The Ramsey Show - App - Your Financial Mistakes Shouldn’t Define You

Episode Date: May 8, 2025

This is the Ramsey Show where America hangs out to have a conversation about their money, their profession, and their relationships. 888-825-5225 is the phone number to jump in America. We'd love to hear from you. 888-825-5225, alongside the slightly anxious, but always Natalie attired, George Campbell. He's ready to go. He's got a freshly cleaned bomber jacket.

Looks like you got that right out of the old dry cleaning plastic. I keep it crispy. It looks good, it looks right out of the old dry cleaning plastic. I keep it crispy. It looks good. It looks good. And we're ready to go. It's a new dawn, a new day, a new pope, Ken. A new pope is right. Anything is possible. Big news. First American pope. So if you have any kind of American pride combined with Catholic

pride, I guess it's a big day for you. It's a lot of crossover there. A lot of crossover. Maybe the Chicago Bears will finally be good in football. I don't know, but I digress. Great studio audience today, full crowd, and very excited. They're very, very affirming. We walked into the studio, they were already clapping. Instant applause for doing nothing.

And we've done nothing yet. So speaking of doing nothing, shall we do something, George? Let's do something. All right, Crystal is on the line in St. Louis. Crystal, how can we help? I am looking to get your guys' opinion on some real estate my husband and I purchased last fall at our home.

We purchased a home. It's on like three quarters of an acre. It meets a lot of our boxes and stuff like that. But our inspector missed a lot of major electrical stuff. I missed a lot of major cosmetic things that needed to be fixed. But the big like question that I have is after we closed and started doing some renovations and projects on the house, we found out that the vacant land behind our house is, there is a developer attempting to get it rezoned to put 1100

apartments on. So right now we're in a very like spread out. It's all, I know it's all like acre lots. Everybody is spread out and then they're going to plop about 50 or 60 acres behind us and they're gonna put 1,100 apartments. So we are kind of on the fence. So we bought the house last fall for $360,000. We've already put about $40,000 into it. It appraised for $380,000.

We could maybe sell it for anywhere right now between $380 to $400. Do we go ahead and take advantage of that development not being there yet and sell it and potentially have a loss? Like I don't think we'd have to bring money to closing, but. Well, how long ago did you buy it? October. Yeah, so you're gonna have a capital gains hit on that

if there's any actual gains and that's up for debate, correct? Yeah, so you're gonna have a capital gains hit on that if there's any actual gains and that's up for debate, correct? Yeah, right. I get out of there. Because the market isn't as good as it was in October. Now I'm gonna give an emotional answer. George may come off the top ropes and hammer me on the financial part of this, but based on what I've heard I'd want to get out of there get out of there quick. I said I possibly could. Okay. That's kind of how I'm feeling about it. I just don't, I mean you never would have bought

that house had you known that all those apartments were coming in there, correct? Oh heck no because they're very small apartments that are going to be at a very reasonable flash low rent, which isn't going to attract high end tenants, either. And we are going to be sharing a property line. Oh, and eminent domain is going to come in and take like the third of my front yard because they're going to have to widen the road. That's my question. Are they paying you for this?

No. Well, they'd have to do the eminent domain part, but like the rest of it, they own the land. They're just going through the motions of getting it rezoned right now, which they've gotten like 80% of it rezoned and they're just waiting for this last level to- Yeah, chances are this thing happens. And the chances are the person who might buy your house

knows that all of this is happening. So won't that hurt your chances of selling for the price that you want? I don't know because I mean, we just bought it six months ago, they did not disclose it to us. I would be hard pressed that the people that sold it to us didn't know because they've been working on getting it going for six years and like we got a notice in the mail

a week after we bought it, like, oh, by the way, there's a zoning meeting happening. How many houses are there in your predicament? You made it sound like there were several of other folks that are so how many how many would be having? I mean like 10 other houses are in the exact same predicament as me and that we share a property line. And- Have you talked to all 10 of those people to say, hey- Oh, yes.

And how do they feel about it? They hate it. They said they have hired attorneys and there's two like major subdivisions that are gonna be impacted quite a bit. So there's probably 50 to a hundred houses in those subdivisions, but everybody is opposed to it. I've gone to our county meetings to help

for the rezoning stuff and there's always a line of people to say against it. Okay. I see the two things here. Number one, you have a right to be upset and want to get out of this. And the second part is, I don't think it's as bad as you think it's gonna, I don't think this is like

end of the world, the housing market's gonna crash in your neighborhood, no one's gonna buy, the prices are gonna jump down. I think everything's gonna be fine in the end. This is a part of living in America. Yeah, this happens all the time. It's happening in my neighborhood. I don't think it's into the world.

I don't think she said into the world. But I don't think it's going to like tank her housing value. I think it just bothers you. I don't think she's worried about, are you worried about the housing value or are you worried about the type of people that are gonna be living in your backyard? Both, because I do think like, I think we paid more than we should have because we didn't

know a lot of the stuff that was wrong that needed to be addressed. So we spent more money on the house than we had originally anticipated, which is normal. But then we're thinking like if we do decide to go to sell it in five years, we're gonna maybe be able to sell what we paid for, which isn't what you buy property for, you know, like that's the post. And that's the part I don't know that we know the future of what the zip code values will be. The apartments very well could bring, you know, better economic times to your area. We just don't know the future.

And so that's the part. But I also don't want, like, I don't want riff-raff going in and out of my yard because right now the biggest thing I've got to deal with is raccoons, not teenagers running around. And again, I don't know how close it's gonna be. I don't know what the boundary lines are gonna be like. And so there's just a lot of question marks

and right now it feels like it's all emotion. I would just want more facts because this is the biggest financial decision of your life and selling it will be the second biggest financial decision of your life. So I also don't want you to just impulsively jump out either. So I would work with an agent and get some more facts

on what's going on and what the timelines are. But are you guys in a good financial spot? Do you guys have any debt? Oh, yes. No. No debt, do you have a a good financial spot? Do you guys have any debt? Oh, yes. No. No debt? Do you have a mortgage on the house? Yes, we do have a mortgage on the house,

but everything else is, we're paying cash for everything else. Okay, good. So again, if you took a loss on this, it's not gonna disrupt your financial life and your future. You would just go, well, we paid a stupid tax, we're gonna do a better job next time. I'm doubling down on my answer. Ken's selling today, well, we paid a stupid tax. We're gonna do a better job next time. I'm doubling down on my answer.

Ken's selling today. No, I'm not saying panic. I never give advice like that. And I think what you said is good, but I'm gonna weigh in on this, what I'm hearing. And I think if you can get out, I would get out. The other option I would be doing is, I would be thinking about bringing the 10 people together. And again, I'm not operating with a map here

But if you're all in that same situation, I might if you can't win in in against the zoners, by the way I hate to be a predictor of this You're gonna lose The county administration they're always gonna go for affordable housing and all that he talks So I'm just gonna tell you I don't like your chances So maybe you guys come together go to the developer and go Would you like to give us a fair offer for our land and you get to add more apartments? I'm always gonna be creative and try to get out with a good fight, but if I don't want to be there

That's what I would do, but I think George is right go get a whole lot more information Don't completely make it on emotion. But I feel bad for you in this situation. That's tough. All right, let's go to Aberdeen, who's joining us in the Phoenix area. Aberdeen, how can we help today? Hi, I just had a question about savings versus debt, I guess.

My husband and I have a decent amount of debt between credit cards, car loans, and I have some student loans. And we also have almost close to $10,000 in our savings. We've actually paid off about $50,000 in debt in the last three years. And this is the first time in our married lives we have savings this big and my husband is reluctant to put a good chunk of that towards debt even though we've been following the Ramsey plan as much as we can with this snowball method he is nervous to go down to 1,000 in our savings account. Yeah, very normal, very normal. I mean he's thinking

provider and he's going, boy he's worked so hard to get that chunk in there. And that's just fear, George. You've heard this a lot. Where did you guys start with with your savings? When we got married, we both didn't really have any savings and brought an okay amount of debt to the table. So our savings really started at zero and we've worked our

butts off the last three years to pay down credit cards, personal loans. We went for a year just down to one vehicle. I guess the bigger question is were you guys ever doing the Ramsey plan straight up or did you veer off at some point where you went, oh we need more savings. Where did that come into play? We were, the Ramsey Plan the last about three years. We've been working it. We paid off three personal loans, and I think we've paid off about two to three credit cards each, which had higher balances. And my husband switched jobs, got a nice bonus, was able to have some increased income for a few months. And it was the first time that we had, in addition to paying our debt, some extra money to spare.

So we just kind of started stocking it away. Uh-huh. Okay. So far, let me tell you what I'm hearing. We paid off higher balances first. Okay. That's not the debt snowball, not the Ramsey plan. We got extra money. We didn't pay our higher balances. They all had high balances, but we did start with the lowest one. Okay. I'm just trying to get it straight. Where you guys aligned in the first place on, hey, we're doing this Ramsey plan.

It's weird. It's a little bit scary. We're going to have a thousand bucks and we're going to tackle this debt. Because it sounds like at some point someone got a little comfortable and, well, I got a bonus. It might be nice to just stash that away instead of throwing it at the debt right yeah I definitely think that's what happened we kind of started with our two and three thousand dollar credit card balances and worked our way up we do each still have two credit cards to

pay off and when my husband switched his job then we kind of had a little bit of extra income it was the first time since we started working the Ramsey plan that we had. I guess we made the choice to save that money versus put more of it towards the debt. But it was the first time that we could pay more than just the minimum payment on our credit cards and sock away a couple extra.

So you kind of got your head above water and said, man, it'd be nice to have a little bit in savings. And I love that you said we. So you acknowledged this is not him versus you. This is something that we decided together. So it might be time to have another conversation and go, hey, I know we decided to do this. Don't make it an accusation.

Just say, but I wanna get realigned on the unity of this plan. I really, I'm thinking we should take the savings, the majority of it, and throw it at the debt. And here's why, and paint that future. We're gonna get there faster, it's gonna light a new fire under us to get out of debt, to get back to savings.

Do you see this kind of picture you need to start painting for him? I do, I absolutely do. We actually, we were at the Money in Relationships Tour on Tuesday night, or Monday night in Phoenix. Oh wow, two days ago. I'm very, two days ago, yeah, so and I have always very much been the free spirit my husband is the nerd when we started this about three years ago he would email me

a calendar invite for a budget meeting and I would totally blow them off and so well has he changed his mind? Has he changed his mind? He has not not at all. I want to kind of got excited by savings. Okay, I wanna take a tack that I hope is gonna be helpful. George is right, but if you just go have that conversation and you don't have any kind of specific vision and specifics for him to grab ahold of, it's gonna be very hard to overcome the psychology.

