The Ramsey Show - App - Yesterday’s Choices Don’t Define You — Change Starts Today

Episode Date: September 22, 2025

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Normal is broke and common sense is weird. So we're here to help you transform your life. From the Ramsey Network and the Fair Winds Studio Credit Union Studio, this is the Ramsey show. Jade Washaw-Ramsi personality number one best-selling author is my co-host today as we take your questions at AAA 825-5-2-2-25. Sarah is in Alabama. Hi, Sarah. How are you?

Hi, I'm good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Okay, so my fiancé and I have been together for 13 years off and on. We have two daughters, five and ten, and a year ago, or two years ago, we uprooted and moved to his hometown in the middle of nowhere, Alabama. We bought a home.

We have since had a house fire a year later, and right now we're renting. We decided that we were going to get married at the beginning of next year in March, and we decided that at the beginning of this year. Right? Slow down, pump the brakes. but uh well he he got rebaptized he got baptized for the first time he has always been a a complete non-believer totally was against it and after the fire he got baptized i got saved again my daughter's been saved again and it was definitely something that as a family we were moving

towards in the holy trying to live life right and god's eyes and so the fire was kind of the catalyst for all of you is that what you're saying Oh, absolutely. And we're all still on that page. We're devout in Bible study and church and all that good stuff. But we just realized that we're not going to be able to afford the wedding. And there have been other things and fidelity, stuff like that that has happened throughout our past trauma that's just kind of carried over. Have you done any counseling? we have not we've talked about it plenty of times and honestly where we're at right now there's not very many resources what do you mean by that in our church there are not very mental health resources not very many mental health resources i come for in the middle of nowhere Alabama okay so okay well there are i mean there are really great online yeah like better help like better help

those guys uh so um okay let's play pretend for a second um are you you've been doing this a long time yes you have two kids that if we keep this up much more they're going to be in college right I mean this is just going on a long time

your spiritual awakening is wonderful that you met God and I want to start living by the book and so the ship has sailed on little 18-year-old Sarah walking down the aisle in an expensive wedding in a white dress.

That was like a decade ago. It's gone. So, go get married. Like today. Tomorrow. What if everything isn't where it should be? Honey? You've been going this long.

You've been going this long. You know where everything. What is not in the right place? My God. I mean, if it's not where it should be, you should have been gone like five years ago. Yeah, and Sarah, with the life changes that you guys are making, I'd like to think that the worst is behind you guys and that you're going to start going in another direction. And to Dave's point, yeah, today or next week when you get married and you go down in the courthouse and you just fill out the papers and legalize it for all of your benefit, there could be a day in the future where you renew your vows and you do the white dress and you walk down the aisle and you do that big party that you want. wanted, but just because that's not going to be today or next week when you get married

doesn't mean it can't happen ever. I just want to break this idea that you need to save up for a big wedding. I was like, that was a decade ago. Just go get married. But I didn't even want a big wedding. Well, then why do you need money for a wedding? Then you don't need money for a wedding. I mean, just go down the, call your preacher and say, can you marry us?

And he'll say, yes. And we met God, we met God, and we know that now we need to be married in order. sleep together and so we're going to get married will you marry us we want to be right we want to do this right and uh preacher's going to say yes and then you go get your license and you go get married and if it makes you feel any better this is a small technicality but it could make you feel better um you know you go everybody gets married and gets the license before they walk down the aisle in the dress everybody because you have to have that first and you that the legal part's done first anyway so for you you're just going to be delaying the part where you're you're just going to be delaying the part

walk down the aisle, but everybody gets the certificate first. Yeah, have you a celebration. But, I mean, you guys have been doing this for 13 freaking years. I mean, this is not, it's not like, yeah, it's, that's in the rear of your mirror. But the only question I've got is you do want to make sure that you're saying, okay, now that we're in this headspace of, we're walking with God now, and both of us are there, and we've been through the trauma of a house fire, which is very traumatic. Now that we've done all that, I'm looking in the eyes of my eyes.

two kids that the two of you made together and you're going, okay, is there anything that's so broken here that we can't work through it? Because to me, it's almost as if you've been married 13 years and you're calling me asking me if you need to get a divorce. And I didn't hear anything in this discussion they called for that. That's a good way to look at it, Dave. And so, you know, the only question is now we're formalizing this because we have a better spiritual understanding of how life works and we're going to plug into that. And, and and you're just going to formalize it. And here's what, then what you're saying is, for better for worse, baby.

Yep. Yeah. It does hit different, though, when you put that, when you put the ring on it, because then there's no, there's no escape valve, you know what I mean? Yeah. But they do need to do premarital counseling, even though they've been together 13 years. Or just go do marital counseling. Yeah, marital counseling.

After you get married, you know, okay, we got to, we kind of ought to dig through this toy box a little bit and see what's going on here. There's stuff going on here in here. And, you know, and make sure we've got that kind of. stuff cleared out because I mean it's like we were with some friends this weekend have been married 50 years we've been married 43 years that's how old we are we had to shoot dinosaurs out of the yard to get married and so um you know what they were laughing I said Sharon they said what's the secret and Sharon said David says if I leave he's going with me oh there you go and that's

the secret you're not getting away that's about how it sounded too she dropped into that southern hillbilly mountain twang and went all down in it I'm just saying but yeah wow that's great that's the truth I told it's an old zigzigler line I've been telling her for years I said if you leave I'm going with you so just you know go and pack both suitcases because I'll be following you right along otherwise I'll go hungry not good you know so oh that's hey kiddo I'm proud for where you guys are and I'm proud for where you're going the best is in front of you the worst is behind you you start walking with Jesus and both of you do that you'll learn things that you never learned before you'll see

you've never seen before, and it won't be without its problems. It won't be without bumps in the road, but you will get there, and you're setting those kids up for a much better life. You're setting yourselves up for a much better life, and I'm proud for where you're going. Three most important decisions I ever made. Number one, following Jesus. Number two, who I married, Sam Warshaw. Number three, choosing to get on a plan for money and get out of debt and build wealth.

Three most important. There we go. Boom. Big list, big list. Michael is in Canada. Hey, Michael, how are you? I'm fantastic. I always told myself, if I ever got through, I'd have to hear you say it.

So how are you doing, Dave? Better than I deserve. That's fantastic. Jade, I actually asked you this question on IG Live a couple months ago, and you wanted more details. You wanted the numbers for it. So my wife and I are both 38. Today's actually my birthday.

We are on Baby Steps 4, 5, and 6, and we own two properties, our primary house, which is valued about $6.50, and we owe $2.65 on it. And then we have a cabin recreational property that we bought for $3.25. It's worth about $4.25, and we owe about $2.14 on it. Now, in Canada, we have these weird mortgages where they advertise over 15, 20, or 25 years, but the interest rate comes up for renewal every five years. So the cabin is coming up in the spring where we're going to renew that, which gives me the opportunity if I wanted to to take equity out of the cabin and then I could transfer that equity into our primary residence. This would just help us pay off our house sooner, maybe provide us with that financial piece a little bit earlier of owning our own home.

And I was curious what your opinions were on that. Do the interest rates compare? Yeah, so actually the house is a little bit more. the house is at 4.5. Right now it's looking like the cabin would renew around 3.9. So people are at a half percent different. So they treat your cabin as a personal residence in terms of interest rate? Correct, yes.

Yeah, because in the States, your second homes and rental properties have a higher interest rate. Yeah, here we can still take advantage of the same mortgage rates. Okay. Again, we just get stuck with this thing every five years, so it can vary more. So your idea is to take out a helock on the cabin. No, it's just extra, do a cash out refinance. Yeah, so we can do it. Oh, okay.

They're going to redo the mortgage. Understood, understood. Reset the mortgage and take another 200 out, I guess, or so, right? Yeah, be about 100. Probably I could get out of the cabin. We have to leave 25% in there. What's your household income? About 240.

Okay. So if you owe 165 on your house because you move 100 over to the cabin, how fast do you pay that off? Well, so right now I'm forecasted about five years out, something, and this would probably speed up to about three. That's really where our focus is paying off our house, and then we've moved to the cabin after that. So it would move up that goal paying off the house, but overall paying out the house in the cabin, I'm still looking in probably the same time frame of maybe closer to eight years. Yeah, that sounds right. Maybe sooner, but yeah, depending on how tight you pull that budget down.

Yeah, okay. All right. well it's just a risk analysis thing of you know if you could pay off one or the other completely we would talk about that this one is still no change because if you get sideways and you got no money you're going to lose both of them right either way because you can't pay the bill it doesn't make enough of a dent so the you know and until so until you get your home paid off in the next two to three years your risk does your risk situation does not really change.

But I like your idea. There's nothing wrong with it. Nothing hugely wrong with it. I think I would move that way. And again, I would not do it in the States because you'd be jacking your rate up. Right. And I wouldn't do it with a HELOC in the States either because HELOCs have horrible terms. But because you're looking at a traditional first mortgage, primary residence, the same type of mortgage on both things.

and you know you're going to go through one more cycle before you you know one more five-year cycle before you get them paid off and you're going to be done yeah that's good do you rent the cabin when you're not in it or does it just sit vacant no so it's actually in a national park where we're not allowed to but my wife is a teacher so we're out there basically all summer with the kids and does carrying these cut into your does it cut into your investing at all your 15% no so we actually passed the baby steps millionaire uh threshold i guess in canadian dollars so not quite the same that's great just a just a couple months ago okay good for you yeah yeah i like it michael i think you're thinking it through uh it's not a it's not it's not

it's not dumb it's not in the stupid column or anything like that i don't think it's a lifesaver either by the way it's not like whoa that changes everything no it doesn't it just kind of yawn a little bit and yeah, it's okay. Move it over there. But then let's lean in and get the stinking house paid off. I want that first mortgage on your personal residence gone because that's going to change your life. If the only thing you got hanging over there is the cabin and you owe 400 on it or 300 on it by then and you're cranking on it with a $260,000 income, I'm a lot less worried about you at that point.

So, yeah, I think you're head, I would do it, but not because it's like life changing. It's just okay to do. nothing it helps a little i see your point i see why you're doing it while you're at it you got to recast the mortgage anyway then why not yeah reset it let's do it toby's in ohio hi toby how are you hey i'm good how are you better than i deserve what's up hey so i had a question i'm 27 trying to navigate life a little bit here about bankruptcy i've got about 14 000 in debt and uh part of that is a car alone. That's about 6,500, and that car is broke down now. And I'm also homeless. So I'm just trying to figure out if that's a smart move or not, or if it's something that I should

live a cash life for the next seven years or not. How did you find yourself homeless? Well, I originally tried to get into a place, and they ended up switching over management. I never got my application. I ended up dropping. dropping a deposit in first month, but they, the new management returned that back to me because they ended up moving somebody in. And that kind of slewed the effect of couch surfing and then making it harder to get in somewhere, prolonging that.

