The Ramsey Show - App - You Can Create Your Own "I've Had It" Moment (Hour 3)

Episode Date: December 6, 2019

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🎵 Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios, it's the Dave Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thank you for joining us. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225.

Merry Christmas, America. We're glad you're with us. Christine is starting off this hour in Tennessee. Hi, Christine. Welcome to the show. Hi, Dave. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas to you.

How can I help? I'm Christmas. Merry Christmas to you. How can I help? I'm so blessed to talk to you. I am in the process of going through a divorce and I'm about to lose my husband's corporate insurance, health insurance. And I am a sole proprietor and don't have any employees. I work for myself. But I also really don't go to doctors. I mean, it's been over 10 years

since I've been to one, not that I'm just completely healthy, but I tend to go to like acupuncturists and naturopaths and things like that, and so I'm interested in looking into trying to find some sort of insurance, whether it's an HSA or an FSA or Christian Health Terminators or something like that, that would allow me to use that money for my acupuncture and things like that. I don't know if that's a possibility, and I was calling to see what you would recommend for that. Okay. The HSA with a high deductible is probably going to be your biggest bet, because obviously

high deductible means lower premiums. Right. And what you're saying is that you're not really worried about the $10,000 and under stuff. It's the $200,000 event that you need to cover. Yes, sir. And that's what bankrupts people. The number one cause of bankruptcy is not credit card debt.

It's not IRS. It's not having health insurance. And then somebody has... I want to have health insurance. Yeah, you need you need to allow me i'm sorry i didn't interrupt you're fine if they allow me to um use that money toward like acupuncture and a naturopath or is it specifically with medical physicians well the hsa uh basically there's two components to an hSA, a health savings account program. One is the high deductible, low premium health insurance.

And you can just do that. Okay. And then you would just, you know, obviously it would depend on the policy as to whether it would count towards your deductible to do other things. But the high deductible, you know, whether naturopath or acupuncture, usually is not going to be covered in anything in a traditional health insurance plan. It's just not observed in that. Now, depending on the nature of the naturopath, depending on the type of naturopath and what kind of degrees they've got and so forth, you know, it may or may not be covered, depending on the type of a policy you get into at that point.

So all of that to say, I would, you know, I probably would go that route and then just know that you're probably not even going to meet your deductible unless something major happens. Right. But I can use the money that I put into the HSA? No, that's what I'm saying. There's two components. No, you can't.

No, the two components. There's the component that's just the health insurance component, which is just a high deductible health insurance policy. And then you can, but you don't have to, save money into an HSA, an actual savings account, that has to be used for approved medical costs. And I don't know. Okay, so acupuncture wouldn't be approved. I don't know. That would be up to the federal tax law in that case.

It's not up to the insurance company. Okay. MaxLaw, in that case, it's not up to the insurance company. So what does that, you know, but if it's a traditional medical cost of any kind, I mean, literally buying a bottle of Tylenol, you know, you can count. Buying eyeglasses, you can count. And so, you know, it's a fairly liberal interpretation of that. So you could use that money, but I wouldn't do the HSA savings portion in your case until you were, you know, really completely out of debt and you built up a bunch of wealth and you had some extra money laying around. Okay? Okay. Because you're not going to use it that often, and you're going to be in question as to whether what you've used it for is going to count, and we don't want to get into that.

So I would just say make sure you have a big honking emergency fund and put whatever natural versions of health care you have going on in the rhythm of your life, in the rhythm of your budget, and don't worry about it. Yes, sir. And just have the big honking $5,000, $6,000 deductible, cheap premium, the cheapest premium you can get now anyway, health insurance policy, and it's going to be called an HSA health insurance policy, which, by the way, is what I personally have.

