The Ramsey Show - App - You Don't Have to Be Stuck in the Same Job Forever (Hour 2)

Episode Date: December 5, 2019

Debt, Savings, Career Tools to get you started:  Debt Calculator: http://bit.ly/2QIoSPV Insurance Coverage Checkup: http://bit.ly/2BrqEuo Complete Guide to Budgeting: http://bit.ly/2QEyonc Interview Guide: http://bit.ly/2BuGnZE Check out other podcasts in the Ramsey Network: http://bit.ly/2JgzaQR 

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. Amy is starting off this hour in Michigan. Hi, Amy. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Thank you so much for taking my call.

Sure. You don't know me, but I feel like I know you. First, I just want to say thank you for changing my entire life financially. I'm debt-free, almost debt-free because of you. And I've called you many times for advice. So you feel like part of the family. I'm mentioning your name every other day, like Dave says this, Dave says that. So I need your advice about my current situation, which is a little bit dire.

I have a lot of expenses and I don't know how to pay for them without taking out a loan, be it a credit card. Well, I don't really like credit cards, but like I was thinking of taking out a home equity loan or something because I just literally have no money to my name. And I need to pay the mortgage and pay for milk and food and things like that. And I just have no money. I make too much money to be qualifying for like aid and things like that. So I get no aid, no help from anyone. And I have no money to my name. So I'm living paycheck to paycheck and not really able to afford things even doing that because I have so many different bills.

Not necessarily debt, but just different bills to pay for the house, the car, the insurance, and all that stuff. So what do you make a year? I make almost $80,000. Okay, and so why are you this broke? I am a single mom, and I do not get any kind of support from anyone. You make $80,000 a year. I know, but I'm a single mom, and I pay for child care for two children. So what?

Lots of people make $80,000 a year with two kids, and they're not even close to broke. Yeah. Well, most people have child support. No, they don't. I'm talking about a couple married with two children that the one person works and makes $80,000, or two of them work and they make $80,000. They don't have any trouble paying their bills.

Yeah. You got this single mom thing all twisted up here. So what do you do for a living? I'm a writer. Okay. And you net, your taxable income is $80,000 a year. Well, it's like $77,000. You work for someone writing?

Correct. Okay. All right, cool. So how much is your house payment? My house payment is $815 a month. Good. How much is your car payment? I don't have a car payment.

Good. How much are your credit card payments? I don't have credit cards. You don't have any credit cards. How much are your student loan payments? I don't have student loans. Don't have student loans. Okay, you have an $800 house payment. You make $80,000 a year and you have to feed two kids. Three. Three kids. And I have child care for two of the three. Okay, yeah, that would be fairly normal for most people that are working. Okay, and what do you pay for child care? I pay $350 a week for child care. So $1,200

a month. So $2,000 a month goes to your house payment and your child care. Yes. That ought to leave a lot of money for milk. Well, but I just have so many other things. Like I have my homeowner's insurance, my car insurance, my, you know, just different utilities, groceries. I just literally have like $5 to my name right now. You are so freaking disorganized, it's unbelievable. Really? Yeah, your budget doesn't exist.

Because I'm sitting here looking at $6,000 a month coming into your house, and I spent $2,000 of it a while ago, and so far you can't pay with $4,000 some lights, some water. Oh, no, I don't have six thousand a month so you should have i i have a thousand dollars a week that i got well 1087 a week that i make okay that's four thousand dollars a month that's forty eight thousand dollars a year that is not 77 000 minus taxes unless you're getting a $15,000 tax refund. No, I make $77,000.

Well, I get a bonus. That $77,000 includes my bonus. How much is your bonus? What? How much is your bonus? It's a 10% bonus. Okay, so $7,000 of it's a bonus. This does not describe where the money's going. How big was your tax refund last year?

I didn't get a refund. Well, I got a refund from, I didn't get any money from the feds. I don't think I got. If I got some, it was very negligible. Okay. Maybe like $500 or something. Okay, so here's the thing. I'm just going to put a little money in here just to make sure I'm doing this right.

I've got $64,000 a year. And make sure I'm doing this exactly right. Yeah, your take-home pay, are you putting money in your 401K? Yes, I am. Oh, okay. All right. And how much? I'm maxing out the company contribution.