So do you have... How long has this been going on? About eight months. Okay. So when are you getting a place? I don't know yet. Are you working? I'm trying to figure that up.

uh as of two weeks ago i wasn't or i'm not um but i am applying currently and waiting for pending or explain what's going on with the work why aren't you able to keep a job um well a lot of times it was uh unwillingness at first and then here in the last year it was just i think i i don't know if it was an excuse or not but mentally i just wasn't really enjoying being in my truck or couch surfing and everything i was doing was going towards expenses like you know I screwed up had a DUI last year so I had some fees I had to be paying so Toby you got a lot going on man I do have a lot going on so my friend years ago that taught me some of this stuff used to say that financial problems including

what I went bankrupt sir financial problems are not the problem they're the symptom of other things that are going on symptom yeah and so your your money issues are the same symptom of all the crap that's going on in your life, not keeping a job, DUIs, all this other stuff are causing the money problems. If you kept a job steady, you got you a little apartment to live in, steady, you kept it clean, you kept yourself clean, you stayed out of the alcohol, you stayed out of the drugs, you kept working, working, working, work and working, all of a sudden these financial problems are going to go away. You agree with that? I do I do it's just why do I find it so difficult then

then it's because it's the same thing I had to face and all of us have to face the problem with your money is the guy in your mirror and he's difficult by the way when I look in the mirror I get the same thing he's difficult if I can get that guy to behave he'd be skinny and rich but he likes donuts you know what I'm saying so you know I mean controlling the guy in our mirror is every one of us it's the thing we struggle with the most okay And so are you plugged in at all to a good church in the area? I am.

Good. I definitely am. Good. You know, if I were you, I would call up the pastor and say, hey, would you put two or three guys in my life to walk beside me and help me become the kind of man I want to be instead of the kind of man I have been? Yeah, you know, and I've just recently been finding that this kind of mentorship with some people. Yeah. And that mentorship kind of guided me with the self-reflection. And that's why I was like, who else should I call and find out?

Good. Am I, should I file bankruptcy though? No, no, Toby, you're not bankrupt. You're broke, you're broken, homeless and don't have a job. You're not bankrupt. Broke homeless and don't have a job. You get a job, you're not homeless, and you're making some money. You can straighten up this car debt someday, maybe, but I'm not worried about that car debt.

They ain't got anything to chase down. If they come find you, they can't get nothing. So you're what we call judgment-proof, but I want you to go have a life, so then you can go deal with it. But bankruptcy does not solve one stinking problem you have, not one. Hey, this is so fun. The all-new, every dollar is coming. And it's more than just a budgeting app now. It's a complete financial game changer.

We're releasing a ton of advanced features to help you make progress with your money. If you've tried every dollar before, you definitely want to check in on these changes. Boom. People are finding thousands of dollars of margin in just 15 minutes. Watch the premiere of the all-new every dollar, September 25th, to see real success stories and how you can be next. Turn on your YouTube notifications to get notified when the premiere drops. So George and Rachel and Jade are going to be doing that on the 25th. That's about a week away.

and they're going to be unpacking a lot of these advanced features, you're going to be, your mind's going to be blown. It's pretty stinking incredible. I've been doing this a long time, and we've come out with some really good things over the last three decades that have helped a lot of people. This probably is the best thing we've ever done. It's pretty amazing.

Thursday. It's this beautiful mixture of proper use of technology and human beings. Yeah, it's going to change everything. All right. Daniels in Kentucky. Daniel, how are you? Good. How you doing, sir?

Better than I deserve. What's up? Hey, I'm 56-year-old. My wife is 55. We have a son that's 16, and my wife's been retarded about two years. I retired about two months ago. And we bring in enough for all our expenses on a pension. You know, our pension does that.

And I've got $30,000 in a 401k at my company previously, and $70,000 in an emergency fund. and about 400,000 just sitting in the bank. Like a dummy, I just didn't invest anything. Everything knows well we're fine right now, but inflation and any kind of buying a vehicle, we're going to have to go into that nest egg. Let me start.

You're 56. You're probably going to live the 96. You plan on sitting on your butt for 40 years? Well, no. I'm going to do, I wanted to do something I wanted to do because I'm away from home about two weeks, two days a week with the job I had. Yeah, okay, so what are you going to do?

I don't know yet. Okay, that'd be a good thing to figure out yesterday. Yeah. Yeah, let's get with it. I'm 65. I can't believe you're sitting on your butt at 56. Yeah, you need to go do something, man. Make some money, and that solves a lot of these problems.

The second thing solves a lot of these problems is investing the 400K. Please. Okay. So in 2023, if you had it in an index mutual fund, called an S&P that reflected exactly what the stock market did. And 2024, you would have made 23% and 26% those two years. Now, that's not normal. But just to point out, okay, here's what that means.

That's $50,000 a year. You've lost $100,000 by having that $400 sitting on its butt in a bank account instead of invested well. A hundred grand. Yep. Why didn't you do it, Daniel? Were you risk averse or were you just never got around to it? Fearful. I've been conservative all my life and too conservative.

Okay, that's good. I can work with that one, all right? So here's the answer. There's two kinds of fear, and we've all got them. There's fear of something that will hurt you, and that's a real fear, and you should stay away from something that will hurt you. The other thing that we're afraid of is things we don't understand and don't know about. Okay, you're standing in the middle of the interstate 18 wheelers coming at you. You should be afraid and you should move.

You're going to die. Okay? Right. You're going to touch a hot stove. You should be afraid. You're going to get a third degree burn. Okay? Don't do that.

That's a real fear. If your seven-year-old son when he was seven, he's 16, but if he was seven, he's learning to ride a bicycle and he's afraid, well, he might fall over and scratch his knee. He isn't going to die, and he's going to get the joy of learning to ride a bicycle. So he's afraid of something he hasn't learned. to do yet. Right. When I drove a car the very first time, I distinctly remember I was 10 years old. My dad tossed me the keys and gave me no instruction, which was a really dumb idea.

And all I can remember is there was a gravel driveway, and when I pushed down on the accelerator all the way to the floor, I just about emptied the driveway with the back tires throwing gravel everywhere until the screaming stopped from all the neighbors, my mother, and my dad, and I let off the accelerator finally. But now I've learned to drive a car, and I'm not afraid of cars anymore. I was afraid that day of cars, okay, with good reason, because I didn't know what the heck I was doing, right? So that's where you are with investing. Investing is not the 18-wheeler or the hot stove, it's you don't understand it.

Right. And it's not, the good news is it's not rocket surgery. You can do it. Everybody can understand this. It's not that hard. So, Jade and I are going to send you to the SmartVestor Pros at Ramsey Solutions.com. Click on the website. Get one of those.

And, Jay, I mean, you came at this the very first time. I had a finance degree, so I had a jumpstart. But you and Sam sit down with a smart vester pro the very first time. You didn't know beans. No. How's that? That's pretty intimidating. It's intimidating.

And I will say, I think it's helpful if you can engage with a show like this or do a little bit of research on your own. So at least you can, because there's lingo and jargon and you want to feel like you understand that. But if you sit down with the right person, they can help you understand it a little bit more. It's really, I mean, because here's the thing, you buy a house, well, that's an investment. There's no guarantee. The federal government does not get, you know, there's no FDIC for your house. You could lose the house. You could lose the neighborhood could go up in a sinkhole.

You'd lose everything. There's always risk. I mean, there's a, but the neighborhood could go bad. Sure. You know, and instead you go, okay, I'm buying a house in an area that has a long track record. Right. The trees are big enough. I can predict the future based on the past.

that's right and that's what you do with an investment you pick out something that's got a long track record and then you got to understand how to do it like you had to understand how to buy that first house that's right and there's 19 moving parts but they're really not that complicated once you do it once you go yeah you start to figure it out it's doable so uh you know i think if you move that 400 Daniel into some good investments and then get back to work and because you're gonna have a better life man it's just more enjoyable. There's just no, there's no dignity in sitting on your butt. You got to use your skills in your mind. Go do something big, man. Go do something big. Go make twice as much money you've ever made in your life. Start you a business and you go, wow, I'm so glad I quit that ugly

job. Act two. Yeah, yeah, here we go. Dave, you know this is my favorite question. If you didn't do finance and real estate, what would you do? If you had to make yourself have an act two. Finance and real estate, well, that's the only things I do. I know, but I'm saying if you didn't do that, If tomorrow you had to pick something else, what would you pick? I don't have any idea. But before I decided, before I decided to not do this, I would have an idea. But now there's nothing comes to mind. I would go straight to the next thing.

Yeah. I mean, I'm a teacher at heart, but I'm not going to the classroom. No. So, but I'm going to teach something. I'm going to lead. I love business. I love running a business. Okay.

So I would open something. Open something, helping people some way. And it would probably involve. teaching in some way or another, but teaching's part of leadership, too. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, but, yeah. I thought you might have something off the wall. No, a pilot.

I never wanted to be a pirate or a secret agent. No, never did. A pirate. So, just don't have any, I don't have any busted Dave dreams, none at all. It's all good. So, none at all. No busted Dave dreams. Oh, yeah, that's it.

Anyway, yeah, that's what I would do. I would sit down with a good smart vester pro and get it going. that way and you know I think that'll show you begin to teach you they've got the heart of a teacher yeah and having a heart of a teacher is the big thing and I do want to say this because you ask the question when you first hear um and learn about investing the first time it doesn't sink in the first time you hear it it's just like it's like when you turn the it's like when you wake up in the middle of the night and you turn the lights on to go to the bathroom and then when you turn the lights off you're like you can't see anything that's like what it is when you hear about

investing for the first time. You're like, what was that? I don't remember. Where was it? And then when you hear it the second time, it sinks in a little bit more than the third time it sinks in. And before you know it, you've heard it several times. And now you're like, oh, I get it now. I understand. So it's okay if the first time you hear it, you don't fully understand it. That's normal. Okay. I'll go with it. That's good. The point is, learn about it because it's not going to kill you. Yeah. You need to learn about it and get comfortable with it. And that'll get you there. Wow. Today's question of the day is brought to you by Y-R-R-F-I. If your private student loans are in default, it can feel like nobody will work with you. But Y-R-R-R-E-F-I was built for this.