Our group plan, the vast majority of the people on our team do that in their group plan. Because the HSA, if you're out there, is the least expensive way to buy health insurance and to cover your medical needs if you are healthy, generally, or if you're very sick and have a chronic illness, generally, where you know you're going to blow through the deductible. And most of the HSAs have, not all of them, but most of them have 100% coverage once you blow the deductible. So if you're going to know you're going to blow your deductible,

then you get in that 100% coverage. It ends up being cheaper. Or if you never go the doctor much, which is kind of a Ramsey thing right now, knock on wood, then you're not going to. It comes out cheaper that way too. So that's the direction to go. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Sharon is with us in Massachusetts.

Merry Christmas, Sharon. How can I help? Thank you. Same to you. Well, I saw you in Boston with my sister who listens to you all the time. It was really great. I'm a public school educator in Massachusetts. And when you sign up to be a public school educator, you sign something and you acknowledge

that they're taking all your social security money as well, that you won't get social security from those years that you worked there. So when I go to retire in the spring, I have three options. I have option A, lump sum, which my sister thinks you would recommend, but I'm calling to verify. Option B is I would get a monthly guaranteed pension. And option C is I would get almost the same as my monthly pension, but spouse inherits that when I die, if I die. Right. Okay. This is all calculated based on the lump sum returning a 6% rate of return or 6.5% rate of return by regulation.

Okay. That's the pensions. The pensions are highly regulated. And so when you die or or if you choose the spousal, the survivor benefit, when the second person dies, the pension dies with you. Agreed? Yes. Okay. Or you take the lump sum and you invest it in something that would bring you in excess of 6%, which would be a series of good growth stock mutual funds. As an example, you roll it to a series of good growth stock mutual funds as an example, you roll it to an IRA in good growth stock mutual funds, and you'll make more while you're alive.

Oh, and when you die, all that money stays in your family instead of in the pension. So you make more while you're alive and more when you die if you'd roll the lump sum and invest it well. Click on SmartVestor at DaveRamsey.com if you want to know the investment professional in your area. We recommend. We're not in the investment business, but these are the people that do it the way we teach. It'll drop down a list of them, and you can choose who you want. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Are high health care costs getting you down?

Are you confused trying to navigate your options? Do you wish you could find an affordable, biblical solution to your health care costs? Based on New Testament principles, Christian Health Care Ministries, or CHM, helps Christian families, churches, and ministries join together as the body of Christ to share their major health care costs. Christian Health Care Ministries is the original health cost-sharing ministry. A Better Business Bureau-accredited organization, CHM members share to pay each other's medical bills. It's not insurance. It's Christians financially and spiritually supporting each other. It's what Christian Healthcare Ministries has done for over 35 years, and our members have shared over $2.5 billion in medical bills. To learn more, visit chministries.org. That's chministries.org. Christian Healthcare Ministries is a proud sponsor of Dave Ramsey Live, on the debt-free stage, Chris and Holly are with us.

Hey, guys, how are you? Hey, we're good. Merry, merry, merry Christmas to you. Merry Christmas. Where do you guys live? Cleveland, Tennessee, near Chattanooga. You know it well. My wife's from Madisonville, just up the road from you.

So, very cool. So, fun! And all the way over here to do a debt-free scream. How much did you pay off? $265,000. Woo! How long did this take? 44 months.

Good. And your range of income during that time? 107 down to 24 up to 125. Okay. There's a story there. And what kind of debt was the 265? Lots of everything, including a big financed bed. A big financed bed?

The dumbest purchase ever big decision no big mess lots of everything okay i gotta stop let's stop what what is the big finance bed what what kind of bed did you buy uh the top of the line tempurpedic for whatever eight thousand dollars or something like an eight thousand dollar bed that we had to finance over 60 months of no interest. Of course. Because we love debt. Yeah. It's a great bed. It ought to be, but it's a great bed. And, yeah, that's something you ought to pay cash for.

Oh, my gosh. So $265,000, the big bed. And what else was it? We had $95,000 in a house that we paid, and then we had $110,000 in school loans. Okay. So you're home and everything. We sold the home. You sold the house.

