The Ramsey Show - App - Why Your Money Isn't A Math Problem, It's A YOU Problem (Hour 1)

Episode Date: April 10, 2024

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. The phone number is 888-825-5225. My co-host today is best-selling author Ramsey Personality and host of The George Camel Show, the one and only George Camel. And George, we're celebrating a little bit today. One year ago, we started The George Camel with a K show on YouTube, and it has blown up.

We've now, in one year, you've had over 30 million total views on that channel. One and a half million unique viewers a month. Wow. And 200,000 subscribers in the first year. That is wild. Pretty incredible. A one-year-old channel. Thank you. I think we need a little smash cake. Isn't that what the one-year-old channel thank you i think we need

a little smash cake isn't that what the one-year-olds get at the birthday parties yeah okay but we'll work on that no yeah anyway yeah the it has been fun we've i mean three videos a week for a year is is no small task for the type of content we've been making very entertaining highly informative we're trying to just kind of, as you've called it, displacing all the filth that's out there on the internet when it comes to financial advice. And I put that in quotes loosely. And so it's been a lot of fun riling the internet up, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes with a lot of hate. And I feel like I'm walking in your footsteps now. I get it. This is what it feels like. The riling up part. Okay. That's how you know it's working. Well, I'll tell you what, you know, obviously the team and you are putting out a great product on the youtube uh

the george camel show you guys check it out again 30 million views in one year that's pretty that's a lot of people i can't count that many people that's um it's more than i got fingers i know that so there you go and 200 000 subscribers and a million and a half a week joining us. So thank you guys for supporting George, but also George and the team. Congratulations. I'm really, really thrilled for you. Thank you. Very, very cool stuff.

Jesse starts this hour in Baltimore. Jesse, what's up? Hi. Thank you so much for taking my call. I'm just surprised that I got through, so I'm not completely prepared. And I have to warn you, if my husband comes home, I'm going to have to hang up real quick. Why? mom. I was a doctor before that, but ever since having my kids a few years ago, I've just been staying home. And, um, the deal was that I don't have to worry about money and my husband will take care of everything and he'll manage the big house and the cars and all that. And I just buy what I want, what I want. Uh, I started to notice that my credit card bill was not getting paid off in full, like a few, like I would say like around September, October,

this was the second time that had happened. And then the first time he paid it all off and then this time it was not paid off. So I finally started asking him more questions. And I found out he has a lot more than I have of credit card debt. And he's just, he has car loans. and I just wasn't paying attention at all. And now we're basically in trouble with debt. Um, and we're gonna have to move to a smaller house.

Um, I don't know how we're going to pay for the kids. So this whole thing of you buy whatever you want didn't work. No. And, and I'm looking at our pool right now and it's, it's a joke. It's all a joke. How can we help? Sorry. My question for you is like, I'm still kind of discovering what's going on. So how do I talk to him in a way that doesn't offend him or emasculate him or make him feel?

Because he, I think, feels like that's why I'm like, I'll have to hang up and get home from work. Because he would like, it would kill him that I'm even asking you this. Because he wants to be the man in charge. Yeah. Taking care of everyone. Well, the proper man in charge shares the burden of running the household with his wife. And he's such a wonderful father there's nothing manly about secretly going into debt yeah there's nothing that's not that's not the man in charge he's dealing with a lot of shame and a lot of guilt he thought he was supposed to

handle this all by himself and he doesn't and that's why he didn't want to talk about it but i think the two of you got to work this is a relationship issue the two of you got to work. This is a relationship issue. The two of you have got to sit down together and you just say, hey, look, I screwed up by dumping this whole thing on you because you did. Because you did. Okay. Yeah. So you can apologize for that and say, and so whatever the mess is, we're going to face it together.

And whatever the mess is, as two adults, we're going to work together to get it fixed. So let me sit down and let's walk together because I love you. You're my husband. We're going to walk together as two adults in full disclosure. You probably made some mistakes. I made a huge mistake by asking you. It wasn't right for me to ask you to carry the whole thing by yourself. And so I'm going to sit down.