Would you agree with that, George? Yeah, if he's the nerd, you gotta attack it with math. All right, so that's what I want to try to do. So if we can work, so I'm going to lead us through here and what I think might help you. Okay, so first of all, as it stands today, okay, we've got 10,000 set aside. Let's just walk through some numbers very quickly. How much total debt is left? We have roughly about 25 on credit cards in total and then same with that in car loans. Okay, and what's the next debt, the next smallest debt using the snowball method? What's next? Give us that exact number.

My husband has his next credit card will be paying off is about $800 and I, his next credit card we'll be paying off is about $800 and I have one that's about 2000 we'll be paying off. Okay, so it's 800, then 2000, then what? Then we each have one that are sitting between four and 5000, they're very close balance wise. So we're talking two of them, we'll just say 5000 and 5000?

Yeah. Okay, now I wanna stop, right where we're talking two of them we'll just save five thousand and five thousand? Yeah. Okay now I want to stop right where we're at okay now what is the what is the minimum payment on the eight hundred dollar credit card the smallest debt? I want to say the minimum payment is like something crazy low like maybe fifty dollars. That's probably right let's say fifty and then what about the two thousand dollar card what's the minimum on that? The minimum on that is 85 and we pay about 150 towards that one. Okay, and then what about the 5,000? Those ones we pay between 150 and 175 on each month Okay, and I could keep going down the list, but I'm only getting you started here and George where I'm taking This is if I add this up It's close to 500 bucks not not quite, but close to it.

All right, here's the point you have to make to him. Because what he's thinking is, I take 9,000 out of that 10,000, and I put it towards debt, but I don't have hardly anything in savings. And what happens if an emergency over $1,000 happens? This is where I'm gonna bring my colleague in because what you gotta share with him is is, yes, we are spending $9,000 but we are from a cash flow game saving ourselves $500

a month. And George, where I'm going with that is he's gotta to be able to see that most garden variety emergencies, they're going to be able to cover with the thousand. But if it's more than that, they can cash flow some things with a $500 a month bump. That's true. That's to me, and I'm coming at this from, if I was in that frame of mind, which I understand, Stacey would have to, I'd have to have that to go, oh, okay, because yes, I'm spending a large chunk,

but I'm also freeing up and that would allow us to weather just about any emergency from cash flowing. Is that? Push back on that. And if his thing, I don't know what the fear is, is it security? I don't know how you'd feel secure paying credit card companies all this money

every single month knowing that you owe them still 25,000. And you guys have been at this for three years already, right? Yeah, we have. Have you asked him, are you exhausted? Do you want this to go another, because based on your math, you got another three years to go.

I know. Can I tell you straight up, our target was six years. Your plan sucks if it takes six years to pay off debt. But George, what would the 9,000 do? Don't you think he would agree you guys can do better? Yes, I absolutely agree. We absolutely can do better.

We have in the past. So the 9 grand. That changes the timeline. It changes your momentum. It changes your hope that you're actually going to see some light at the end of this tunnel. What's your household income? My husband makes about $75,000 a year. He's working, he has a steady job during the week and then he has a Saturday job as

well. Okay and are you working outside the home? I am NOT. I'm a stay-at-home mom right now. We have a two-year-old little girl. I've worked a lot of freelance marketing in the past for myself, so on occasion I pick up jobs here and there when companies I've worked with want to hire me again, but it's usually just like a small contract of work. Let me challenge you. Let me say to you what your husband's probably afraid to say. You need to be working in the home with a two-year-old. You've got too much experience and I wouldn't just allow yourself to fall into the kind of rhythm you've fallen into before

with just small thing here, there. You actually have some transferable skills and I wonder what kind of freelance work you could do to where you brought in an additional two grand a month. Dig into that. What would have to be true for you to use your skill and experience to make that? And now we're really speeding up the timeline. But you got to do this.

Yeah, absolutely. And you can do it with one two year old around the house. There's a lot you can do. Yeah. And show him the math and go, listen, I think we can be debt free within a year, maybe 18 months instead of another three. If we do this plan as it's laid out. By the way, no tweaks.

I'm going to I'm going to make a bold statement. If you come to him and tell him you're going to start looking to work to make two grand a month or more, he'll be okay letting go of that 9,000. Folks, buying or selling your house is a big deal and you don't wanna do that on your own. You need an expert in your corner making sure you're getting the best deal for the right price

and our Ramsey Trusted program is the only way to find a top agent that you can trust in your area to make sure that the whole process goes well. Find a local Ramsey Trusted real estate pro for free at ramsysolutions.com slash agent or click the link in the show notes if you're listening via podcast or on YouTube. Janelle is up next in Raleigh. Janelle, how can we help? Hi, I just needed to get some advice. I did the ultimate no-no.

I bought a house with somebody I wasn't married to. After about a year of having the house, I needed to move out due to some circumstances when we broke up and having the house, I needed to move out due to some circumstances when we broke up, and now the house is going to go into foreclosure, and I'm just trying to figure out what are my options here, what to do. I've also accumulated about $25,000 in debt due to these circumstances, and trying to figure out how I can get out of this. $25,000 in debt to who?

Credit cards loans personal loans Well, it wasn't a well, I guess you can call it a personal loan it was a water soften a bill for the house That's the circumstances That was that's one of the loans that was that's part of my debt now. What happened are you on the mortgage? Yes I'm on the mortgage we're both on the mortgage. And you're both on the deed. And we're both on the deed.

He's still in the house I moved out. You moved out and he decided to stop paying? Yes. But you've been paying? Well, yeah, we were paying before. When I moved out, he was paying, and then now he decided to stop paying. And it's already in foreclosure or it is in the process of getting there? It's in the process of getting there. We're four months behind.

We have been trying to sell the home but have been unsuccessful with that. Unsuccessful in that no one's even looking at it or you've had showings and they're giving you feedback that you can process? We had showings but no real interest in the house and it's a brand new house. Are you working with a real estate pro? Yes. And what is their logic for why nothing's moving here? Is it price too high? I was, they feel like it's, well, it was price too high, but because there was a new community being built in the area, that was kind of affecting us as well because they were able

to bring their prices down, give lower interest rates and that sort of thing. Have you lowered your price? Yes, as far as we can go. We're now in the process of asking the mortgage company for a short sale to see if that's even possible. Do they know that you have the place listed and you're trying to sell it before the foreclosure goes through?

Yes, they do know. Okay. I mean, that's gonna be your best bet is just trying to sell it before the foreclosure goes through? Yes, they do. Yes, they do now. Okay. I mean, that's going to be your best bet is just trying to sell this thing ASAP even if you have to lower the price instead of going through a short sale or, worst case, that foreclosure. But even if we lower the price, the bank has to approve us going below what we owe on the house. Yes, because what do you guys owe on the mortgage?

465. And when you moved out, he obviously could not pay that mortgage on his own. Was that the case? I'm assuming no, yes, I don't know. He paid it for six months, so. Okay, he was floating it and then could no longer float it. What's the communication like with your ex right now?

We don't communicate unless it has something to do with the home. Oh my goodness. All right, and just one more clarification question. You've been paying your half of it. Is that how you guys have been doing this, splitting the payments and you've been making your payment? No, no, I don't pay anything towards the mortgage.

I moved out, I had to find another place to stay. So I'm paying where I have to live. Okay, but your name is on the... okay, you understand why it has to be? You have a legal obligation to pay more. You are legally obliged to pay that whether you've moved out or not. So, wow. I don't see a way out of this I don't unless you guys can find a way to sell it before it forecloses and I don't know that you can or want to float the payments to help get out of this or have the ability to no I don't have the ability to what are you making right now what's your income about 112 and where's all that money going? That's a

good income. To my expenses. What's your rent? 2400. Okay and what else? Because you're bringing home probably what eight grand? No probably about six. Okay. I mean, well, after tax. I guess you're saying after tax is about six. Okay. Are you doing any investing right now? Yes. I mean, I invest in my 401k and stuff like that.

Yeah. We need to pause all of that. You need to act like everything is on fire and you need to work on getting out of this house mess and paying off your debt. So we're not saving right? Do you have any savings? Yeah, I have some in savings. How much? I have about four in savings. Four thousand? And what is owed to get current on the mortgage?

About twelve thousand. Okay, and he doesn't have anything saved? I would assume not. I can't say for sure. I would do some homework and find out where you're at in the foreclosure process and find out how much time you have to at least try to get current on payments so that you can get out of the foreclosure process and have time to then sell. Okay. And that might mean you both put some skin in the game and go, all right, I'm gonna put in three grand a month and we're gonna get caught up on these payments.

Which means you need to get rid of all of the expenses in your life. Anything that isn't food, utility, shelter, transportation must go right now, including investing. Okay. Well, do you, well, I have these credit cards that have like high interest rates. Do you suggest taking a loan from the 401k?

No. And paying it off? No more debt. If it has the word loan in it, if it has the word consolidation or relief or settlement, run far away. Your income is the solution here. You. Which means you need more income.

You may need to get a second job, a third job for a short amount of time. You got to get these house payments current so that again to George's point you have time to sell this house. You don't want to go through foreclosure. Can he get a temporary roommate, a friend of his to live in the house too and pay rent to help get above water? I don't know that's what I mean. Like I said, we don't have communication. I would suggest that, that that's what he do. You're gonna need to start communicating. You guys entered quite the partnership here

to then just flee the coop. I get that you guys don't love each other and you don't like each other, but you need each other right now. And that really is awful. I get it. But you guys have got to partner up on this thing to get out of this deal.

You're on the hook for $465,000. Yeah, I know, I know. And this could wreck your financial life if you go through this foreclosure. This is where I wish we could get him on the phone. I think Ramsey Show needs to go to the next level and get this dude on the phone, and we mediate this deal, the two of us.

Oh my goodness, that could be a new show. That's the show that people need to see. I'm telling you, we could help. phone and we we mediate this deal. Oh my goodness. That would be a new show. That's the show that people need to see. I'm telling you, we could help. You guys need to be adults and sit down and figure this out. There's no more blame. I agree. There's no more blame here. There's no more you did this, you said this, this is we're idiots because we did this and we've got to figure this out. And then we learn and we lick our wounds and we move on from each other. But this is going to make this breakup 10X worse. Am I right, George?

Yeah. Play this out. Well, there's just, you're kind of stuck right now until you guys figure out the next move and there's sort of the ABC. The best option is to sell it for the most you can get for it, and then you're probably gonna lose money on this deal, I assume.

No one's walking away with cash at the end of this. Exactly, we accepted that. I'm afraid that this guy, he's just mailed it in at this point. He's given up, and he's just gonna let everything just burn down. Is he gainfully employed? As far as I know, yes.