To pay off my school loans from what we made on the house and then the last big debt was his school loans and we just knocked it out after a few years. Okay, so you're debt-free everything but the mortgage. Correct. We're currently renting right now. Oh, everything right now. 3B. Okay, yeah. Gotcha. Back to 3B. Got it. Okay, way to go. Good job. So what happened 44 months ago that put you on this journey? We were buying groceries on credit card, didn't have any money to speak of, just lots of bad decisions that led to a sick and tired of being sick and tired moments. And we just decided that we've had enough. And with her crying at the kitchen table looking at the bills and me saying I don't know what we need to do. And,

you know, him crying on the way home from work, listening to your show, thinking he would never be able to do it. You know, a lot of that. And then finally one day he was like, Hey, let's start listening to Dave Ramsey. And I was, we would get ready together in the mornings before school or work or whatever. And I was like, okay, whatever. That's fine. Just listen to this guy.

Kind of snuck it in there. Yeah. Not that I was opposed to it. I just never heard of you. No offense. That's cool. Okay. And so we would just listen to it, and we would listen to these debt-free screens.

And I would be like, you know, in my mind, we're not as bad off as I thought. So he just said, hey, how about it? I said, we can't do anything worse, so we might as well try this and see if it works. And it worked. So we did. So we started selling anything and everything. I mean, everything we had, we sold things we didn't need. I mean, we started with a trampoline, with tools, with a lawnmower,

because we decided we were moving, and so we just sold everything. We had a full weight room in our basement, sold it all. What did the lawnmower sell for? I don't remember. I think like $400. Okay. It wasn't like one of the $10,000 lawnmowers. No, no, no.

All right. We didn't finance that. Okay. I've talked to people with $12,000 John Deere tractors that they mow their grass with. So, yeah. Okay. Cool. Way to go, guys.

Fun, fun. So you're selling everything in sight. You're listening to the debt-free screams. So was the guidance from us that you had all came from the podcast? It was largely the radio show podcast. I listened to that for years. And then toward the end, we actually coordinated an FPU class. Oh, wow.

This past year, yeah. And it was right at the end of our baby step two. So our group helped celebrate our being debt-free with this. I love it. And in the middle of that, we had another group that also got debt-free. So they're on 3B, or they're working to pay off their mortgage right now. So we got to celebrate with them as we celebrated as well. So it was a pretty cool experience.

Yeah, there's nothing that gives you a push across the finish line like teaching it, much less doing it. Right. So leading the class, obviously I'm doing the teaching on the videos, but you guys are in there, you're're leading it and that holds you so accountable doesn't it and it was powerful for other people to say oh you've already paid off this much debt we can do it too yeah yeah it's a you're a real person you're not just on youtube yeah right yeah wow way to go guys yeah so proud of you who are your biggest cheerleaders other than your fpu

group and you two um i would say our friends and family once they figured out, like, hey, they're serious about this. You know, everyone has their, oh, yeah, you can do it, but probably won't happen. You'll always need debt. But once they realized they were pretty serious about it, then they were super excited for us. And we talk to them constantly about finances. We have young nieces and nephews, and we talked to them constantly about finances. We have young nieces and nephews, and we try to lead them the smart way. But pretty much our church family, our family, everyone around us was pretty really encouraging. Very cool.

Very cool. So what do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is? Communication, the budget for sure, and having a proverbs 31 wife to be supportive amen amen i mean it's definitely a walk by faith um we live and we breathe you know through god so that was what got us through it um when it was hard when it was tough um we we never stopped tithing we always gave you know what we could. I mean, God is number one. Yeah. He always supplied. Always, yeah. Yeah.

And then some. And then $264,000, $5,000 over 44 months. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty cool. How long have you all been married? Ten years. We just celebrated this summer.

Okay. So four years of the ten has been this journey. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. In the middle of that, that $24,000, we had to put on hold because we moved and our income went down pretty significantly. Pretty dramatically, yeah.