Now let's go forward, not backward. Let's go forward and say, how can we work together? And the first step of working together and it is for us to get everything out and put it on the table, put the kids to bed. And let's just look at it and let's figure out a game plan of how we how we clean up the mess. And wherever that is, if we need to stay in a tent, I'm going with you. OK. is uh if we need to stay in a tent i'm going with you okay um and so and if i need to pick up some shifts or something i will do that i mean but we'll sit down together and let's look at it together and it's just not it's not condemning his stupid decisions he made some stupid decisions but

but he was it but he also had it's all clouded in this shame and that's why he doesn't want to talk about it he feels inept he feels in um it's it's hurt his self-esteem confidence and rightly so that's how i felt i felt like an idiot when i went broke kind of cause i was hello i wasn't an idiot but i had done some idiot but stuff that caused us to go broke, and it really wasn't Sharon's fault. But I felt, you know, and she was scared to death like you are. That's why the tears are so close to the top. Because not knowing is more scary than knowing something hard. Exactly.

Yeah. And tell him that. Okay. Not knowing is more scary to me than knowing something hard. And I'm worried about you, and I'm worried about us, and I want us to get on the same page and lock arms. I'm not here to beat you up. I made a mistake.

You probably made some mistakes, but we can put all that in the rearview mirror, and let's just go how we can go forward. Okay. Does that sound clean? You have no idea how helpful that is. I mean, or maybe you do. I feel like I don't even, oh, my God. Well, let me tell you, my wife is a tough hillbilly woman,

and she was so scared she couldn't breathe when we went through that. That's what I feel like. Yeah. Said she felt like she was driving a car and hit an ice thing, and the car's spinning, and she's going to hit something. She just doesn't know what. That's what I feel like. Out of control.

Yeah. Well, we want to help you take that next step, Jessie. We're going to gift you one year of every dollar premium, and you and your husband are going to sit down, lay out all the debts, and if you're not even sure, go pull credit reports on both of you, find out everything on paper, then make that detailed budget with every dollar, list your income, list all of the expenses, all of the debts, and it's going to be scary at first,

but then you're going to be able to make a plan together and go, how are we going to tackle this debt? Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you so much. It's a little bit like, you know, one of my buddies got diagnosed with cancer the other day, and that just completely puts you, you know, it knocks you out emotionally. And then, you know what's worse than that?

It's like three weeks before they tell you anything else. Because they can't seem to get into what? Three weeks of not knowing. The unknown is so much harder. You know, not knowing is harder. Just sign me up for the chemo. Sign me up for the plan. You know, let's just get.

What's the plan? That's not as hard as not knowing. This is the Ramsey Show. George Campbell, Ramsey Personality, is our co-host today. Thank you for joining us, America. George, I'm so excited about this total money makeover weekend. The month away. Yeah.

It's right here on campus at our Ramsey Event Center. And we're going to walk you on friday night and all day saturday george and rachel cruz and uh jade warshaw and me dr john deloney kencom we're going to walk you through everything you need to do to completely change your whole household uh not only how to get out of debt not only how to create a proper budget on every dollar not only how to get along with your spouse or those of you that are single how to deal with those issues and when it comes to money and how to make more money for mr ken coleman is a good idea because more money helps us go faster right we're going to go through every bit of it and you're going to leave here so bring your reluctant spouse bring your friend that thinks you're crazy because by the time they leave i promise you they will be crazy we will convert

them there's something about a live event dave you've been doing these for 30 years but it's so different than just listening to the show or reading a book it's an experience and we're going to do a bunch of q a we're going to get to hang out with you guys there's it's a whole weekend and we do this show on the glass from one to four central time so you can roll in here a little bit early on friday watch that and then come on up to the event center and we're going to do i'm gonna be speaking that night uh you guys are going to do a live taping of smart money happy hour up there that night and we'll do some other stuff and then saturday is buckle in because here we go, baby. That's the game on day.