How would she know? They don't talk. I think you need to have a come to Jesus meeting and say, I gotta know everything about what's going on in your life and you're gonna know everything that's going on in my life until this is all over. But we need to make a game plan. Yes, okay. I'm so sorry, Janelle. You can talk to a real estate attorney and dig into that, but that's going to cost you too. But I really hope this doesn't end in foreclosure. And you have an amazing income. Use that to your advantage to catch up and get out of this thing with as little damage

as possible. Our question of the day is brought to you by Why ReFi. If you have defaulted private student loans and nobody else is going to work with you, we want you to try Why ReFi. They're going to help you explore refinancing options with a low fixed rate and a payment plan based on your ability to pay. Go to WhyReFi.com slash Ramsey, that's the letter Y, R-E-F-Y dot com slash Ramsey. It may not be available in all states. Today's question comes from Stella in Maine. I'm on Baby Step 7 and want to stay there,

but I don't understand how to do it. I have future debt coming and I don't know how I can account for it in your plan. For example, I know I will need to buy a new car in the next three years. I also have home repairs that need addressing. How do I account for these upcoming expenditures? We need to bring back expenditures. What a great word. That's a great word and I just have to do this. Stella!

There we go. Thank you for that reference. I don't understand. Thank you. Yeah, I have future debt coming. She's in Baby Step 7 and it's low she's forgotten about Baby Step 3. Maybe we got, if there are some emergencies, I might be okay. But I'm in Baby Step 7, I should be able to save all the money necessary for that, George. I'm a little flummoxed. Agreed.

Speaking of words. Predeciding that you're going to have debt is a great way to go into debt. So I would just decide I'm not going to go into debt for any of this. Nobody needs to buy a brand new car in the next three years. You can buy a used car and you can pay cash. And the way to do all of this, the home repairs that need addressing, you know these are coming up.

So what you do is you set up a sinking fund for each of these. So a upgrade in car sinking fund, we're gonna put 500 bucks a month away in the budget, in the bank account so that we have six grand per year going toward this new car fund. Then for the home repairs, another 500 bucks because we know we have these upcoming repairs, try to calculate as best you can when it's going to happen and how much you're going to need, and then divide it out and set that amount aside in your bank account within your

every dollar budget in a sinking fund. So that's the solution. Neither of these are even emergencies. If she's in Baby Step 7, truthfully, that means she has no debt whatsoever, no mortgage, the house is paid for, and she has a fully funded emergency fund of three to six months of expenses.

So the question, I have future debt coming, is the wrong statement. How do you account for these? The sinking fund in the budget, you cash flow everything, and if you can't, that means you can't afford that car, or we can't afford to do that home repair with that person right now.

Do what needs to be done at the speed of cash, and that's the only way to do Baby Step 7, or any of the Baby Steps for that matter. Thank you for the question. Stella, all right, Jamie's up in Pizzicola, Florida. Jamie, how can we help? Hey, how y'all doing today? Good. How are you? I'm good. I had a question. Me and my wife is currently in baby step two. We have about $30,000 worth of credit card debt and I currently have a truck that is worth about $39,000, but I'm $10,000 upside down on it.

I didn't know if it would be wise to pause the baby steps and just try to pay the 10,000 negative off and get rid of the truck and then resume the baby steps. You have a thousand dollars right now. I well, funny story. So we had just started. I had a thousand dollars and then my truck broke and it was the auxiliary battery and the transmission cable. So that cost $1,100. So now I'm back to a baby step one. Ouch. Man. Yeah. That's real life. Well, I like that you're trying to get a baby step one. Ouch. Man. Yeah.

That's real life. Well, I like that you're trying to get rid of the truck. You said you're 10,000 underwater on it. So you owe 49? I owe 39 and then whenever I was Kelly Blue Booking it, it said that it's worth about 28 or so, like selling it. Is that a private party? By myself.

Yeah, yeah, that's a private party. Like the trade-in was like 22 or something. I was like, which you know, like I originally rolled like six. Oh, you rolled negative equity into it. Well, yeah, so I had a bad truck and I rolled 6,000 negative into it originally. And then I bought the truck new a couple years ago.

That explains it. Okay, I see where you're going now. So you're saying you want to do minimum payments on the credit cards to try to stack up another 10 grand to be able to sell the truck and clear the title. Right, so like when I calculated, so I'm able to work overtime and then my wife is a nurse, she can work overtime. But I was also sparking on the side to make extra money like that. What was that?

What were you doing on the side, sparking? Yes, sir, the Walmart delivery grocery service. Oh, okay. Ken and I aren't hip to all the lingo. Just learned what sparking was. I thought it had something to do with dancing but I didn't know. I let my line run wild there. Okay. So I've been doing that with five-thousand. So I should be able to pay the ten thousand off I was thinking three to four months. What is your next smallest balance? We have a couple cards that are like $1,000 and then like $1,500.

So I'm like, we do have some smaller cards, but I just didn't know if it would speed up the process. Because the Jeep cost a lot in gas too. So I mean, it's probably like $400 a month in gas plus like an $800 payment. Could you go down to your local credit union and get a $10,000 loan for the difference and then sell it I Tried that and then they and then they denied me and then I had I had some equity in the house I didn't know no like the pike. Yeah, you're not doing he like you know. I don't think I should be there

No, we're not gonna go The the idea with the credit union loan is to just lessen the debt, not just move it around. And so I don't want you to rob from your home equity in order to do this. So if they won't give you a loan to the credit union because of your credit? Yeah, yes sir.

Okay. That's a tough one. How quickly could you save up the 10 grand if you guys worked your butts off? Are we talking like two months? I'd say three to four months. Hmm. I mean, if we got after it three months.

What's your household income? We make about $130,000 a year combined, like me and my wife. Amazing. Okay. And you want to get rid of the truck? Oh, yeah, sir. I mean, I've been wanting to get rid of it. I've just felt stuck in it though, because of all the negatives, you know? Yeah. Well, the damage is done. You already have the negative equity, so I don't know that it's going to do that much for you to delay making payments on the credit card to save up the ten grand. I'm wondering if you guys just bust through all of this. Okay. How quickly could you pay off the 30 grand in credit card debt? I mean... Six months? I was trying to... Yeah I mean

possibly. I mean like well we're in we're in the second month of our budget so I'm like we're still trying to get the kinks worked out. But I mean, we typically only have like 900 a month left over. But that's, you know, like that's without me counting, you know, like delivering groceries on the side. And then my wife hadn't worked much overtime lately. Yeah. What's the payment on that truck? He was pregnant. 800 a month. Dang. And what's all your credit card minimum payments combined? It was a lot like a thousand or maybe a little more maybe like 1200. What do you do for a living? So I do, so I work out at Navy Federal on the grounds facility like doing all the landscaping and stuff.

And then my wife's a nurse. Okay. The reason I'm asking that is I don't... I just learned what sparking was, and obviously I was confused about what it might be. I just don't know if that's the best use of your time. You know, I don't know what you're making. I used to cut grass on the side and all that stuff, but then I ended up getting rid of my equipment. Well, so that kind of took that out of the picture.

Well, but you keep coming up with all these reasons, limitations, I just hear it in your voice. You don't have to go buy equipment to do this, but where can you pick up some extra hours doing landscaping for somebody? Because they can't get somebody else to show up, but you go, I can, I'm your huckleberry, I work. Yeah, I mean, I could.

Let's go. Yeah, I mean, I could probably do like a flower beds and stuff like that, you know, I can. I'm your Huckleberry, I work. Let's go. Yeah, I mean, I could probably do like a flower bed and stuff like that, you know, like that didn't involve life. My point is, what can you do to make more money for your time than driving groceries? George, you've done this. It's not a lot of margin. I did it in December.

I was doing Instacart shopping. I wanted to see what it was like. But there's not a lot of margin in this for your time. No. What are people making on average per hour? I was really hustling trying to take advantage of all the little bonuses and it turned out to be about 20 to 25 an hour. Okay, well that's better than I thought. That's if you're really going after it. Oh, okay. But the average person's probably not making that much. More like 15 to 20. So not terrible. All right. But it's a lot of, you know, you're wear and tear. Is Instacart the same thing as Sparky?

It's similar. I think Walmart, that's their version of it. I gotta give them credit. I feel like it's a really fun name, you know? Instead of I'm delivering groceries, I'm Sparky. I think it's a conversational starter. You can pause and save up and clear the equity, but you're gonna do the same thing if you clear the credit card debt and free up all those payments anyways. So it's up to you, man. This is the Ramsey Show where America hangs out to have a conversation about their money, their profession, and their relationships. Triple 8, 825-5225 is the phone number. Triple

8, 825-5225. George Campbell is alongside, I'm Ken Coleman, and we're gonna talk to Jonathan right out of the gate here. Jonathan, how can we help today? Should I get a credit card? I've never had one. Wow, where's this coming from? Well, I like that it gets right to the point.

No setup. That was amazing. Boom, here's my question. Should I get a credit card? George, what say you? Must be fun at parties. Yeah. Personal opinion, no.

The fact that you called this show to ask us that tells me you knew we were gonna say that. Are we on TikTok right now, Jonathan? Oh, that's very funny. I did know you were gonna say that, but I was hoping to provide context. Okay. To get some insight.

Give me some context. Okay, I'm 29. Still no, but go ahead. Okay. Well, my question is how have you lived this long without a credit score? So I moved out into some friend's house after I came to Christ and that was it. They just took my money and that was it

and then moved on to the next apartment with roommates, same thing. So what is the impetus for you now needing a credit card or a credit score? So I lost my job September 11th last year. I then started a business and between January, February to now, I've raised about $20,000 and it's going further.

And... What do you mean raised? So I sell services. I'm a mechanic for specialty coffee equipment. So I've accrued that much in my business. That's what I mean by raise. Oh, like you've created a revenue. It's not like investors.

Oh, right, right, right. I'm sorry. Yeah, that makes've created a revenue. It's not like investors. Oh, right, right, right. I'm sorry. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Got it. Okay. All right. So you've got this coffee machine business going.

You've made 20 grand so far. That's great. And where does the credit come in? So I want to get a car and I'm also alone. Like I don't have any family to rely on for anything. And friends who own businesses and what have you are telling me to get a credit card should I want an apartment, a house, a car. What do you mean rely on?

What are you needing other people for at this point? Just like support in some sense. Like there's no reference. There is no- Like community or money? I would say- There's a difference if you're like, hey, I want some friends versus I need a loan

from mom and dad. Right, that's what I don't have. Like there's no one coming to help me. Well, you don't need any help. You're 29 years old. You're a grown man. That's fair. You've got Jonathan. You've done pretty well to this point, sounds like to me.

You're not calling us from underneath a bridge. Right. Right. So your car situation, you're really asking, hey, I need a car and I need to get a loan to get a car, therefore I need credit? Yeah. And people have also just been telling me to, you know, do the debt system to build credit

and I won't get far in life without it. Have you met people? People are idiots. People are broke up to their eyeballs complaining, hoping the government's going to come save the day. You're not hanging around with the right people because these people don't have a lot of knowledge. Let's just play this out one thing at a time. Can we just destroy these myths that these people you keep referencing are giving you?