So we just had his school loans left, so we just made the minimum payment for that year. And then we moved back because the move was just not the best thing for us. And by the grace of God, we both got our jobs back and better than what we had before we left. Wow. And so then we just started kicking it in gear. So anything that I made went all towards debt, and we just lived off of his one income because we lived very minimalist. We didn't need a lot of things.

So we just stuck to it and had a goal and kept going. Okay. Yeah. So except for that little bit of time off, you'd have been done a year sooner probably. Correct. Correct. Yeah. Wow. Good for you guys. It wasn't time off, but you had to. Right bit of time off, you'd have been done a year sooner probably. Correct. Correct, yeah. Wow, good for you guys.

It wasn't time off, but you had to. Right. It wasn't like you quit, but, I mean, you had to back off it mathematically to survive. Did I ask you what you do for a living? What do you all do for a living? I'm a high school teacher. And I'm an auto adjuster for an insurance company. Okay, very good.

Good for you guys. Well, very fun, y'all. I love it. Proud of you. Excellent job very fun, y'all. I love it. Proud of you. Excellent job. Well done. Well done. How's it feel?

Pretty amazing. I love it. It's unreal. It's kind of surreal right now. I think we've been waiting for a while. So now we're here, it's kind of like, yeah, this is for real. Instead of making those several thousand dollar payments every month out and not seeing any of the money, we're actually seeing money come into the account now.

And it's like, hey, we've got some momentum now. We're so looking forward to buying a house again. Yeah. You're on the right way. Yeah. Beautifully done. We got a copy of Chris Hogan's book for you, Everyday Millionaires. And that's the next chapter in your story because you are definitely on the way.

You've got control of this difficult subject. Now you can do anything. Well done. Very, very proud of you. All right. Chris and Holly from Cleveland, Tennessee. $265,000 paid off in 44 months. 107 to 24 to 125.

Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free! Yeah! Woo-hoo! Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah! Well done!

That's how it happens right there. Beautiful, beautiful. When you have that sick and tired, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired moment, when you finally say, I've had it, that's when everything changes. And it can be in any category of your life. It doesn't have to just be money. But you know what? I've had it.

Working at this toxic place with these toxic people is killing me. I've had it. I'm going to read Ken Coleman's proximity principle, and I'm going to say take this job and shove it. You can say I've had it about the debt. You can say I've had it about the mismanagement of your relationships. You can say I've had it because my spiritual life is empty and I don't have one. You can say I've had it.

I'm going to lose this weight and get in shape. You can say, I've had it. And when you do, when you really mean it, that's when things are getting ready to change. I've had it! Like from your toes all the way up through your being. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Support a small business this holiday season that does business right. I'm talking about Grip6 Belts. It's the only belt you can get online with no holes, no flap, and no bulk. And the buckles come in really cool designs and are interchangeable.

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Go to Grip6.com and search for the Dave Ramsey page to get 35% or more off Grip6 products. G grip6.com and search for the dave ramsey page to get 35 or more off grip6 products Thanks for joining us, America. We're glad you're here. Open phones at 888-825-5225 merry christmas to you rachel is with us in kansas hey rachel welcome to the dave ramsey show thanks dave for taking my call and merry christmas to you sure what's up um i have a question on if we um should sell our house or stay in it until we have enough money for a down payment so we started your program a year ago our monthly take-home pay is thirty one hundred and we've paid off over twenty thousand dollars last year

and we have about five left and that's just student loans and a stupid cell phone. And my husband bought our house before we were married. It's a fixer-upper, and he bought it for $28,000. It's a two-bedroom, one-bathroom house. And the first year we got married, we had to put a new roof on it. And then we had to remove some trees, and we put about $10,000 in renovations of the house. And then we had a kid, another kid. So we have two now and things are getting kind of tight in our house. Yeah. And we are wanting, you know, we want to do the steps right, but we're kind of stuck on whether we need to stay where we're at or sell our house and move into a rental.

