The Ramsey Show - App - You Just Went Back in Debt for a “Refund” (Hour 2)

Episode Date: December 22, 2022

Dave Ramsey & Jade Warshaw discuss: Dealing with a mess after applying for student loan forgiveness when you already paid off the loan, Getting started on the baby steps, Managing life insurance. Have a question for the show? Call 888-825-5225 Weekdays from 2-5pm ET Want a plan for your money? Find out where to start: https://bit.ly/3nInETX Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts: https://bit.ly/3GxiXm6 Learn more about your ad choices. https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the pods moving and storage studios, it's the Ramsey Show, where debt is done, cash is king, and the paid off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. We help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual, amazing relationships. Jade Warshaw, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today.

As we take your questions about your life and your money, the phone number is 888-825-5225. Merry Christmas to you, America. We're so glad you're here. Well, folks, I'll give you a little statistics as we wrap up this year. This will be our last live broadcast of the year as we head into Christmas season here. The last few days before Christmas and after Christmas and so forth. Trying to look up here.

We did 233 live shows this year. We talked to 147 millionaires. That means about every one and a half shows we talked to a millionaire. We did 358 debt-free screams that accounted for 61 million dollars a little over 61 million dollars in debt paid off just screamed about on the air and um and that's in on about 2,900 calls that we took this year about 3,000 calls we took on the air. So we do three hours of this show live every day from 1 to 4 Central Time. It is broadcast on 680 talk radio stations. We are the second largest talk radio show in America.

Sean Hannity is number one, and we are number two, and there's not even a close third no one's even in that in the same ballpark that he's in or we're in in terms of listenership or in terms of stations cleared actually sean has a has fewer stations than we have but more listeners because he's got better time slots uh he's owned by iheart and so they put him on premium time slots in all of their stations so but he does a great job too he's a friend and does we're proud for him everything is good and uh he just does a really good job so uh that's the talk radio shot side and uh then there's the podcast side which has now had a billion downloads there are five shows in the world that have had a billion downloads joe rogan

dave ramsey the two largest um and so not even close uh you know and i mean there's a there's almost a billion podcasts probably i don't know there's millions of them it feels like but uh everybody with a computer in a bedroom is doing a podcast which is fine that's a there's some good ones out there they're fun to listen to i listen to a bunch of different things george and rachel launched the smart money smart or smart money the smart money happy hour podcast and it's really good it's really good listen to it this morning on my walk as a matter of fact the one that dropped today and so check those out but that's just a few of the numbers of the things that are going on around here. YouTube, you know, we've got our little button over here, over a million subscribers. We've had that for a long time. We're one of the top producers and all of minutes viewed

in all of YouTube and just amazing, amazing results. And all of that is you folks. Thank you. Yep. I mean, we're here to help you. And you've joined our humor. You've joined our caustic sarcasm. You've joined our approach to this whole process from our faith. You've joined in with us on telling everyone about the shows and the various formats. There's about 24, 25 million of you between YouTube podcast and talk radio in a given week. And so thank you. Thank you.

It's $61 million worth of debt-free screams last year. That's so fun. I'm looking at these stats, you know, all the debt that's been paid off, all the millionaires that's called this year, uh, 358 debt-free screams. And it reminded me of something I saw this morning, someone posted, they had, they had some debt and they posted and they said, you know, I bought this car. It was for $35,000. And my plan was to pay off 10,000 between August and December. Well, that didn't happen. I just haven't felt motivated enough to aggressively paid off. And she said, I think I had the most success when I saw other people's debt progress, but there doesn't seem to be much of that going on these days. She's in the wrong community.

She needs to get over here because we're paying off debt. We're becoming millionaires. We're changing our lives. And we are following a plan that we've seen work with millions and millions of people. She's got the wrong folks around her. She needs to come and get in this Ramsey camp. Amen. For 30 years. 30 years.

