius XM be sure and tune in and. And YouTube. And YouTube. That's right. Can't forget about that. Yeah. Because, I mean, you and I are known for our quality camera appearances. Yes. Yes. We probably should stick to radio, but, you know, you have to expand. You have to

embrace the modern technologies. You've got to go where people are. I'm telling you. All right. Carly is with us in Cincinnati. Hey, Carly, how are you? Good, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Okay, so just a little bit of background. I'm 23 years old and still living at home with my parents. I graduated cosmetology school in 2016, but I ended up leaving the salon life to explore other options with steadier incomes.

I took a job two years ago with a logistics company doing billing. The pay is really low. I get $13 an hour at full time. So last year it was about $26,000. I'm debt free after paying off $35,000 in school loans and car debt. Good for you. Thank you. My question is more so advice. I'm wanting to move out on my own soon now that I'm debt-free, and actually I was planning on moving down to Tennessee. I'm seeking advice on finding a new job or career that pays enough for me to be able to support myself. Does the cosmetology degree, does it transfer from state to state? Is it reciprocal?

It does not. Just Ohio. I'm sorry. You're kidding me. You got trained to cut hair and licensed to cut hair in Ohio, and Tennessee does not respect that license. No. I would have to retake my board test for tennessee just the board test

but not the school right yeah okay well how big a deal is that um i would have to refresh my training um and education why and then sign up to i think it's uh i think it costs money to take your boards but i'm not sure i'm sure it does yeah it, I'm sure it does. Oh, yeah, it does. I'm sure it does. But why would you have to refresh? Just go take it. You just took it. Yeah, in 2016, I did. The question is, what kind of work do you want to do?

Because when somebody says, well, what kind of work would allow me to make good money? That's an open-ended question. I could answer that for 24 hours straight. You know, a job, a J-O-B is a J-O-B. But I don't teach people that they're put on this planet to just, a J-O-B, is a J-O-B. But I don't teach people that they're put on this planet to just work a J-O-B. Work is not a utilitarian function. So what is it that you really want to do?

You've got a creative bent to you. You're 23. Where do you want to be when you're 43? Yeah. What's something that gets you excited, that fires your heart up? The reason I actually went into cosmetology wasn't to work in salons.

It was to work doing backstage theater or movie production, that type of stuff. You just need a salon experience to get into that. However, I've since done a lot of research on getting into that, and it's very hard. Also, you have to be in a union to even be able to legally be paid to work on jobs like that. Are you talking about doing makeup in the entertainment industry? Yes, sir. Okay. All right, keep going.

I'm sorry, you were saying? So you have to pay to get into a union for that to get paid to do it legally. So I've been back in Ohio. I've just been doing a full-time job and then doing the cosmetology stuff on the side. So I'll pick up weddings when I can. I don't know if you know what Kings Island is. I've worked there for the past five years. I've done makeup for them for the past five years for their Halloween haunt and Winterfest stuff.

All right, so let me just break this down for you because you need to be able to look up and see what's the long-term play here. And I can tell you unequivocally that you can do very well as a makeup artist in the entertainment industry and start to break into, you know, not just the entertainment industry, but, you know, like, for instance, Ramsey Solutions hires makeup artists when we do different things. There's no union requirement here. There's no union requirement. So that's a myth that you have to be a union member to be a successful cosmetologist or makeup artist and you can do very very well now it's a lot it's just like any other industry you got to get in and then once you're in once you're on that ladder carly now we can begin to climb the ladder and that's why i wrote this book called the proximity principle and here's what the proximity principle It just says this. In order to do what

Carly wants to do, to be a professional makeup artist, she's got to be hanging around professional makeup artists. People that are doing it. And then she's got to be in places where it's happening. So that means online communities and associations and I'm going to show up in some places where it's happening and I'm going to volunteer

where they need an extra set of hands sometimes. And I may not get paid at a couple of these gigs but I'm meeting people because I'm in the right places. And if you stay with it long enough, you'll get there. So you can get going part-time, as you've been showing, and you've already proven it to us, doing some makeup artist work. If you want to move to Tennessee, then you get a couple of jobs. You keep busting it. These are day jobs, and we get the money to move to Tennessee, so it's an easy transition. We make some connections

before we move to Tennessee, and we get going. But you can start in this part-time, and eventually you'll get in full-time and do very, very well. But number one, you don't have to join a union, but you're going to have to get anchored. And Nashville's a hot area for this. And as COVID begins to kind of

thaw out and all this stuff, when people get back, you're going to see a roar. You're going to see a boom, Dave, in these entertainment jobs and in the entertainment industry. And she needs to be positioned geographically, and she needs to be positioned professionally. And getting here and getting the state boards taken to be ready to go and ready for action and making connections.

I'm available. I'll come do this. This is just a game of attrition, Dave. It's not a difficult play, but we've got to put ourselves in the right place, stay there, keep showing up, keep connecting, keep doing a great job. And as you know, when I was doing radio, I had a full-time job, and I was doing radio on Saturdays. And that's the deal. You've got to stay with it.

This radio show lost money for the first 10 years it was's the deal. You've got to stay with it. This radio show lost money for the first ten years it was on the air. And the other parts of the business were our day job, so to speak. We're supporting it. Now it makes a lot of money, but it didn't used to. That's right.

It's not unusual to do this. It's not unusual in the entertainment field. It is all about connectivity. The proximity principle is a big deal. So we'll send you a copy of Ken's book on that and get you going, Carly. Brett is with us. Brett is in Long Beach.

Hey, Brett, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave, thanks for having me. Sure, man. What's up? I just wanted to check with you. So I'm following the same steps, and I'm on step number two now, trying to pay off all my debt. And I want to see if it's wise for me to do a cash rent refi on my condo in order to pay off my student loan. No, because you're not paying it off.

You're just moving it onto your condo. Okay, and even though the interest rate might be lower on my condo, that doesn't make any sense? Nope. You're changing something that you should pay off in a couple of years into something you're going to pay off in 15 to 30. So how much student loan debt have you got? I got $36,000 left. What's your household income? I make $92,000 a year.

Okay, so why can't you pay that in a year? Well, I got a truck payment, and i'm slowly chipping away at it how much do you owe on your truck i owe 19 000 okay and how much other debt have you got not counting the condo that's it okay that's it all right so you have 55 000 in000 in debt and you make $90,000. Yeah. Well, for sure you should be debt-free in two years. That would be $27,500 out of $90,000 a year. How much is the truck worth?

The truck, well, I bought it for $25,000 in 2016 Colorado. I'd find out how much it's worth. Is it just you? Are you single? Yeah. Yeah, I might step down out of that, and that will help you get things moving too because you got a big momentum there but here's the thing what you're not doing brad i can tell based on these numbers you're not doing a written detail budget where you're making every dollar behave you've not quit eating out you've not gotten into attack mode on this debt you're not squeezing the money that you have because ninety thousand

dollars should be able to live even in long beach uh and still come up with thirty thousand dollars a year to become debt free in two years and keep the truck in that case but no you cannot borrow your way out of debt there's no short-term goal there's no short-term quick easy way out of debt and borrowing on your condo to move it around and calling it a wise move because of interest rate did not make the debt go away. What makes the debt go away is you getting on top of it with your foot and standing on its neck. You can do this, man. You're just going to have to get really intense. And now's the time.

When you're single and you don't have anybody relying on you, get after it. Yeah, this is your call to really get very detailed and very serious as if your life depends on it. Because your financial life does. It's time. It's time. Hold on, I'm going to send you a copy of the Total Money Makeover book to help you with it. This is 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 or head to daveramsey.com thanks for listening