We talked with a real estate agent, and they said that if we sold our house as is, we would only get back what we put into it, which would be the $28,000. Okay. So how old are you? I just turned 25, and my husband is 28. Okay. So how old are you? I just turned 25 and my husband is 28. Okay. When you're 35, which of these two paths got you quickest and easiest to where you wanted to go? When you're 35, you're living in a home that you own that is nice and of sufficient size for your family right right which of these two paths gets you there the fastest it's not a trick question okay um i would i would think we would sell the house and then just pay the rent because we have to keep –

if we stay in the house, in a few years, we're going to have to redo the plumbing and the electricity too. Okay. So you can sell it now and get out of the money pit-itis of writing checks all the time. Right. Is the house paid for? Is it debt-free? We have have uh 18 000 left on it okay all right so we so what we're saying is is it might actually be cheaper over the scope of a three-year period of time to rent yes it's about i've looked into prices because i know you like us to do our homework.

And rent here is about $550 a month plus utilities. Okay. But my point is that by the time you put all the repairs into a house that you're not going to get out over the next three years, you probably could have rented cheaper, which puts you at the 35-year-old version of you in a better condition than you would be in today than if you stay there. Right. So I think this leads to selling this house is what it sounds like. You following my reasoning?

Yes, that makes sense to me. And that's what I was feeling, but I just needed it to be confirmed on that. Yeah. So you think we should list as is and not put any more money into it? Exactly. And let's get on out of there. Okay. And I don't want you to go rent the taj mahal though okay nope i rent because every dollar you're spending on rent

is a dollar that's not going for the down payment on the big house right right right and you say 15 year um fixed 15 year more fixed mortgage. Where the payment is no more than a fourth. And less than 25%. Exactly. Exactly what we're saying. Yeah, I got that worked out. Yeah, you've got everything laid out. So here's the principle that I used, and you can use it in other discussions in the future.

Okay? Okay. Broke people that stay broke ask, how's this going to make me feel today? And they say, thank God it's friday oh god it's monday wealthy people don't ask how much down and how much a month they ask how much and how does this decision affect me 10 years from now not 10 minutes from now. Okay. And if you'll make financial decisions that are the right decision long term, they're almost always a little bit more painful short term. Right.

But they always work out long term. If you'll do that, that's called being a grown up. I can be a grown up. Yeah, but most people aren't grown ups. Most people aren't grown-ups most people aren't and so most people just spend their spend their butt off and they're like impulse because they're trying to look like someone else's instagram feed and they just impulse their tails off and they have nothing to show for it and uh it really gets people in a bind so you have to learn to delay pleasure to say, what is the best to see?

Which one of these decisions leads me to the best position five years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, not five minutes and not by the weekend. Because if it's thank God, it's Friday. Oh, God, it's Monday. These are the people that blow everything every weekend that they make and then complain about, you know, the problems of our culture and how they can't get ahead instead of delaying pleasure to win. And that's what you're talking about here.

You're being very wise, wise beyond your years, the way you're posing these questions. That's my point. So you're doing a really good job, Rachel. Really, really good job. Alex is in Nebraskabraska alex welcome to the dave ramsey show alex alex all right we'll get rid of that problem hey guys if you didn't know if you think about riding a bike uphill i'm not talking about a neighborhood i'm talking about like a steep mountain

road that takes grit, takes determination. You really got to work to get to the top. Well, you got to have endurance. You got to have motivation. And of course, I'm not talking about bikes. I'm talking about investing. Continually investing over a long period of time is the most proven plan to building wealth. Very few people catch lightning in a bottle. Very few people have this instant idea that makes them rich. Most people that build wealth do it steadily with a hustle on the ground, a hustle on the ground, a hustle on the ground. And to get there, you've got to have some help.