You need to learn to do it the Ramsey way. And it's not Dave Ramsey said. That's not what you're going to do with it. This is God's and Grandma's ways of handling money. It used to be called common sense, and now it's so rare it's like having a superpower. Well. and now it's so rare it's like having a superpower well so we became one of the most downloaded watched viewed listened to repeated shows in the entire freaking world that's right all we do is tell you to live on less than you make simple as that simple principles hard to do hey Ramsey you don't say anything new I said yeah but I say it better and more often than you do so it worked there you

go that's all i did i there is nothing the the irony is i mean my preacher told me the day he said you say the same thing over and over again i said so do you you just keep coming back to one story all the time that is so good well you know the thing about it is you got to actually put it into action you got to do it yeah you hear you'll hear it and you say oh i get it but are you actually doing it are you are you actually putting it to work longest journey in the world from the brain to the heart yo yeah that's a hundred miles right there you know get it to leak from the brain down into the heart and cause you to actually go freaking do it it's all about your will do it i mean that that just requires something right there that's it you know it's it's directing your will into the right place it's a we we know that we you know

people talk about a lot about willpower but we know that we have free will. And your will is simply your desire to put fixated effort into something. And when it comes to this money stuff, we sit around and wait for motivation or we wait for somebody to say it. I don't know, the billionth more time, right? You've said this stuff a million times, Dave. But there comes a point where you have to assert your will into it you have to assert your will you have to say i'm going to put all of my fixated and focused effort onto this path and when you do that you change your husband can't do it for you no and your wife can't do it for you

and we sure can't do it for you can't do it for you yeah and i can't do it for you. Yep. And I can't do it for you. All we can do is give you the information. That's right. And the proof, the social proof. That's right. 358 people doing debt-free screams in the calendar year 2022 live on the air on this show paying off $61 million plus of debt. You can't do it. Why?

Those people fixated their will on it, Dave. They said, I'm going to get this thing done. I'm going to change my life. I can change my life. And I'm not going to sit around and wait for anybody else. I've heard it enough times. I've heard live on less than you make. I've heard, you know, get out of debt.

Debt is dumb. Cash is king. I've heard you got to do a budget. And these people finally said, enough listening. Time to start doing. Hey, help us by subscribing, by sharing the show, and by leaving a five-star review. Don't need any one stars. Your mama said if you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all.

This is The Ramsey Show. so jade warshaw remsey personality is my co-host today. Ten million folks have gone through Financial Peace University and chances are if you did, it's because someone in your life lit a fire under you. Your mom or dad gave it to you as a gift. Your pastor offered it at your church. A friend wouldn't shut up about it. So you finally took the class and now everything's changed. Well,

maybe it's time for you to do that for someone else. Maybe you're that mom or dad or that pastor or that friend. You can give someone you care about, Financial Peace University, share the same hope and freedom you've discovered with money. That's a cool thing to give for Christmas, hope and freedom. To buy FPU as a gift, go to RamseySolutions.com slash giveFPU. That's RamseySolutions.com slash give fpu justin's with us in

portland oregon hi justin merry christmas hey you guys too thanks for taking my call sure what's up hey um so we my wife and i finished baby step two about eight months ago and uh which included roughly forty thousand dollars in student loan debt. Woo, congrats. And so we didn't have any debt. And my wife found out a couple months ago that she qualified for $20,000 in the student loan forgiveness program. And which how we didn't have any debt

and she qualified for that. I have no idea why that is or how that is. So she applied and we were approved. A weeks ago we got a check from the united states treasury for forty thousand dollars oh crap and i'm like okay well that's a little odd first of all we only qualify for twenty thousand so why do we have a check for forty well there are there let's wait a minute stop there has been no student loan forgiveness. That's right. Well, so.

So what they did is they put your loan back on the books. Yep. That's exactly what they did. So they, I looked into it and they reopened her student loan. Yep. And charged it the exact amount that's on this check that we received. Yep. They gave you a refund because your debt was already paid and you qualified for this.