I think it's like 12% is the company contribution. So I'm just putting in 12%. Okay. Do you have any money? I think it's like $100 per pay period per week. Okay. That would be $400. So I'm still, I've still still got you should be getting home with um

you're getting home with about four thousand dollars a month and you should be getting home not counting your 401k with about 5500 a month not now that's not counting your bonus but still um okay so here's what we've got to do i I'll just back up and quit. I'm trying to run your budget out of here on the air because it's just not making sense. Okay. So what part of Michigan are you in? Grand Rapids. Oh, perfect. Okay.

Here's what I'm going to put you down. How old are you? I am 43. Okay. I'm going to put you on hold, and Kelly's going to set you up with one of our financial coaches as my gift. Thank you. As my gift. And they're going to sit down with you and help you learn to do a budget

and put this together. There's no reason you should be this broke. There's no reason you should be this broke. There is no reason you should be this broke. You have got to just do the simple math on this. Every dollar has a name. Plan out where the money's going and lay it all out. I don't know where you're putting this money,

but before you start talking about borrowing money to buy milk, which is how you started the conversation, because life's just too hard as a single mom, before I learned you made $77,000 a year, you would stop your 401k contributions. You don't borrow money to buy milk because your 401k is funded. Now, I don't think that's necessary, but these are the kinds of choices that you're not making consciously.

You're like, spend, spend, spend, then you run out of money, and I got $5 to my name, and I'm panicked, and it's all because I'm a single mom. And that's just simply not true. It's because you're disorganized, and you don't have a good budget. So we'll help you with that. I'm going to help you get your budget going. Go ahead and put her in Financial Peace University, too. Let's get her to go through the class and get some people around her to go with the

coaching, and let's help her get this straightened out this is the dave ramsey show support a small business this holiday season that does business right i'm talking about grip six 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. I personally own a number of these belts. Plus, these guys have a great story. BJ Minson started Grip6 on Kickstarter from his garage in 2014 and now sells hundreds of thousands of these American-made belts to customers all over the world. As a mechanical engineer and a minimalist, BJ took his dislike for heavy, bulky leather belts that never fit right and created the perfect belt, a high-quality, minimalist belt

that gives the strength and support of a belt without even knowing you're wearing one. I'm really proud of these guys, and I'm thrilled to recommend them to you. Go to Grip6.com and search for the Dave Ramsey page to get 35% or more off Grip6 products. Grip6.com. Mike is with us in Nebraska. Hey, Mike. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave.

Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? Well, my wife and I have just started the baby steps. We're on step two. And we've sat down, we've got the budget put together, got a plan. But my question for you, she is not 100% on board with stopping the 401k contributions. From what we've put together, we're about $75,000 in debt,

not including the mortgage. And from what we've put together, we can get it done in about three years or less. What's your household income? Conservative would be $160,000. Why in the crud would it take you three years to pay off $75,000 making $160,000? $2,500 mortgage, $1,400 in child care. That was $25,000 a year out of $160 out of 160 you ought to do this in a minimum maximum of two years that would be ideal yeah you guys you guys have cut nothing out of your

lifestyle in this budget okay and you're still and you're still contributing to the 401ks i am not um he is however he's contributing about seven percent yeah um employer matches about three yeah and you know i think her she's just she's very conservative and i think she's just afraid that you know if we stop that you know we're going to miss out on a ton of money yeah so well if you if you don't stop if you don't stop you're going to miss out on more money because the all the data says all the data of all the millionaires that we've studied says that 80 to 90 percent of them did not use consumer debt they get out of consumer debt and they stay out of consumer debt and they stay out of consumer debt.

And the fact that you're limping along making $160,000 a year with consumer debt because of her theories about being conservative are holding you back to wealth building is what it amounts to. Here's the thing. How long y'all been married? About seven years now okay the reason you got married was focus you focused on her she focused on you the things you focus on you win at and the problem with her theory is is you're not focused i understand the math i'm an absolute math geek i can virtually do compound interest in my brain i've been doing this a long long time i love the power of compound interest i agree with her what she has not seen yet is she's not looking at your all's budget with you and if she is she's not emotionally

grasping that this is a temporary stop to the 401k for two years how old are you two uh 31 and 30 yeah and so if by the time you're 33 years old you have zero debt except your house and you make 160 000 if you can't become wealthy by 60 years old you're mentally deficit i mean really that's absurd right right so i mean it'd be like falling off a freaking log with no payments at all anywhere except your house making 160 000 you should be able to load the 401ks up to 15 like we teach and start your kids college like we teach pay extra on the house and get it paid off in 10 years like we teach and you should be multi millionaires by the time you're in your 60s like we teach like we teach that's what the math says and that's this is by a hyper conservative margin hyper conservative

because you make almost 3x the national average income in your household right and you're only 30 jeez right so the the bottom line is is that the problem that she's facing is she has not spent enough time to emotionally grasp the full play of what we're talking about she's just looking at the budget and her husband's gotten all excited about this and she doesn't know if y'all are really going to do this or not. And so just in case, I'm going to keep doing my 401K because I'm not sure we're going to do this, so I'm not sure it's going to work. And I haven't really understood how it's going to work, other than I think we ought to get out of debt.