If you need to get a car, you do realize you can pay cash for a car. You can buy it from somebody off of Facebook or Craigslist or wherever. Which means you're not buying a $30,000 brand new car. You're buying a 2014 whatever. By the way, a dealer will take a cashier's check as well, and that's cash. So you have cash in the bank, you go to your banker and you go, hey, I'm getting ready to buy a $20,000 car. I need a cashier's check for $20,000.

They're not going to ask you for credit. So we don't need credit score. George bought a house without a credit score. George, you need to blow his mind with this one. And I'm going to, Jonathan, when we're done here, I'll send you a copy of my book, Breaking Free from Broke. I break down every objection and how to do all of these things. How to live without a credit score. How to rent an apartment. What chapter is that? Chapter two.

Chapter two. Out of the gate. I had to leave with this. Jonathan, you can skip ahead to chapter two, okay? You can get, I'll send you the audiobook if you don't even want to read it. It's fine. The point is, the information is there on how to do all of this stuff. The question is, are you willing to commit to a life of debt freedom? That's the most important part.

Oh, sure, yeah. I owe no debt in its most technical form. I owe a college, not a loan, but a semester when I dropped out. Other than that, I have no debt. I've never had a credit card. Okay. Well, you're not gonna need one now.

Keep not having one. How much do you have in savings? Yeah, you'll need one. What was that one. How much do you have in savings? Yeah, you'll need one. What was that question? How much do you have in savings? Savings personally is laughable, but my company has all my liquidity, which is about 20 grand.

Isn't your company you? I'm sorry? Yeah, but I'm not a sole proprietor. I separated it, I'm an escort. Okay, so the money is tied up in the business and you can't access it? It's not your money? I pay myself a salary.

I tie a certain percentage. I save a certain percentage. I opened a Vanguard IRA. Okay. And then the rent and stuff like that. Well, you can pay yourself dividends. So he can get a whole lot of cash. So how much do you have in savings right now?

Personally? Yes. Personally is about $700. Okay. And what are you making every month? Every month I make, so every four weeks if that would be, 750 a week times four weeks, about 3000. So you're making 36,000 gross for the year

if this continues. Yeah, that 39, technically, yeah. And how do you increase your income with this business? I've only been doing it a few months, so I guess I would have to make more, like as the business grows and I get more services, I can then, I guess, give myself a raise. Yeah. But you don't need a car, does it seem like to me, anytime soon? Yes and no. Living in the city, you can get by without it,

but sometimes it does help to have. Yeah, but my friend, I get up to New York all the time, and I'm telling you- It feels like a nightmare to own a car in New York City. Yeah, if I lived there, I would not own a car. I mean, you can get anywhere you need to get to. And so, let's put that on the back burner right now. You're gonna pay a thousand bucks a month for a parking spot if you're lucky.

And it's never convenient to get in your own car in New York City, let's be honest. There's no chance. Yeah. It's a nightmare. Yeah. All right, so we don't need a house right now, but that's on the list. But again, George's book will tell you how to do that, but he did it.

Many people do it, you can do it. So- What's your rent right now? If you're living in the city. 1000, five zero, 1000, 50. Okay, is that on your own? No, that's with other people. That's smart, that's smart.

Good, I was just making sure your rent wasn't like three grand a month, which is all of the money you're making I think the key here is to get your income up because right now you don't have margin to do much of anything You got seven hundred you got seven hundred bucks to your name Right and I don't think there's a lot of extra money every single month that you can throw toward Savings for a car or savings for a business goal. And so that's where the real question becomes, how do we get this business income up and how do you do this all debt free

to just expand and grow this thing? How many hours a week are you putting into this, fixing these coffee machines? Between admin and I don't really count up the hours because I'm a solo operation. I just generally just work every day except for like Sunday. Okay, just tell me really quick, how much when you're physically turning the wrench and fixing the machine, because I'm a solo operation. I just generally just work every day except for like Sunday. Okay, just tell me really quick,

how much when you're physically turning the wrench and fixing the machine, how many hours? Ooh, maybe 10 at this moment. Exactly. Maybe 10, 15. Exactly. The rest is admin stuff? Yeah, so my point is, is the first thing you can do

is to start beating the street here and let's find some people who need their machines fixed. Let's add five, 10 more clients. And get some recurring clients. You have more time on your hands. And so let's go. Get after it. Well yeah, I'm doing the treadmill thing, right?

So it's not exactly, you know. You get my point. You need more money. You don't need more credit. Hang on the line. That's the deal. We'll send you a copy of Breaking Free from Broke and Dave's book, Build a Business You Love. There we go. All right. Let's go to Joseph who is in Knoxville, Tennessee. Joseph, how can we help?

Yes. I have got a nephew that had agreed to take care of his parents when they retired, and he's not honoring that obligation, and he's asking other family members to chip in. And of course, we're all older and retired and on fixed incomes, and it's just becoming difficult for us to help. How do we get him to honor his obligation? Well, what does take care of mean? It sounds financial. Is it more than that? Give us a little bit clearer picture as to what you're describing when you said he committed to take

care of them. What does that mean? That means he obligated himself to help them financially with expenses over their current income. And he was honoring that for a while, but now he's got himself in so much debt that he cannot honor that. Why does his parents, why do his parents have more expenses than their income they were in a situation where they had a daughter who had a separate from mental illness and through her mental illness she passed and ended up passing away

and when she was alive she had an income which was a social security disability, that covered most of their other expenses. But now that she's passed, that amount of money has fallen to my nephew, who agreed to cover that. How much is that amount? That's around $1,200 a month.

And he covered it for how long, he said? He covered it for about a year and a half. And now he's in deep trouble, and he's calling everybody, going, I'm in trouble. I need some help. Correct. Well, you know you can call us. We're kind of pointing out to him

that because other family members are chipping in to pay for property taxes or HOH fees and HOH fees and that sort of thing. His parents are kind of going, we need help, and they're calling everybody else because he's not doing it. Because he's not doing it, correct. How old are the parents? The parents are in their mid-70s. Okay, and how old is Nephew?

Nephew's in his early 40s and he's got a job in healthcare that he's been doing for fifteen years. He makes a good income. I don't know exactly what he makes, but I Googled what his position is and Google told me what the average person in his position should make, and he should have plenty of money if he was managing it properly.

Everyone in America should have plenty of money if we manage it correctly. So I feel like there is some truth in that he said he would do this, and now he's unable to, right? I also think it's unfair to put this on this guy for the rest of his life to cover his parents inability to cover their own future. And are they invalids? Are they just unable to make good decisions for themselves?

No, they're not. They're not able to make good decisions? No, no, no, they're not invalids. Okay, here's my point. I apologize. That's the ask is confusing. Let me rephrase. My mom and dad are mid-70s right now, and they have, they're retired, but they have income based on their retirement, Social Security and everything else. then that's on them. It's not on me and my brother to handle that and deal with that. Now, would I sit down with them and lay out all their options? Cause I think that's what has to happen.

That's where I'm at, George. What has to happen is you and all these other family members who are chipping in to bail them out need to stop chipping in and we need to have a gathering in the living room and we're gonna talk it out because your son can't deal with it and you guys have a problem and we all have fixed incomes we can't keep doing this but what we can do is sit down and get a whiteboard out or a legal pad out George and start laying

everything out and see what they have, what they can sell, what the changes they need to make. They're not invalids, they're not 90. They have some options. And I think that's the conversation. None of you in the family are obligated to keep doing this. And there's no legal obligation or moral obligation for any of you to cover their expenses.

Nor is it your job to tell the nephew to shape up, you know what I mean, and scold a 40-year-old grown man. It's not your job. Correct, I mean, yeah. So therefore, George and I don't have any advice on that because we wouldn't do that. So if we were in your shoes, what I would do is call a family meeting and go,

listen guys, we all might have to chip in something. What can you chip in, if anything, in order to float this for now? And what expenses can we cut? How can we get more income in their life? And that might mean parents have to go do some part-time work. Yeah. Yeah. Are they healthy? They are, and the father does have a part-time job, so, you know, that's... What's he do? But yeah, he's a tutor. Okay. So he's healthy enough to tutor, he's healthy enough to go to Walmart and stand there and

greet everybody and put one of those little blue vests on and smile. You know, I could come up with ten other things that he can do to come up with 40 hours a week. So based on George's scenario there, we'd be going, okay, now what can we make? And then if she's healthy enough to do something, guess what? They can work the same shift. She's on the grocery side of Walmart

and he's on the general side. I mean, we gotta do something and we just don't sit there and we're the victims and I understand they had a hard journey and losing a child under any circumstances is just awful. And the mental health stuff, I'm sure they're mentally and emotionally exhausted. And it sounds like Nephew had dealt with this trauma too.

Nephew's got it, but at this point, you all need to come around them and give them that hug that George is describing, but at this point, you all need to come around them and give them that hug that George is describing, but it's an accountable hug. You guys are going to be okay. We're going to walk with you on this, but we're not going to continue to fund this. That stops. You guys are actually enabling them out of a spirit of helpfulness.

Right. You're definitely right about that. Are they paying a mortgage right now? Is their home paid off, the parents? No, it is not. They do pay a mortgage. Okay, so here's a solution. We need to downsize into a place you can pay for in cash. Because that mortgage, they can't afford it. Well, actually, the mortgage was given to them through another family member. How is that a gift? I don't understand. They can sell the house though.

It's their house, right? Yeah, but they're paying the other family member back the mortgage. And it's a small amount. So their name is not on the mortgage? Not that I'm aware of. Are they renting then? I'm confused. Is their name on the deed? Not that I'm aware of. Oh my goodness. What's your relationship to this family you're telling us about? What's your relationship to them? I'm a brother-in-law. Aha. It's my wife's brother and his wife are the parents that we're talking about that are

in financial straits that their son is trying to help them. This sounds like a- Why are they paying property taxes on a house they don't even own? Yeah. There's a lot more questions here. I think this is a dysfunctional Walton's show. You remember the Walton's, Joseph? I remember the Walton's.

We got Jim Bob and everybody's in the same, it's all too connected and family members giving them a house and then they're paying, it's just, doesn't it seem? Yeah. Like we got too many people trying to help and it's caused a real dysfunction. And you see it, because you're not directly related, God bless you, you married into it,

but there is so much enabling going on here and it's all weird. It needs to be untangled. Yeah, the parent's life has been artificially propped up for a long time and it's time weird. It needs to be untangled. Yeah, the parent's life has been artificially propped up for a long time, and it's time to untether, start to look at all the pieces and go, how can we make this sustainable for everyone and create healthy boundaries so that nobody's resentful

and the parents can stand on their own? Even if that means downgrading their lifestyle substantially, that's what might need to happen to have a reality check. So I'm sorry you're now involved with this because it involves your wallet, but you might have to happen to have a reality check. So I'm sorry you're now involved with this because it involves your wallet, but you might have to help assemble the family meeting. Get everyone on a call or in person. Go, we got to figure this out. This is not working for anyone.