And maybe they, I don't know, I don't know why they doubled it. Maybe they assumed you did too. Well, it was the original balance. Ah, so they put it all back. These guys are scoundrels, man. So, yeah. oh these guys are scoundrels man these these so yeah i mean they went from having no debt to now having a debt of 48 250 well just send the check back and tell them to close the account and don't apply for student loan forgiveness again okay that was my question i didn't want to cash it

because i didn't want to be taxed on it this whole thing is it's not taxable it's not taxable there's no taxes on it but what what you may end up doing you may end up having to pay some interest because you now have a fifty thousand dollar loan on the books again so you need to get my guess is you're going to have to cash it and then make a payment and pay the loan off again that's right yeah and then the student loan uh servicer they do not know what's going on. We've called three or four times, and we've gotten three or four different answers.

They're showing no balance? No, they're showing the balance that the check is for. Okay, yeah. They do know what's going on, too. They're acting like they don't know what's going on. They absolutely know what's going on. They know they now have a loan that they are charging interest on again. They are happy campers.

Send that money back. Go today. Yeah, close that account today. And I'm afraid that your wife screwing around with this might have cost you $400 or $500 interest. We'll see when the smoke clears on this. Hopefully not. And that goes for anybody, Dave. If your loan is a zero balance, do not go back into debt

to possibly get this money. It's too risky. There's not enough information going on with that. And we can listen to a call like this and see. He didn't even request the $48,000. They just opened up the whole amount of the loan back. It's very sinister. It's very nefarious what these folks are doing, and I don't like it. And if I'm y'all, I'm not getting involved in it. You're debt-free, be debt-free. Walk away. Walk away.

Walk away. So you're going to have to treat this like you have a $48,000 loan balance, because you do, and you have a $48,000 check in your hand, because you do. So my guess is you're going to make a deposit of that you're going to write a check and close the loan out again and whatever period of time this gyration has been going on you're probably going to have some interest due and you might even have a late charge because you haven't been paying your payments properly yeah guys don't let the lure of free money lead somebody who's otherwise smart

into doing something stupid. Do not fall for that. Wow. Don't fall for it. So let's kind of back up about two steps. Here's what exactly happened technically. There is no student loan forgiveness program as of this date. Facts.

Period. There is not a loan. The Biden student loan forgiveness program is under several lawsuits going before the Supreme Court on February the 28th. The hearings begin. They may go on for months or years, but they begin to decide if Biden's student loan forgiveness program is going to go forward. Today, it does not exist, okay? So you do not need to apply for something today that does not exist. This is just a carrot.

Because what his wife did was she said, my grandmother, what big eyes you have. That's right. Thank you, Little Hood Reddenhyde. Oh, my God. This is a carrot that started as a lot of us into making bad decisions. Well, what his wife did, and bless her heart, she was trying to do something smart. She was trying to get money back from a loan she'd already paid off that she may qualify for if this does go through when it does go through but they don't have a mechanism the government nor the student loan provider does not have a mechanism to do student loan

forgiveness because it does not exist today yeah okay the court has not cleared it there is not a program there it doesn't exist and so what they did was they said, oh, you really didn't mean to pay off your student loans. You'd like to keep them there in case forgiveness comes through. So we're going to give you your money back that you paid off the loan and put the loan back on the books. So when and if forgiveness comes along, we'll be able to give you the forgiveness of $20,000 against the $48,000. Right. That's what they did.

And if people aren't careful, that money is going to be sitting there. And whenever interest starts back, people who aren't watchful. Oh, that's a good point. There won't be any interest on that. There won't be, but what is it, March? I told him there might be interest charged on this. There's not going to be interest charged on this. Well, if he lets it sit.

If you let that money sit until forgiveness takes place. Yeah, but I did tell him there might be interest to you now i was wrong not yet not yet yeah that was that was a miss but i still want him to take that check and it could be a late charge it could be a late charge for not paying payments oh yeah well no payments are paused too but the point is the point is if you're not careful if you take your eye off the ball in this situation that money will be sitting in your account you will have forgotten about it, right? Because it's just sitting there

and you've got this check that you're kind of holding on as well, waiting, and you're trusting yourself to not spend that $48,000 during Christmas time, during inflation, during the start of a new year. That is a very precarious situation to put yourself in. We can't. It's been a hard year.