I love it. Prepare your hearts. This is a great event. And, you know, if you're already doing the stuff, it's your pep rally. If you need to get somebody on board, it's your method of, you know, converting them to this thing called common sense. And there's all the people who are ish. They were kind of doing the plan.

Maybe they fell off the wagon. This is their moment to get back on and actually do this stuff as you said i've been doing it a long time and we've uh filled theaters and arenas across the nation doing this this material in different versions i mean this obviously is all updated we're going to deal with current modern stuff on this but but the number of times i run into somebody saying you know 10 years ago went to your event not only we get out of debt it saved our marriage not only save our marriage but now we're millionaires wow and you know i run into that just like the catalyst was that event yeah but that experience turned the corner it was it was the pivot point there you go the hinge the hinge pin yeah there you go man so check it out get your tickets platinum plus tickets are

sold out but there are platinums, a couple, and a couple of VIPs and general admissions are still available. RamseySolutions.com slash events. It is May 10th and 11th on campus here. Come to Nashville. You're going to have a great time in Nashville, and we are going to pour out everything we're gonna we're gonna pour out everything we got to help you change your life we leave it all on the dance floor there we go that's what we say

nothing nothing left uh out there except on the floor that's it leave it all on the field all right anthony is in los angeles hi anthony welcome to the ramsey show uh hi dave hi um george um calling me because I'm looking for some hope. I got, well, actually, we have $29,000 of debt on a vehicle, and we made $196,000 this past year. Right now, our current year to date is $57,000 gross, a little bit over $57,000 gross. We have this $29,000 debt and 52 and 51.

And, you know, we just, we're looking for hope. We want to know if we can ever buy a home and be millionaires. You know, I did my budget for this month and it's a little higher than normal because we had some things come in that weren't planned. Normally, on average, our budget is about $8,300 a month right now to $11,000, a little bit over $11,000. But yeah, I'm really frustrated, and we're looking for hope. We want to own a home. We're not old, but we're not as young as we used to be,

and we just want to be out of debt and own a home and have peace. And so we're just looking for some hope. Well, what is your car payment right now? It is, I think it's $1,016 a month, if I'm not mistaken. For one car? For one car, yeah. The other two cars are paid off. Okay.

Well, that's a problem. It's not the reason that you don't have hope, because that alone is not the factor. You also live in California, high cost of living out there, homes are going to be wildly expensive. So it might look different for you guys, but there is hope for you yet when you make $200,000. That's a good start. Yeah. So how quickly can we knock out this car? I'm sorry? How quickly can we knock out this car loan making 200 grand? Well, I know that I'm going to make more this year because the more I'm sorry? How quickly can we knock out this car loan making $200,000? Well, I know that I'm going to make more this year because I'm in sales, so the more I hustle, the more I can make.

The issue is that I did the math, and our average monthly budget is about $8,300. Now, this year after I've net, I netted $9,300. But this month's budget is $3,333. Are you guys investing right now? No, we stopped. We have a 401k. We have $17,000 net. And then we have $5,000 in an emergency fund.

Okay, so you have $5,000 in the emergency fund. You've paused investing. You have $29,000 left on the car loan uh anthony uh yeah nine thousand dollars ninety three hundred let's just round it up to ten thousand that's 120 thousand dollars a year if you make yeah that's my just a minute that's my um no no stop listen if you make a if you're bringing home 120 and,000 and you make $200,000, something's really wrong because there's not an $80,000 tax bill on a $200,000 income. I forgot to mention that I get SPFs, too. That's the net from my regular paycheck, but I also get income for selling chassis from the OEM, and also I get money spiffs from the body companies

for building bodies. Is that included in the $200,000 but not included in the $9,000? Exactly, exactly. So I have another $1,200 coming in in about a week and a half, two weeks from spiffs. Okay. How big is your tax refund, Ben? The tax refund we're getting for, we're getting $8,800, I believe, for $8,300. Yeah.