That'd be nice. But there's not a complete, the last 10% of truth where she grasps emotionally and says, this is going to be worth it because it's going to lead us to tens of millions of dollars and that's what's going on so basically you're trying to you know last summer i had my ski boat out with my kids and i dropped anchor in the cove because we were swimming and i uh tried to drive off with the anchor out and the boat ran really slow oh it would go but it was slow and that's what you're doing you're trying to run run the boat with the anchor out and so stop pull the anchor in

go go go that's what you do hey man thanks man, thanks for the call. Hope that helps. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Ashley's in North Carolina. Hi, Ashley. How are you? Hey, Dave. I'm doing well. Thanks for taking my call. Sure.

Merry Christmas. How can I help? Hey, Dave. Question for you today. My wife and I are currently in Baby Step 7, and my specific question is around 529 accounts and asset allocation, and specifically whether you think that you should adjust that allocation when your child gets close to entering college. And specifically, I've got a daughter who's 16 years old

who's going to be going to college in a couple years. We've put away a little over $150,000 for both of our kids, with about $100,000, a little over $100,000 for both of our kids with about $100,000, a little over $100,000 for my oldest daughter. Way to go. Yeah, thank you. And I know you've given some advice. I'm trying to reconcile two pieces.

I know oftentimes when people have a very short time horizon, you'll tell them not to get cute. I know for retirement you recommend staying fully invested, which I totally agree with, given that you're going to live another 20 to 30 years. In this case where, you know, the horizon is shrinking and the goal is ultimately to utilize and deplete those funds, I didn't know if you might recommend, as you get a little bit closer, I'm not suggesting like, you know, some age-based portfolio, but just maybe switching over into something a little bit more stable,

like a money market investment or something like that within the 529. Okay, so really, you know, you can do either. But let's just think through what it does when you do this, okay? Because as you've – you've got a real grasp on this, and you've stated your question beautifully. Thank you for the clarity. The tradeoff is if you stay fully invested, you are risking a portion of this. So let's say out of the $100,000, $25,000 is in an aggressive growth fund, and the market is even, and the aggressive growth fund is down 5% that year.

5% of $25,000 is $1,200. Yeah. That's your risk. Okay? By staying fully invested. Let's say you go your way and you say, okay, we're going to move 50% of the portfolio

into money markets. And so $50,000, instead of making 10%, makes 1%. And so we lost $5,000. Okay? Right? Yep.

No, gotcha. Okay. So the swing here is 1200 to 5000 is our worst case scenario oh 5000 is guaranteed you're gonna lose that if you move it in the money market the other is i'm taking a risk i'm gonna take a five i'm gonna take a five thousand dollar hit to get rid of a risk of maybe losing five thousand dollars000. So I think it's going to be a wash, and I'm probably just taking the risk and just going to ride it out, because when you actually do the nominal mathematics on it, not the concept, it turns out to be irrelevant in your life situation. Neither of these things are going to cause nor keep your child from going to school, because you have done such a wonderful job everywhere else.

Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes perfect sense. It's, you know, we're talking about a $5,000 or $8,000 swing maximum, unless just the whole freaking world caved in, which in which case I'd be worried about the money markets. But, you know, so I, whatever you want to do, you've already covered it by doing the big deal, which is investing and created the nest egg. So well done, sir. Salute.

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 Events. chministries.org In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage, Reagan and Robin are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? We're doing great. Doing great.

Honored to have you guys. Where do you live? Ocean Springs, Mississippi. It's just east of Biloxi. Oh, yeah, pretty area. It is. Very nice. Welcome to Nashville.

Thank you for having us. Thanks for coming up to visit and do your debt-free scream. How much have you paid off? $51,890. Good. And how long did this take? 16 months. Good for you. And your range of income during that time? We started around $82,000 and went up to $88,000. Cool. What do you guys do for a living?

I'm a supervisor at the Gulf Coast Blind Rehabilitation Center. And I'm a CBICU nurse. Okay. Very cool. Very cool. Wonderful. Good for you guys. What kind of debt was the $52,000?