We really need a vacation. Oh man. And my cousin's wedding is coming up in the Caribbean. And we got to get a car. You know, that car is- We have to get a car. You know, we do. And you know- We need it.

We need a new van for those twins. There's no question. Yeah. That's the kind of crap that's going to happen all over America. It's already happening. Yep. Because they do not have a mechanism to process your student loan forgiveness check because there is not a policy in place to do it today that is approved. It's in the courts.

And those servicers can't wait to issue your fake refund. Get you back in debt. They just got you. They made you a loan. Yep. They couldn't wait to do it. Wow. And they call it, Dave, a refund. That's what I hate. They're got you. They made you a loan. Yep. They couldn't wait to do it. And they call it, Dave, a refund.

That's what I hate. They're calling it, they're putting positive vocabulary around it. So it feels like we're getting some sort of prize, but there's no prize to be gotten yet. Well, it's a prize, but it's not one of the trophies you want. It's your I got back into debt prize. Oh, Justin, I'm sorry. What a mess for you, honey. We're not making fun of you, Justin.

Nor your wife. We're trying to tell these folks out here not to do it. Everything under the heading student loan, if you just say that first, everything second says sucks. This is The ramsey personality is my co-host today christine is in chicago hi christine how are you i'm well how are you thank you for taking my call. Sure. What's up? I'm currently a resident physician and I'll be graduating in six months. I recently signed my contract and received a signing bonus of about $43,000 after taxes. I currently have about $70,000 in total credit card debt and personal loan debt.

And I'm looking for the best way to use my signing bonus, current income, and future income to kind of get out of debt. That's great. What's your income going to be once you start working? $375,000. Ooh, girl. I love to hear it. That's great. Well, you know.

What is it now as a resident? $70,000. When do you start? September. Good for you. Congratulations. You've worked a long time, and you've worked really hard to get here. Congratulations.

Thank you. I appreciate that. You know, if I'm you, I'm going to work through this. I'm going to work the baby steps through this because I want you to be able to enjoy that income, and I want you to be able to live that life that you've worked for as quickly as possible. Have you started working the baby steps thus far? I have not. Okay. So let's walk through that real quick. So the way we teach this, this is going to be the best, most effective way to manage your money and ultimately get to the fact to where you're hopefully a millionaire and you're living

like no one else and being generous. So this is the path to get there. The first thing we want to do is we want to make sure you get $1,000 saved. So I know that you have that 43K of bonuses. Do you have any other money laying around? No, that's it. That's it. Okay. So we're going to take 1K. We're going to set it aside. That is your starter emergency fund. It's not meant to be the be all end all. This is just temporary, right? So that's thing one. Baby step two is you're paying off all of your debt except your mortgage. So in this case, we've already put $1,000 aside for the emergency fund. You've got $42,000 left.

Am I right? Correct. So if I'm you, I'm going to go ahead and put that money towards my debt snowball. Now, as it stands right now with your current salary, you're paying your bills, everything's happening, everything's happening, everything's rolling, right? You should have even more money to put towards your debt snowball.

So what I want you to do as part of baby step two is I want you to get on a budget. Have you been using a budget thus far or is that kind of a new concept for you? No, I have a budget. It fails at times, or I guess I fail the budget. Okay, okay, yeah, I'm glad you said that next part because the budget, I mean, you make it, right? It's your plan that you're putting together and that plan needs to be on purpose and on par

with what your life demands. So if the budget is failing, it's because we're not being detailed. We're not being realistic. We're not being flexible within our budget. So I want you to make sure that you are planning for every single dollar. And at the end of the day, it's you who's got to decide, I'm going to stick to this budget and I'm going to do what I've said I'm going to do. Here's the really cool thing. You should be 100% debt free before Halloween. I know that's right. Okay. And because you said you start in September, right? Yes. Okay.