Yeah, I would say that your wife and any other siblings need to lead with this. You've already got too much this on you, you know. Time for Jim Bob and John Boyd to all live on their own. All right, we got Derek and Savannah joining us from the Columbus, Ohio area out on the debt free stage. Welcome. Thank you. How are we feeling out there right now? A little nervous. Of course. a little nervous of course she's not nervous she's not nervous well you look happy yes and that tells me you guys are debt free is that right yes all right let's get the facts how much debt did you pay off four hundred and twenty two thousand whoa and how long 72 months whoa this is a journey yes does this include the house yes does was it does. Oh, was it all mortgage?

Yep. Oh, this all was mortgage. Oh my goodness. Goodness gracious. That is weird and we love it. We love that. So what was the range of income there? There you go.

So we started out at 110, and then we bumped it to a little over 200. OK, I always love to ask, how the bump happened or what did happen? Well, we're grocery department leaders. So during COVID, we just worked a ton of overtime. And then I also had a side hustle with boarding dogs. No kid. Wow. And has that kept up? Oh, yes. Okay. That's awesome.

Now what does that mean? The way you said that? That means Christmastime, we have eight dogs and three kids and we're just going. You just like to be busy, don't you? Yes. You don't know what peace and serenity feels like other than financial peace that we now know. Okay, gotcha. Wow, so what happened 72 months ago

for you guys to look each other and go, all right, we're gonna pay our house off? Well, in 2019, we actually separated. We were going through a really rough patch in our life and our marriage. So we separated and through all that, we came back together and we realized just how much we love each other.

And we were able to go through a lot of counseling and work on a lot of things. And we decided that we're gonna go through this. Build a new life. Yep, go through this life together and we're gonna work really, really hard together and build a good marriage and build a good life. And one of the ways we decided that we're gonna go through this life together and we're gonna work really really hard together and build a good marriage and build a good life and one of the ways we decided to do that was we wanted to not owe anybody any money. Whoa, so this was much bigger than just paying off the house.

This was a symbol of a new chapter of unity. How long were you guys separated for? Probably six months or so. You know, you probably didn't plan to talk about that, but I just feel a sense right now that I need to just lean in on something. I know you can handle it. But I just feel like there's some people watching and listening that are either separated or thinking about it, and I just want them to hear some hope. And here's my question. In the six months, and you both can weigh in on this, what had to happen in you guys and between you guys

to actually say, we're not gonna quit, we're gonna dive back in? I'm just curious. I think just realizing what life truly is. If you're, I mean, I was not financially secure on my own and then you have these kids, it's terrifying. And then you left your person that you truly love. It's just all weighed in on my part.

No, absolutely. And just thinking about the life that we could have together if we actually got on board with the same thing. We got married really, really young. We were both high school sweethearts. So we had kids really young. We thought we knew what we were doing. We had no idea.

No idea what we were doing. By the way, nobody does. No. Nobody does. So we decided to have kids really young, we thought we knew what we were doing, we had no idea. By the way, nobody does. So we decided to have kids really young and then just being able to look back at our life and be able to make the decisions that, I mean, we both loved each other very, very much. Yeah, I'm so glad. I'm so glad you fought. That's really great. So what role did money fights and money problems play

in all of this where this was, was this like the beacon of like, if we're going to get on back on board, we're going to pay off the house and it's going to be this new chapter financially. Not really. It was just a by-product of it. Like we got on board with so many other things.

And then we decided that we wanted to lay a foundation for how our life was gonna be going. It's part of the marriage reset. It was like, all right, part of our money stuff. We're gonna get this mortgage knocked out. Yep, absolutely. Wow. And you stuck with it.

Six years is a long time to do anything. Yeah. When you have three kids, it's like, you gotta figure this out and give them a straight path. Yeah. Was it pretty linear? We're just gonna make this extra payment every month? Or there's was there seasons? No we just we just like Dave says we just try to live intentionally and being able to live

intentionally we've been able to do just amazing things with our kids we've been able to travel everywhere and make a bunch of good memories and we just decided like when we reset our marriage we decided we're gonna decide what was important for us and the life that we wanted to live and we both decided to focus more on like experiences and the best way to do that was to be able to not owe anybody any money. So how much so what George was asking there is this was this an X amount of money you put towards it every month over the 72 months or were there times where you guys you had a big influx maybe and you put, you know, how extreme was it

over the 72 months to pay off a $422,000 house? Condo. Yeah, no, no, it wasn't that extreme. It was just honestly just living intentionally. Consistent. Yeah, just whatever money. So you still lived your life. Yeah, absolutely.

You still went places and had some great experiences. We've been able to do amazing things with our kids and build memories that they'll be able to tell their kids about. We're truly trying to change our family tree. Yeah, wow. So if I'm seeing this right, it's about 60,000 a year you averaged roughly to put this away.

And what was it like knowing your story now when you guys made the last payment on the house? Take us back to that. Yeah, I remember I was sitting there just at the gym or something, I remember looking around, I was like, wait, I don't owe anybody any money. I was like, it's just a completely,

completely surreal feeling. And that's an unreal feeling for me when I lost my child home when I was younger. We never had, we were never financially secure. So knowing that and like, wow, this is my house and this is for my kids, it's breathtaking. And we're seeing a picture here on YouTube and I just knowing what I know,

I'm coming up on 27 years of marriage on Friday and I just know having moved several times, you know, a house is a true nest for a woman, isn't it? Yes, yes. And now this is really your nest. There's no bank name on this nest. Nope. That's kind of awesome.

How old are the kids? We have a 11 year old, a 10 year old, and then a three year old. Oh wow. Yep. Oh yeah. There they are. Good looking crew there.

That's incredible. So this home now represents a new future, a family tree change, safety, security that you never had growing up. What's next for you guys? We have a lot of travel plan and we're gonna keep building on making a bunch of good memories with our kids.

And it's just very important for us to change our family trees, set them up for their kids and so forth. Do the older kids understand what went down? Like are they in the know? Yeah, yeah, I mean. Ish. Yeah, a little bit.

I mean, we've talked about the problems that we've had in the past. We try to be open about it so they can learn from it. Yeah, yeah, we let them know our journey and we're trying to set the whole budget with the kids because they're kind of learning. So they make their own money. They have allowances every week.

They actually help with the dog business. So they buy their own things. They have allowances every week. They actually help with the dog business. So they buy their own things and. They know money comes from work. And they see, they have seen mom and dad work really hard. That's for sure. All right, I want you to encourage couples out there that are listening or watching. What is in your mind, the key to staying with this journey?

Communication and then just. I'd say just building a future that motivates you and you wanna, like once you start building momentum and you start seeing a future that, and you make progress towards it, it keeps you working hard, that's for sure. Yeah, yeah. Wow, I just love that story, George.

It's so fantastic. Who was your biggest supporters on the journey? He was mine. Yeah, I know. You guys are like a hallmark card. Honestly, we were just, we didn't tell too many people about it. We just relied on each other.

And then, like I said, we had a future that we were both working towards. Just low key. What's the house worth? About a little over 700. Wow. And what's in the nest egg and retirement accounts? 750.

We're looking at Baby Steps Millionaires. Baby Steps Millionaires right there. How old are you, if you don't mind me asking? I'm 32. I'm 34. This is mind blowing. Hey listen, that's exciting. We're talking about crazy wealth

that they're gonna be building. Really crazy wealth with the kiddos, so. I love it. Wow, really good stuff. All right, you guys ready to go? Are the kiddos watching or listening somewhere? Don't be watching. Yeah, they told me I have to be cool.

Yeah, we have to be cool on the YouTube. Be cool. All right. Don't be cringe, mom. I get it. All right, we got Derek and Savannah from the Columbus, Ohio area. They paid off $422,000.

It was their house in 72 months, making a range of income from 110 to 200,000. They are truly changing their family tree. What was once a separation is now an awesome, beautiful marriage, and we got to see it. Derek and Savannah, take it away. Let's hear your debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free!

Yes, they are. And they were cool, too. The kids won't be cringed over that at all. There's nothing like that. Three, two, one, we're Dent-Free! Yes, they are. And they were cool too. The kids won't be cringed over that at all. There's nothing cringe about Dent-Freedom. And young, younger than you, George.

That is incredible, I know. I feel like I gotta step up my game. Yeah, well, a couple new bomber jackets will do it. That'll do it. That'll do it. All right George, you know it's that time of year where kids are graduating high school and college and with that time of year it's kind of a mixed bag of emotions. The celebration and the excitement moving on to a new chapter but all of a sudden massive reality for the young people. The celebration and the excitement, moving on to a new chapter, but all of a sudden massive reality for the young people.

The existential crisis. That's right. For high school kids, it's like, I'm going to college. What major do I pick? Where's that going to put me in the real world when I need a job? Then we got college kids coming out with a lot of debt, many of them, and they're going, I've been here for four years. Now I got to get out in the real world, what do I do with my life? And the answer is, find the work you're wired to do. And so we have a book called

The Get Clear Career Assessment, Find the Work You're Wired to Do. It's a best seller, comes with an assessment that measures three specific wires, if you will, George. The wire of talent, that's what you do best, think of skills. The wire of passion, that's what you do best. Think of skills. The wire of passion, this is work you really enjoy doing. You lose track of time when you're doing it. And then the third wire is a sense of value and mission. In other words, what results do I want to put out into the world? And so we measure those three wires and we put it together

with all the details and someone can see, oh, this is the work I'm wired to do. So that's a quick summary of what the assessment does, and then the book itself is me coaching the results with that individual. So you get your assessment results and it's about a 45-minute reading. This is the book, just came out this week, Find the Work You're Wired to Do, Student Edition, comes with the student assessment, It's $34.99. This is a great gift for the student who's graduating in your life or certainly any student, but people are thinking graduation gifts and this is a fabulous, fabulous resource. You can get it at ramsysolutions.com slash store. That's

ramsysolutions.com slash store. All right, Rebecca is up in Atlanta, Georgia. Rebecca, how can we help? store. All right, Rebecca is up in Atlanta, Georgia. Rebecca, how can we help? Hi. Thank you so much for taking my call. Well, my situation right now is my husband and I were closed on a house back in 2023. I got laid off the same week we closed, unexpectedly, and we've been underwater ever since. I'm trying to, I guess I needed advice on what would be the best route for us to take. What were you making? I was making around 80 and my husband currently makes 75. Okay. Are you able to cover your basic bills with his income right now?

Barely. We cannot afford our mortgage. Are you able to cover your basic bills with his income right now? Barely. We cannot afford our mortgage. Yeah, we can't afford our mortgage at all. Are you behind? Yes. How many months? A year. We run forbearance. We just resumed payments last month. Oh my goodness. Yeah. What's the plan with the mortgage company?