They'll help you explore a fresh start. Go to Y-R-R-R-E-F-I-com slash Ramsey. That's the letter Y, R-E-F-Y dot com slash Ramsey, not in all states. All right, today's question comes from Dean in Iowa. He says, if I have debt but also want to invest, why can't I do both in benefit from the compounding interest. I'm 21 and have over 95,000 in college debt. I won't be able to pay that before I turn 30 and I don't want to wait that long to build wealth. Okay, so Dave, we hear this a lot. It's kind of like that age-old argument of why can't I invest whilst paying off debt or why do I need to wait until I'm done paying off debt to invest? And the biggest thing, I mean, if I go back to the basis of it,

it is your income being your biggest wealth building tool. So here's a thing. You have $95,000 in debt, which means a portion of your income is going to be going to paying that off. And the longer you wait, the more of that income is not helping you build wealth. So while you might be able to put, I mean, theoretically, yeah, you could put some money into investing. It's not going to be the full scale of what you could or should put in to build ultimate wealth. So why wouldn't you just clear that out? Because here's the thing. The compound interest works on your debt too yeah that's the thing that 95,000 that's going to accumulate that's going to accumulate more and at a quicker rate than when you start from zero

investing you know your hundred dollars here and there yeah so dean you're 21 you can do whatever you want to do honey you're like an adult and stuff but you wrote us and ask you're full of opinions and they're wrong wrong and you wrote us and ask so here's the truth the probability of you getting out of debt if you don't focus on it exclusively and with great intensity and get your little butt in gear the probability of you ever paying off that student loan is close to zero if you think you're going to wander out of this over 10 years like you've kept the flu for 10 years you're not going to do it you're simply not going to do it we've worked with people getting out of debt for way longer than you've been alive and so the you know tens of millions of people

have followed our stuff and gotten out of debt and one of the keys is for you to get fired up and wired up where you turn it on don't talk to me about being 30 years old and still having this debt how about 24 years old and it's gone three years from now $30,000 a year because all you do is work, young man. You have lots of energy. Go use it. Go get you some money. You have made a mess and you need to clean up your mess.

And the faster you put this in your rearview mirror with the faster the intensity, the higher the probability that you ever build wealth and the higher the probability you ever get out of the student loan debt. The number of people who drag out student loan debt and systematically pay it off over 10 years or 20 years is almost zero. They either do nothing and it stacks like cordwood. in the backyard or they get after it and they knock it out fast there's hardly anybody in the actual data that does the middle ground he goes i'm going to very slowly and methodic nobody

does it they don't do it so you get fired up and wired up so your set of assumptions are wrong it's not going to take you nine years you'll pay off nine 900 i mean nine nine thousand dollars a year come on how wuss it is that come on don't be a wuss do it man come on nine thousand Come on. That's nothing. You need to pay off $35,000 a year because all you do is work. Clean up your mess. And then you're sitting there at 24 years old without this thing hovering over you like most of broke Americans walking around with their own spare bedroom for freaking Sally May. They've kept her around so long she's like a member of the family, the old ugly aunt with a ward on her nose. And she's stuck in the back bedroom and we're paying payments for her. all the time. We can't get rid of her because you won't give her an eviction notice.

You do, roll up your sleeves and punch it in the mouth. Tell Sally, she gone. You're out. You're done. You don't get to live here. I don't like you. You're ugly and you're inhibiting my future. You are going away. You have to get mad about it and knock it out fast. It increases the probability of doing it. It destroys your little formula because now you're out of debt at 24 or 25. and now you can build wealth really, really fast because you're used to living on very little and paying off a bunch of debt. We can transfer that to living on very little in investing.

You'd probably be a millionaire by the time you're 35 if you do what I tell you to do, what Jade told you to do. But if you don't, you're going to be normal. And if you want to look up the statistics on normal in America, normal sucks really bad. You do not want to be normal. It's a disaster. So your goal is to be weird.

That's our thing around here. I know that's right. Yeah. That's how you do it, man. That's the answer. And so, but yeah, if you make a set of assumptions, you're going to be there. And by the way, compounding interest works on debt. Exact same math.

Works against you. And as it does, working for you with investment. Right. The only difference is the rate. The only difference is the rate. If you're saving money at the same rate that you're paying off debt at the, not paying off debt at the same rate, you have broken even exactly. If you're doing it at a lesser rate,

You still broke even because you're carrying around all this risk. And there's increased risk that debt represents. So the answer, folks, the way, you know, Jay when I was growing up, a bunch of us a little hillbilly kids, we were running in out of the house and back door big opening, closing, open and closing all day. You know, your mother says stuff like where you raised in a barn, that kind of stuff. And finally, the heat of the summer, she would have it. She'd be done with these kids running in and out, the neighbor, kids, me, everybody else.

And she would just go, that's it. The worm has turned. Now, we had no idea what that meant, except that the beatings were getting ready to begin, right? That's all we knew. And so, but the turn found out later, it's actually from Shakespeare. Who knew Mom knew Shakespeare? But yeah, there you go. So, but all I knew was she was sick and tired of being sick and tired.

Yeah. She had had it up to here with these kids and putting all the air conditioning in the outside and running up the bill. She'd had it. And when you kind of got to get that thing going like, Mama, the worm has turned. I've had it. I'm not living. like this anymore. I make too much money to be this freaking broke. I live in the most prosperous

time in the most prosperous country in the history of mankind and I'm broke. This is stupid. I'm going to change. When you get that thing going like that, a little preaching going on. Then you can turn it. You can turn it around. But Dean, it's not compound interest problem, honey. It's a Dean problem. Just like when I went broke, it was a Dave problem. Listen, I think it's about him wanting to take the easy way out. That's all I think. I think you look at 95,000, you go, that seems like a lot of work. It seems a lot easier to go over here and put my little $100 over here. I'm taking the easy route.

And I think it literally just boils down to that. You can either do the work and get the full, the fullness of what you're supposed to have, or you can punk out and take the easy route. You know, I said that this on the show last week, I was being interviewed in a leadership situation the other day. And a guy said, you've got all these Gen Zs working for you. And I said, yeah, I love that generation. They're an incredible generation. generation because they've grown up with a magic wand in their hand and if you push a button

stuff happens things are up on your front porch man that's right yeah anything's possible for this generation they're possibility generation and it's fast they think anything can happen but it all happens fast that's the downside and and he said well what about they're being entitled I said they're not entitled they're just impatient yeah that's good because they're used to everything coming fast it comes easy comes fast you just push a button and crap happens you can't even have an argument because somebody's got the answer for the argument's done it's like good gosh and so um you know it's you know but but it's you know but here's the thing guys there's no such thing as good microwave barbecue that's an oxymoron there's only one way to get barbecue you cook it long

the dog the neighbor's dog is howling that's how good barbecue is made okay and it's like a long cook long slow cook and guess what money's the same way baby and so you can't push a button there is no easy button and uh while all things are possible to Gen Z, you better, you better buckle up Buttercup because you're going to have to learn some maturity. And one definition of maturity is learning to delay pleasure to get something better. That's an emotional maturity. That's psychological maturity, spiritual maturity right there. You delay pleasure to get something better. It's perseverance. And you'll get a callous while you're doing that because you'll be working all the time. And calluses are good for you

and patience is good for you. It's called growing up. And, but I tell you, man, this is great generation. If we dropped a little bit of that in the soup, they're going to be the best generation we've ever seen because they believe anything's possible and they go after it like it's possible. But quit looking for the stinking easy button. You're right, Jay. You're absolutely right. Welcome back to the Ramsey show in the Fair Winds Credit Union Studio. Jade Washaw Ramsey Personality, number one bestselling author is my co-host today. Alyssa is with us in Chicago. Hi, Alyssa. How are you? I'm good. How are you?

Better than I deserve. What's up? My question is, how much is too much to spend on a wedding? Okay. That's cool. How much are you thinking about spending? 60,000. Cool. Nice wedding. Good. Okay. Do you have 60,000? So we're actively saving to get to, we have about half right now.

So by next September, when the wedding would be, we would have that. So mom and dad aren't chipping in. That's you and him paying for it. We are going with the intention that we're paying for it. They've briefly mentioned that they might contribute, but no hard numbers have been given or anything like that. Okay. So you're assuming it's all on you. So what do you make?

Yeah. I make 90 before. What's he make? A hundred and 90. cool do you guys have any debt no debt wow it's not too much it's not too much okay not if you pay cash that's exciting okay you want to know how I did that yes here's fun okay average household income in America right now is about $75,000 the average wedding in America is about $36,000 it's about half of the average income so if you spend more than half your annual income on your wedding

and if you're paying for all of it which just sounds like you are okay um then you're spending too much on a wedding because you're more than half the average now here's the thing keep in mind average kind of sucks in america we don't necessarily want to be average but but you're below 50% of your your uh way below 50% of your 270,000 dollar income and so you're as on a ratio basis you are half of the national average which is half a weird way to say that but yeah so i mean the national average would put if you if you spent 50% of your own income maybe 135 so you're well below what the average person is doing and you're about half of that at 60 and so you're you're very conservative as a ratio but now for somebody

it makes a hundred grand it sounds like that you know unless has lost her mind you know but that's what people say that don't have any money and that and you've got some money so yeah when you have more money you can spend more yeah of it without it being a problem yeah so and if that doesn't include the honeymoon and we added i don't know 10 or 15 on top of that it would still be about the wedding yeah honeymoon's a different different story i think that'd be fine and the engagement rings another story okay but um yeah that's a good differential though when we're talking about talking about the wedding there are those three components there's the rings then there's the actual party and then there's your honeymoon what do you all do for living i do medical sales and

he does product management cool okay well he's going to really like this last suggestion we've done three weddings at the ramses i've got three kids that are all married been married many many years okay and um rameses we like a big party we like to celebrate stuff like that and so um we we threw major parties on each of these weddings it was a lot of fun um but we learned and that and we did it from the first one way we introduced this idea that for your fiancee will love me your wedding is a project so let's lay out a budget yeah in detail if we're going to spend 60 how much of that's the dress how much of that's the reception how much of that's the videographer how much that's the preacher, how much is the venue, and you lay out a budget.