$20,000 in cars, $28,490 in student loans, $3,000 in credit cards, and $400 in medical. Yeah, all just normal. Yeah, absolutely. Just bopping along. How long have you been married? Just over three years. Okay. So you've been married a couple of years, and you look up, and there's debt everywhere, and something happened.

What happened? Tell me your story. Well, she actually tried to get me on board a long time ago, just not with your plan. She was fed up with the debt as soon as we got married. But coming into the marriage, I came with most of the debt. So I was a little ashamed of it and was trying not to think about it. And I felt like if we didn't think about it, I'd have to deal with it. There you go.

Denials, that always works. But living on the Gulf Coast, we have little things called hurricanes come up. And we were actually celebrating our one-year anniversary up in Gatlinburg. And a hurricane was coming straight to Ocean Springs. So we came home early and had a little bit of damage to our house. Got an estimate. Got a couple estimates. And the cheapest one was $1,000.

And we're like, oh, okay. So we got them to do the repairs to the house and so after they sent us the invoice we were like oh here's our credit card and they're like oh we don't take credit cards so we're like what are we going to do we just spent our you know pretty much our savings on our trip so uh that was uh kind of a point because we basically just lived on rice and beans and on your plan, but just because we had to that week. And so that was the starting point of why we decided to start getting into it. I had bought your book, Standing in Line at Walmart, as an impulse buy while I was in nursing school.

And it was the world's largest coaster for the next couple of years well i was i started reading it and i said well you know you to do this plane you actually have to you know have money and i was i'm not making money at the time so i just put it away forgot about it and um so uh okay so this contractor uh didn't take a credit card so you have a pinch you have an ouch moment what happened then what did you do you had your wake-up call what happens after the wake-up call wake call i just remembered that i had your book oh okay started reading it and i said somewhere around here on the shelf is the answer to this problem yeah okay so i started reading the book and i said we we can do this right and uh my manager at work happened to say oh i was listening to dave ramsey's podcast i was like he's got a podcast so uh i listened to it and heard a debt-free scream and it was someone who was making

you know had just as much debt as we did making the same amount of money as we were and got out in close to a year and i said we can do this so i knew i had to get robin back on board and but that wasn't hard she was already smart well she had got burned out because I was just so adamant not about doing it. So she got tired of trying to get me on board. So I let her listen to that same death-free scream, and she looked at me and said, we can do this. Okay. So you took the book and got it out and just started doing a budget.

Absolutely. Game on. All right. Cool. Wonderful. Great job, guys. Thank you. Thank you thank you how's it feel it's amazing like it's i can't begin to tell you how how grateful we are that we are debt free it's just been a crazy amazing journey very cool so when people find out you paid off 52,016 months and they ask the question how do you do

that what do you tell them well I tell them you know it's you know it's all about you know creating a budget and sticking to a budget and I tell them that you know of course we were on your plan and they're like oh well I do this I'm like well if you know and we both agreed to do this if we were going to do your plan, do the plan. Don't do Dave-ish. Do the plan. Stick to it. It works.

It's been proven to work. And, you know, we're not the first person, people to do this. And we get out of debt by doing your plan. But Robin has got a better way of saying what we did well um i think you know a big thing for for us or for me anyway was we as soon as we decided to start getting out of debt we set a goal date so each month as we were paying off it just got us that much closer to the goal so to me that that really really helped a lot but we both know that you know that that this story isn't in our own. We hit a point where, like you said, a breaking point.

And for us, in that moment, we decided to get on your plan, but we also decided to surrender our finances to the Lord and to quit doing things in our own strength. And we just, when we threw up our hands, we gave it to him and allowed him to step in. And from that moment we said, okay, we're giving him the first fruits of our, of our money, our tie that's going to him, but not just that we're going to start praying over it. We're, um, and we just started surrendering more and more of ourselves, all of our lives to him. And so now we really, and truly are walking in freedom and peace.

And so that's the game changer for us. And that, you know, has just changed the rest of our lives. That's very insightful and very well done. Very well spoken. Good for you. That is a very big key. And, you know, when we talk about not doing Dave-ish, one of my friends, you probably heard me say this, said he finally did this stuff when he submitted himself to the plan. He said, when I quit trying to fix it and I just did what you say do, that's when it started working.

Absolutely. And what you're saying is you submitted yourself. You put someone in authority over you called God. Absolutely. And it changes your relationship with each other when you do that. It changes your relationship with the Lord when you do that. It changes your relationship with finances when you do that. Submitting, submission, is something that human beings have trouble doing.