You've got to have cheerleaders. You've got to have people saying you're doing the right thing. You've got to have people helping you with your nutrition. You've got to have some help. You got to have cheerleaders. You got to have people saying you're doing the right thing. You got to have people helping you with your nutrition. You got to have people thinking about the whole thing. And that's where the SmartVestor Pros come in. We are not in the investing business or investment advising or selling investment business here at Ramsey. But we do have a network of SmartVestor pros that we have very carefully done the due diligence on that will sit down with you with the heart of a teacher and help guide you, and these are people we recommend.

And you're going to hear advice from them that's consistent with what you hear here on the show. So if you're interested in getting your college fund started, your Roth IRA started, or doing a rollover, you're ready to start investing in any way, click SmartVestor at DaveRamsey.com. It'll drop down a list of the SmartVestor pros in your area. You select the one that you want, and you sit down with them. You can sit down with several of them and then select the one you want. I don't care. The point being that you're in charge of this and here's what you do. You're always looking for

someone that has the heart of a teacher. You never just do what some person says with your money. This is how people lose their money. You don't do it because I said do it. Dave Ramsey told me to do this, and I just did it, and I didn't even think about it. No, you never do that. You didn't understand Dave Ramsey's advice. Dave Ramsey's advice is always you understand the investment before you put money in it. This is why you need an advisor or people in the financial world that teach you with the heart of a teacher, not the heart of a salesman.

That's why it's so important. So click SmartVestor at DaveRamsey.com, and we'll help you get in touch with one of those folks. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. We'll see you next time. Our scripture of the day, Ephesians 2.8, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God. Thomas Aquinas said, Faith has to do with things that are not seen,

and hope with things that are not at hand. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Alex is with us in Nebraska. Hey, Alex, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave. How are you doing on this fine Friday? Better than I deserve, sir. How can I help?

All right. So I am a full-time college student working part-time living on my own, and I'm barely scraping by right now, and I'm just kind of curious what you would say when it comes to paying off school while working and living on your own. Paying off school? Paying for school or paying off school? Paying off as I go along. Cash-flowing school as you go along?

Yeah. That's what I would do. Right now I'm paying for about half a semester like half of each semester than the other half in loans okay so what is the semester cost um between 4,500 and five grand roughly okay and so you're borrowing the other two or three thousand per semester uh yes generally it's about 2, semester. Okay. And you live on campus or what? I live on my own in an apartment with two roommates. Okay. And how much is your rent? After utilities, it's about $350 a month. Okay. And what are you earning when you're working?

Generally, it's around $750 a month or about $8,000 a year during school. Then I'll boost that up in the summer and pay off some other stuff. Okay. Well, what I would tell you is your job stinks. You need a different job. Okay. You can deliver pizzas four nights a week and make $1,500 a month. Okay. You're making $700 a month. And that would be the difference in you not going

into debt to pay for this. You've got very inexpensive tuition. Where are you going to college? University of Nebraska. It's $ university of nebraska it's forty five hundred dollars so it's nine thousand dollars a year roughly yeah that's about right that's about normal state school so uh what are you doing what's your job um right now i work part-time as a server at a assistant assisted living and memory care facility yeah and i make about 12 an hour yeah you're just not making any money that's the problem okay so i mean dude you can buy a lawnmower and cut grass

and make a lot more i do that on the side occasionally but it is also the winter right now so yeah so it means snowblower in the winter right but the um uh But my point is that there's a whole lot of different things you can do that will make you a lot more money than what you're making and work more hours. Okay. And I think, you know, here's the thing. We're talking about 500 bucks a month completely changes this whole picture, doesn't it?