And then guess what? You stick to the budget. And that would be my word of wise for you, Alyssa, because when you hear what Dave said, which is, yeah, which is technically you could be spending more if you were being, quote, average. So for you, the hard part is going to say, even though we could spend more, we're going to stick to what we said in the beginning of 60,000. Yeah, I would pretend like that you work for someone and your job was to manage a $60,000 budget, and bring the event in on budget on schedule because you're manager project it's an event

project I mean we manage events here it's what it is and so this is what you get fired if you went over someone else's budget yeah if you if you work for somebody you get fired if you screwed it up right so just treat it like it's serious business and and I know that doesn't sound very romantic but people use romance as a way to do a lot of stupid butt stuff so no we're not doing that so um no just lay it out exactly and you say this This is, and you can pull up some percentages. There's some good guidelines online for how much to spend on the dress. I will go ahead and tell you, if you're going to have a nice reception to have the big party,

it's going to be your biggest line item by far. Like how many people you think, I mean, 60,000, you're thinking about inviting a decent number of people, aren't you? It's not huge. So we've already booked the venue, and we're going through that process. But I'm more of the favor, and he's more of the spender. So thinking of kind of the rough estimate that we put together with all the, you know, videographer, photographer, and all of that, it just sounds like a lot of money. So I go back before the team hesitant and not. You know what I mean when I say scope creep?

Yes. Yeah, this project, this thing will creep up and the 60 will turn into 80. If you do not, if you do not line item this and no rough estimates, it's freaking what we're going to do. And then when you're meeting with the caterer and they go, well, we can't have a leg. No, no, this is all we got. This is what we're doing. And, well, you know, we could spend, you know, freaking $85,000 on flowers. Who's getting married here?

Princess die? I mean, seriously. So, you know, we're going to go in the field, pick some wildflowers so that we stay on budget. Rachel actually did that one. Well, if nothing else. Because she was over budget on other stuff. And the only way she could get it back in budget was to get the flowers down. If nothing else planned for 54, so at least you've got 10% set aside just as contingency.

Oh. That's what I'd do. A little slush fund in the line items. Just in case. Yeah, a little just in case fun. I'd have something in there for that. I don't know if I get away with that, but wow, wow. Yeah, that's exactly how I would do it.

And, listen, I think you're approaching it very wisely. You're not counting on the people who have been vague about their possible input. That way, you're not under their control. Matter of fact, whatever they come forth with, I'd probably just use that for the honeymoon. And I just lock this baby down on 60 and just go, we're doing it. And you and the fiancé sit down and agree to that. Go, this is a project like you manage your work. We're going to manage this.

going to come in on budget. We're going to get the details out because there's always something that you can go higher. You can always go one bigger, one better on everything. You get the extra large shrimp instead of the large shrimp. What was the thing on the father of the bride? Cheaper chicken. Oh, yeah. You get ice sculptures. Yeah, that's it. And so, yeah, you can do it. And you can do that on a $10,000 budget. You can do it on a $60,000 budget. You can do it on whatever. You just manage the budget. That's right. This is what we're doing. And so it's just, we're going to get super creative or we're going to do this for 7800 bucks we had a lady here on the team that got married and had a really nice little wedding for 7,000 bucks and she just slammed you know they were trying

to get out of debt and that's the most they weren't going to spend and uh it was it was really very nice can I tell you the okay Sam and I paid for our wedding what you're pocket oh it was like 10,000 okay um it was a little bit more but I my biggest regret to this day and it was in the name of doing it debt free we didn't have an open bar no open bar that's your that's your regret that you didn't booze up everybody else for free I mean we were on a yacht we were it just made sense you should have had there should have been some drinks on board oh you know you didn't have a oh there was no open bar there was no bar no no what not they couldn't even pay no open bar would be like you paid no well I thought it was tacky to have people

pay so there just was no bar just no oh well okay I'll go with that okay but it was a mistake that's okay you know what They don't remember it? You're the only one that does. I guess so. I don't know about that. Sam doesn't even remember it. Richards in Oklahoma.

Richard, welcome to the Ramsey show. Hi, Richard. Thanks. boy i don't know uh i don't really know where to start okay i'm beginning to think i'm i'm a lost cause um i went through i went through a very similar situation actually an identical situation that you did um but it was much later in life i was 55 uh with the banking i was in the mortgage business for 10 years when everything crashed um i lost everything i was completely ruined um my my confidence was kicked out the door.

So I went through a few years to try to get my act together and went to, went to Florida. Basically, I went back to the one place that you never want to go, but the one place it's got to take you in. So my mom was very elderly at the time. And so I went down and I was taking care of her in Florida. And then it got to a point where I was. going to need somebody to help, so I got to drive in a truck. And it was something that was kind of conducive because it was like I'd be in the truck and they'd say, okay, where am I going now?

And it was only going to be for a couple of years. I was going to drive for a couple of years and joined the immersion Marines. I wasn't married. I'd lost everything. I had no children. And then, I was going to join the merchant marines. I figured, okay, I'll drive the country for a couple of years, then go to sail the world for a couple of years.

But then I had to put my mom into assistant living. So in order to handle that, I stayed on the truck and was paying for that. And I also figured, well, you know, if something came down, I'm a day or two days away versus, you know, a month to two months away. I'm sorry, Richard. So how can we best help with the day? Well, it's, well, it's, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, I, you know, I never, I never sailed, you know, I never really planned, you know, based upon a previous caller, I was totally ignorant and intimidated and not knowing anything about

investing, afraid of missing out at this, afraid of losing, and then afterwards, how old are you now? Right now, I'm 72. And how much money do you have now? Right now, I've got $40,000 in a savings account, 5%. Okay. Out of what, because then in, after a couple of years, then I got involved with something else. And it looks like it was going well and put good money after bad when COVID hit.

Are you still driving? Are you still driving trucks? Are you still working, Richard? Yes, I'm still driving now. What my plan was, I wanted to have more of a nest egg. I wanted, well, I shouldn't say nest egg. I wanted to have, you know, my goal was to have 50, thousand dollars in the bank for me to get off the truck get back to uh um get back to texas where there was a community there of people with common interests and then really research what i could do um without without having to try what's going on with your what happened to the house your mom was living in before she went in assisted living well when she died um it was a at one point she had taken a reverse mortgage on it so it went to the day

Oh, shoot. Yeah, and it was a condominium there in Florida. So it was worth nothing. Right. Where are you living? Are you just living in your cab? Where are you living? Yeah, I'm living on the truck.

Technically, I'm homeless. I was living in Florida. I had a room. I was right in a house. What do you make? Much of you make. Well, you know, I was just figuring that. out because it's fortunately for the company I drive for that I've been with

for a while now a number of years they have a minimum of 1250 a week because you don't always you can go out and get with the way it is with driving they pay by the mile but they could pay a dollar mile but if you're only getting 300 miles a week that's that doesn't really do what do you make Richard with my Social Security it comes to about 80,000 gross and you don't have any overhead because you're living in the truck, how much of that can you save? Can you not save $40,000 a year? Well, I've been, I had credit card yet, and I've been paying that down, and then...

Is it gone? I thought you said you were debt-free. Well, no, I didn't mean debt-free. I'm sorry. How much credit card debt do you have now today? $2,500 out of what was at one time $60,000. Good for you. Good.

other debt do you have, hon? Really, really, I owe the IRS, but I'm getting with an account in the beginning next week. How much? I filed an extension, only $2,500. So $4,500 and $2,500 makes you debt free, and then you start stacking cash as fast and as hard as you can for as long as you can and you start stacking it to the tune of $4,000, $3,000 a month into a good gross stock mutual fund and you sit down with a smart vester pro if you can do that for five years you can build a good nest egg i don't know if you got five years left but uh in terms of passing your exams and everything to stay on the road and be safe and all that but you've got to do this today like you've got to start today get online find that don't put it off because if you do you're going to fall back

in your same habit and you're just going to put it in a savings account and it's not going to do any of what dave is saying it's going to do so you've got to do it today you know i want to set up $3,000 a month automatically coming out of your checking account. And then I want you to add more in addition to that. Going straight into mutual funds for your investing. That's $36,000 a year. You do that for three years. It's $100,000.

It'll be $100.5. By the time you get done with it with growth, it'll be $300 before you know it after that in terms of more growth. So you can actually build an est egg, but you've got to have to lean on it. And your adventures are over. Now you're just grinding. We ain't no more time for adventures. We're just going to grind. and no more interferences, we have to grind.

Whatever comes up, we've got to grind. Whatever it is, we've got to shift the gears and go, shift gears and go, shift gears and go. You've got to make it, you've got to make up money. And you take all the runs you can take, and you pile the cash as high as you can pile it as as you can pile it because you are in emergency mode. You're not a lost cause, but if you don't change your ways you are, but it's not because the math is killing you, it's because you're killing you. Do you think he owns that truck?

You've got to get those two little debts cleaned up right now, as soon as positive. Go ahead and write a check and clean them up today. Take the $40,000 and pay off the credit cards and cut them up today and pay off the IRS today. As soon as you get with your tax guy and you figure out exactly what it is, write a check and pay them. Do not delay. Put that behind you. And then let's get, because that'll leave you $34,000 in your emergency fund, which is just fine. Leave that there for the emergency fund and then run over to your, go over today, like Jane said,

and get an automatic draft started on your checking account for $3,000 a month. And you can do this. you can do that and that's going to put you in a much better place three years from now than you ever dreamed you were going to be between that and social security but yeah you're you're going to be working a while longer that's for sure and but then that'll get that'll get you away from wolf to get the wolf away from the door yeah is that truck his asset or does he have to turn that in when he's done no he's working for somebody he's driving their truck which is just fine okay so because otherwise that's stupid things going down in value and that'd be another debt we own right now he's much better off He's much better off in the seat he's in. That's the place to be, especially in this situation. So, yeah, just grind, just grind, just grind, just grind. And you've had a lot of drama in the last 20 years, and you don't, you don't, for the next five years, you don't get any more drama. You don't have room for it.

You've got to grind and pile cash. Grind and pile cash. If drama knocks at the door, tell them to go next door, we don't have a play going on here. Okay, it's going to go somewhere else. You really do. I mean, you've had your share of it, my friend. So, but it's not hopeless at all, but you're going to have to, the, the only way it's not is if you lean in and really get laser focused on this and knock the crud out of it. But it can be done.