Submitting to anything, each other in your marriage or to a boss at work, a leader at work, to a pastor in your church, and then submitting to the Lord. He is the Lord. And so this whole thing of not a toxic thing, not a cult-like thing or something like that, but this idea of submitting to something because you're admitting, I don't have the answers, someone else does. That is huge. That's very insightful.

Well said. I like that a lot. When we started doing that, though, just things started changing. Yeah. They start working. Everything. Our marriage was better. Our finances started working. We were like, we have money now. like yeah it's it was just they start working like our marriage was better like our finances started working like we were like we have money now and and the biggest joy now is actually you

know not what can we buy now it's how much we can give away now like we're able to just write a check to our church we're able to just you know buy things for people and not think twice about it and that's been the greatest joy, actually, out of all. Absolutely. Well done, y'all. Woo-hoo! I love it. Who are your biggest cheerleaders?

Both of our parents. My parents are home watching, and we were hoping they'd get to come up here with us, but my dad got ill at the last minute. But both of our parents, they both were real big cheerleaders for us. That's awesome. Mainly both of us. Yeah.

We cheered each other on. Yeah, obviously. Well done, guys. All right. Reagan and Robin, Biloxi, Mississippi, $52,000 paid off in 16 months, making $82,000 to $88,000. We got a copy of Chris Hogan's Everyday Millionaires for you. That's the next chapter in your story. Count it down.

Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free! This is how it's done right here. Woo-hoo! Love it! Awesome. Very, very cool, you guys.

Very well done. Oh, by the way, they make $82,000. And they're paying all their bills, and they're not short on milk. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Thank you. Zachary's in Kansas. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Zachary, Merry Christmas. Hi. Hey, what's up?

I'm at 24, and I'm wondering if I should file for bankruptcy because I have about $20,000 in medical debt, and I owe two and a half times more than what my current car is worth. It's about $22,000 on a car that's only been appraised at seven grand. And you're 20 years old, 24 years old. 24 old 24 okay and what do you make a year um 30 what do you do i'm a delivery driver for amazon okay all right what's your game plan career-wise for the next six years? Honestly, I never went to college or anything,

so I'm probably going to be stuck where I am at now in six years. Well, you will be if you keep thinking that way. I mean, you plan on driving an Amazon truck for the next 40 years. That's not a good plan. I hope not. No, it's just not you need a better no not it's not about hope you need a better plan you need to do have a mindset of what i'm going to do and what it's going to take me to get me there uh what do i want to do when i'm 30 years old that pays me a hundred thousand dollars a year eighty thousand dollars a year i don't care and what is it i want to do for a living that i enjoy doing and then i can make a good living for me and my future family

and so forth and we need to look at that so you're working 40 hours driving the driving truck about 40 to 80 hours a week right now with christmas yeah well i mean other than christmas you're working 40 because during Christmas, you make more money. They pay you by the hour? Yes. Okay, so you're making a lot of money right now. Right now, yes. Yeah, okay.

And then it'll slow down after middle to the end of January. You'll still work a lot on the returns after Christmas even. Okay. So what will be your income in, in December? Um, let's say probably, uh, five, 500 a week instead of my normal 400. Be more than that. If you're working 80 hours and being paid by the hour, you'd ought to double your income. It just depends. weeks i were kept at six days a week for eight hours at 16 25

an hour so well that's not that's not 80 hours some days they don't have my math is not that good some days they don't even have routes for us so some days i don't go home with any pay at all so gotcha all right okay so one thing we need to do we've established is we need to get you a better income and a more stable predictable income you picked this up because it was something to pay the bills right i've been doing this for four years it's just because driving driving's all i've ever known my wife gets mad at me but driving's all i've ever known why does she get mad at me, but driving is all I've ever known. Why does she get mad at you? Because she doesn't want me on the road.

I've been in three accidents, and that's where the stem of most of my medical bills are. I see. Okay. I've got a metal rod in my back, as it is. Okay. What does she do for a living? She's a stay-at-home mom. I see. Okay. What does she do for a living? She's a stay-at-home mom. I see. Okay.