So you're having way too much held out of your account. About $700 a month. Out of your check. Yeah. I'm having way too much without okay yeah because a tax refund is the government giving you money back because you overpaid your taxes that's what a tax you've been overpaying by about 700 a month out of your checks out of my checks on taxes yeah you're overpaying your taxes so you need to change your withholding by about $700 a month,

assuming your income stays the same. So you've got some things you need to do to adjust along those lines, and then that's going to help you get the car knocked out a lot faster. The second thing is that when you say you're doing a budget, you are doing a budget differently than we teach. So we're going to upgrade your budget experience because your budget experience is you write down what you hope is going to happen and then when you look back it didn't happen that's not how you

do a budget a budget is you're going to write down exactly before the month begins where every dollar is going to go it all has a name and your wife and you are going to look at it both of you are going to agree to that number, and we're not going to change anything on this budget unless we come back together and have another budget committee meeting. And you're not doing that now. When you say you're budgeting, you're just kind of like, yeah, I had an idea what I thought it ought to be, and it wasn't. That's a different thing. I'm talking about exact, like you were running a business unit for me me and i was going to fire your butt if you didn't get your number straightened out and you would look at every stinking detail and you'd write it all out in detail and you have agreement with your

wife and nobody gets off the budget train without a ticket okay period hardcore Once you agree to it, it's a contract. You pinky swear and spit shake. That's it, baby. Now, once we're doing that, you're going to find a bunch of money because you've got this loosey goosey idea of how life's supposed to work, although it's not working that way. So you're kind of letting all this happen to you and I want you to happen to it. This is proactive instead of reactive, in other words you and i want you to happen to it this is proactive instead of reactive in other words so we're going to plug you into the every dollar budgeting app for free as my gift our gift from george and i and financial peace university the class you and your wife go through the class together every lesson don't miss a single lesson. This has helped 10 million people get their crap together.

And you can do this, and you can own a house on $200,000 a year in Los Angeles, California. It's possible. It's not easy. But if it was easy, everybody would do it. This is The Ramsey Show. Man, I got to tell you, we are thankful for you folks out there the ratings and the numbers on this show on podcast on youtube on talk radio are just mind-blowing it is the i mean we've had a billion and a half downloads on youtube now that's just i can't even get my head around that and um but

the reason is you guys are spreading the word and we appreciate you doing that there's no possible way that we see the results we're seeing in all the rankings and things unless you guys are telling people about the show it's not simple search engine stuff it's it's good old-fashioned word of mouth even if it is in digital form. So click the share button on your platform or, you know, cut and paste the link or whatever and send it to your friend. Subscribe to the shows in whatever format you're using it. Follow the show, whatever format you're using it. All of that stuff really helps push the show forward where people that are just coming in for the first time see it.

And it pushes it out there into the light, so to speak. You are our marketing plan. So thank you. That's a good one. Thank you for that. It's word of mouth. It always has been. Always has been.

The best marketing is somebody likes your stuff and tells somebody else. Always has been. And we appreciate that. We don't have anything fancy. It's just that simple. We want to help you, and we'll help your friend if you send them over here too. So thanks for hanging out with us, and, again, we appreciate that. Oh, and those five-star reviews, they make a big difference in the algorithm too.

Greg is in Boston, Mass. Hey, Greg, welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave. Hey, George. Long time, first time. How you doing? Hey, better than we deserve, sir. What's up? So, I'm 27 years old, and I'm making a lot of money. I make about 220 grand

a year. I've got about 160 in my Fidelity account and 70 in the bank, and it's a great job. But last year, they sent me international for about 100 days of the year, and I really fell in love with it, made a lot of connections, learned the language. It was amazing. And now I want to kind of further that, but it seems like international is off the table for this year and the forthcoming.

And I kind of want to move out there. I've applied to some university programs and got accepted and it's a big choice if I'm going to quit this job to go follow that dream out there or you know I I take the gift I was given and you know I listen to the show a lot and I almost feel kind of guilty even thinking about this what would you make in the new position that you've applied for? So it's not a new position, right? I'd go over there. Okay, you said you applied at a university.

I heard that, right? Yep. What did you apply to do? To study the language more. It would be studying the local language more. You can do that with Duolingo from the comfort of your home. Why do you need to move there? And I do. Okay, so you didn't apply for a job.