So, yeah, that'd be 100,000 and three years you'd have in there a little better than that, about 110. And that will have grown, yeah, probably it'll be bumping done 100 and a half. And then if you left 100 and a half alone for seven years, it'd be. 300 but you don't have seven years there so yeah but you're going to have some money you have a little bit of money and you'll have your um at least not be right on the edge of everything and get your little some kind of apartment to rent very inexpensive apartment to rent and come off the road and do something else then too but um yeah i'd plan on doing something plan on creating an income have to if you're ever around the nashville area stop by and see us we do the show

on the glass live from one to four central time every day. And there's usually 50 to 200 people out here, partly to watch the show, but partly because the coffee and the homemade cookies are free. So there's that. And come by and hang out with us. We do pictures at the commercial breaks and all that kind of stuff. And you might have the opportunity to see someone stand on the debt-free stage right here in the lobby

to do their debt-free scream. Dave and Roxanne are with us. Hey, guys. How are you? Hi, Dave. Welcome, welcome. Where do you live? We're from Calgary, Canada. Fun. And how much debt of you two paid off?

$702,970. Wow. Whoa, how long did this take? About seven years and four months, Dave. I smell a home payoff. Yes. Good for you. We're looking at weird people. I love it.

What's this house worth? About $800,000 right now. Wow. Very cool. And how much in your nest egg these days? days both 320 so you're millionaires baby steps millionaires how old are you two i'm 37 45 and your baby steps millionaires in calgary canada i'm so proud of y'all awesome thank you way to go how's that feel that's amazing amazing yeah how many millionaires in your uh in your

line your parents your grandparents all that kind of thing um no one no one you're it you're the first one you broke it and my brother's here with me i think he's gonna he's a millionaire Okay, wow. All right. So both of you made it. All right, good. So a whole new line to the family tree coming with you too. Yes.

Way to go, guys. I'm proud of you. Excellent job. All right, and your range of income during that seven years? Yeah, it's really interesting. We started 30,000, almost made nothing. And by the end of the journey, seven-year journey, we make about 700,000 right now. Oh, amazing.

700? Amazing. What do y'all do? We started, I was a general manager of a, cleaning company and a facility company and I used to work in finance in a government and along the way we started an online business and uh in affiliate marketing and it started the sales started to pick up and that's what we do full time now in freight marketing no no affiliate marketing online affiliate marketing oh high ticket yeah oh wow good for you awesome pretty cool well congratulations you too

Zoom, Zoom. What a wonderful income. This is very cool. How did a power couple like you guys get plugged into the Ramsey stuff? It started actually. I was listening to Joyce Mayer sermon and she talks about Financial Peace University, Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. So I started searching about you. I got so excited about baby steps and I showed it to him and he's very skeptical. I was skeptical. I used to be a financial advisor. I wasn't a big fan of Dave Ramsey at a time. And, but our turning point was that it was February 2018. At that point, we had about 86,000 hours of consumer debt, 24 failed businesses. Wow. And the only thing that was left for us was that we were managing an apartment and we were leaving for free.

Again, our income was about 30,000. We got home and we got an eviction letter saying we don't need you anymore. And that kind of almost broke us. And I remember that day we were afraid. And, you know, we were mad at each other for, you know, saving nothing and living for free. And I remember, Roxanne prayed this very powerful prayer, right? Yeah, I asked God to heal our finances to lead us to a solution and to lead us to the right opportunity. And that's when, you know, Dave finally, you know, became open about looking into more about at the FPU.

Yeah, and that's when we, you know, for me, it's like total surrender. I said, you know what, I may be a financial advisor, but as Dave would say, you know, I don't, like, have a six-pack, right? So I'm a fat financial advisor, so I need to have total surrender, and we went all in after that. Wow. Wow. So you just plugged in online? Yes.

Yeah, online, because they don't, for what I know, they don't have it. Right, right. Canada doesn't like the word university. Yeah. When it's not like a real university, so they won't let us in there. But, yeah. Wow, so cool, man. I'm proud of you.

Thank you. Very neat. So what was the first thing you did to get the income up? Yeah, so... I mean, you're sitting there homeless, almost, almost. So we started, you know, I started to apply on, I mean, full-time and, you know, like, we're employable. So I got full-time job and then you get full-time job. We started to go back to actual work because we had this mentality of love where, you know, we want to be entrepreneurs,

but we didn't want to have a full-time job because we have a wrong mindset about hard work. So we all actually went back to full-time work, Roxanne and I, and then we went intense. We had cleaning jobs. We had, you know, the best side hustle for us was like we had a, we rented our apartment that we were living in, right? Yeah. Because we were living in a two-bedroom apartment. And we started to rent the second bedroom to international students. And that, I think, it gave us like $500 extra.

And then we sold our Mercedes-Benz. It took us like three months to really think about it. So we sold that Mercedes-Benz that free us. more cash flow for us and then we sold some stuff in a facebook marketplace as well and everything that we saw that wasn't you know we had like three iPads for some reason we sold two of them I had an old golf club we sold it you know had an old suit we put it in every marketplace everything must go yeah there was a there was a um so where did you grow up um I grew up in the Philippines and he grew up in the Philippines too okay all right and so you

you're in you moved to Canada on whole new opportunity yeah a whole new set of things a bunch of failed businesses take the full-time jobs plus all the side hustles start scratching and digging and one of those side hustles became the affiliate marketing that blew up yeah along the way um you know I was I was I was I was to come here to thank you day because I yeah we talk about that it that this journey healed us because on those businesses it wasn't the business for say it was you know I was our impatience you know we had a sickness It's called ABD, I call it Attention Businesses Order, right? When the business becomes...

Sounds like an entrepreneur to me! When the business became challenging, we said maybe there's something easier out there, but baby step two really taught us to be patient, have spirit of contentment, be creative, be resourceful, everything an entrepreneur needs, right? And when we hit our, you know, the business along the way, it was February we started, October 2018, when we started affiliate marketing.

that's it took off because you know God bless that business because we now have the character at the foundation it sits on it so something you guys are incredible thank you it's amazing yeah wow preach it preach it I love it well done so proud of you way to go how's it feel now to be this age and you know I mean you go through all of that and now you're millionaires already and it was not a smooth journey it was a it was a gut-wrenching journey but rich, rich. And so how's it feel now that you're there? It feels weird to be weird.

It feels amazing at peace, knowing that, you know, we're taking care of God's resources. We learn that it's not our money, it's God's money, and we realize that if God bless us earlier, we would lose it. But now because God knows that we're prepared, so we can handle more. So when you're faithful in the little things, you'll be given more to manage. Yeah.

Yes. Pretty much in his scriptures. Love it. Proud of y'all. Very, very well done. And you brought your son with you, right? Yes. Bring him up.

Do you want to introduce him having part of this? Yes. All right. How old is he and what's his name? His four years old. His name is Caleb. Hey, Caleb. Well done, brother.

He just means the handoff here. Yeah, right. I love it. Very cool. Good looking guy. Fun, fun, fun, fun. He has no idea how. Much of a hero, his mom and dad are.

They've changed their entire lives. Very cool. Their entire family tree is completely shaken up. Way to go, Caleb. Pretty cool. You selected good parents, brother. So cool. Good job.

All right, Dave and Roxanne and Caleb, $703,000 paid off in seven years and four months, making from $30,000 to $700,000. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. To God be the glory We're debt's free All right

Yeah I love it Woo-hoo That's about as good as it gets right there Man how fun Way to go you guys If you died tomorrow How would your family keep the lights on

How would they pay the mortgage Afford groceries If anyone in your life depends on your income You need life insurance but how do you choose from all the options that are out there? Well, it's actually simple. Life insurance is one job, and that's to replace your income. If you die, term life insurance is the only thing that does only that.

The others like whole life or permanent life try to add in investing. They end up doing a bad job at everything. You only need life insurance while someone depends on you financially. So if you're like most people, you need a policy worth 10 to 12 times your income for 15 to 20 years. and it should be a level policy, meaning the premium stays the same. To find more info and resources, use our free term life insurance guide. Go to ramsysolutions.com slash term life guide or click the link in the description if you're listening on YouTube or podcast.

Ryan is in Idaho. Hey, Ryan, what's up? Well, thanks to technology, I'm calling you from the tractor seed, so that's kind of neat. So, I guess the main reason for my call is you always say, if you woke up in my shoes, what would you do? So I guess I'm just looking for a little advice. So me and my wife have been married about five years. We've had a couple of little kids, and I pursued a degree in diesel mechanics and then moved to a commercial stator farm as a diesel mechanic. So this time of year, I make a very large substantial amount of money during the harvest

and then kind of papers off during the rest of years. We do maintenance and some other things. So I kind of live on a boom and a bus cycle. And we've kind of been working the big steps trying to get stuff paid off while we have the money to do so. And I've kind of just been trying to figure out what to do. My wife's been very sick. A lot of our debt is actually medical debt. and we found kind of a, I guess, like a hormonal therapy.

It's kind of an extensive program to help her feel better, and I'm kind of in a weird place where I'm making a lot of money, and I'm like, well, do I take the money and start paying off dead, or do I take some money and help her feel better, so we don't have as much medical better in the future. You help your wife, sir, before you do anything. Before you do anything, you take care of her. What's the nature of our illness?

It's more hormonal. All the doctors have kind of said after she had babies that just kind of messed with her hormones. And so we kind of been to a bunch of different doctors and really the biggest issue is that it's not covered under any kind of insurance. It's not anything we can just take care of. And so we've sought out a lot of professionals. So is she struggling with depression?

after the postpartum? Oh, all sorts of different things. Depression on top of just actual illness. I mean, she's sick all the time. She doesn't feel good. And trying to take care of two little kids while I'm on, you know, I'm out in the field gone all day. It's just.

What's it costing you? What's it costing you to do the treatments? Are you just, you're hitting your max every year? Is that what it is? No, it's completely, it's got to be completely out of pocket. So the doctors have said it's about a $6,000 procedure, but I just have to come up with. Which I can do, obviously, I make a lot of money right now.

What's a lot of money? I wouldn't be able to pay anything on my debt. What's a lot of money? I make about 20 grand a month during harvest. Okay. And so for three or five months, you make 60 grand? Yeah, I can stock a lot of money right now. So you make 60 grand in three months, but then you don't make much the rest of the year.