But between now and then you make $70,000 a year, and we're going to put $42,000 towards $70,000, leaving $30,000. So your debts, when you list them smallest to largest, what is your largest debt? The largest one is a five thousand twelve thousand dollar credit card okay so you can pay everything but that no no no what's the next largest one the next largest one is a six thousand dollar credit card so you've got a bunch of ankle I do okay so you've got a list of things that's probably 20 long and you're going

to get rid of the majority of that list with this signing bonus in one fell swoop boom that's going to feel really good and the good news about those little ankle biters is you're going to be able to feel wins very regularly right because you're going to knock out those first several with this chunk of money and then you know every couple of weeks you i want to knock out those first several with this chunk of money and then you know every couple of weeks you i want to see you paying something off every couple of months you know you're paying off these little aid and one thousand dollar things and two thousand dollar things you're going to be feeling those wins uh how long has it been since you've used a credit card for a purchase um this week this last Saturday yeah I thought so okay there you go Dave

there's where your budget's going because you've got you got a pocket full of credit cards you're used to using these things so here's your painful experience when you get off the phone uh are you you're not studying to be a surgeon by chance are you i am here's your time to practice i want you to have plastic surgery when you get off the phone i want you to chop up every one of those credit cards into little bitty pieces and then every time you close every time you pay off one i want you to close the account and never reopen it make sure your bank you get on the phone with your bank today and get a debit card if you don't have one on your checking account and anytime you get ready to purchase something from this point forward use a debit card you got amazon prime i sure do jump on there and change out for your

debit card take the credit card off of it okay are you going to do it christine i am okay that's gonna help you do the budget it is because what's happening is it's too easy for you to fall off the wagon yeah because you got fake money laying around you got extra make it hard extra fake money yeah make it hard to spend money you don't mean to spend if you're gonna spend money on purpose that's fine i've got i mean we've got amazon prime at the ramsey house and it's just got a debit card attached to it. But I know when I click that button, Sharon knows when she clicks that button, that real money just left a real account. It's not fake money. And that credit card money is fake money. It'll catch up on you. It's not emotional. So, okay. So you're going to have an emotional experience that's positive

in a whole bunch of ways. You're going to feel this weird transformational thing when you chop up all your credit cards, get the debit card on Amazon Prime, get the debit card on anything where you used to have a credit card, get out of the credit card business, and you're going to take this check and clear through more than half of your list. Yeah. All these little $100, $200, $500 things are just going to go out like a hot knife through butter. You're going to knock off a whole bunch of them, and then you're still going to be staring at a pretty decent list. But every time you get a check-in, now you're more under control. You're spending, and you're going to be able to attack it. This is so cool, Christine.

I'm so proud of you. It's great. I got to highlight the fact this is going to feel countercultural to what you think security is. Counterintuitive. Thank you thought counterintuitive thank you counterintuitive you thought security was having credit cards it's something to fall back on you thought security was maybe i can have this signing bonus i'll just hold on to it it's a nice little cushion even if i have debt and we're telling you to do things that are opposite of what security security comes from you taking control that's right you telling your money what to do instead of wondering where it went that's right you're going to get a sense of power

like you've had you remember when you the power christine when you start working through the syllabus to get to be an md yeah yeah you know and you start i knocked that class out i knocked that class out i knocked that i'm that much closer i'm that much closer i'm that much closer i'm running a half marathon i'm at mile nine that's right. I'm that much closer. I'm running a half marathon. I'm at mile nine. That's right. I've got, you know, I've got four and a half to go. Here I go. 4.3 to go, right?

So there we go. I mean, that kind of stuff. So you're clicking off the miles. You're clicking off the traction. And you've never done that with money. And so you're going to get this positive feeling. But it is also, it's a transformational thing. So it's going to be uncomfortable for the first 90 days that you live in this she's proving the concept exactly that's

so i just wanted her to be emotionally that's good paired for that but she's doing right she's doing it right she's doing it right so good because you know the thing is the weird thing folks is y'all think that these doctors that make a lot of money are rich most of them are broke i mean we mds are as bad as pro athletes they're just horrible with money i mean they're just i mean there's some pro athletes that do a good job with money and there's some mds that do a good job with money but stereotypically you know we always think of the doctor and the lawyer or the rich people in town especially old people like me that's right used to be in the 50s you know the people sitting on the chamber of commerce were the rich ones right and that's just the doctor the lawyer

the um the college professor um and these are these are the wealthy people in the in the town the little town and uh the weird thing is these, a lot of them do very well on their income side. That's right. But they've piled themselves up with debt. Christine's not that bad. She's only got $70,000. But your income is not your net worth. Exactly.