What's the latest communication with them? So the latest communication is they reduced our loan by like $500 and we currently pay 3,300 a month. And we're currently on a trial right now. So we have to pay April, May, and June. And then whatever we didn't pay for the past year, they're going to put on the back of our loan and extend our loan. Why haven't you guys moved out and sold the place? Honestly, I wanted to do that since last year.

My husband, he doesn't want to. He's very fearful of it. He doesn't have a choice. They're going to take it away from you. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. There's no wants right now. What's the reality of our situation?

And then what's been going on with your job and income for the last year? I've been, I just had a baby a couple of months ago so I've been home with, we have three kids so I stay home with them and I have been looking for work. I've done some jobs here and there, but right now everything is on him. What does he do and how much does he make again? Sure, he works in sales and he earns $75,000. Is he straight commission? No, no, he's salary. What's he selling?

He sells cars. Okay, might I make a suggestion that he start looking? I mean, you guys got a lot going on here. So this is like, I don't want to give you too many things, but if I'm him and I realized that the skill of selling has no limit to it, it's just he's got to find the right thing to sell. And if I were him, I would be treating this like his life depended on it. And I would find a better sales job. And let's get a raise because if we can get him up over 100,000 with a lack of a ceiling, you know, and he can keep going. You guys need that momentum. I still think you need to sell this house. I think he needs to swallow whatever pride he has on this deal or whatever's going on and let's reset. Okay? You got a baby. Let's

reduce our expenses and introduce some peace and serenity into your family. And while he's rebuilding, in other words, a sales career where he can do very, very well. He's got to happen to this situation and he's letting it happen to him. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I mean, I, I mentioned to him about selling the house, we've had family, you know, wellness money, but I feel like we're just kicking the can down the road. Like we're getting by, but it's not relieving our situation. Like we, we are at a negative each month. but it's not relieving our situation. We are at a negative each month.

Yeah, this isn't sustainable and it hasn't been. This really is an income issue. I mean, there's other issues, but the solve on this is sell the house, but then let's make sure we get our income to a much better place and now start operating within that. Yes. I mean, I don't know what needs to be said to him. I wish I could get him on the phone. I think it's going to have to take a foreclosure for him to realize this is serious and I don't want it to get to that point.

Yeah. That's going to be traumatic emotionally and financially if you guys go through that. So you need to start looking at options of where you can live, you know, where you can actually afford it. How much do you owe on the house total? We owe 470. What's it worth? Right now it's worth 650.

And do you guys have any debt? Right now we don't have any credit cards. I have some credit card debt, but he doesn't have any. Okay, how much? How much do you have? I have around $12,000 in credit card debt. What other debt do you have as a family? As a family, we have a car note of $400 a month.

What's left on the loan? On the car? Yeah. We just got it. You just got it? You're telling me in the midst of this crisis, you decided to take out a car loan. We needed a car, the car that I had just-

What did the car cost? It was a $30,000 car. You will not convince me that you needed a $30,000 car. Yeah, you didn't. You may have needed a $5,000 or $7,000 or $10,000 car. You know, you called us and we're not trying to beat up on you at all, but we've heard this call thousands of times, just had a different name and a different location.

But the answer to your question, what should we do? You should sell this house. And you should both get very serious about resetting the way you guys treat your finances. Because this problem will stay with you even if you were to sell the house. So selling the house isn't this parachute, but it is the thing that needs to happen so you guys can actually get a reset. Because you can pay off all your credit card debt

plus the car and be able to start over. Right, right. It's gotta happen. Yeah. Here's what I'm trying to get at. George and I can tell you this and tell you this and tell you this and tell you what you need to do. But until you all realize that you are not victims in this,

because I think you're both acting and feeling like you're victims of your own stupidity, and we've all done stupid with money, okay, all of us. George and I included, so this is not like some sort of, I'm not casting shame here, I'm saying, at some point we all have to go, yes I did stupid, Dave Ramsey himself has said he has a PhD in DUMB. So we've done it, but we didn't sit there and soak in it. We said, oh gosh, that sucks. I don't like where we're at right now, so

we are going to do more things that suck, which means we have to sell our house and that's really going to suck. But we are going to be able to get out of it. George, I want to give you the final word here. Well, Rebecca, I'm gonna gift you guys a financial coaching session with a Ramsey-trained financial coach to walk with you through this. I need you and your husband to join the call.

Will you commit to that? Yes, absolutely, 100%. Okay, I think if we sit down together, make a plan, make a budget, we're gonna get the reality of this and then get a game plan to move forward and keep this house if we're lucky, but likely selling it in the next few months. Okay, alright, sounds good.

This is The Ramsey Show where America hangs out and talk about their money, their profession, and their relationships. 888-255-225, alongside George Campbell, I'm Ken Coleman. Let's go to Jake, who's joining us in Baltimore, Maryland. Jake, how can we help today? Yes, hi, I'm calling to talk to you about whether and under what circumstances I should lend my son money for grad school.

He graduated college, he, you know, he graduated, um, college, uh, worked, and now he's getting ready to, to go back to, to grad school. And he knows for a period of time he will be, you know, he'll be doing that full time. And the cost for the school plus living expenses is going to be about $80,000. And I'm in a position where I think I can lend it to him. So I would look at doing that. How are you lending it from your savings account? Well, I mean, I actually have about that much

in a checking account. Like it's liquid. What was that money for? Well, it hasn't been there that long. Recently sold a house, you know, that had been in our family. And then, you know, those were the proceeds from it. And then after taxes, you know,

put the money in a checking account so that I you know, kept with the money to check an account so that I could make sure that all the taxes and everything were taken care of and now that's where it currently is. What's he going to grad school for? He is going to grad school for a degree in accounting. His undergrad is in finance. He doesn't have student loan, well he actually does have $6,000 in student loan debt from the undergrad, but that's all he has. And then you know he's been working and he's been paying off his

student loan. How long have you had that almost 80,000 from the family home proceeds? How long have you had that in the bank? Like less than a year. Did you ever have any other designs on what you might do with that money? I was thinking, I mean no specific designs, but yeah, no. But was thinking what? You're about ready to say something something you've been editing that answer I've done this too long. I know when somebody goes That you're actually processing thoughts. So I was like

one of my dreams and thoughts was to like eventually sell the house that I'm currently living in and And get a beach house. So I was sort of like thinking like okay that could be a down payment on that. Okay. All right. You know, along with other funds. Why is he choosing such an expensive Masters in Accounting program? Well, it's the program itself is, it's a one year program, it's about 20 some thousand,

but he's gonna be living in an expensive area. So the 80,000, he'll finish it in like a year. So he wants $60,000 to live where he wants to live, essentially. Right, well, I mean, it's not as cut and dried as that. There are more elements. But do you see what I'm saying? Where does he live now? He lives in, he's lived in Baltimore. He's going to be moving to Boston. Why?

With his, well, he and his partner are gonna be, she's gonna be in medical school. In Boston. So he's following suit. So they're a couple. Oh, well now we have a whole different, now this thing is layered. So he wants dad to help out, make his life really.

I offered, like he, I mean, like I offered to help him out. Like it's not just like he came up to me and said, hey, you know, hey, you see. I'll cut to the chase. I'll tell you this. I would never lend my family any money. I would gift it. But if you're going to do that,

I would say, here's what we're gonna do. I will cover your master's in accounting, but it's going to be an online program. It's going to be an in-state tuition. I'm not gonna cover your cost of living, but I will cover the program and you're not gonna go into debt. I agree, I'm with George.

I would not loan him 80,000 and I would not give him 80,000 in this situation. And I'm with George, I think you come up with a number of what you would give towards this. And I just would not do this. This is a different deal. First of all, he doesn't have to go do this right now. And he's got a degree in finance.

He could get out and get a good paying job in Boston. Here, I'm gonna do my fancy pencil like it's a magic wand. This is what I would do. I'd say, all right, why don't you go to Boston and get yourself a good job with that finance degree. And then you can play house with your old friend while she's doing her thing and you guys can live it up in Boston and learn how hard it is to stink and make a living. And let's, you know, you graduated college, now let's go adult. And you go use that finance degree and get yourself a job in Boston. And then

here's another idea, Sparky. You save up enough money and you can pay for your own master's degree. And I, on the other hand, I'm gonna keep piling money away from my beach house because I raised you and I paid for everything. And then you can come see me and mom at the beach. Now that's what I would do. I like this plan. That's probably a little too harsh for some of you

and that's okay. But I'm okay with George's idea too of you going alright I'll tell you what I'll put 10 to 12 thousand towards it or whatever but he's already made up his mind to go to Boston and I think your heart's really big and I get it I'm a dad I just that's my two cents on this one I would not. Jake do you think this is a good idea regardless of who's paying for it? Yeah, I actually do think it's a good idea. For him to spend the 60 grand on cost of living and 20 grand on the program? Well, I mean, he's been like, you know, he's been living on his own for several years.

It wasn't like he just, you know, he's put a lot of thought into this, and he's also simultaneously worked and gotten the prerequisites that enabled him to get into this program. Did you have any pause about this at all? Because you called us and asked us what we thought about this, so it makes me think you had pause, but the way you're answering it now, it's like you wanted us to validate what your heart's been telling you. Actually, I mean, I thought that I might get this answer because before I called in,

I went online and looked at sort of this category of what you were saying. We have a catalog out there. Like it was always, no, I don't know why I thought that the answer for me in this specific situation might be other than that, but you know, that's what I did. I mean, it's your money. You can do what you want.

It sounds like you've decided. If you're going to do it regardless of what we say, I would just gift it and not expect to dime back. There you go, I agree with that. Cause it's gonna cause resentment. He's not gonna wanna call you. Cause he knows in the back of his mind, crap, I owe dad 80 grand.

If he sees that I just went on a vacation, he's gonna be like, dude, where's my money? You owe me this money. So if you want to gift it and go, hey, early inheritance, have a blast in Boston, son. There's nothing wrong with that. I agree. You will resent him, Pops,

if he doesn't pay it back in time, because this is your potential beach house money that you're loaning to him. George is 100% right. If you're going to do this, cut ties with the money and say, I'm the greatest dad in the world. Go. That's the only way. Okay.

Yeah. But just know you're funding a lifestyle. You're not really helping his career. And I'm fighting for you, bro, to get you that beach house. We're on Jake's team. I'm on team Jake and Jake's like, ah, I want that beach house for him. Oh boy. As a guy from Boston, I'm like, I'm scared for this situation. Both of them are in school. Nobody's working.

We're all just living off of dad's money. It's a lot of chatter. A lot of chatter. I could go for some of that. Carol is joining us now in the city of brotherly love. That's Philadelphia, George. Oh, thank you. Carol, how can we help? Thanks for taking my call. Sure.