You applied to learn the language. Exactly. So what's going to be your job? So that's the hard part, right? If I can, I want to continue the job I'm at, working remotely, of course, but I don't know. That's exactly it. I don't want to waste my young years,

like all my peers around me, tell me I'm going to if I don't follow. That's exactly it. I don't want to waste my young years like all my peers around me tell me I'm going to if I don't follow this dream, right? It's not a dream. It's a nightmare. That's what mom and dad say. I don't care if you run to something, but you're running off into the clouds and into the mist like there's a unicorn waiting on you. I mean, what the flip man

really so play this out years later you told me you had a position doing something over there and you love that culture and you want to go immerse in that culture and learn the language and you told me you had a position even making less than you're making now then yeah let's talk about that but just absolutely nothing i'm just going to move over there and learn the language and i'm for yes so my you're a little old for your gap year i know i guess my thought was you know i'm learning the language and becoming uh more professional in it i could then transfer my business skills with that language to work over there and where's over there where you're talking about what's going on tokyo japan okay all right all right um okay the only i mean you you called to ask our opinion and it's really the only thing i'm an

expert on is my opinion so um i uh if you were my son who's a slight bit older than you and you came in and said dad what do you think about this i'd say i i like the whimsical part of it it sounds kind of cool kind of fun uh you know the japanese culture is a great culture to learn the language is difficult um but you can learn it i'm sure you've already had some some runs at it and you've had some experience there um uh and um but but it it it feels very disjointed and listless because you're not going to something other than tokyo so right you gotta you gotta put one more piece in this you gotta put the career piece in this puzzle somehow and i don't care what that is and if it takes you six months to land something there uh through your connections and what you're already doing and you find something even if

you're making 75 of what you're making tokyo is uber expensive it's one of the most expensive cities in the world so you're gonna have to go over i mean you have to have some you're gonna burn through 160 000 bucks in savings about 20 seconds here so i i just i want you to go to something that's more certain than this the than the the vague thing you're describing for you i it doesn't matter to me greg it's not gonna affect me at all but uh but but if i'm in your shoes, you are single. You do have a pile of money. You can go on an adventure. But make your adventure better.

This is a low-quality adventure that you're describing. I'm just thinking if I'm Greg, I'm just going to start applying for similar roles that are based in Tokyo. Yeah. That would be a smarter move. And then you can learn the language here you'll obviously learn it better when you're entrenched in the culture but that doesn't seem to be the factor holding you back it's i need a job when i get there uh wait a minute i mean i just greg are you with us greg you're still with me yep i'm here is there a girl there no are you sure i mean hey it's possible to happen but not at the moment no okay because

that would explain some how illogical all this is okay dave's always swinging a miss yeah that's it dave's looking for the hallmark no i'm not looking for the hallmark i'm trying to figure out why this guy who otherwise seems very on to things and has is so buttoned up on this one issue just lost his dadgum mind. Love will make you do that. I was trying to figure it out. I thought it was a girl. Okay. Put a girl in it.

Okay. We're swinging a miss. Okay. Anyway. But yeah. So anyway, Greg, we love you. We want you to win. I want you to go on the adventure, but I don't want you coming home regretting that you went on the adventure.

That's where I'm trying to get to. I don't want the 30-year-old, 35-year-old version of you going, what the heck? You know, no, you don't want that. And so, and there's no anchor points in this. There's no, there's nothing. It feels sort of untethered, very mushy, you know. So I want you to go do it, but I want you to do a better version of what you're talking about than what you're giving me. I like that plan.

Okay. That's not quite a dream killer, but it's a nightmare killer. I'm big on killing nightmares. And some of you, Dave's a dream killer. Now, I've had a bunch of dreams that turned into nightmares, and I know what they look like because I'm old. So we try to keep you from doing that to yourself because we love you so that's it well it's kind of like moving to mexico because i love tacos i need a bigger dream than that dave i can get yeah the tacos are better there but it's not a great reason to move and you've eaten a lot of

tacos in mexico so you're the expert oh now you're just getting personal right here. I'm just saying. I'm sorry. Has your Spanish increased as you've traveled? George, that was just me. My Spanglish is excellent. So I can manage myself around, but I still don't know what they're saying about me. So there you go. That's the key. Loco gringo.