Well, the first thing I want you to do, Zachary, is to start thinking about your career field and what you want to become and what your steps are to become one of those. Eventually, I want to own and be what my boss is and just own a fleet of vans instead of being the one actually delivering everything. I want to be the one that owns the contracts and everything else okay no there's

a goal that takes but that takes a lot of money yeah so we have to figure out what the steps are to get there and when i ask you you said six years from now i'm still going to be driving six years from now i want you to own 10 trucks so let's figure out how to do that all right that's the first thing the second thing then is are you bankrupt no you're not bankrupt you're just scared and out of control and you don't know where the money's coming and where the money's going and um i wondered if filing for bankruptcy would give me a fresh start if it would be better it's not it would but it's not necessary. You've only got $20,000 in debt on the medical, and most of that will take 20, 25 cents on the dollar

if you call them and negotiate with them and work them down when you've got some money to offer them in lump sum. So meaning a $2,000 bill will take 400 or 500 bucks as settlement in full because old medical bills due from a 24-year-old are not very collectible. And so they will work with you. They will settle. Don't put them on payments. Settle lump sums.

And so you can settle that for $4,000 or $5,000. And then we've got to get this car mess straightened out. So who told you the car was worth $7,000? I got it appraised at a dealership it's a ford um it's been in an accident so it's worth less than what it should be okay and uh why was it not repaired when it was in the accident it was repaired but uh they just deem it since since it was in an accident, the Kelley Blue Book value puts it down lower. Yeah, so it's diminished value, but the repair has been done. Yes, the repair has been done on the car. That does not explain why a $20,000 vehicle is worth $7,000.

Well, I haven't paid on it since February, so I've been compounding interest in late fees. Okay. Why hasn't it been repoed? I don't know. I'm not hiding the car. I'm not doing anything. I've told them that they want to come get it. They can come get it.

But I just haven't been able to financially afford it. We got roped into a dealer, promised zero down. I was a delivery driver at the time using my own car, and my car got hit. I needed a car, and this dealer said, well, we can get you in this car for zero down i was a delivery driver at the time using my own car and my car got hit i needed a car and this dealer said well we can get you in this car for zero down and we didn't have any money saved up and i needed a car for work so yeah so you made a stupid so you made a stupid but decision okay yeah all right i've done that too right after i get desperate i usually get broke and that's what happened to you you gotta be careful when I get desperate, I usually get broke, and that's what happened to you. You got to be careful when you get desperate. That's when you make dumb decisions. So, all right, cool.

Well, I think we work our way out of this car. We work our way out of these things, and we're going to have to get you on a written budget, and we're going to have to do something to get your income up and get your career moving in a better and a different direction because what you're describing to me is that you are not making, you're not working 80 hours, but you're not getting the hours you should be getting, even in the month of December, which should be a bizarre, busy month for you. So let's do two things. Let's put you and your wife into Financial Peace University, and we will show you how to get on a budget, and we will show you how to start managing the money that you have very carefully and very tightly um and then i'm also going to send you a copy of ken uh coleman's number one

best-selling book called the proximity principle and it's all about your career and your career direction and dude you are going to have to get off your butt and intentionally do something with this career or you're going to be a 40 year old with a metal rod in your back still driving a van for amazon and you don't want to do that as an intentional use of your precious life your precious mom i thought you were going to be something and do something and you know why because you have the ability to do something and be something and i want you to do that. There's no shame in driving a truck right now, but you've got to have a game plan to be something different or you won't be.

No one accidentally succeeds at these things. So you want to own a bunch of trucks and contracts and run a trucking company? I got no issue with that at all. That sounds like a good plan to me. Let's start figuring out how to do it and start making the first steps to get there. And the first steps will be to get rid of this debt without filing bankruptcy. You're not bankrupt. You're scared, disorganized, out of control, and you need a better job than the one you have. Hold on. Kelly will pick up and help you guys get started on this. We will pay for every

bit of it. We're going to give it to you as a gift. The only thing we require is you actually attend the class and that someday when you're rich and famous, you find a scared 24-year-old and you give them the class for free as a gift one Christmas. Merry Christmas to you, sir. Open phones at 888-825-5225. See, giving gifts like that's fun. You could give Financial Peace University for Christmas right now. Some of you are in a position it's time for you to pay it forward. You've already been the recipient.

Someone gave it to you or you bought it and it has given to you financial peace or maybe the total money makeover. All this stuff's on sale in our store right now for Cyber Monday week. I just love saying that. I just made it up. But we're doing Cyber Monday the whole week. Apparently everyone is. So there you do.

There you go. $10 book sale on all the best-selling books, or most of them. Financial Peace University is a deal. DaveRamsey.com. Check the store for the bargains or call the Ramsey concierge team at 888-22-PEACE. 888-227-3223. Hey, it's Blake Thompson, Senior Executive Producer for the show. You know you can listen or watch anywhere with 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.