So I have an investment question. Background is, I'm 67, my husband's 70. I'm working, he's retired. We have a net income of $6,800 with no debt, no mortgage, no car payment. Awesome. Yeah. And with those numbers, to be honest, we're living our best life. We honestly are. So we have a TSP account. That's my husband was a mailman and that's like a government 401k. Then we have another one. It's with Ameriprise. It's for $85,000.

Over the last 10, uh, over the last two years, we made $10,000. However, we put 8 eight thousand into it so bottom line we made two thousand dollars on eighty five thousand I'm not a financial person but like that just doesn't sound like a lot to me yeah two percent return five thousand I'm sorry you're saying that you met you made a 2% return. It just doesn't seem like $85,000. I'm sorry? You're saying that you made a 2% return on your money in a year. Two years.

Two years. We made $2,000. Yeah, that's terrible. You could have made that sitting in a savings account. That's, you know what? That's what I was thinking. Well, you thought correctly. I don't know if you guys like Capital One,

but they're- Not a fan. I think it's like 5%. Yeah, I mean, any high-yield savings account is upwards of, you know, you're 3% to 4% right now. Yeah. The days of 5% are long gone as the rates have gone down. Oh, okay. But still, the idea remains in that

a high-yield savings account, which is liquid, secure, compared to an investment account, you wanna be making more in your investments for the risk you're taking on. Right. So you're saying this is in the Ameriprise account? You got this terrible return? No, we're just investing and we have a financial planner.

And the thing is we're putting $500 extra a month away. And it just seems like it's just kind of not going anywhere. Well, it sounds like you don't know what you're invested in. And that's the number one rule of investing is understand what you're putting your money into. And it sounds like your financial planner did not educate you. Right. And I am not good with investments. I kind of don't understand it. So I don't know if I should just go

with another financial planner or- Yeah, I don't know what they have you in. I can't tell you why you got that return. My guess is that you are heavily in bonds, which is why you're seeing a big drag on your returns compared to actually being in the stock market. And so I can't tell you what you're invested in, what kind of product it is, what fees you're paying.

Where did you find this financial planner? A friend of mine, so I feel is like kind of responsible with money and smart with money. And so I kind of assumed that, which is my best. And I don't know if this financial planner is good or bad. I don't know what they put you into. And if it's just, they put you in very, you know,

non-risky investments because of your ages, I don't know. But I would get a second opinion from a SmartVestor Pro. So I would jump on to ramsysolutions.com, click on trusted experts, click the SmartVestor button, and have them dig into your investments and actually look at your portfolio. Because this happened with a family member of mine. They said, you guys always talk about 10 to 12% returns.

I've gotten 2% over the last 10 years. And I went and looked at the portfolio. It was like 58 different bonds. And I'm going, well, yeah, you're not even really investing here. And so that is my guess as to what's happening in your portfolio. But on a radio call,

I'm not gonna be able to dig into that, but I would say you've got to do your homework and you need to start learning. Cause you've said, well, I don't know anything about this. You're gonna need to start learning about it if you want to grow it and manage it well. So they're gonna help you out with that. I would jump on ramsysolutions.com, click on the SmartVestor button, Carol, and hopefully they can solve it. Luckily you're in a good place financially, but we can definitely do better.

Yeah, great advice there. It's so important to sit with a pro and be able to understand everything they're saying to you so you can call the shots and they're executing those shots. Very good point there. Erin is up now in Bentonville, Arkansas. Erin, how can we help? Hi guys, thank you for taking my call. How are y'all today? Doing well. Well, I'm excited to ask y'all this question. My husband and I make a total of $153,000, $153,000 a year. We paid off student loan, all the debt, about $57,000 in the first eight months of our marriage.

Wow. There you go. Yeah, we were ready to be free. So we've been saving up our emergency fund and what has made it difficult is that I work for, I work in corporate America and we schedule work, work traveling a lot and everyone uses their credit card

and I've been using a debit card. Well, we've gotten to a point now when work expenses have been charged six months ahead of the day that we, like rooms have been reserved six months ahead and I can't expense that out until after the trip. So I've had to have difficult call conversations where I'm like I take a firm stance on no credit cards but everybody else uses credit cards. And so I would love some advice on how to navigate those conversations about sounding, you know, mean. Is this a pretty good sized company? This is a medium sized company. It's a

poultry, a poultry farm in Northwest Arkansas. And so everybody else uses their personal credit cards and then gets reimbursed. But you're saying the expenses are six months out and so if they're putting it on their card they have to pay it off within a month to not carry a balance. Exactly. So, I'm still confused. Well, that's just bad. That's just a bad policy by the company. They're really putting unnecessary, to your point.

That means their employees are paying interest on travel expenses. Just to do their job. I'm not even sure you can technically do that. That's... Yeah, this feels crazy. It feels... What are we talking about when we say expenses and you say six months out? Is it 500 bucks, 1,000 bucks?

We're talking about lodging mostly. We'll do these conferences and conventions where customers will invite us and then they'll give hotel room blocks. Those will be available ahead of time. And so you wanna get your, that room block gives you a discount and you'll wanna reserve it as soon as possible

in order to capitalize on the discount. So what's the range of expenses we're talking that you'd need to cover? We're talking like, could be $150 a night, so for a three night, so that's probably like $450 ranging from $450, $600. One work trip I had was at a resort for two nights, and that overdrew our account. We had to dip into emergencies temporarily. I think it's insane that they're not just covering this.

That's my point. With a corporate card or direct billing. So that's what I would bring to them and say, hey, I've realized we're having to cover this ourselves. Is there a way we can set up direct billing from the company to the hotels in order to cover this? That's what our team does here at Ramsey. I'm assuming somebody's brought that up before and this is not a mom-and-pop shop So I'm confused. I feel like it is why they've absolved all the risk

They put it on for 75 years so family owned Yes, yeah, we're in third generation, but they run it like a mom and pop, don't they? Yes, the culture is very good. It's just this is where I've gotten some I wouldn't say pushback but I get really weird looks because the credit card is just what everyone does and what everyone has because they want to capitalize on a point. I know, but here's the deal. I have real questions for their CPA, for their chief accountant officer. If you're asking employees to pick up travel expenses and you aren't reimbursing those

prior to that credit card bill coming due, as George pointed out, that means the employee is paying an interest. And if you aren't paying that interest back, that is, I'm no accountant or CPA, but I gotta believe that's some real question marks on taxes for the company, because those end up being, so here's my point,

they end up, that goes under their accounting as an expense, okay? But if they didn't pay that interest payment, I don't know, I just feel like that is so backward. I mean, they're acting like they started 70 years ago and they've stayed in 70 year old mode. I think you gotta push back on this and say, hey, I'm uncomfortable with this. It's not you being mean.

Yeah, something about me. It's just it's not fair to me personally. And in the meantime, I'd have a separate savings account where I park the buffer I need for this, these work expenses and just cover them out of that for now. But I would put a stop to this ASAP. I wouldn't be putting up with it. And to the point, I hope you hear this. Eventually, I would put a stop to this ASAP. I wouldn't be putting up with it. And to the point, I hope you hear this, eventually I would not be working for this company if they're going to put you in personally tough financial situations where you're overdrawing your account because they're cavemen. Hey, if you're a tiger, exhausted of living paycheck to paycheck and you just feel like

you can't get ahead, you don't have a whole lot of hope, I want you to hang in there. I want you to try our free budgeting trainings this month. This is our every dollar free webinars. You're going to learn step by step how to use it, allow you to stick to a budget and begin to make progress. You get all your biggest budgeting questions answered in the live Q&A. So it's not just you listening. If you've got questions, they're gonna give you answers. Sign up for free at everydollar.com slash webinar, everydollar.com slash webinar. Bill's up

next in Sacramento. Bill, how can we help? Yeah, I made the mistake of starting a business some time ago and started it out with credit card debt. And I never was able to really recover from that. And I was able to sell the company a few months back, but the problem is that I didn't sell it for enough money. And so I still have remaining debt. How much? Quite a bit. I'd say between 200 and $225,000 left to pay off. And who do you owe that to?

I have a couple of bank loans, um, business credit card and my mom about $93,000. And then I have an SBA loan and a beverage company that I owe about $46,000 to. What are you doing now? I am going to be getting into truck driving school. I would like to get my class B license. How long is that gonna take and how much is it gonna cost? Well, it's already paid for. It's about $3,900. And then I believe it's gonna be starting.

I'm still getting the information on when it's gonna be starting, but it should be starting sometime this summer. What are you doing for income until then? I just have a little bit of money that's left over from the sale. The new owner paid off some equipment financing, which came to about $125,000. So we have anywhere between $20,000 and $25,000 after that. So I'm just curious what's going on in your mind where you say instead of going and getting

a job and living off the job, you decided to live off the proceeds, especially when you're in the kind of bone-crushing death that you're in. I'm just curious of your state of mind. I'm not living off them. My wife has a job and so that's what's kind of, you know, that's kind of what's helping us get by right now. Oh, okay. Well, when I asked you, okay, well, you know, that's kind of what's helping us get by right now. Oh, okay. Well, when I asked you, okay, well, you said you were living off of that. I said, how are you, how are you surviving until then?

And you said that, that extra payment. So, um, anyway, I wasn't clear. I was just a little nervous. What's no, you're doing great. So what, how can we help you? What's your biggest question? Uh, so, um, I went and got a coach from Ramsey Solutions and I've had a couple sessions with him, my wife and I, and the guy was

recommending bankruptcy and because he said bankruptcy would be the quick solution getting this all paid off and no he recommended George's books. We've been reading George's book and in the book, George said he was able to pay off that debt within 10 years. I don't think he read my book. That's, yeah, I'm- That's not what happened. But I'm glad you have a coach.

I don't like the advice they gave you. I disagree that this is, you're right. This is the shortest path to maybe cleaning some of this up. I doubt a lot of this is even dischargeable and is not the solution to your problem and it will wreck your financial future and your wife's for the foreseeable future. So the key is your wife has income, what is she making?

She's making between 50 and 55,000. Okay, is that enough to cover your basic bills? It is, right now it's just food, you know, um, transportation. Are you guys behind on any bills, any of your debts? Uh, yes, but they're, those are business. Those are business bills. The personal way to the personal bills were doing fine, but the business debt is your personal debt.

Your name is on it. Correct, yeah. Some of them are going to collections. Okay. So what's the plan for that? Are you going to get current on those? Yeah, I'm going to go, like I said, I want to do truck driving school, get a truck driving job and start paying them down.

Okay. We're doing the budget. What are you gonna make as a truck driver? I think they said it starts off with like $55,000. Okay, so if we can live off of your wife's $55,000, then presumably all of the money you're making as a truck driver goes to debt elimination? Is that what you're thinking? Yeah, well, I'm calling for advice. My thinking hasn't really helped out, so.