What's that mean anyway? I would tell you, but I think we'll be taken off the air. So yeah, you need to do some stuff like that. And the good news for Greg's situation is he is unencumbered. He doesn't have a lot of stuff holding him here. So it is a good time to do this. He would survive it. But I think you're going to have a better quality adventure if it has another element or two to the plan.

There's a little more purpose to it. Yeah. More anchor points with your job. Not even purpose, just eating money. I just want some eating money. I'll be doing something. Going from 220 to zero, that's a steep decline in income. That's how it sounds. This is the ramsey show george camel ramsey personality is my co-host gordon is in seattle washington hi gordon welcome to the ramsey show hi dave yeah um thank you for taking my call and i appreciate all that you teach thank you uh just wanted yeah just wanted to uh give you advice on Thank you. baby emergency fund to attack some personal loans. My question to you is, would it be worth it to take a loan out of my 401k just to clear

out all the personal loans since the interest on the 401k loan is essentially paid to myself? No. How much debt do you have? Personal loans, about $22,000, and then steering loans, about $30,000. Okay. And how much are all these after-tax investments going to create when you liquidate them? Only about $6,000 and another $6,000 or $7,000 in savings. Okay. So it brings your debt down to $40,000 if you do that. From $6,000 and another $6,000 or $7,000 in savings. Okay. So it brings your debt down to $40,000 if you do that.

From $52,000, yeah. So you've got $40,000 in debt. What's your household income? Right around $155,000 before tax. Good. Okay. All right. The problem with a 401k loan is severalfold.

One is, yes, you do pay yourself back the interest, but you unplug that portion of the investment from the mutual funds that would have been earning you 12 this year, maybe even more percent. So maybe you would have made 15, but you paid yourself 5 instead. Bad idea, number one. Number two, when you leave the company, and you will leave the company, when you die, when you get a better job, or when they fire you, you will leave the company. Okay? And if that loan is still in place at that time, it becomes due in full.

If you do not pay it off in 60 days, it's considered an early withdrawal with all the taxes and penalties. So that leaves you very, very vulnerable. It's a really bad loan. And you've still got $40,000 to pay off regardless of what we do, making $155,000, which you ought to do in, what, like a year? Yes, if I were a retirement. 55 which you ought to do in what like a year yes if i really yeah if you do if you get on beans and rice rice and beans and you tear into it it sounds like you've studied our stuff and you're doing you know you're cleaning out everything you're leaving a thousand dollars you're going to stop adding to the 401k yes i would do that but we never tell people to borrow on a 401k ever i

don't even offer the borrowing option to our team couldn Couldn't do it if you wanted to here, which is good. Stop people from doing stupid. It's just not available. It's just not available. Just because I'm not going to participate and you're doing something stupid. It's that simple. So the, but no, that's the problems with it is you're going to get, you just leave yourself very, very vulnerable as opposed to a regular loan, so to speak.

I mean, if you went and got just another loan at the bank for 40 000 and paid off and cleaned them up but you've got one big loan instead at five percent you know that would be okay because you don't have all these other problems you didn't unplug an investment that might have made you 12 or 15 and you didn't leave yourself open to penalties and taxes in the event you leave that particular position so um because other i mean pretend somebody came along offered you double income you got to think about not taking that because you got these stupid handcuffs that you've created yeah that's that's what people do they go i i was gonna take that better job but then i had borrowed on my 401 and i was gonna get hammered so yeah that that's what you don't want to do gordon so this is gone in less than a year i mean if you make 155 after