Yes. And so we've got to, you know, what you've got to do is retool your job idea, what you're doing for your job, and typically it's going to be something that has a bit of a self-employment to it, okay, rather than just going and clocking in and making, you know, $7, $8, $10, $12. I mean, it can be a dog-walking service. I don't care. I've talked to several young people that are really good at doing online stuff, and so they literally are making a couple of grand, three grand a month

as a part-time gig building websites for small businesses, those kinds of things. So I don't care what your talents are. What are you studying? I am majoring in advertising and public relations right now. I wonder if there's not some side gig hustle stuff you could do for someone in the PR world? I've actually looked into, so my dad owns a shop, so I'd probably help him and he'd pay me a little bit,

and then I could also look at some local businesses. Yeah, I mean, anything, you know, whether you did it as a side hustle self-employed, but if there's a good publicity or PR firm in the area that doesn't want to pay somebody hourly but instead will pay them, say, listen, you call these 73 things and we'll give you X number of dollars, and you do that on your own time, and you get some of these things, some of these articles pushed out or whatever it is they're trying to do that they can outsource to you as a 1099, but you can make a lot more than you than you can you know throwing dishes at the assisted living thing uh and so uh again i appreciate where you are you're really on top of things

you are this close to doing this whole thing debt-free you've almost hustled your way through it by the way when do you graduate um right now i'm projected to graduate in about 2023 23. So, uh, 2020. So you're a freshman. Uh, I'm a sophomore, but I'm looking at taking about five years of classes. Why? Uh, because my first, my first year of college, I essentially failed one semester worth of classes between both semesters. So I'll be retaking classes why did you fail them um it was the money situation where i had to work in order to pay off my uh just pay off my living just survive basically and i had a i had a stupidly higher rent back then too okay i was basically living off food, and all that on like $150 a month. I got to tell you, Alex, you are doing a really good job as a super young guy

trying to wind your way through this and figure this out. The lessons that you have already learned and the lessons that you are learning while you're plowing through this are really going to set you up for the next decade because you're going to have some things that come out of this like you know you realize the stupid high rent now you and i are talking you're realizing this other gig isn't paying you enough and we can do this without uh student loan debt and uh you've made a good choice uh in terms of a field to study you've made a good choice in terms of where to study it in-state tuition very reasonable tuition um you know you've made a lot of really good choices and so you really are just about three more good choices away from having this thing on the run and uh i just

want to encourage you i'm i'm pretty impressed with you you've fought your way through some crap to get to where you are and i think you might might even be able to play catch up because once you start getting your head around the idea that I'm working crappy jobs that pay well to get this to get these tuition paid, you're not going to want to stay in school any longer than necessary because you're trapped in the crappy job to get the tuition paid. And, you know, in this substandard college life that you're living. And so you're going to want to crank those classes up and get on out of there maybe sooner than you've got in your head right now. But I think you're doing really, really good, sir. I think you really are. I'm looking in from the outside.

I hear a lot of good things and a lot of richness in the lessons that you have learned. So hold on. I'm going to have Kelly send you a copy of Anthony O'Neill's book, Debt-Free Degree. I want you to jump on Anthony's site and learn about applying for scholarships and see how many of those you can get. Every minute of your waking spare time is not spent playing beer pong. It's spent applying for scholarships and see how many of those you can get. Every minute of your waking spare time is not spent playing beer pong. It's spent applying for scholarships.

And let's get through this thing without any more debt. And between a better-paying job, you've already made good college selection, and then add some scholarships to this, we really could see your whole situation turn around dramatically. So check anthonyoneal.com, the website out. It's got a really good scholarship search tool on it. He's got a bunch of other good things on there having to do help students in your situation. And we'll send you a copy of his number one bestselling book, Debt-Free Degree, which is what I'm trying to walk you through and show you how to do.

But dude, you were just this close and you figured it out on your own because it's obvious that you are on your own so you're not anymore we got your back brother you call here anytime that we can help i'll help you any kind any way i can i like guys like you that are scratching and clawing and hustling and grinding you're gonna make it you're gonna be all right brother're going to be all right, brother. You're going to be all right. That puts this hour of the Dave Ramsey Show in the books. Our thanks to James Childs, our producer. Kelly Daniels is our associate producer. I am Dave Ramsey, your host. We'll be back with you before you know it.

In the meantime, remember, there is ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus. the Dave Ramsey Show app on your smartphone. Catch the full show or watch the highlights and check out Dave's upcoming guests. Head to the App Store and download it today.