Your income, you can make hundreds of, you know, several hundred thousand dollars a year. You can make millions of dollars and be broke. We hear it all the time. Well, we've done the studies on millionaires and we see it's teachers, engineers, and these people, they're not making hundreds of thousands a year. They're not making $300,000, $400,000 a year.

Now, that's interesting. 33% of the millionaires in the study never made over $100,000. One-third, one out of three. Something to think about. This is The Ramsey Show. jade warshaw ramsey personality is my co-host today paul is with us in cincinnati ohio merry christmas paul merry christmas dave and jade how are you great how can we help all right so i'll jump right into the question um right now i have a 25 000 whole life policy and i'm in baby step two i'm wondering if I should cancel the policy and

get the cash value out of it to apply to my debt snowball, but the kicker is that I am not insurable for term life insurance. You're not insurable for any life insurance if you're not insurable for term. What's wrong with you? So in the past couple of years, I've lost about 200 pounds, but I'm still a little bit above the weight limit for his life insurance. The $25,000 policy that I have right now, I was able to get when I started my last job and there was no medical exam required. Yeah. You got that. You're paying through the nose for that for sure.

So what are you weighing now? Right now I'm about 350 okay have you talked to zander i tried to talk to him and they said the only thing they could do was a policy i couldn't afford i mean way up there and it wasn't for anything that would cover what i needed okay so yeah you're not insurable then it's what it amounts to they they were able to make a market but you're but your weight loss and you're still not down to. Extreme weight loss is a negative, believe it or not. Shouldn't be, but it is a negative.

And still being at 350 is a negative. So that's where you're getting. But you can't get whole life life insurance either. No, I can't add anything to what I got. Right now what I have is enough to cover burial right pay off the one last debt before my federal student loans and our debt snowball yeah what do you make uh right now i make about 50 000 a year our family like our household income is around 115 okay all right well you're doing well with your income.

Congratulations, by the way, on the weight loss. How'd you do that? Thank you. Combination of surgery as well as lots of exercise and diet over the past few years since the surgery. Okay. Yeah, eat less, exercise more. Go figure. Who knew?

That's exactly it. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, I'm proud of you that's pretty amazing i mean you you've changed your whole life already uh i'm going to tell you to just continue the journey and get back down to a more normal height weight ratio and uh it may take a year or even two after that before you're going to qualify. Yep. They told me I could get it if I had sustained weight loss below their weight limit, but I'm still not quite there.

But I'm still working. But sustained would be like a year to two is what I'm saying. Yeah, that's about right. Exactly. That's what I figured. That's a fair thing. And so it gives you yet another reason for the target, not to mention the fact that you feel better not to

mention the fact you feel better about yourself emotionally way to go man i'm so proud of you that's a very difficult journey very and the good the good news is an elephant on my knees oh i bet yeah for real um yeah a small one literally yeah for real man way to go well merry christmas paul i wish i had better answer you. I'd keep that whole life policy in place until you get past this final stage of regaining your health. Congratulations. Very well done. Hey, guys, we talk about life insurance around here all the time, and we throw it around. Always get 15 to 20-year level term, 10 to 12 times your income.