Yeah, you guys need to make as much as possible and live off as little of it as possible and throw the remaining at the debt. I'll pick up a side gig. But this is not gonna, it's not gonna take 10 years if you do it right. I mean, you have a total of 225,000 in debt? Around there, yeah, between two and 225,000 after the sale of the business. What about your wife? Does she have any debt?

Yeah, she has. That's totaling up all the 2 between 225. Do you guys have a mortgage? No, no. That's a good thing. We just moved. You're renting? To another town here in Northern California and her parents actually gave us a house so our rent is really, really low. So we're renting from our parents. Oh, good.

Okay, so that's helping you guys cover all the bills. Mm-hmm. Okay. So to give you some sort of a mindset here that George is leading you to, because he's crunching numbers, if you were to put $50,000 a year towards debt, then you're out in five years.

Just, I'm not saying that's what your path needs to be, but that's half the amount of time that you've thrown out there of 10 years. Okay, yes. And it's okay if it takes a while. I mean, it's a big amount of debt and you guys don't have a very big shovel. You're not making $300,000 a year.

And so the key here is get your income up as high as possible, get your expenses down as low as possible and throw the difference at the debt for the next five years. And if you do that, you can be completely debt free and avoid bankruptcy. And so that's why I'm saying bankruptcy

is one of those things people go, well, I guess I'll file bankruptcy. No, bankruptcy is a last resort, hail Mary. I've tried everything else and I couldn't keep up and they came after us. Right now you can still make some headway, get current on your bills, get a job, and start making some progress on this debt. And mom might need to come last. Is mom willing to wait? willing to wait? What the coach said, the coach said just take whatever money you have here and say hey this is all I have right now for this month. To who?

She'd be happy to probably take anything. Yeah, but I'm more worried about the creditors who can actually sue you and get your wages garnished more than I am about mom. Sure. Mom will still love you, right? Mm-hmm. Okay, and you'll make, you're gonna pay her back. It is, it's an obligation that you pay her back.

You took this money saying, mom, I promise I'll pay you this money back. But I'm just saying, what is the next upcoming balance that we can knock out and get out of your life? What's the smallest balance you have? Like around 20,000. What's the smallest balance you have? Like around 20,000. What's that on? The bank loan.

What about the business credit card? What's on that? That's about 20,000, 247. Is there anything you can sell in your life? Equipment, cars, toys, electronics? I have a truck I can sell. A what? A truck.

Okay, what's that worth? I have two work trucks. I'm trying to sell one of them right now for 10,000. Okay. And then I think the other one I think I have is worth about 9,000. All right, that'll get you out of about $9,000. All right. That'll get you out of that $20,000 debt, just about.

Plus, you said you have about $25,000 coming from the sale of the business? Yeah, give or take. We're still on the transfer, so. But you should be able to knock one of the debts out of that. The sale closes. I'm sorry? You'll be able to knock out one of the debts with that money once you get it. Yeah, depending on how much we get.

But yeah. Okay. And then the next one that my wife and I had already agreed to pay off was we had an SBA, small business loan. Okay. $27,000. Did you get the book yet?

Your book? Yeah. Yes sir, we are reading it. Okay, good. The answers are in there, man, but it looks like hard work. There's no shortcuts. Not one time do I say, and hey, if you have to file bankruptcy, just go for it. That's a shortcut. It's not in there. The solution is in the mirror, man. It's going to be hard work for the next five years, but I wholeheartedly believe you guys can get out of this mess.

But it's gonna take both of you getting on a written budget, getting on a plan, and sticking to it for a long time. Wishing you the best. Our scripture of the day is 1 Corinthians 9.24. Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, Our scripture of the day is 1 Corinthians 9 24. Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.

Interestingly enough, there just a little breakdown of that verse. The Bible there is very clear that there are winners and losers. No participation trophies. No participation trophies in 1 Corinthians. I just want to point that out. We'll move right along. Some expert theology there. William James, father of modern psychology, is our quote of the day, most people never run far enough on their first win to find out that they've got a second. Oh, that will also preach. I like

that. How about the running theme in our scripture in quotes? I like that. I like that. How about the running theme in our scripture in quotes? I like that. As I sit. Yeah, you're allergic to running. The only thing you run from are small animals. And gluten. And gluten. Mark is in San Diego, California. Mark, how can we help? Yeah, good afternoon. I'd like to ask a question about pulling money out of retirement accounts. Oh, juicy. One of George's favorite. Love it. Yeah. Are you of retirement accounts. Oh, juicy. One of George's favorite. Love it.

Yeah. Are you of retirement age? Well, I'm 60. Yeah, congratulations. I'm still working. I'll be retiring in two more years at age 62. Wow. Got a pretty good nest egg put away.

And once I retire, I'm gonna be pulling about 120 out every year to live on. And I'm imagining that and I'd like to pull the money out on a market rally and not on a market downturn. Now, if I do that- Wouldn't that be nice if I had a crystal ball? Yeah. I know. Well, I know what a rally looks like and I know what a downturn looks like. Now I'll give you that I don't know what the future looks like. So if I don't do that, how should I be thinking about pulling my money out of retirement if I don't basically

transfer at the moment of a rally? Well, there's a lot of strategies around this. There's no like well this is what the right way to do it is but the the general rule is pretty common sense of take only what you need and only when you need it. Okay. And so some people go you know what I'm going to take out $120,000 on January 1st. I'm going to put it in a high yield savings account live off of that and then come next January 1st I'm'm gonna pull out another 120,000. That's one way to do it, right? The other way would just to pull out

exactly what you need each month. So January 1st, I only pull out 10,000, leaving the other 110 invested to continue growing. Okay, all right. So that's another common strategy to leave your money. You know how you sort of dollar cost average when you invest, you're just like, hey, no matter what the market's doing, I'm gonna put a thousand bucks in every month. common strategy to leave your money. You know how you sort of dollar cost average when you invest, you're just like,

hey, no matter what the market's doing, I'm gonna put a thousand bucks in every month. It's kind of the same thing on the way out. Is I'm gonna pull out that $10,000 every single month, no matter what the market's doing. So don't look at the market and say, this week has been pretty good, I'm gonna hit the transfer button today and not tomorrow.

Well, then you're gonna regret it because the market's gonna keep going up and you're like, I shouldn't have let it ride. What was I thinking? And so personally, I'm just an anxious guy. I'm timing the market either way, right? Exactly. And so as we always say, time in the market

beats timing the market. And that goes for when you're investing and when you're withdrawing. And so depending on your nest egg, I don't know how tight this is gonna be for you. What's your total nest egg going to be at 62? That worth is 4 million. Amazing.

How much of that is in retirement accounts? About two and a half. Incredible. You've done a really good job. Yeah. I've been lucky. I've been fortunate. Do you have a financial planner or a CFP that you've been working with?

Yeah. Yeah, I do. What is their thoughts on this? Have they kind of crunched the numbers for you to give you the best strategy? I haven't asked them that question. They've been more, on timing, I haven't asked them. It's been more about tax planning, which has been more like an even withdrawal

throughout over the years. But I haven't asked them about the actual date of transfer yet. I would dig into that with them and also based on the different buckets you have, if it's traditional, Roth, taxable, I would dig into that with them and develop a kind of a bucket strategy of where to pull the money, when to pull the money, and then kind of how to use it in the best way. Part of that is going to be tax planning as well. How do we minimize taxes?

Right. Right. So I think you're onto something here, but you've got a great problem. You're going to have two and a half million sitting there going, all right, I need to withdraw 120,000. That's reasonable. That's what five percent. It's going to last you in perpetuity forever based on your spending.

Yeah, that's right. And so I think it's a less of a big deal than you think but I would definitely want to get it right if I was in your shoes as well. Let's go to Mike in Seattle Washington. Mike, how can we help today? Hi, thanks for having me. Sure. I am a 23 year old first-generation immigrant from overseas. I'm a software engineer at a Mac 7 company earning well above the median income. Now, what are you earning? Given up, I'm earning $160,000 to $180,000 based on my performance. If I stay course, I will probably become like the guy that was just calling before, like

before and I was what a great situation. Yeah. But so there is a surefire way I'm back to my foreign care all of these things. Now one of the issues that I'm struggling with now with one year into my early career is I have left behind my country, my family, everything to come here and build wealth. And unfortunately, this great job that I currently have, I have a strong desire, a strong calling to build a business that serves my own purpose. And I'm thinking about doing something on the side and transitioning out of this corporate job because, you know, I didn't come here just to live, you know, a middle income lifestyle.

Right. I guess my question is, since Dave has also been a businessman rather than a worker in the corporate field, you know, how should I balance my time between maximizing my income and having a secure future and a nest egg as well as, you know, immigration issues all considered being at a Max 7 company resolves all of those issues against, you know, risking all of those things and investing in a business that might fulfill me much more spiritually, but carries financial risk. It's a really good question.

And the answer, the high-level answer, and I'll break it down and I know George will have some insight on this as well, but the high-level answer is you do it one step at a time. In other words, there's never a scenario, or let me say this, it's very rare that there's a scenario where you go from the current job you're in into this unbelievable dream job of working for yourself and the company's going great. That happens incrementally and you understand that. Okay. So you do this a little bit at a time. So you get this big time company, you're making good money, you're only 23 years of age. And so if you have an idea now for this business that you want to eventually

own, then I'd stay still. And as far as the day job, and I would test and I would connect and test and research and do all the homework while I'm in this stable situation and really get a crystal clear vision of what you want this company to be, what you want your future to look like. And once you've got the crystal clear vision, and again, I don't know what that timeline's going to look like, but we're not in any kind of rush because I hope you hear me saying you're an engineer. Let's say you have an idea for X and that's your business one day,

then you do the research, the market research, the analysis, you talk to people who are in that industry, you do everything you can until you come away with, I know exactly my ideal scenario for what I want in the future. That's what I mean by vision. And so now we say, okay, what must be true for me to be able to launch into that?

Well, I might need X amount of dollars of seed capital. So where am I gonna get that? I gotta build relationships. That's gonna take some time. Or I need X amount of dollars that I would be able to fund myself. And it would be small six figure capital outlay to get going.

And so I'm gonna have to have that George put aside. And then I'm gonna have have to have that George put aside. And then I'm going to have to also have six months, maybe 12 months of my current salary set aside above and beyond that so that I don't put myself at risk. Then you bring in the immigration issue. What boxes do I need to check off? If I want to stay here in the United States, what do I have to do? That's going to be a process.

So I want to give it to George real quick on any final thoughts there. I took a lot of time this is incremental you're sort of just building this thing and you have the cushion of the stability of your current job and that's a blessing not a curse and so use that to your benefit to get in a great place financially to where you're not stressed about I need this business to make this much money you can focus on testing it out proving it out this could be ten years coming up with this plan and all the while investing his 401k and he has a massive start on his financial

future so great question Mike one day at a time is the answer.