Yeah, what do you make the rest of the year? I average So I make about 80 a year And so I'd say probably half It's probably closer to 30 or 40 grand during harvest And then the rest of year kind of evens out So I still have a consistent paycheck Okay

All right And Okay so I don't know anything medically about where you are But if you have a high probability In your mind And you've solved for that that this, I mean, you work on engines, and so if the doctors have convinced you that this will work on your wife, you know, is this a high probability of a fix? I don't want to throw $6,000

on something that they just hope it might work. You know, it's a 10% probability. No, thank you. I'll figure out something else. But if there's a high, a high healing rate for whatever it is she's struggling with with this particular procedure, and you can do it for $6,000, I just put that at the top of the list. Okay. everything's paying minimum payments and you're living on a budget and you come up with six grand and then we go back to we're living on a budget and we start paying down the smallest debt the largest debt okay and that's kind of what it it was kind of hard because it's not it's one of those

things where it's like I feel like we should pay it but even my wife's in here like we need the money for other things we're trying to pay off debts we're trying to get well I mean you're probably spending $6,000 on medical bills though right That's the thing. If you don't do this, you're going to spend the same money coming in and out of the hospital, right? On other things. I guess. I don't know.

I don't know what you're dealing with. And I'm not a medical doctor. You know, I couldn't tell you if I didn't know. But it's a fairly, the way you've explained, it's pretty vague. I have no idea what she's facing. But, you know, I'm, I don't know. It sounds like an immune disorder of some kind. I don't know.

But I do know. I think the hard part is when you're wanting to go, you know, hard on the baby steps. It's hard to let other things go in front of that. But the truth is, yeah, health, when you have a health concern or something that's very seriously affecting your health, that does need to jump in. Yeah, well, not only do we not want to be sick and not want to hurt, but on top of that, just the mathematics are you come out ahead. Yeah.

If you don't have the medical bills because you paid the money to get the treatment, you know, assuming it works. And that's the thing you've got to understand. And y'all need to be your own advocate with these off insurance procedures and make sure you've got a high probability of this stuff. And it's not some witch doctor thing. I don't have any idea what you're getting into here. But I truly know nothing about it. And I can't tell anyway.

I couldn't tell based on what you told me anyway. So, yeah, if you think it's going to help your wife, then it gets first. But I'm going to want a high degree of due diligence to really know that I know that I know that I know. that this is going to have a, you know, that nine out of ten patients, they do this, then they quit having the ongoing illnesses, right? Yeah, that's right. Whatever it is we're trying to accomplish here. Let's see some cause and effect to this, not just, oh, well, I think this will work.

Let's try hers our next skinny pig. No, I don't want to do that either. Thank you, Kermit. That's okay. We'll pass. Jay's with us in Arizona. Hey, Jay, what's up? Hey, so, yeah, I got a question for you.

And my, I don't really know where to start. My little sister was killed in an accident a couple years back. Oh, my gosh. The company responsible for it basically just failed to need a whole bunch of safety regulations. How old was she? 22. Wow. So sorry.

Sorry. We have, we have received wrongful death payout. the grand total I don't know about I have requested that I have no interest in knowing I just want to know what affects me and basically what affects me is that my parents have set up trust accounts for everybody with enough in them under the management of a financial advisor that I'm told that we'll set up generational wealth I will not have to worry about retirement my kids will not my grandkids will not and we are being given on top of that all of our debts outside of floor walls are being wiped out. Wow. And then a one-time financial gift of $38,000. That part sounds weird. You know, my parents' finance.

Where did that amount come from? In Arizona, the maximum amount that a married couple can give their kids is $38,000 before Uncle Sam wants his house. Got it. Okay. $1,000 a person. Uncle Sam lives in Washington, not in Arizona. that's fair um but um they've i mean they brandy the crap out of their finances they're almost debt-free um and they weren't five years ago so your mom and dad are receiving this

money correct and you don't know how much it is i don't know how much the grand total is no what i what i would do is operate my life as if it wasn't there and i would say for retirement and i would say for my kids college and then if any of this money does come your way as a result of all this trust funds and all these things they're doing, then it's just gravy on the biscuit. It's just extra money. But I would continue to operate my life normally as if this wasn't there. And then if it comes fine, if it doesn't come, fine.

Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fair Winds Credit Union Studios. Jade Washaw Ramsey Personality, number one bestselling author is my co-host today. Barbara is in Dallas. Hey, Barbara, how are you? I'm good, thank you for taking my call. Sure, what's up? I'm very nervous. That's okay, darling.

We've never lost a patient. How can we help? I'm calling because I'm going to try to get through this without crying. My mom recently suffered a series of strokes, and since then she had some short-term memory loss, and the medical staff basically said that she should not be by herself anymore, and so she does liver. alone and I'm she was about four hours from me she used to live with me um wanting to come back to live with me but I'd have to live um build onto my house to do that um I'm recently debt free following the baby steps and I just don't know what to do because I don't

have the money to build saved so I was hoping that could help How old is she? 75. And you said she's had a series of strokes? Yeah, she had seven mini strokes. Oh, wow. So is she mobile? Yes.

Physically, she's strong. It's more her memory that's been infected. Okay. That sounds right. All right. What is her financial condition? She needs no savings. no retirement nothing basically she has no money no she on her house she has a mortgage but yeah

she has her house what's it worth probably about 150 and what is owed on it uh 50s okay are you are you the are you the um only child No, I have two siblings Are they going to take care over? They are right now My sister lives about an hour She goes on the weekends And then my brother lives about 30 minutes

But they work in town So they go during the week But she's by herself for the rest of the day So that's probably what that would look like that she stayed there. Sounds like that she needs to sell her house and be moved into assisted living to me. I don't think you need to build on.

Okay. Number one, your brother and sister are in town where she is. You're the one that's four hours away. You're going to move her four hours away from them. And you need their help. And you need their help, and they're willing to help, and they're good people.

They've been trying to help as best they could with their schedule. Okay? Yeah. And number two, if I'm 77 and I've had a series of strokes, I don't know what my probability is to live five more years. What do you think? I have no idea. I don't know, but it doesn't sound good.

You know, I don't think this is a, most people that are in that situation don't live 15. years, would you agree with that? Sure. I mean, we're all going to go sometime. I'm not trying to be cold. I know it's your mom, but I'm just trying to say, you know, you don't need to go spend $50,000 or $60,000 for something that's going to be for four or five years. Even if she did live longer than that, it's probably going to get past your ability to care

for her. Yeah. Because even if you took, let's just say, look, let's say you did sell her house and take the money and use it to build onto your house, it still doesn't cover the fact that you wouldn't be working because you'd be home taking care of her, right? Because the fact remains that someone still has to take care of her during the day. Yeah. Listen, I love your heart and I hope my kids want to take care of me as badly as you want to take care of her. I think that's awesome. And that's an act of love and that's a good heart thing. I'm just trying to help you through the actual realities of

your desire what is your desire what's the reality of your desire to do this wonderful thing and then what's best for mom what's going to give her the best quality of care um i think she's got those two kids right next to her i would find some kind of assisted living there and um i'd sell the house and put her in that and if she outlives that if she outlives that money there then we'll work on something else okay but i suspect that you could probably get you know reasonable care in that area I don't know you just have to shop around and find out what's available and what can be done and so forth does either your brother or your sister have room for her if they had someone there to care for her in their home they do but and they've

offered for her to go live with them but she keeps saying she doesn't want to she wants to come here what why is there something with that because whenever we've made mentioned your siblings, you kind of have a bit of a pause. And yet they're both doing their thing. They're helping. Yeah, they are. They are. They definitely are.

Do you just have the closest relationship? Say it again, hon. She used to live here with me. And when my dad was here, my dad passed away in 2018. Are you single? Yes. Okay. All right.

Well, I mean, how many bedrooms do you have? I have a three-bedroom house. Why would you need to build on? The problem is that she's got three dogs, and I have three dogs. No, she doesn't. This is not. This can't be about dogs. We're not building on to a house for dogs. Yeah.

No. No, different discussion. Yeah. Sorry, Mom. You want to live here? We don't have three dogs. I can help you with that. I love dogs. I love my dog more than I do most humans, but no way. No way.

Dogs don't make this decision. This is too important, too big a decision. We're trying to figure out how to care for a lady who's had a series of strokes. And now dogs enter the discussion. No, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new. So now, she can move in with you, the dogs can't. She sells her house, and you put her in one of the bedrooms, and you hire somebody to care for her there if you don't want to put her in a day.

assisted living it's actually a better economic idea better economic value anyway so yeah that's easy okay let the dogs go stay with somebody re-home them is that what they call it now i don't even care i just now i know what the real deal is with the situation yeah the kid the brother and sister said no dogs yeah and now you're gonna go into debt you called us to go into debt to build a wing for the dogs come up girl seriously no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no now we've gone no no you take care of your mom that does not include taking care of her pets this is a lady who has no money has saved no money her whole life and now her family is going to have to care for her they are not obligated to take care of her dogs i'm sorry dave's so cold he's so mean to animals he

doesn't like animals i love animals yeah but this is ridiculous this is just way off the chart see well big news the Fed cut rates for the first time all year and the 15 year fixed rate mortgages have dropped the lowest we've seen in 11 months if you're financially ready now's a great time to buy or sell lower rates could save you thousands over the life of your loan

but if you sit on the sidelines waiting for the perfect moment you could miss the window and you might end up paying more in home price for the exact same house So buying an affordable home you love is possible when you work with a Ramsey trusted real estate agent. These are pros that are handpicked by us to guide you through the market and keep your financial goals in mind. They're the top agents in your area. Find a trusted local pro for free at Ramsey Solutions.com slash agents or click the link in the show notes.

Joseph's in California. Hi, Joseph. How are you? Hey, I'm doing great, sir. I got a question about a few problems I'm facing currently. okay yeah so I current okay so I've been a full-time gig worker I've been driving for Uber and Lyft and I financed two vehicles um first one I financed was a Honda CRV um and when I bought it I bought it at the at the peak when prices were so uh inflated you know dealerships were marked enough

prices and there was low inventory and you know the car prices were much higher so would you pay So I bought it in 20. I financed it for 60K. This was in 2020, like the beginning of 2022. You financed a Honda for 60K to drive Uber. It was, okay, so it was like 59 out the door. Well, I mean, you financed a Honda for $50,000 or $60,000 to drive Uber. Correct.

Correct. Because I got, so the thing is I got advised from other drivers that, hey, you can really make good money. You got financial advice from other Uber drivers. Yeah. You just said that out loud. Yeah. Wow. Okay.