taxes let's call it you know 110 you can live off 60 and pay off 50 in a year and so it's gone yeah it's a 40 000 and you're probably going to add to your income and you're probably going to find some other stuff so maybe it's 14 months maybe it's 15 months maybe it's nine months i don't know but it's somewhere in that range it's not a but it's not worth doing a five-year issue yeah and i wouldn't put all of this other stuff at risk for that and so no i've never told anybody to do that and folks it's a good idea to just aside from gordon's question let's just sidebar a second george the thing that we have figured out at ramsey that a lot of people in the financial world are now acknowledging because we've made such a big footprint in the space, but most of

the people when I was growing up in the financial world, we thought all this was a math problem. It's all about the math. Well, hey, the interest is higher here. Why wouldn't I do this with lower interest? All I got to do is fix the math and I'm going to be okay. And what I've discovered in 35 years of doing this is it's not a math problem. It's a me problem. It's 80% personal finances, 80% behavior, and 20% head knowledge. Now, why does that matter? Well, if you fix the math and you don't fix the behavior, you're going to be right back in the soup that's why debt con consolidation doesn't work that's why we call it a con because you move all your debt from one place over to another into one big loan in this case he's using a 401k

to do it now in his case it doesn't apply because he is actually changing he's he has changed what he's doing he's cleaning out these savings accounts he's thinking about this he's doing a budget you can hear gordon's really focused right so this is not this is this particular part of the discussion does not apply to gordon okay because i think he's beyond that he's willing to make a lot of people that have called me over the years i want to do a debt consolidation and i want to move my debt over here first thing is the out out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks the bible says and they say i paid off my debt with the debt consolidation no you didn't you moved it you put it in the junk drawer you didn't pay it off but what that tells

me is is you took the pressure off of yourself and it's now okay because i paid it off. No, you didn't. You moved it, and you still got the problem in your mirror. This person is still not handling money. This person is still spending money like they're in Congress. They're not on a written plan. This person in the mirror is still impulsive. This person in the mirror is still not working with their spouse. They're still not thinking long term. They're still doing a bunch of other stupid stuff, and so the debt's going to grow back. And we know from the debt consolidation industry that 88% of you, that's 9 out of 10 that take out a debt consolidation loan, your debt grows back after you move it. So you end up with twice as much debt because you don't change the behaviors, habits, character

issues that caused it in the first place. Yeah. And these are all shortcuts at the end of the day. And it feels like you did something when you take a shortcut. But the problem is, like you said, you're going to be right back where you started. When people do these 401k loans or the HELOC or whatever the move is, they actually end up in the same place they were a year from now.

Yeah. Because the same person. And you've got to transform if you want to see different results yeah and so you know the same thing happens with your marriage okay how many times you know somebody and i know people because i'm again you go through enough life you see this but i know people who um are in a marriage and they have a certain set of behavior problems in their relationship. They get divorced and go marry a new person with the exact same set of issues, and they didn't fix their own issues, so they just do it again

because they thought the problem was that person, and it wasn't. It was the issues that were not addressed, the core things that were not addressed. You go with you. And so, yeah, the problem is you take you with you when you do all this stuff. And me too. I'm the same thing. So the beautiful thing that happened when Sharon and I went broke was we didn't have a choice. We had to change.

We didn't have any food. Electricity was cut off. We had to change. We had to address the ridiculousness of our decision making paradigms our our ridiculous set of assumptions our stupid intellectualizing rationalizing ridiculous financial concepts with my intellect that absolutely caused me to lose everything because i'm an idiot you know i had to face all that I didn't have a choice you ran out of shortcuts there was not I was everything was gone I just left with this mirror you know and I'm stuck

with me and I'm like god you you are a problem and that but the beautiful thing about something that dramatic and traumatic is you you come away from it change you don't have a choice when you guys are just kind of everything's okay and nothing's smacking the crap out of you to get your attention, you don't have to face it. And so our job here is to keep you from having those extreme experiences and instead letting you choose to face it rather than all your choices are taken away.

Be the preventative medicine. That's how this whole thing works, guys. That's why this Ramsey stuff works, is we have figured out the guy in your mirror, the gal in your mirror is the problem. That's the bad news. The good news is they're the solution. This is The Ramsey Show. Thank you.