Here's the thing. There are two things you can do, and Paul's an extreme example, but there are two things you can do that dramatically affect the pricing of your life insurance that are under your control. If you smoke, it's double. That's right. Just like that. Okay? Period. bubble that's right just like that okay period and you know they pretty well uh in our culture

today now smoking's not cool it's not like the 1950s right yeah so um and there's lots of ways to get out there and quit yeah there's i mean it it's a decision it is uh it is a tough thing to kick the habit oh yeah i've never smoked but um but but i understand it's very hard to get away from the nicotine so uh but uh it's worth it because if nothing else you save half yeah on your life insurance that's pretty incredible not to mention all the health benefits not to mention your when you kiss your spouse you don't taste like an ashtray so there's all that expensive habit in many ways yeah so uh your clothes stink everything so the the second thing is uh obesity yep being overweight yeah and uh these are things we control um as i've told you all here on the air many times during covid i was a lot of high stress working here i gained a whole bunch of weight

and uh i got just straight up fat eating every donut in the dadgum 50 50 mile radius that was a decision yeah and then to not do that is a decision and so um i still qualify at 62 years old for premium pricing on life insurance uh because my rate, my weight ratio, all the lifestyle choices, all of those things, if I want life insurance, I don't want it. I don't need it today. But these are things you can set yourself up for. Now, there's things you can't control, but other health issues. You have a heart problem.

You have a cancer problem. Those are things you can't control on your life insurance but more people overpay for life insurance on obesity or smoking than any other all other factors put together right oh yeah i believe it the good news is if you you know like that last call you know he he's walked the journey he's he's proven that he has the discipline and he's got the systems in place to lose that weight. And, you know, I think a lot of those same mechanisms apply for money. I think, and my guess is probably when you put that, when you put on, I'm not going to say how many pounds it was. It was a lot.

With those donuts, you already had the mechanisms in your brain that you could just pull from and go, hey, I know how to be disciplined. Well, just like I told him, it's not, you eat less and you exercise more. So no more donuts, fat boy. I mean, it's a hard eat less and you exercise more. So no more donuts, fat boy. I mean, it's a pretty straight up thing. This is what you do. Simple can be hard, though, Dave. You know, simple can. It's a simple method, but it takes effort and can be difficult to put that into place.

So you got the first of the year coming up here. And you know what the three largest New Year's resolutions are? Get out of debt, lose weight, quit smoking. Yeah smoking yeah gotta be and they'd actually run together is my point they do they it's and jade's point is is that they they all have to do with this thing called self-control self-control it's a fruit of the spirit it is self-control it's a beautiful thing it's a it's a reservoir that you can you can pull from when you've had self-control it's a beautiful thing it's a it's a reservoir that you can you can pull from when you've had self-control in one area you know you can do it and when you come to another area of life where you say you know what i need to i need to enact that same mechanism and i need to have

some self-control here you know that you've done it before it's a well that you can draw from man that guy's impressive i'm so proud of him sarah and waco go quick what's your question i just have a couple questions for one for starting your financial peace university and generate teeth with our church and i was just wondering um i have stuff in collections but I don't know how much. I know one is about $9,000 for a credit card for Wells Fargo. But there's a couple other things. And in the past, my sister used mine and my mom's social security number and everything. Well, that's called identity theft.

That means your sister's a criminal yeah but they didn't do anything about it i know but you don't know the money oh okay you have to you have to get identity theft uh and get it you know file a victim's report on that those debts now the ones that are in collections that you haven't paid i would set those aside until you get the debts paid off that you are current on. If you're making payments like on your car, let's get that paid off. You got a credit card you're making payments on. Let's get that paid off in Financial Peace University before you go clean up the old bad debt.

So you're going to kind of run two debt snowballs. First, your active real ones. And then secondly, your old ones. I like it. Sounds like a plan to succeed. Yeah, and you're going to have to fill out a police report on the fact that your identity was stolen. The sad thing is you know the criminal. Yeah, your family did you wrong.

I'm sorry that happened. It's amazing the amount of identity theft that occurs because someone feels like they have the right because they happen to be blood. Yeah. Yep. We see it all the time. Yeah. But that makes you the lowest kind of scum if that's you doing that, by the way.

And it's also why we make sure you put Zander Insurance's identity theft protection in place. That puts us out of the Ramsey Show in the books. Dave here. You can find all of our shows with the Ramsey Network app on your smartphone. It's the only place to listen to the entire back catalog of episodes. Download the Ramsey Network app in your favorite app store today.