Okay. So you got the $60,000 car. What else? Yeah. And so it was just a regular SUV. And so I was making decent money at first. I was making about $2,700 a week easily. And then I started seeing my earnings go down because then Uber, you know, they got rid of this one program called Uber green,

which most hybrid vehicles qualified at the time and you know Uber green is like that feature that gives passengers the option to ride in a vehicle that's eco-friendly right and so a lot of them think that a clean hybrid vehicle or Tesla is going to show up to pick them up so they got rid of that feature so all hybrid vehicles don't qualify for that so then my I would say

my earnings dropped by like $500 or $600 then I was like shoot I was talking to other drivers or like hey you might need to level up getting an Excel vehicle which is like a three-road seat SUV right so then what i did so did you trade in the carv for no no no i i went to the i went to the dealership i put down because i had savings of 50 000 i put down 30 000 to get the um it was an accurate mdx so you kept the honda carv and then got an accurate mdx yeah why they didn't want it they did the dealership was like hey if you take it there's like a lot of negative equity got it so

I was like, maybe I should take, maybe you should just keep this car. So what did you pay for the MDS? I was about 54,000. Oh, Lord. And I got this, but I got this a little later. I bought this one in my 2024. You financed 54. So you put down 30 and financed 54.

So you paid 84 for it? Yeah. Stupid. That's what, exactly. And I'm really pissed off at my. Joseph. How old are you, Joseph? 29, sir.

Okay. All right. Do you have a real job yet? Yeah. I did at the moment, but I wasn't making the kind of money that I was making doing Uber and Lyft. No, you weren't making any money doing Uber and Lyft because you haven't been smart enough to factor in all the losses on your vehicles. You're right. When you factor that in, you didn't even break even.

And by the way, you didn't take out gas and repairs either, did you? No. Yeah, and I was going to get to that. Yeah. By the time you do all of that, you didn't even make, you didn't even make a, you know. didn't even make money on all this. You've been working for free for Uber. That's true.

At first, I saw the money was great. You know, like when I got the gross revenue was great. The net profit was not great. $3,500. Right. There's a difference. Yeah. Okay.

So now you're stuck in these two cars, honey. What a mess. Yeah, two car loans. And do you have a job now? Currently, yes, I do have a job. What do you make? Unfortunately. about 22 an hour not a lot okay what were you doing i don't have many i don't have i don't have

a lot of skills what were you doing before your uber escapades yeah i was just i was working as in a you know i was just doing regular uh minimum wage jobs you know like working in customer service industry like fast food restaurants you know service industry and then you know so the acura you put 30 000 down you should not be upside down you should be able to sell this vehicle. What's it worth? There, okay, so if I were to sell it to a dealership, private sale, please. Private sale, not private sale. I mean,

it's worth on Kelly Bluebook about 48. And you owe what? And you owe what? 54, a little over 54. So. And, but the problem is I don't have any money left over. So I would be able to pay the difference. I understand that. I'm just trying to, You put down $30,000 you've driven it one year and you're already upside down. Yeah.

Oh, my gosh. Are you sure? Wait, that's what the dealer offers gets. There's just no way. Yeah. I mean, how many miles you put on? How many miles do you put on it? About 30,000.

Oh, something doesn't add. Is that, does that sound right? No. I was going to say that doesn't add up to me. Okay. So, well, here's the deal. well no because it's a newer it's at 2024 that's why the value is not so low is why it dropped so much mm-hmm still oh no wait wait wait I'm confused were you guys expecting a lower number than

well well typically expecting a higher number yeah because you put 30,000 down which means there's that much room you had to lose 30,000 dollars in value before you got upside down right right but when I bought it it was brand new had zero miles I could 30,000 miles on which is not a lot it is in one year but it's not enough to devalue it that far um all right and they're rough miles we bring um is your is your is your is your credit terrible can you go to the get down to the bank and get a loan for the difference yeah it's kind of bad because i'm i'm late i've been late for a month okay on one vehicle and i assume both of these loans are with the car companies right yeah both with the same

No, they're with the same? Who were they with? You know, Honda, what do you call it, finance? Yeah, they have like their own finances. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, got it from the same dealership and so, yeah. Well, what I'm going to do is try to scramble and get out of these cars with car loans and extra work. I want you to work a bazillion hours and not at Uber.

Actually, you've got two cars sitting there. You could go make some money with Uber names. now and pile up some cash really, really fast. I mean, how fast can you make $6,000? How fast you make $6,000 and just put that aside and get rid of this one car, driving the other one, drive the Honda? So that's what I was trying to tell my family members that maybe I should move to a different market where I could make that money,

because my earnings drop around $25,000. I don't care if you get a job at Target. I, ma'am, I get that. It's not simple, you know, especially with like I got to pay for like groceries, I got to pay for, you know what? What market are you in? That's very California. I know.

We're in California. Yeah. Austin, Francisco. Okay. Yeah, you probably do need to move to a different market. You're in one of the most expensive markets in the world. And the only good thing is there, the Uber is expensive. But other than that, your cost of living is killing you.

Yeah, that's going to. So, yeah. But I do want you to do something to earn a bunch of money as fast as you possibly can. And, yeah, if you move, that's fine. But you've, you know, you've got. got to reverse the things that are killing you and that the first thing is to not be driving the Honda or the second car because we've got to get out of it it's the one you have a chance of getting out of the other one you're neck deep in it and if you just turn these cars in

they're going to sell them for 50% of what you think they're going to sell them for and they're going to sue you for the difference and you're going to find yourself in bankruptcy and you're going to find out that uber your uber career bankrupted you along with some really stupid decisions but that's where you're going to end up if you don't fight your way through these so voluntary repossession or straight up repossession are really really bad for you joseph so your best thing to do is to control the price of the sale the sale price of the car and the hole that you're in that corresponds that by getting these sold by covering the differences In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage,

Zach and McKenna are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? Good. We're doing well. Yeah, welcome. Where do you guys live? We're out in the Seattle area in Washington State. Cool.

Welcome to Nashville. Good to have you. And how much debt have you, too, paid off? A whopping just north of $68,000. Nice. Good for you. And how long did that take? It took about two and a half years.

Good for you. and your range of income during that time started off at about 117,000 took a dip to zero and now we're looking at finishing off at about 150 this year good what do you guys do for a living i'm a police officer yep and then i stay home with our four kiddos love it love it congratulations and what kind of debt was the 68 000 well it was a little bit of everything a big chunk of it was medical debt we had car debt uh we had credit card debt and i think that was about it oh yeah pretty much everything you could have is what we have. Kind of normal. Yeah. Good mix.

Normal's no fun. How long y'all been married? Almost 10 years. Okay. That's about the mark. Yeah. We did that long to get there. Yeah. Okay. And then two and a half years ago, something happened. What happened? Yeah, we were kind of, it felt like our paycheck was constantly robbing Peter to pay Paul type of thing. Our credit cards were just about maxed out. And when they just had just enough wiggle room, we'd pull from another account to pay for that bill and this bill. It just got to a point where we felt like we're on a sinking ship. and we just had to change something, so.

Yeah. Yeah, it was pretty, I feel like two are just, our, I mean, we had always felt fairly stressed out, you know, with finances, and we were always just barely making, you know, to pay our bills, and that was really stressful, obviously, and then you bring four kids into the picture, and all of a sudden that stress becomes just even more so. So how did you find us? It's funny. My mom, I was a missionary from our church.

church way back in the day and she gave me a book the uh i forget which one we've read a whole bunch of them but she gave it to me and i read it and for for whatever reason i didn't think we had to go past the first baby step of a thousand dollar emergency fund we did that forever and then it was like oh yeah we're not supposed to have debt so we've always been around and exposed to it and then my little pea brain finally figured out that we're supposed to get past that that first baby step and that's kind of where we just when we hit that head of we can't really pay for anything anymore and we got to make a change and that's kind of when we got back into things so yeah wow what's the story on the 117 to zero.

Yeah, so I got, I worked in the tech industry and, uh, it was during COVID. The market was real hot. It was really easy to get a job and that's when I got up to 117. And then as COVID kind of died down, uh, I got laid off for about five months. And so that was went down to zero. And that was in the midst of us trying to pay off our debt. So that was a really, uh, big hurdle in the whole middle of that. And that's why I made the career change from working in tech to now being a police officer.

Wow. Yeah. Very cool. And in Seattle proper? Uh, just outside of Seattle. Yeah, real close. Okay. Good for you.

Yeah, wow. Well done. That's a big deal, you know, paying off $68,000 with four kids at home, middle of a career change. I mean, I have some guesses, but what was the hardest part? It's just the, I think we were talking about this earlier. And for us, it's just the time away. Being the sole provider, it was, I was putting in 60 to 80 hour weeks for almost two and a half years. And so it was just the time away from the family and the kids was really, really hard.

Yeah, we had a lot of conversation with the kids because he went from being a work-at-home dad. You know, he was at home with his tech job. And so it was really hard all of a sudden to have him out home 24-7, basically. And then he lost his job for a few months, he was home extra. And then, you know, we made our goals and we were like, we got it. We just got to work really hard, especially with his job. We was able to work overtime. And so, I mean, he's been gone a lot.

And he still is because we've got some goals we're working towards. and so yeah it was we had lots of hard conversations with the kids and luckily though they've been on board with us which we've been grateful for and we'd rather do it now while they're little than you know later and and gosh yeah you're changing your whole family tree it's worth it yeah they'll be better off you'll be better off everybody will be yeah the whole mindset changed too is huge i remember the first time when we first were like okay we're actually sticking to a budget and we're in the i think it was walmart self-checkout and we were like a dollar over and it was for some stupid poster board and I had to do the walk of shame all the way back

to the back of the store. Can't afford this? Like, yeah, it's a dollar and I can't have it. Right, but it's a principle. It is. And that's what made that change. It was just that. We had to change a lot of habits of, you know, the immediate gratification and delaying that was huge. There was a lot of peace with that too. I mean, even though we were still in debt, you know, working towards getting out of it, it was amazing. The piece that came because we actually were reaching. Yeah. We weren't even a hole deeper anymore. Yeah. And it was just, there's a light at end of the tunnel finally. I want to ask more about that because a lot of people will say, you know, when we're telling people to be gazelle intense and just really go hard and

baby step two, you know, the pushback is, but you know, I got to pick up my coffee and I just, you know, I got to do my run through Chick-fil-A, whatever. But what you said about the poster board, it is true, you know, how you do anything, how you do everything. So talk to that person who says, Jade, my latte doesn't matter or, you know, just this one thing, talk to that person. Yeah, I mean, you get to choose which discomfort you have, right? Do you want the short-term discomfort of not having your latte or the long-term discomfort of being in debt and that stress. And for us, it was an easy choice when we put it in that perspective, that lens of what would I rather have now or in the future? And it's, it makes it real simple

when you look at it in a bigger perspective. I agree. Yeah, it shuts down the need for it. Then, I mean, what feels like a need just becomes a want. You go, I don't have to have it. Yeah. I'm in control. Yeah. I'm going to live like no one else so that later I can live and give like no one else yeah and these kids the whole lives are changed because of you where to go hero proud of y'all really very well done very very well done what do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is yeah just make a plan and stick to it it's it's just like working out losing weight it's the the answer is really really simple you just got to stick to it just make that choice and and whatever that reason why is make it bigger than the discomfort yeah and i think being okay having to do a little bit

of extra, you know, on the side or whatever. I mean, we had to get real creative over the past couple years. And there were times we were doing plasma. We were doing, you know, selling things. We were, yeah, it was just whatever we could do. We were trying to find, because every little bit just, again, got us closer to the end. It's not forever. It's a short period of time if you do it right. And it's not that. Once you're done, you're like, oh, that wasn't that bad. That's, I can handle that. Who cheered you on? Our whole family. Yeah. It's, uh, her side of the family, our family that's right over here. They're cheering us on the whole time. Yeah, that's great to have. Yeah, we've got a lot of family that's debt-free, so a lot of them are out of

debt, and so they were great because they all knew what it felt like, and so they were there encouraging us kind of along the way. So, yeah, I love that. It feels good. Yeah, they knew what it felt like. So, yeah, that does make a difference. And it's worth it, it's worth it. You know, I know it's hard, but it's worth it. Yeah. Yeah, that's the kind of cheerleaders you need, ones that are knowledgeable. Very good stuff. All right, and you brought a couple of the four kids, right? We did, yep. We left two at home. They're little babies, but we're going to bring them up for the debt-free scream here. Introduce these fellows to us, their names and ages.

So this is Oliver, our oldest. He is seven years old, and this is Everett five. And our two little ones are Lucy, who is almost three, and then Asher, who is almost one. Wow. Nice little-grown family, yep. Very fun. Beautiful. Well done, guys.

Proud of you guys. Congratulations. Thank you. You paid a price to win, and you win. Yep. Very well done. And a great example today on the air. Thank you for being with us.

Thank you. All right, it's Zach and McKenna, Oliver and Everett. 68,000 paid off in two and a half years, making 117 to 0 to 150. Lots of overtime, baby. That was the solution, but now they're free. So count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Ready?

Three, two, one, we're debt-free. Yeah. I love it. You know, those little guys don't look unhappy. They don't look like they've been deprived. No. I think they're in good shape. But they didn't see their dad a lot for the last couple of years.

And so we do get a lot of questions about work-life balance. And the truth is there is no balance in life. You're going to concentrate what you concentrate on. Some of you have been concentrating so much on hitting the submit button after you filled your cart. on Amazon and you've been concentrating so much on going on vacations that you couldn't afford and buying cars you couldn't afford and living a life you couldn't afford that now you're going to have to concentrate on something else called work and work is what's going to get you out my grandmother used to say there's a great place to go when you're broke to work it works this

work thing look at this guy what a stud man pretty incredible very well done this is the Ramsey Show. Our scripture of the day, 2 Corinthians 517, therefore if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come, the old has gone, the new is here. Jordan Peterson says, you should be better than you are, but it's not because you're worse than other people, it's because you're not everything you should be. Tracy's in Virginia. Hi, Tracy, how are you?

Hello, how are you? Thank you for taking my call. Sure. What's up? So I am looking at retiring in about three years. I currently gross about 130. I'm estimating low because I gross a little more, but I don't like to work with actual high numbers. So I gross about $130. I have about a $10,000 debt right now. $3,000 is a loan that my son is paying off because it's his student loan, and I told him he had to pay it back. $5,000 is from appliances I bought, they're interest-free until next year, and then $8,000 is actually on a credit card. I'm looking at whether or not I should, and I have about $12,000 in actual cash cash. So I'm trying to decide since I'm close to retirement, is it best for me to pay off my

house, I owe about 360 on it and the debt and that'll be debt free because the other debts are relatively small and I can pay them off fairly quickly. Or if I should look at a supplemental income, I have about 45,000 in stocks and mutual funds. I also have an IRA and two whole life policies or if I should buy a separate, buy another property so that I'll have that as more passive income. I know I'm talking fast. There's a lot going on. I'm trying to be respectful.

Okay, you're fine. You're fine, honey. You're doing a good job. So, real estate is not passive. Okay. It's active. I own several hundred million dollars worth of real estate, and it has to be managed. There's nothing passive about real estate.

Not even a piece, not even a piece of farmland that you do nothing with except hold the earth together. it's not even passive. My neighbor called, and one of my trees fell on his yard. I ended up having a send somebody over there for that. Not even that's passive, and there's nothing on there but dirt. I can't even get that to be passive. But if you deal with tenants, it's anything but passive.

If you deal with water heaters, heat and air and roofs, it's anything but passive. So you're going to be actively involved in real estate, and you don't have the money to play in the real estate market. Okay. You don't have enough money to fool with it. You have a good income. Yeah, you have a good income, but you don't have any money. So let me get this straight.

You have $10,000, $3,000, and $8,000. Is that the three debts? No, I'm sorry. Overall, it's about a little more than $10,000. The $8,000 is credit card. Yeah. The $3,000 is the student loan. Your son's supposed to be paying it, yeah.

And then you got the $5,000. I'm very, he calls me the bill collector. I make him pay it every month. So he is paying that. And then $3,500 is for appliances I needed to replace some appliances in my home. She said that was five. Yeah, I thought you said it was five, too.

I'm sorry, that is five. I got it written down. I have $3,000 for my son, $8,000 for credit card, $5,000 for the... So $16,000, so $16 clears you? Yes, but the reason why I said three is because I got my little note under here. It started off at $5. It's now down to about $3,500. Got it.

And then you've got $3,000 in cash? Cash enough out of your mutual funds in your... In cash, I have $30,000. Yeah, you need to write a check today and pay off your debt. Okay. I'll just pay that off. That's step one. All right.

How old are you? 56. And how much is in your IRAs in 401ks? In my IRA, I have about $300,000. Yes. Okay. Is that in good mutual funds? No, that's in my 401K.

I'm sorry. That's okay. My 401k is $300,000. My R-A-E-300,000, thank you. And is that in mutual funds? Well, it's through my job, so I don't know. No, it's a 401K. You do know.

You had to select it. You just don't remember. Okay, you need to go find out what that's invested in and make sure it's in good growth stock-type mutual funds. We recommend a fourth in growth, a fourth-in-growth, a fourth in growth in income, a fourth in aggressive growth, and a fourth in international, with good long track records. If you're doing that, you should be earning north of 12% in the last several years.

Okay. Okay. Because I do know that they gave us like these boxes now that you mention it, but I don't know what it was going to go back and double-check all that after you listen to this back. I'll be on the podcast and on YouTube. You can listen to it back, okay? So it gives you all the details.

So growth, growth, and income, aggressive growth, and international, a fourth in each of those long track records that have over 10% rates of return over the last decade or so. And you ought to be making well more than that, okay? So if you're doing that, your 300, without adding anything to it, will double about every seven years. So you're 56 at 63, it'll be 600. At 70, it'll be 1.2 million. If you don't take anything out of it if it just grows. I don't take anything. I know, but I'm telling you to 70, okay?

Tell us about your whole life policy. I have, well, they're for my, I got them for my kids. I have two of them, one for each, my son and one for my daughter. I want to get one. I just qualified. What I want you to do is cancel all of them. They're crap. Oh, okay.

It's the worst financial product on the planet. and use that money to build wealth and leave that to your son and daughter. Okay. But this is not a good place to build wealth, and dying is not a good way to create an estate. It doesn't, the math doesn't work out. You're going to have a better rate of return investing that money in the same mutual funds that Dave was just talking about. You're going to have a higher rate of compounding interest. Yeah.

So I do dabble, and I do use that word loosely, dabble in the instance. stock and mutual funds, and I have about $45,000 in that right now. Yeah, I would tell you to sit down with one of our smart investor pros, and let's make sure that you're getting 15% of your income going into retirement, canceling the whole life policies, you can use some of that money to beef up your retirement. You're dead free, because we told you just now, write a check, pay everything off. You've got a good emergency fund of three to six months of expenses. You're in good shape there.

So now all we've got to do is work towards putting 15% of your income away and get your house paid off. And so if you'll put 15% of your income away and your and your current nest egg is invested well, you're going to be in really, really good shape at age 65 and you need to be in a paid for house. So if you move into 65 with a million dollars and a paid for house, on top of a paid four house, you're going to be in great shape. And that is what you leave your kiddos. And you will, that's where you'll be if you do all the stuff we just outlined. And it's so, it's clean there's you know what I'm saying I'm listening to everything she said and there's stocks and whole life and should I do real estate and interest free on the appliances oh gosh

it's just so much please don't do that stuff no payments until the year 30 39 and then we're going to backcharge your 38% interest through the whole stinking thing because you didn't send in the check just like we told you to in the form we told you to send it in yeah it's it guys it's simple. Just keep clean, clean and crisp. Simple as best. One thing at a time. A couple of rules on investing. As we've studied millionaires, they all use the kiss principle. Keep it simple, stupid. They really do. And they don't put money in things. They don't understand. And they're steady and they're not flashy. And they don't care what you think. Yeah. And that, you know, these are attributes of the typical millionaire. And we've studied 10,000 of them. It's in the

book Baby Steps Millionaires. The white paper of the research project is in the back of the book. You can read all the detail. And you can also read the conclusions we've drawn from the actual study and from 35 years of sitting at this desk helping people become Baby Steps Millionaires. So she's right on track. She's going to be just fine. A few little adjustments, a little bit of more confidence as she steps out these things and not confidence in whole life and not confidence in fooling around with trading stocks and mutual funds. Let's just get in there, start in investing. Let's just be that tortoise. Well, that's where the bulk of her money was.

And stay away from, there's no reason for you to do real estate. You're not in a position to you. You do not have the cash to do it. Your cash is all in 401 case, and you don't have access to the front. That puts us out of the Ramsey Show in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus.