The Ramsey Show - App - Your Payments Are Keeping You Middle Class

Episode Date: October 23, 2024

This is the Ramsey Show, where we help you win in your life. Win with your money, win in your work, and win with your relationships. So excited that you're with us, 888-825-5225 is the phone number. 888-825-5225. I'm Ken Coleman, joined by the absolutely incomparable, the fabulous Jade Warshaw. And we've got a great studio audience today. I gotta just say it, just that the studio is packed. They're lively, a lively bunch. Yeah, they look very excited to be alive, and that's always exciting. They're here. They always give us a little extra juice, so we want to say thank you to all of you who are here.

Let's get right to it. It's time to coach some people up. Carly is going to start us off in St. Louis, Missouri. Carly, how can we help today? Yeah, I recently purchased a home within five years ago with my ex-boyfriend now, and we are separated. He has a restraining order against me, and I'm not sure where to go at this point. I have violated it a few times i'm trying to get my belongings back okay and um i know i've been trying to um seek a partition suit or going on a route

or what my rights are and we have a dog together. That's the most important part, really. So you were in the relationship, you bought the house together. Are both of your names on the deed? They are, yes. Okay. And he's the one still living in the house and you are the one who no longer lives in the house, correct?

Yes. Okay. You're legally not allowed to go to the house or you're just not allowed to go to the house or you're just not allowed to go to the house when he's there um i am not allowed actually that's a really good question i'm pretty sure i'm not allowed to go to the house at all listen i'm gonna ask the questions that inquiring minds want to know what did you do to get the restraining order? Can we ask? I wasn't going to do it. He lied. He lied. He lied.

He just did a deposition and he lied. So you didn't do anything. He said that you did what? Didn't do anything. He lied. He lied. He's on a deposition and I contacted the judge and he lied. And the problem is I'm not an attorney.

And I told the attorney this this i talked to law enforcement i've contacted them at least 10 times they don't want to get involved or if they do and they're a nice police officer they tell me what to do and say hey you need to tell the judge contact the judge but the judge can only do so much when i email them um okay so i don't know i've lost my job i've lost everything and the only thing i have left is really my house and my dog really i don't care when they closed 95 percent of the house it's a very large home i don don't even care about that. Where are you living now? With my parents. I'm so sorry.

So you have a place to be. You're not homeless, correct? No. Okay. So, sweetheart, we are so sorry for you. You've got a lot going on here. I have a lot of little troubles because of this, and I can't get a job now. Because of the restraining order?

Because I broke it. Oh. So this is now like off. I'm sorry. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, this is tough.

I'm sorry. You can't get a job because you broke the restraining order. And he has filed property damage. He filed property damage? Well, personal property damage and theft. Okay. Even though it's from my own home that I'm on the deed and mortgaged. Right.

I just, it's insane. So is your primary, sweetheart, we got to try to figure out what little we can do here today. And so I want to help. So a couple things. Did you call us today to figure out how to get out of this house? Is that... I want to move on. I want to do something.

I can't move on. I can't buy a house. It's a very expensive house. What is the house worth? It's worth about a million dollars. Holy crap. And what do you two owe on it? Like $340.

Okay. So I'm just trying to take some liberty here to try to get us going forward where we can help. If you could sell it today, if you could somehow get him to agree to sell it, and you got off of this loan, and you started moving on, and you guys came to some settlement, that would be your ideal situation on the house. Obviously, I know you want to get the dog, but I can't help with the dog. So I'm trying to focus on what we can. And I'm so sorry. Is that what your idea is? Is that why you called us today?

I want to do something. Have you talked to a lawyer? Well, you've got to get a lawyer. I have two or three lawyers. Okay. Okay. And what are they telling you? Just take a deep breath.

I don't know. Nobody knows anything. Nobody can help. It's just... I don't have any money. Do your parents have any money? No, they don't anymore. Everybody's just... so let's let me let me let me bring this down um let's talk about best and worst case scenario worst case scenario is you let this

ride for a while but since both of your names are on the deed both your names are on the loan the negative side of this is if for some reason he decides to stop paying the payment your name is on it right and so it affects your credit he's not gonna do that yes but you don't know that i'm talking i'm talking about the worst case scenario let me talk let me talk let me talk i'm talking about the worst case scenario you don't know what he's going to do okay so the worst case is anything that you guys have your names together on the debt, whether it's a car or a house, if the person who's been paying the bill stops paying the bill, it has the effect on either of you since both of your names are on it. That's the negative.

So what the ideal scenario is, let's get our names off of this. Now, you're on a restraining order. You can't go onto the property. Let's get our names off of this. Now you're on a restraining order. You can't go onto the property. Let's honor that. Is there a way that you can contact him and say, I want to divvy up our assets and I want to split them. Are you open to that? And just find out what has he said? Is he open to selling the property? Do you know that? His attorney doesn't respond. Okay. Have you, not the attorney, have you talked to him? Do you know that his attorney doesn't respond okay have you not the attorney have you talked to him do you know or will he not talk to you okay all right i want to jump in ask him tomorrow okay here's here's what i think within the next couple yeah when you get a chance to whatever the

arrangement is because there's legalities here find out what his sentiment is if he's out to jack you then yeah you're gonna have to get a lawyer and here's the thing if your lawyers aren't doing anything fire them and get somebody who will yeah it sounds like you're not working with good attorneys and so you can change that you're overwhelmed and you should be but i'm i'm here to kind of grab you by your collar and kind of shake you a little bit because... Please. Can I jump in there and shake a little bit? Yeah, shake. Carly, I understand about the legality of the restraining order, but this idea, this notion that you can't work and make money right now, you're going to have to absolutely reject that.

That's not true. If I were you, if nothing else, you can babysit. You can walk dogs. You can do so many things. And you have the one benefit you got going for you right now is a place to be safe with mom and dad with very little expenses. Sweetheart, you've got to make money doing seven jobs. Quite frankly, your life is an absolute disaster. And the best thing for you right now is to put all of your effort into working. You can't be in pain if you're working and busy. Number one. Number two, we need the income, Jade, because she's got to fire her lawyers and get a legitimately decent lawyer who gets you in front of the judge. And we begin to unravel this thing. You need money so you can get a good

lawyer and get in front of the judge. That's it. Those are the three things in your life right now. That's all you have time for. Do that, and you'll get out of this mess. This is The Ramsey Show. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. All right, so I was born and raised in Texas, and I love the myth of the lone cowboy. You know, the guy who doesn't need anyone or anything.

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Visit betterhelp.com slash ramsayradio to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P,.com slash Ramsey Radio. Alongside Jade Warshaw, I'm Ken Coleman, and you have joined the conversation about you here on The Ramsey Show, 888-825-5225. It's hard to believe. I feel like I sound like my dad right now. Okay, let's hear it.

But like, where did the year go? Like, I'm that guy who says that now. 100%. You know what I'm saying? The fact that it's October? Yeah. And the holidays are right around the corner. I stinking was in the mall last weekend and ran into a Christmas decoration. Ooh. Yeah, that's early. That's a whole nother rant. That's a whole other rant. That's a whole other rant. It is.

But I bring this up. You're probably wondering, where are you going with this, Ken? Have your meds worn off or you got a point? You tell us. The point is, the holiday season is here and that means everybody's budgets are going to be a little tight. We got all this pressure. We probably didn't plan for it.

Some of us are in the baby steps out there that are listening and watching right now. They're going, what are we getting everybody for Christmas? And so it's time for a really great and relevant webinar. How about our EveryDollar free live training coming up Thursday, October 24th, 1 Eastern, 12 Central. You can register for free at ramsaysolutions.com slash webinar. Click the link in the description of the podcast, or if you're on YouTube, we've got a link there for you. We've got over 100,000 people registered. That's bananas.

That's a lot. That's not a lot of people. It's what it says. Listen. Are my eyes deceiving me or is this right? Over 100,000 people registered for this free live training. Oh, in the past. Oh, okay.

I was about to say these people are lining up. This is what happens when you don't read the entire sentence and you have ADHD, folks. But it's over 100,000 people in the past. So this is a popular training. Again, it's coming up this Thursday. This is a lunch and learn. And I don't know if you could do anything better with your lunchtime.

So there you go. RamseySolutions.com slash webinar this Thursday, October 24th, 1 Eastern, 12 Central Time. All right, Columbus, Ohio is where we go now, and CJ is there. CJ, how can we help today? Thank you guys for answering my call, first of all. But my question is, so I bought a vehicle a couple months back, a RT Durango. And I love the vehicle, obviously, but I feel that it stops me from investing.

I'm 21 years old, and I watch your guys' podcast relatively often. And I want to... My biggest goal was, obviously, I want to start a Roth IRA. But I feel that the payment on my vehicle is kind of like it gets in the way of that. That's good.

What's that payment? Tell us. It's $625,000. Hey, ooh, yeah. Yikes. I need to get my Tums. Where are the Tums? Well, let's make it worse for Ken.

He's going to have to go extra strength because what's your income every month? So I'm a union worker. It's different every month. What's a good month and what's your what's your income every month um so i'm a union worker it's uh it's different every month so uh what's a good month and what's a bad bring home a good month is probably around 7500 or eight grand okay uh that's on the top end but on the lower end four grand so i mean minimum i'm probably bringing home a thousand a month okay y. Okay. Yikes. Yeah, it's definitely getting in the way, Jade. Yeah. That payment's in the way. It's 100% in the way. And I'm glad that you're realizing that because we say it all the time here. The car payment is what keeps middle class, middle class. It's what keeps you broke and it's what keeps you from getting ahead. Because that

$625, let me tell you something, that's suspiciously close to what you're supposed to be investing every single month. So let's find out if you're at the point of an investing. Okay. So you've been listening for a little while. We teach a series of baby steps and investing is baby step four. Okay. And before you can invest, we talk about clearing out your debt, saving up three to six months of expenses. So my question is, have you paid off all of your debt? No, I have the loan on the vehicle. That's my only debt is the loan on the vehicle.

That's it. But any other debt, yeah, it's paid off. So before, I've watched you guys probably since I got out of high school, which obviously has only been like three years. But so I had a decent emergency fund. And then I started spending because I got bored. It was like $8,000, which I was living at home at the time. So it was okay. You said was.

Yeah. What's it now? Nothing. Probably $1,000. Well, is it nothing or is it a thousand dollars because that's a big difference i don't i don't have anything in it right now all my money's in my savings or not my savings i'm sorry my checking got you okay so let's clarify this let's make it simple so baby step one you need a thousand dollars of savings don't keep it in your checking account

anytime you have savings you want to keep it separate from where your month to month money goes because you don't want to, in quotes, accidentally spend it. Right. And so you're going to take that thousand dollars. You're going to drop it in. I don't know, just a basic savings account or a high yield savings account. Either one is fine, but you're going to get it out of your checking account. That's thing one. That money is there for an emergency an emergency is something that is completely unexpected completely necessary like i gotta do this and there's got to be like a time constraint like i gotta do this fast right if it's something that you gotta do in three months then it's not really that much of an emergency right so it's got a filter it's got to check those three boxes in order for you to pull from that fund. Now we focus on the car. What do you owe on the car? $36,000. $36,000.

And if you were to sell it, what could you get? It definitely holds negative equity right now. All right. Because I just got it, you know, three, four months ago. I could probably get $27,000 probably get 27 or 28 out of it. It dropped that much? Oh, because of the negative equity. Okay.

And that's private sale? Or are you looking at trade-in value? That's trade-in value. I think private sale, I might be able to push 29 or 30, but I don't think it's going to be. Well, look it up. Because I got it for 30. Okay.

Oh, wow. Okay. Look it up on Kelley got it for $30. Okay. Oh, wow. Okay. Look it up on Kelley Blue Book and see exactly what you could get if you sold it on your own. Yeah, that's your best option. Okay. Then, either way, you know, to your point, since you said, I want to get out of this car, if I were you, let's pretend you're actually $8,000 upside down. I'd probably go to my credit union and get a loan for it

and a little bit more so you can buy something in cash. Maybe you spend five or six in cash. But at the end of the day, I'd rather have a loan for $16,000 than a loan for $36,000. Agree? Right. That was my question. Yeah, that was my question is how you guys would go about it because I just feel like it weighs you down a little bit. Obviously, I have extra coming in every month still on top of the car payment. I can keep it if I wanted, but I feel like I could be so much better off if I just didn't pay on the car. You're a smart guy. Yeah, you're right. By the way, you do exactly what Jade said, exactly what she said. That's the answer to your question because you're going to probably cut your payment in half and all of a

sudden we have a much more manageable debt that we got to get rid of at $16,000. And so that's going to motivate you. It's going to give you a little bit of breathing room because that payment's going to come down, obviously. That's the textbook answer. So that's what you've got to do. There's no wiggle room on this. Because every week, month that you delay, this car keeps putting you in a bigger negative hole. So this decision needs to be made today. We're trying to unload this car keeps putting you in a bigger negative hole so like this decision

needs to be made today like we're trying to unload this car in the next week so intensity so the question is if you did this if you got off the phone today and did what we just told you to do how quickly could you save up six months of expenses uh very quickly. I have a significant other that helps me with utilities and rent, and she, all her, she's debt-free and all that. I mean, we're obviously just dating, so funds aren't joined yet. Okay. But I do have somebody helping me with half expenses at home as well, which does help. Yeah, and the other question I have is what kind of work are you doing? Construction. Do you have, I don't know the rules where you are. Can you do side stuff or does the union prohibit that?

Certain ones do. Mine doesn't because I'm just a labor. Get after it, baby. But I have looked into getting my own side gig, stuff like that. Get after it. Yeah, I got to get everything figured out. No, no you don't. Just get after it. You don't have to figure out anything. You have a skill, experience.

You know your market. You got pretty decent on those good months. That's a really nice paycheck. But right now, you need to get out there and get that car paid off quickly and then get the six months emergency fund. I mean, this is just a function of you working really hard. And can I tell you the opportunity cost? Here's why you're smart, because you figured out early this 625 car payment is doing me and I need to get rid of it. If tomorrow you do what we said and you start investing that $625, by the time you're 65, you're going to have $5.9 million, which is suspiciously close

to $6 million if you don't do anything else with your life except invest $625 a month. Mic drop. You don't have to figure anything out. Jay just told you what to do. He figured it out. That's how smart he is. I know. But this is all about effort.

Effort turns into $6 million. Wow. All right, quick break. We'll be right back. This is The Ramsey Show. Hey, George Camel here with a not-so-fun fact. Every American social security number, including our children's, has been hacked and is now on the dark web. And this is not a scare tactic.

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I'm Ken Coleman, and Jade Warshaw is in studio with me. 888-825-5225 is the phone number for us to coach you up. She'll be leading on the budgeting and what to do with the debt calls, and I'm going to lead on how to make more money, how to move up in your professional life so we can make more money, more freedom. That's the theme there. So we'd love to hear from you.

And how about a question from the Ramsey Network app, Jade? You up for one of those? Sounds good. Let's do it. All right. This is from Anne. She writes, I'm engaged and my fiance just bought an RV. Four.

You ready for this? Hard swallow. $240,000. But he's not sure how he's going to pay for operating it. Yikes. What? I'm concerned that he may take a loan out. So he'll not only have a monthly payment, but also all the expenses and upkeep that

go along with owning an RV. My question is, how do I proceed? Because we plan to get married next year and we disagree on money issues. Yikes. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's a big red flag. Dude went and bought an RV. I don't think I realized that RVs were this expensive.

Oh, man. Yeah. That's a house. Oh, yeah. On wheels, basically. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Oh, but doesn't go up in value.

Right. Dropping like a rock. Yeah, dropping like a rock. Yeah. Dropping like a rock. Okay. You should be concerned. The fact that she's concerned that he's going to take a loan out makes sense. He took a loan out for the RV.

So yeah, he'll probably take a loan out for the upkeep. The biggest issue is they don't agree on the money issues. Ken, I don't know about you. I believe that money, it's one of those big overarching themes you've got to be aligned on. It's money, politics, religion, and how you see raising your kids and family, that kind of thing. I agree. And so this is a big one. The best way, I think, to call this out is just to sit them down and say, listen, here's what we've said our plans are together. We obviously plan to get married. I've started noticing that you and I have different views on how we view money and how we view debt. Can you tell me a little bit more of how you see

that playing out in the future? And maybe just kind of set them up with some questions. Hey, in the future, when we want a car, what do you think we would do? Would we try to save up and pay cash? Or do you think we would take out a loan? And just kind of ask him, learn more about what he would say. And then you, once you've heard his response, then you come back and say, okay, well, here's my viewpoint. I think that if we were going to buy cars, I'd like to pay cash. And here's why. And here, and then lay out your side and say, I just want to have a clear conversation and see, is there a way that we can get on the same page with this? Because this, this feels like it could cause problems down the line. And I don't want that for us. And you just have to have a hard conversation. Yeah. I, I agree with everything you said. I'd probably ratchet up the, uh, the, the, uh,

technique here. Tell me. Yeah. I'd probably ratchet up the technique here. Tell me. Yeah. I'm going to go with the, he needs a text. What do you mean? I'm going to tell you. You're going to text him the questions? No, I'm going to text him and say, we need to talk. Okay. Now you know that. That strikes fear. If you didn't have bubbles in your tummy,

when you receive that text, you will have bubbles. You need bubbles. We need bubbles. This is a bubbles level conversation. Oh man. So you want to create uncomfortability going in? He needs to know how serious it is. Okay. This is not a manipulative power play. It is a, we need to talk. It's time to define the relationship. Because she says in this question, I am really concerned that we don't see eye to eye. And I think I agree with everything you said. I just would put some seriousness on it.

It's not a threat. Serious sauce. It's not manipulation. I'm just saying it needs to be. I don't know that we should be talking about getting married or no, I don't know. We shouldn't be talking about getting married. If we can't get get this we've got to press pause on this because this will break us down the road and this has nothing to do with my feelings for you I think it's that serious okay so I'm approaching this as if she were my daughter okay but here's here's let me push on this a little bit there we go this is why people show up let me push on this a little bit okay i would be afraid because love goggles make you can make you change parts of yourself can you and this is embarrassing but give me a real quick 15 second on what love goggles means i think i know but i'm not sure i've

ever used it love goggles are you see them and everything's perfect because you've got like these you don't notice their back hair you don't notice you know the little things that after you get married you'll start to notice you know okay okay so you think she's got love goggles yeah she did she doesn't now no she doesn't but my point is if he has love goggles on if she makes it feel like an ultimatum then he might change some of his answers in order to get what he wants and i'm'm not saying maliciously or in a diabolical way. I'm just saying that sometimes... You think he feels the pressure.

Yes. Because the truth is you are your best self when you're in your dating phase. You're your best. You're on your best behavior. And so he could be like, oh, yeah, yeah, honey, we don't have to do that. So you think my approach, help me, how is my approach not, how does she then make it serious? I think if she just makes it a conversation and we're talking,

she's more likely to get the real answer. But if she puts the stress of we need to talk, we need to define this relationship, then he could feel the need to be like, well, okay, okay, yeah, yeah, no debt, no debt, that's fine, that's fine. But that may not be really where his heart is that i know okay so okay so let's say i go with your approach i'm not there yet okay fair enough let's say she has that conversation and and then there's no real there's no real outcome then i think she can ratchet it up

i think i would start so you're okay a little more casual like my plan you just aren't ready to push that button. Yeah, we're on like level two and you were coming in hot on like medium high. That's fair. And listen, I can now say, I understand that, but you know, I was truly coming at it from. If it's your daughter. If it's my daughter and she's having this conversation, she says, dad, what would you do? I went, dad.

I pushed the dad button, everybody. Jade, thank you for pulling me off of it a little bit. If it was my daughter, I'd be like you do? I went, dad. I pushed the dad button, everybody. Oh, it's cool. Thank you for pulling me off of it a little bit. If it was my daughter, I'd be like, let me go talk to her. Okay. Hello. You just took me and said, hold my beer and I'm going to kick the door down. All right.

All right. Very good. But you get my point. Yes, I do. I would say this. I think you said it well. And I want to park it here. Okay. Can we park it? Yeah, that's I want to park it here. Okay.

Can we park it? Yeah, that's a good plan. Because here's why. You nailed it on the things that cause marriages to splinter and unfortunately break. You gave a whole list. Kids, faith, politics, money. Yeah. Excuse me.

And to that point, we have a lot of new people that are joining this program all the time. Yes. I'm parking it here because I think it's important that we share with people why this actually happens. There are deep-seated habits that come from beliefs, the environment, on all of those issues. You can pick any of those issues. We're only talking money right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But when you have two completely different value sets,

and you mentioned love goggles, let's just talk about money goggles. Okay. If the two sets of goggles and the way you see money are so different, it literally can cause chaos in your relationship. True or false? Is that too strong of a statement? No, I think that's exactly right. How does it cause chaos? Well, you know, think about it. One is, let's filter it through the question. She is a person, obviously, a little bit more frugal. She sounds like she's debt averse. She sounds like she understands the value of keeping your income every month and that might

be because it's all of that belief is because of how she's experienced the world up until this point and then he's the opposite i'm not saying he's a bad guy i'm just saying that his beliefs are based on how he's experienced the world up until this point and when you want somebody to change what they believe based on how they've experienced the world that is a hard fought that is a hard fought fight yeah it's it's their default mode it's their default mode so you can't it's not just as simple as we'll change well i gotta go back in and i gotta figure out how do i feel about this and what does that mean about me because i've always operated like this because of this so it's not just a surface

level request that's right hey i don't want to use debt anymore oh okay no problem like it's it's never that these are and that's why i say when it comes to these money issues we do say can sometimes it might sound a little bit flippant get on the same page with your money yeah and the point is it's not a light switch that you just flip up or flip down one day. It's a journey. I agree. And I would say on all of those issues, I think all those issues should come up in premarital counseling. Can I just put that out there? But I certainly believe money ought to. Just press pause. Don't get married until you get on the same page with this stuff. I think you're going to save yourself a ton of stress and everything else. My goodness,

it's that important. So just a little relationship thing. We talk about this. Relationships and money, folks, you just cannot untie those. They are tied together whether you like it or not. So really good stuff. All right, quick break. Don't move. More calls. They're all lined up, folks. We're going to get to them. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show. I'm Ken Coleman. Jade Warshaw is in studio with me.

888-825-5225. Thrilled to have you with us. We're here to coach you up. Let's go to Brandon in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Brandon, how can we help today? So I just enrolled in an HSA this year and i'm wondering if it makes sense i had a couple of uh a couple hospital visits pop up this year and i'm anticipating the same thing next year okay so even with the compounding interest i'm spending thousands of dollars each year does it

make sense to still hold on to the HSA? Well, it depends. I mean, when you do know that you're going to have qualified medical expenses, it could make sense to pay for them through the HSA. And in that way, you're not taxed on that money. So that could make sense for you. So you're thinking about it more through the lens of your actual health purchases. You're not thinking about it as an investment vehicle, which a lot of our callers do, correct? Well, no, I am looking at it as an investment vehicle. I'd like to have it, you know, in retirement. Oh, okay.

Well, in that case, an HSA is a great idea if you know that you don't go to the doctor much, if you're willing to have that higher deductible because maybe you know that you're not going to meet it, that could be great for you. And then of course, if you're thinking about it as a retirement vehicle, that's great, but it would not be my first choice. It would be what I would do maybe tertiary to a 401k or a Roth IRA and then I'd go in and do an HSA. Have you already maxed out those other options? I have not. Okay so yeah. I've been paying for everything out of pocket so far. Okay so if we're looking at it through the lens of strictly investing yeah I'm starting with a 401k if If I have it through my work, you know, start with that. If there's no match, you start with a Roth IRA first. Now, for the use of, hey, I want to filter some of my actual health expenses

through this, then yeah, you could fund it up to the point of, yeah, I know that I'm going to spend, I don't know, $3,000 on healthcare this year. So I'm going to put that in there. And that I'm going to spend, I don't know, $3,000 on health care this year. So I'm going to put that in there and then I'm going to use that HSA to then pay for those expenses. You could 100% do that. But I would not overfund it to the point of investing. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. It's set up weird where I have to have $2,000 in the regular HSA and then everything above and beyond

I can invest. Yes. And if you know, hey, at this point, the $2,000 that are in there, I'm actually going to use that on healthcare costs this year. And this is a great funnel for it. Yeah, I'm all for that. But as far as you overfunding it to the point that you can then invest the rest. I would not do that until I've overfunded my 401k and Roth IRA. Make sense? Yeah. And I'm, you know, giving the max up to the match for the 401k. And I'm slated to max out the Roth IRA. Okay, great.

Good for you. Yeah. And if you do all three of those, you are what's known as winning at life. That's amazing. Yeah, congratulations. Thanks for the call. Yeah, good call. By the way, speaking of winning at life, you dropped tertiary out there.

I want to just give a little shout out to that. It's a great word. Tertiary? Yeah, yeah. That's a word, by the way. You figure out how to use that right. Drop that in a sentence this week. You get a good brand at work.

So there you go. Just call that out. Thanks for the call, Ken. I was impressed. Tertiary. I appreciate that. Yeah that yeah very nice word of the day connor's up next in boston connor how can we help hi ken hi jade love you guys thanks so much for taking my call you bet what's going on all right so my wife and i just got married we're in the process of combining our finances and i basically have a retirement question. My question

is, should we convert the money that we have in our traditional 401ks into Roth? Or should we just from this point forward, put money into the Roth 401k option? Okay. What baby step are you in? We're in baby step 3B. We're currently, and we're going to be renting for the next couple of years because we're not going to be in the city that we're in long term. Yeah, I mean... How much do you have? Can I ask you a question? How much do you have in your 401k?

Yeah, so across my wife and my accounts, we have about $220,000 in there. Our household income is about the same. Okay, good. Very good. thousand in there our household income is about the same okay good very good uh typically we would wait until baby step six to make a rollover like that because the truth is you're going to be on the hook for some taxes associated with that obviously um right and with the goals that you have up until this point in this case it's saving for a down payment, it could really eat into that goal that you have. So for this matter, you may, you know, yeah, from this point on, I would do Roth style. That's what I would invest in.

But I probably would wait to roll it over until you're ready to fit the tax bill and that it's not going to put a dent in your other very important goals. So yeah, you could wait till baby steps to do that. Okay, great. Thank you very much. Absolutely.

Love that call. They're rocking. Love hearing that. Spokane, Washington, near your birthplace. Isn't that right? The city where, hey, before we go to Spokane, let me go back to that. Cause somebody might be like,

why do they want to do that? What's the purpose? So their 401k that they have now, they have not paid taxes on that money, right? And what they're trying to set themselves up for is a situation that when they get into retirement, they can pull money and not have to pay taxes on it. So if you do a Roth account, you're paying the taxes upfront so that when you're 59 and a half and older, you can pull money from that and you're not taxed on it. So most people would like to carry that burden now instead of waiting for later. So that's the purpose of that. And whenever you attempt to move that money that you have not

yet paid taxes on it, well, then you will have to pay taxes on it. Okay. Yeah. No, good, good explanation. I'm glad you did that. All right. Randy's up in Spokane, Washington. Randy Huckawheel. Hi, Ken. Hey, I was recently let go in my mid-50s from an executive position making more than $200,000 a year. And since I'm completely debt-free, everything, and I have a pretty good nest egg set aside investment-wise, I'm thinking about making a career change. But to start out, I'd be making maybe $50 a year the first couple of years.

Later on, it goes up. It's something that gets me out of the corporate stress and the hassle. I don't have to move. It's right down the road from my house that's completely paid for. Does that sound weird? No, it doesn't sound weird given what you just experienced.

I mean, when you lose a job like that, that is a real shot. We know from psychology studies that it's the equivalent of losing a loved one. So, number one, I'm sorry that happened to you. Number two, it's not weird for you to be thinking through this. My first question comes down to the transition phase. So financially, can you make ends meet making this pivot to the $50,000 a year deal, and then how long would you have to live in that situation? Yeah, so I'm cash flowing it all out, and I have access to about a quarter million dollars in cash outside my 401k investments, Roth, all that. And so my thought is that while I learn this new career path, you know, maybe I pay myself three grand a month out of that month of cash that I have. And, you know, we just do a little bit more than what we were doing before.

Right. So that's $36,000. Jayden and I are keeping track of the money. And would that then get you to a place where we've got margin if you used $36,000 of the $250,000 that you got set aside? That's what my spreadsheets tell me, yeah. Now, I'm just curious, what is this new path? Being a surveyor, a licensed surveyor. Okay, and so how much would would is it excuse me is that a government job is that like a county level state level or is it private no it's actually it's

actually it's a little private company that uh they have their own little firm and um you know they run a little business all right so 50,000 a year for how long before it goes up and then what does it go up to? Probably the first couple years, and then as you get more experience and you're running your own jobs and everything, it gets into $70,000, $80,000, $90,000 a year. Yeah. Well, at that point, it's just me and my wife. And you've got, in your investment situation, you started off the call saying your investment

situation is good. In this situation, I'm okay with this. I just wouldn't limit myself just to the $50,000. I'd be doing some other stuff in the meantime because I really don't want to use any of that $250,000 I've set aside. That would be my advice. If you love it and you can make that change, then I'm okay with it. It's not my favorite idea, but not a bad idea. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome to The Ramsey Show, where we coach you to win in your life, specifically winning in your money or with your money, winning in your work and winning in your relationships. The phone number for you to get coached up today is 888-825-5225. I'm Ken Coleman. Jade Warshaw is with me and we're here for you. 888-825-5225.

We'll start it off in the Motor City, Detroit, Michigan. Sarah is on the line. Sarah, how can we help? Hello? Hi, how are you? Hi, good. How are you doing? Good. What can we help with? Well, first of all, thank you for taking my call. I love you guys. You guys are absolutely amazing and helped me so far. The challenge I'm facing now is I have $300,000 worth of debt, and I just can't see a way out. I'm working three jobs, and it just doesn't seem to work. Wow. Well, break it down for Jade here. So start off with your income through the three different jobs. Give us a range and then walk her through your debt. My salary position, I bring in 80. I'm sorry, my salary is 80. I gross, I'm sorry, I bring in 80 and then I net 55 when you take out tax and insurance. And then I have a second job that I gross 40, but then I'm an independent contractor, so I have to take out taxes and stuff. So I net about $30,000 to $35,000. Good. And then I have another part-time job that brings in about $600 a month. Okay. Okay. So $72,000 on the $85,000. So you're somewhere in that $92,000, $93,000 range with those numbers. Is that right? Net? Yeah. I mean, that sounds amazing, but that's, yeah.

Yeah, but you can do something with that yeah dr jade is in today so it's gonna be okay i'm gonna pretend like you didn't say that um so the debt doctor no oh okay okay you didn't know what i was doing i didn't know where you were going sarah now that i know where he's going you can do surgery on this i can help you there you go so you're bringing in almost eight thousand dollars month, which ain't too shabby. Um, but you've got $300,000 of debt. So walk us through this debt. It's all student loans. Okay. Private, federal. Um, I have $12,000 of private. I will have those hopefully paid off by December. The rest, the $300,000 is all government. What was it for? I'm just curious.

I went to law school. And are we practicing law? Yes. And that's the number one amount of money you gave us? What kind of law are you doing? Yeah, I do estate planning, probate stuff. Gosh, it feels like we've got a path to be making a whole lot more than that. Am I right? Or are you feeling like you're capped out and why? No, you hit the nail on the head. I've been looking on Indeed and stuff and that's actually the average pay for where I live. And it's pretty, it's hard to deal with because I do feel that I should earn more, but it's about average.

Is there anything keeping you tied to the Detroit area? Family, yeah. Okay. Okay. All right, one other silly question, Jayden, and I'll get out of the way. I am curious with what you've done so far. Is there a pivot or some type of additional legal work that you could do that would add to your income based on your current qualification or specialization? So I got my real estate license about a year and a half ago. So that's my second job. Yeah, I'm talking just the legal field right

now. Well, the reason why I got a different type of job is I'm really burnt out practicing law. So I'm trying to expand on other things. So that's why I got my real estate of job as I'm really burnt out practicing law. So I'm trying to expand on other things. So that's why I got my real estate license to help bring in more money. But that's extremely part time. But I really want to try to pivot out of practicing. I get it. But I'm going to, and again, I'm about ready to hand it to you, Jade. No problem. But you got $300,000 in law school debt. I don't think you get the burnout yet. And I think that the greatest opportunity for you to make money is through your law, your legal work. You just

don't have time to sell houses. That's a full-time deal. So it's either or. It's like you go all in on selling homes. And if you do that, then there's no limit to what you can make. But I'm just going to make that point. You've got to bring in some more income here because $300,000 is doable. I'm going to hand it over to Jade. Jade, walk her through the process here. Okay, so the loans, did you consolidate them or are they singular? They're single.

Okay, good. That's good. That's good that's good okay so as trite as this may sound all we're doing is listing them from smallest to largest and we're paying minimum payments on all of them hopefully uh i don't know are you enrolled in any of the assistance plans are you in save plan or anything like that the income driven payment i've been on that for about 13 years. Okay. And is it going to run out or do you still have time to be on it? I mean, honestly, I try to re-enroll and it takes months and months to get an answer. So I don't know. I'm kind of in limbo right now. Okay. What's your current payment for the lot of them?

I don't pay anything. Okay, good. So here's what we do. The fact that your minimum payments are zero is a good thing for you right now, because that means you can put the full strength of your income on the smallest debt and knock it out fast. I wish there was a way to tell you that there was an easy button here. There's just not. And if you've listened to our show for any bit of time, you know, my husband and I had 280. Okay. And at the time we weren't making what to combine what you're making now. And so there's, there's a part of this that you have to just, you know, ride that income until the, the debt is gone. You know, once you have maxed out your money for your time, and I don't know that you have yet. I agree with Ken. I think that you

can do more to max out your time and get better money for it. But once you do hit that point, there is a point where you just go, okay, this is what I'm making and this is how long it's going to take. And as I've said many times before, you got to ride that horse to the Old Town Road. And just, that's what you got to do. And then when it's done, it's done. That song is going to be in my head now all day. I'm going to have you to thank for that. I'm kind of like, yeah, I'm kind of like torn because I actually make more money selling real estate in half the amount of time versus my salary position. Of course, I get that paycheck every two weeks. Well, what's that transition look like? Because that's what I'm getting at.

Like if you get after it and you can double, triple your income, then this is a game changer. Key word is consistently. If you can do that consistently, then that's a great sign. It's almost like what would have to be true for you to change your schedule, stock some money up or something to be able to then go, all right, I'm dropping one of these jobs. My gosh, you got more jobs than you know what to do with right now. So we got to create some margin

time-wise, which means we got to have some margin money-wise, right, Jade? You tracking with me? I'm tracking with you. What would it take for her to get to a place to where she can now go all in on real estate, and that's going to take a little bit of time to build that pipeline up? Yeah. I mean, we're always looking for you to be able to replace whatever your income was at its best, right? And if you can do that consistently with real estate, I say more power to you. The weird thing about real estate though is of its nature, it tends to be up and down. What's the market like in Detroit area? It's slow. I get consistent, at least for our two listings and closings, but it's a roller coaster.

See, so you got it to Jade's point. We've got to factor that in. The market determines what's going on in some degree. You don't just hang a shingle and everybody wants to buy a house from you. I'm going to tell you, when you have this kind of debt, there is something to be said for being able to count on. I know what's coming in and I know what I'm doing with it. There's just kind of that assembly line

that you can just I'm cranking it out. I'm paying off the debt and this is temporary and when the time comes, you'll do what you love. I agree. Because of the market where it's at, I'm going to go with Jade's. Decide what you can do and lock in on it. And then if something changes, then the timeline changes.

But get that mindset for the climb. It's going to take me a while to climb this mountain, but I will get there. Appreciate the call. You got this. Stay encouraged. This is The Ramsey Show. There's a time in your life and at the baby steps for renting, but you don't want to do it forever because when you rent, you're still paying for a mortgage, just somebody else's.

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Suite 100. Brentwood, Tennessee 37027. Helping you win with your money, winning your work, and winning your relationships. This is the Ramsey Show. I'm Ken Coleman alongside Jade Warshaw. Today's question of the day is brought to you by why refi private student loans are different than federal student loans like Sally Mae, but they can hurt just the same. WhyRefi refinances defaulted private student loans and builds a custom loan based on your ability to pay. So stop feeling the pain of defaulted private student loan debt. 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. That's right. Today's question comes from Dean in New Jersey. Hey, where can I find accurate market research on the salary of my current position and positions I'm considering

in my field? And making a case to my manager that I am underpaid or looking at other job opportunities in the industry. What websites should I be underpaid or looking at other job opportunities in the industry? What websites should I be looking at or should I talk to others in the same role? Being respectful and coming to my boss with accurate numbers is important for me for obvious reasons. Yeah. Well, to avoid coming across like I endorse any site, I'm not going to get specific names, but this is very easy to look up. I would be looking at job sites, the well-known job sites that are all over the place. Can I say like Glassdoor and Dean? Yeah, that's where I would go. LinkedIn? Yeah, just pull up the research. And what you want to do though is be very,

very specific. I love how you just jumped right into that. That was fantastic. But what I would do in this situation is I would make sure that I'm also doing the second thing that he asked. It's yes and yes. I would absolutely be talking to people in your area, in your field, with similar skill and experience so that you get a real-time situation. Now, here's the deal. Not all these people are going to tell you what they make. That's what I was going to ask, Ken. So again, you can say to them, if they want to tell you their situation, you say, hey, I'm just curious, based on my skill and experience, what do you think is, give me a range of what you think is market-based value. Then they will talk to you about that, because then you can say, give me a range, and they may say, and I'm making this up, 60 to 75. Because what you're asking for is give me a range,

give me a low to a high. And what's the interval of that range that you're looking for? Because you don't want them to give you a $30,000 spread, right? No, that's why I said that. Yeah, so you want to say, give me a low, and then you're asking questions and you can come up with your own number. But between the two things, the research and the feedback that you're getting, you can come up with a pretty good number. Now, the key thing that I want to talk about is not so much the number, because you can go out and get a number all you want to, but companies have budgets and this decision is rarely made directly by your superior. Yes. It is very rare that you're just going to go to your superior and it's all in their hands. So you know your situation in this case, Dean. And so

in that case, what you're going to have to do is you can say, okay, I want to get to this number. But realistically, can my superior get me that number? And the answer is probably not, which means you've got to do as much as you can to help your superior make the case on your behalf, right? And so what you're going to do is you're going to go get real market research that is viable. You can verify it. You go in and go, hey, I want to get here, okay? And I understand that that may or may not happen right away, but I'd really like to discuss a growth plan. I never want somebody to go in and go, I just want to get to

this number. What you want to do is say, Hey, I want to talk growth. And so I want to talk about what I can do to get better. Give me some areas where I can upskill. Give me some areas where I have some blind spots. What if you already are there? Well, if you're already there, then you don't have to have that conversation. I'm saying on the skills, but not on the money. Well, in that case, again, the growth plan is the way I'd want to talk about it because now I want more responsibility. I see. Okay, smart.

You're never going, just give me more money. I see. You've got to give the leader a narrative. Yes, Got it. If in fact that I'm right, and this is my supposition that it's rare that the boss goes in and you go and they go, all right, yeah, let me correct. Let me move some numbers around. I'll get back to you tomorrow. Right. It doesn't work like that. So in that case, we want to create a narrative where it shows some hunger, some humility.

I want more responsibility. And with more responsibility, can we measure that and those results? And then can we tie that to comp? Love it. That's different than saying, hey, I did some market research. I'd like a raise. Yeah. Yeah. You can't come in guns a blazing like that. That's my take. In the same conversation, it's just we're not putting that leader in the defensive posture because then that never works out. So that's my rule of thumb. I'm with it. Back to the phones we go.

888-825-5225. Amy's on the line in San Francisco. Amy, how can we help? Oh, hi. I called because I don't know what, I guess, my moral and obligations are as a daughter. I am a middle child, and I know that my parents gave my two sisters $40,000 more than me. But I also know that from past experiences that I'll be the one that's more expected to be there for them when they get older and when my aunt gets older and when my grandma is older too, because I'm close by. But I just can't help to feel it's unfair that I have to work harder because if I had the same amount of money, I would just be investing in it

and not have to work as hard as someone that got significantly more than me. 40K more for what? Are you talking about 40K more for what? Is this inheritance? Is this college? Why was this given out? It was for whatever we needed. My little sister used it for her down payment for her home.

I used it for down payment on my studio and then my sister, I think she invested it in stock. But you're saying they got more money than you? Yeah.

What did you get total? 60. What did they get? And they got 100? Yeah. And you're the middle child, and you feel in some type of way. Was this the same time? I do.

No, it was different times. That's the thing. So my little sister, her historically has made more, so she was able to buy a home sooner than me and my big sister. So she got that money first obviously my mom you know and then um my big sister and i got 60 000 kind of in the same time and then i know she got another 40 000 and then i remember um i found it you know just to be hearing conversations like oh then i'm i'm like you might 40 000 i know it stinks it stinks did It stinks. Did you ask? Well, let me ask, let me ask you this.

When you received the monies, did your parents say, and you're going to get this and they're going to get that. Was there any conversation from the parents or you found out about what they got through the grapevine? Basically. I think I found out through the grapevine. It was,

she never sat us all down and said, I'm going to give you each a hundred thousand. It was kind of like, Oh, my little sister got her thousand. And then I found out, like my sister got her100,000. It was kind of like, oh, my little sister got $100,000, and then I found out my big sister got her full. And then when I asked for like... Listen, hold it, hold it.

Amy, you are a Lay's potato chip. You are so salty. And I get it. Well, first of all, I know exactly. I get what you're laying down. So we only have about two minutes. Because I want to address what you said. I didn't hear a direct question in there, so we only have about two minutes. So is your, because I want to address what you said.

I didn't hear a direct question in there. So I want to make sure that we, I think I know where you're going with this, but what's the question? My question is, I feel like when they grow older, I'm the one that needs to take care more of them because I live in San Francisco. Nope.

I'm made to feel that way. That's not your problem. I thought that's what it was because you said that earlier. Uh-huh. Yeah. So I'll be quick. I want Jay to jump in. There's two things going on here.

One I'm sure of. The other I think. The one I'm sure of is your parents exercise poor judgment. I don't care what their reasons are. I think they're very nice people, but they just exercise poor judgment because of how this thing is played out. And I also, whatever's going on, I believe you that when you say they make you feel like you're going to have to be the one that takes care. That's the thing I'm sure of. That sucks. And that's not on you. And you got going to have to be the one that takes care that's the thing i'm sure of that sucks and that's not on you and you got to shed that the thing that i think is going on and this will be my transition to hand it to jade uh for her take i think you're codependent

and i think that you've built up some of this in your mind too like you're the one that has to take care of them because you're more responsible than the other sisters. The studio audience is agreeing with me, which tells me I might be right. I think you're on the money, but you got to release both. You got to release both. Yeah. They can put something on you or you can put something on yourself about what the future holds, but what actually happens is up to you and your obligation is to you and your family. And if your parents had the money to give you all $240,000, then they should be able to take care of themselves. And if your sisters were gifted $100,000, they should be able to take care of themselves.

And that's the truth. And the rest, like Ken said, you're going to have to let it go because that resentment in your heart is sickness to your body. So you got to let it go. Maybe watch the movie Frozen tonight and sing the song from a different perspective. Might help. This is The Ramsey Show.

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needs. Members become part of a family who will pray with them and for them when they experience a medical event. So listen, y'all, there's no better way to take care of health care costs. CHM programs start as low as $98 a month. So learn more today and join at chministries.org slash budget. That's chministries.org slash budgets. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm Ken Coleman alongside the budget queen herself. Did you like that? I like the debt doctor. The debt doctor? Okay, well, you can just pretty me. We can keep going. Are you? Okay. But speaking of which, one of the things we've been doing lately on the show, and this is so practical, we've got Phillip on the line in Little Rock, Arkansas. Let's bring him on the show, and this is so practical. We've got Phillip on the line in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Let's bring him on. Phillip, how are you? I'm doing well, sir. How are you doing? Good. Are you ready for a budget breakdown with Dr. Warshaw over here? Yes, sir. All right.

Take it away. Sorry that took that to the next level. That's what I do. Okay. So, Phillip, let me just set it up for the audience because what we asked is for people to send us their budget, you know, because starting a budget for the first time can be tough, and you don't know all the factors to it. And so, we wanted to give people a little leg up here. And so, Phillip, you sent us the budget, 32 years old, Little Rock, Arkansas, you're single, yeah? It's just you? Yes, ma'am. Okay. And so, what do you do for a living?

I'm actually a school teacher, band director, exact okay so band director you're making 51 000 a year yeah but you're taking home 3191 yes ma'am okay um so your goals that you told me you said okay my goal is i want to save three to six months of expenses i want to get out of debt and I want to purchase a car, but it looks like there's a decent amount of debt that's standing in your way. According to my screen, you've got $69,589 in all one student loan. Is that right? Yes, ma'am. Okay. So that being said, I was able to take a look at your budget and we're going to kind of go through some areas where we think that you can find some savings and some ways that we think that you can kind of get your head and your money around this student loan. Yes, ma'am. Okay. So let's go through this. First off, did I ask you, are you investing at all?

Not at the moment, not investing and can I ask you about your tax return because those are the areas where we're usually able to free up a little bit of money when you get your tax uh refund every year what does it look like uh sometimes I think the max I've got was like 1200 okay so I would say there might be some room in there that if you adjust your withholding, you can get that money back in your paycheck because the idea is for you to break even. Maybe you pay $100, right? As opposed to be getting back money because that's money that you could have had throughout the whole rest of your budget, $100 a month. So that's something.

So that's the first thing I do. I'd probably check out my withholding there and make that adjustment. But let's kind of go through this this budget here and they're going to bring it up on the screen. So your rent is looking good. Five hundred thirty five dollars for rent. Electricity. Fine. Internet looks good. Gas looks good. Let's look at groceries. One hundred and twenty dollars for groceries? What are you eating? Not much. No. I do a lot of cooking because I'm dating, and so my lady, she likes to cook, so I would do a lot of cooking for her. Yeah, but to Jade's point, what are you cooking? That's only $120. You got some meat in the freezer?

Yes, sir. But don't get that dollar store meat because that's sketchy. Okay. Dollar store meat and the commercial break. I need more information on that. Okay. Groceries, 120. You are killing it. That's amazing. Restaurants, $40. If you really wanted to go ham on this, you would knock that back. I don't know what that means it just means to really go hard oh okay yeah i actually hardly eat out and when i do eat i was just cooking for his lady yeah we do most i do more cooking than anything okay good keep doing that uh phone bill eighty dollars again can't get much better than that and you're you're currently paying zero dollars on your student loans i'm guessing you're on a save plan something like that i love that you're currently paying $0 on your student loans. I'm guessing you're on a save plan, something like that. I love that you're giving.

And then there's $2,000 in your emergency fund over here, which is pretty good. So that also shows me another thing you could do. You know, we say $1,000 while you're in debt is enough. And so you could immediately throw that additional $1,000 onto your debt. Um, my question about the student loan, did you consolidate it into one? No, ma'am. Actually, this student loan is not, my first payment is not due to December 2025. So I kind of want to get ahead on the game, get a plan started so I can go ahead and get that out.

Because I want to get that out in two years. Yeah. So I want to get ahead of the game. Okay. No, that's all one loan. So the way to get ahead, I mean, currently with your existing income and with the fact that you've got $1,800, so if you look at the top of the budget there all the way up here,

his margin is showing $1,831 of margin. I mean, you and I can do the math on that and say, if you do that on the student loan, it's going to take you quite a while to pay it off, right? And so the key is we got to bring in some margin. So are you doing anything as a side hustle? No, I'm actually been putting in get some second jobs working

so I can go in and knock this out. Okay. But no. Well, if I were you, I suggest everyone do a side hustle. They need to be making at least $500 extra a month. But for a guy like you, if you can find a way to bring in basically another, like you said, part-time job, if you can pull in $2,500 a month, if you can pull in $3,000 a month doing another second job, that is going to cut this down to a two-year window for you. What do you do or what have you done? Tell us a little

bit about your professional background. Well, I recently got certified because I've been teaching school for a little minute, been on and off in different places. With Amazon, I used to work at amazon i recently left amazon to go teach school and that's kind of where it's been from there after college has been getting into the school system okay what were you doing at amazon at amazon i was in the store store session section uh i was a store there. Then I moved up to learning ambassador. What were you making? That was

like I think, what, 40? 30-something. And you're a full-time teacher right now in the public school system? Yes, sir. Okay. What are you making? I missed that. I'm sorry. 51,826. Yeah. I wonder sorry. $51,826.

Yeah. I wonder if the tutoring or I'm just trying to give you some ideation here on, you know, I like Jade's suggestion here. Like, what would have to be true? Or in other words, we could say this way, what could you do to make an additional couple grand a month? And I'm wondering if tutoring or some type of training, instruction, you got all this background as a teacher. I wonder if you could get some part-time hours doing some type of training or something. I would just be looking in that direction.

You're an instructor. And to the extent that you could get some of that contract work, that's where you could stack up some decent money. That makes sense. Yes, sir. So let's look at this stack up some decent money. That makes sense. Yes, sir. So let's look at this in terms of real numbers. I'm just kind of trying to do some rough math over here. So right now, with your margin, $1,831 a month, over the course of the year, that's almost $22,000

that you would pay off from this debt, which means you'd be debt-free in about three years. But if you do what Ken and I are saying, it would give you, if you added $2,500 to your budget, that would give you $4,331 of margin. And over the course of a year, that's $52,000. You see where I'm tracking? Yes, ma'am. And so this is huge. So, you know, I'm not saying tomorrow you're going to wake up with $2,500 of margin, but let's start $500, $1,000, $2,000, and let's stair-step this up to get to where you want to get

because suddenly that's not a big pill to swallow anymore. No, it's very, very doable. Are you feeling that momentum? Yes, sir. I've been feeling that for a minute. I've been back and forth, you know, to go talk with my pastor about things. I'm like, Pastor, I'm ready. I'm ready to go.

Got to get there. I know. That's right. And what did your pastor say? He said, well, yeah. He said, you're a single guy. He said, faith without actions is dead. Go do it.

Wow. When the student is ready, the teacher appears. That's right. I think Jade did a wonderful job. Phillip, we're very excited for you. I think this is all about intentionality and I'd add some intensity into this. I think you could be making more money. I'm with Jade on that. That would be my number one. Let's go, Phillip. Cheer. Let's go make some more money and speed this timeline up. That's right. That's what I like about that. He's got three acts of homework and these are probably homeworks that apply for you too. If you've got additional money sitting in savings that's above $1,000, you need to put it towards

your debt. Number two, you need to check out your withholding. If you're getting a tax refund, that's money that could be back into your monthly cash flow. And then finally, are you side hustling? 40% of Americans are side hustling because they know we need this extra money in our budget. And so that includes you too, America. Look out there and see what you can get. Try to put $500, $1,000, $2,000 back in your budget and see what it does. And don't forget another piece of advice she just dropped in there earlier. Stay away from the dollar store meat. I need to learn more this is the ramsey show what does the future hold for business ask nine experts and you'll get 10 different answers economic growth or a recession

business taxes will go up or down ai will help us work or it will replace us all. But there's no such thing as a crystal ball. That's why more than 40,000 businesses have future-proofed themselves with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud enterprise resource planning system. Ramsey Solutions uses NetSuite and you should too. Whether your company's earning millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and seize your biggest opportunities. With one unified business management suite, there's only one source of truth for the visibility and control you need to make quick decisions. NetSuite's real-time insights and forecasting help you see into the future with actionable data. And when you're closing the books in days, not weeks, you can spend less time looking backward and more time focusing on what's next. And speaking of what's next, download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com slash Ramsey.

It's free at netsuite.com slash Ramsey. It's free at netsuite.com slash Ramsey. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show. So excited that you're with us. I'm Ken Coleman, and I'm joined by Jade Warshaw. You learn something new every day. So learning a lot, learning a lot on today's show. Thanks to Jade. She's getting me to be more and more culturally relevant.

Apparently I'm very irrelevant, which I'm increasingly aware of. That's all right, Ken. That's what I'm here for. That's why you're there. I need to hang out with cool people like you. So there we go. Hey, folks, time is running out to book your cabin on the Live Like No One Else cruise, setting sail March 22 through 29, 2025.

Anybody in the lobby going on the cruise oh yeah oh really oh yes several people oh fantastic well this is fun uh this is not your average cruise it's a premium caribbean cruise turks and caicos puerto rico st thomas and the bahamas holland america's new stottendam ship uh incredible great content, including all of the Ramsey personalities. You got the pools, the hot tubs, the fitness center, and pickleball courts where I will be the resident whatever, cheerleader, pickleman, instructor. Oh, geez. And so it's going to be a lot of fun. You don't want to miss this. RamseySolutions.com slash cruise. It's going to sell out. RamseySolutions.com slash cruise.

We'd love to see you there. And I'll tell these fine folks that are in the lobby right now, I'm going to have some cruise outfits, if you know what I'm saying. I'm going to have the top-siders, I think, kind of the preppy sailor look maybe a couple of times. You're giving me Gilligan's Island. I'll wear a Gilligan hat. Skipper vibes.

Yeah. Yeah. No, not Skipper. Gilligan's more my speed. Really? The red shirt with the white collar? No, I had to put that little, the bucket hat. I think I could pull off. Okay.

Okay. I was about to say. Yeah. I think I could pull the bucket hat off. We'll see. It depends if the hair is long or not at that point. All right. All right.

We'd love to see you on the cruise. It's going to be fun. Now, Dave, Dave on the skipper hat, that's what people want to see. Him rolling around the deck with a skipper hat on. Oh, gosh. So I'm not going to say what I want to say. Let's move on. Well, I don't think I want to now. I feel like, okay, during the break, and then I'll decide if we can bring that back up. Okay. Okay. We'll run it by James as well. Annie is up in Boston, Massachusetts. Annie, how can we help? Hi.

So I have kind of an unusual question. Recently, my husband inherited some money, and we started calling it our money, but when it came time to decide where this should go, he kind of, let's say, put his foot down and decided that it should be invested as opposed to paying down our mortgage. How much money? And so the total that was eventually invested was about $140,000. Okay. was about $140,000. We are on technically step six, looking to, we are debt-free. Our kids are all set with their 529s and there's money set aside elsewhere. We're contributing to

our 401ks and our Roths. How much do you guys have invested or how much did you have invested? Let me stop for a second. Have you already invested the 140 or is this just something he said, this is what we're going to do? So he, we did it. You already did it. It's in there. And I, I disagreed. I wanted to pay down the mortgage. And I'm just struggling with that. I get it. So we'll get to that in a second. So let me just ask. Can you tell me what that looked like when you said he put his foot down? What did that look like? Did that look like him going and doing that without telling you? Tell us how that happened. No, we definitely did it jointly. I'm not a fighter. So I said, I'd really love to put it towards the mortgage.

And he said, well, I'd really love to invest it. And then we looked at each other and he goes, so we're investing it, right? And, you know, he kind of like trumped me a little bit. How long ago was that? This was about two weeks ago. All right, so real quick, before we get into that. The account set up. Hold on one second. All right, so real quick, before we get into that. The account set up.

Hold on one second. Everything's good. All right, so here's what I want to know. We'll get into that in a second because this is a relationship issue, not a money issue. But I'm just curious. Yeah. How much was in the retirement accounts before you put the $140,000 in? So there is a separate investment account that we started. So in his 401k, his retirement

account, he has about 450,000. Okay. I have about 250,000. We're just at different contribution rates and he's a little bit older than me. That's great. And how old is he and how old are you? He is 53 and I am 46. Okay. So you guys were at about $600,000 in your separate accounts and now we created a separate investment fund with the $140,000 in it. Is that correct? Correct. We have both of our names on it. Right. How much is left on the house? About $300,000. Yeah. Okay. about three hundred thousand yeah okay well jade the reason i'm asking all these things is i just

think all we can provide here is perspective number one because this is a relationship issue you guys are you guys are in great shape uh i can see i will say this um i can see why he did what he did i can and i can also see why you wanted him to put it on the house you're almost cutting it in half um financially speaking nothing is broken no because this decision was made that's right on either if you guys had put it towards the house yes that's in keeping with the baby steps and that's what i would have advised you to do uh by investing it nothing broke you guys are in a great situation. To Ken's point, this is a relational thing. It didn't sound malicious the way you talked about it. It felt a little

dismissive. But if I might add, I think it was dismissive on both ends. I think that he dismissed you when you initially brought it up. But I also think you dismissed yourself if you didn't bring it up again more intently um so for that reason I do think it's but let's let's figure out what's at the core of both of those sides I I agree and and maybe it's because um technically the inheritance was to him so I I almost felt as if like, okay, well, you know, his opinion should matter just a little bit more than mine. I could see that. I could totally understand that. Yeah.

I'm not saying that's right, but I can understand your way of thinking. Is he opposed to paying the house off? No, but I don't think he understood like i have a different urgency he wants to retire in eight years and i'm only making two extra i sound like a snob when i say this and i'm very sorry i'm only making two extra payments on our mortgage every year and i feel like we could do more to pay off the mortgage so that I wouldn't have a mortgage. Right. And I think that's the conversation. When I say that this is a relational thing, I agree with Jade. I think you got to go back to him and go, hey, well, first of all, two things. Number one, I think I love that you called us and I love that you admitted that you're resenting him right now. I think that's important that you're expressing those feelings.

And I'm guessing you've expressed that to him. And I think you should. I really think you should say, hey, I'm struggling with this and I'm resenting you and I don't want to. And I think we got to get together, whether that's with a therapist or a pastor or if you two have a great relationship. This is just a this is just a chill conversation. It's not a big fight because as Jade said so beautifully, nothing's broken here other than feelings are hurt. And I think most of the feelings are on your side. And I think you've got to address that. So here's what I would do. I would say, I understand what you did.

I need to get this out, but I want you to understand why I'm resenting and what's going on underneath this. I'm not going to resent you anymore, but I need you to know that I'm fearful. I'm fearful with this mortgage hanging over our head and not being gone eight years from now when you plan to retire. Can we please talk through this? I just need you to know why I'm feeling what I'm feeling. Jay, do you agree? I think that's the approach. Yeah, I think you, yeah, 100%. I think Ken covered it. And just based on the way you're talking about it, I do think that you probably stepped lightly, maybe a little too lightly. And yeah, this is, the truth is you are in a marriage. What's his is yours and what's yours is his. And you both get to make this

decision together. That is the truth. In a healthy marriage, that is the way that should work. That's a good point. Are you going anywhere, Annie? You going anywhere? Are you going to leave him? No. Is he going to leave you? No. Okay. I know you're chuckling, but do you know why I asked that question? That's the perspective you've got to take off this call. We're in this for the long haul. Yeah, this is just a little hiccup. We're going to be okay. But there was no wrong answer, right? No.

No. No, no, no. No, nothing messed you up. You're still on a course to succeed. You are going to pay the house off, and the intensity level is determined by the two of you when you have that conversation. Yeah. Thank you for the call, Annie.

You're a good lady. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome to The Ramsey Show, where we help you win, America. We're going to help you win with your money, win in your work, and win in your relationships. 888-825-5225 is the phone number. We'd love to coach you. Jade Warshaw will be coaching you on your money,

specifically the budget, paying off debt, and I'm going to coach you in your income. How do we make more of it? How do we max it out? What's that long-term income potential so we can get through the baby steps faster and live the life we want to live? 888-825-5225 is the number. Let's get after it. Priscilla is going to start us off in Portland, Oregon. Priscilla, how can we help today? Hi, thank you for having me on the show. You bet. Okay, so the only debt I have is my car payment. I make a total of $4,705.22 a month. Okay. $8.28 of that is from babysitting nine hours a week, which the family doesn't have any more hours for me. They're lovely. I love babysitting their kids.

So let's see. I'm limited in the kind of work I can do because I have traumatic brain injury from serving. And so I have short-term memory issues and issues with organized thinking. And so far, babysitting is the only job I've been able to hold down. Because usually what happens is I get a job and about a month, three months later, they realize that I'm not retaining anything they're training me on. And so, you know, they either take me off the schedule, fire me, or, you know, just start treating me like a total idiot. Bless your heart, Priscilla. Depressing cycle. But because of my injury, I do get a disability pension. I'm 100% disabled.

And they wiped out all my student loans when I got that rating. Wow. So I'm in a good position, but I only have $633 saved. And, you know, I have a budget of $269.39 a week, which I have to use a lot of that for food and gas. But despite all this, anyway, I have a wonderful, loving life. And it's really not stressful anymore because I'm used to living as a poor person. But there's got to be something I can do to save more money. I know there's something I'm just not thinking of. I've applied for remote jobs with customer service, so with phone.

But every time I get past the interview, it ends up being a scam, which I don't want. Yeah, I would be, I would not be doing that online. Then if you're having that experience, I would be looking at local companies that are looking for remote help and that nature, you know, or at least state or regional companies that, you know, there's a real, you can see the brick and mortar, you know that it exists, and go that direction. But these are just random online things where you don't know the company. I would be looking at stuff that you know that you know these companies exist and that they're looking for somebody.

The other thing I would mention to you is, are you in a heavily neighborhooded area? Are you surrounded by a lot of homes, or at least in your near area, there's a lot of neighborhoods? Well, yes, I'm in Portland, Oregon. And unfortunately, Oregon is a no-move state. So when you get divorced and you have joint custody, you cannot move 60 miles away from your ex without their permission. Right. And that's your situation?

Yeah. Yeah. But my question was this. I was going to try to go more the babysitting route or dog sitting route. The reason I asked you the question about neighborhoods is, take Williamson County. And depending on where you are, and let's be very clear what I'm suggesting here. These are areas where there is wealth. And so in certain neighborhoods in Williamson County, People will pay you. One could do very well dog sitting. And I mean way better than you're doing now. Real numbers, you're looking at as much as $200 to $300 a day.

Is that what you pay for Ellis? No. Oh. But I'm saying that that is a real number because we know people that are dog sitting, dog walking. And I'm just saying the babysitting works for you. Well, throw in some nice little furry animals. People love their animals sometimes as much, if not more than their kids. And so what would 40 hours a week look like at 15 to 20 an hour i think you're going to easily get that that would be amazing i can only work uh monday through wednesday and every other weekend okay that's great but we got a set schedule so now you start offering your services in your

these local neighborhoods you know i think starting to look around in the dog sitting area babysitting i think you'd be surprised how much work you could get. Even, and I don't know if you would do this, but even like cleaning houses. That could be something that you, because of your schedule, it's something you could say, okay, every other weekend I come and these are the houses I do. And you would have the ability to choose. Obviously, if somebody said, oh, we'd like you to do our house, you can choose. Yeah, that works for me or that one doesn't. But that's another way that you could set some income there.

That's a great idea. I'm awesome at cleaning, being a mom, you know. I knew it. I could just sense it. Very good. Can I just say on behalf of Priscilla, you're a pocket full of sunshine. You really are. For somebody who's gone through what you've gone through. You're a pocket full of sunshine. You really are. For somebody who's gone through

what you've gone through, you're very pleasant. You are such a joy to talk to. And I think you keep offering yourself out there like that. You're going to have more work than you know what to do with. Let me tell you,

if you were in my area, instantly. She'd be done. Immediately. Are you kidding me? Absolutely. We need dog sitters all the time. I know it.

You're so sweet. Truly. Thank you so much. Yeah, no, you're, listen, you're unstoppable. So keep your head up. And that's the kind of work you're looking for. I'm just telling you, man, if I was a person right now, I want to come back to this. If I was a person. What are you right now? What? Now I'm very confused. You said if I was a person right now. If I was a person right now, I didn't finish. If I was a human, this is the deep part of the show, folks. Okay, okay. No, if I was a person who needed to make extra money. Okay.

And I did not want to go to a Walmart or just kind of take any J-O-B. Yeah. And I lived in a populated area. I would be headed to the nicer, my mindset would go nicer neighborhoods. Amen. People have disposable income. Amen. What they don't have is time.

And to the extent that you can come in and solve some of their time problems, whether that's dog sitting, baby sitting, I don't care what it is. Dudes, you want to go out and get a power washer? Can come in. that's where i would be going if somebody knocked on my door and said hey i'll come to your house every night and unload and load your dishwasher you're hired wow you are bougie the dishwasher we hate what is sam for that's like my number one job as a husband he does does it because I cook. Yeah. And my son has started doing that. Yeah. But that is our number one most hated chore that seems to never stop.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, mine is, you know, mine is like the grass, getting the grass cut, you know, and so we pay somebody to do that. The service isn't great. If somebody came up to me right now and said, I'm going to beat your lawn service guy right now, I'd go, it's yours. Take it.

Let's see what you do with it. You know, power washing. You know uh i'm not kidding you um because we have a golden doodle ellis yeah who you know and love a wonderful gentleman we actually my daughter josie made really good money watching another golden golden doodle who looks almost exactly like him and we did it because it was like it's no big deal. He's well behaved. This young couple has no kids. You wouldn't believe what they paid Josie for a week. These babysitters.

You would not believe it for her to watch this dog. And all he did was follow Ellis around the whole time. She fed him and it was unbelievable. These babysitters and dog sitters are making bank. I covered a story on the Ken Coleman show a year ago. You ready for this? Manhattan. Lady with a law degree the Ken Coleman show a year ago. You ready for this? Manhattan. Lady with a law degree wanted to pay her law degree down.

Started a dog walking business. Never pursued locks. She's making $180,000 a year walking dogs. Wow. There you go, folks. It's out there. You just gotta go find rich people and save them some time and they'll pay you. This is The Ramsey Show.

Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm Ken Coleman alongside Jade Warshaw, 888-825-5225. Hey, if you're worried about insurance, if you're the type that goes, hey, am I fully insured? Do I have everything I need? You really need to make sure that you're getting with a Ramsey Trusted Pro to shop the market, compare insurance quotes. You don't have to. They do all the work for you, give you great advice.

They're going to compare quotes, discounts, and bundling all at no extra cost just to get you the right plan. These are folks, Ramsey trusted pros. When we say this, we interview, we vet, we coach to make sure they're the market experts who are going to have a coach's heart for you. You can shop the right coverage at RamseySolutions.com slash coverage. RamseySolutions.com slash coverage. All right, New Orleans, Louisiana, or as I like to say, Nolans, is where... I knew you were going to say that.

You knew I was going to say that? I love that. Danielle is there. How can we help, Danielle? Yes, my question has to do with the dating world. What tips... Now this is exciting. What tips do you have?

Yeah, tips. Finding somebody who is willing and wants to get through the baby steps and live the death-free lifestyle. Where are you looking now so that we can cross those off the list? In the church. Uh-oh, don't cross that one off. Okay.

Are you using the dating apps? Yes, yeah, I've used a couple of dating apps. This question, Danielle, feels like it's coming from a place of experience. Is this correct? You've been trying to find the guy for a while. What's your relationship status and what's led to this question? Yeah, so I've had a few short--term relationships never had anything long-term but um there always seems to be a stumbling block i find out eventually that they have a lot of

consumer debt um or even still live under like an umbrella with family and yet have no goals as far as how old are you? How old are you? 34. 34. Okay. Yeah. And the older you get, the barrier to entry gets higher and higher, right? Because you just, you want what you want and there's nothing wrong with that. Are you debt free? Except for my home. And how much do you owe on the home? Currently $127. Nice. What's it worth? About $230. What do you do for a living? I'm a registered nurse.

Wow. Way to go. You're a package. You got the whole deal. You're responsible. You're financially sound. I think this is a function of numbers. So you may have a different view on this.

Anytime dating and relationship stuff comes up for Jade and I, it could be fun right now. It could be. think this is a function of of of numbers so you may have a different view on this anytime anytime dating and relationship stuff comes up for jade and i it could be fun right now it could be uh i'm gonna start out by saying on behalf i'm gonna speak to this as a as a dude who's been married a long time all right and i got married at 23 okay so just putting that out there okay because that's gonna that's gonna be a frame of reference because what I'm about to say is going to probably be somewhat shocking to some people. But I think that this is a function of, for her, in today's world, very different than it was long ago when I was dating. I think you've got to keep putting yourself in the right places around the right people. I dare I say this is the proximity principle, but it's for finding the right man. Indeed. And I, and I really believe this. And I think that it's not your job to chase. I wish

that men would, would pursue women, uh, like they used to. Uh, but we got a bunch of boys that are posing as men. We've got a bunch of women who aren't making guys commit because they are offering plenty of benefits, if you know what I'm saying. Okay. Come on. I'm just keeping it real right now. Keep it real, Ken.

And I think to find a really good dude who cares deeply about you, who then will, when presented with this situation, go, I've never thought of this before. It's really freaking me out maybe, or I don't understand that. I didn't grow up in a house with that, but I like this idea, but I like you more and I want to learn about it and I'm willing to get my financial life in order if it means that I got a shot at building a life with you. Okay. That's what we want.

Correct, Danielle? Yeah, absolutely. All right, so here's the deal. This is a numbers game, unfortunately. You are going to have to hang around really good couples. Let me explain this. Because if I'm hanging around really good couples, those good couples are going to know other good couples.

In other words, they know good people. And when I hang around good people, I will eventually meet some guys that are single that are good people because I'm around those people. And that is what you do. You don't try to just do the dating app and navigate this thing from a place of loneliness. That is my opinion, and I'm sticking to it. I think you've got to be around really good people who know how awesome you are and and eventually there's going to be a good guy who will surface that is my belief what do you think I think that you're probably right on the money and I also my

other question for um you Danielle is is is any form of debt uh does that take them off the market for you like they can't have debt period uh no just as long as they're working towards paying that off okay so as long as they're working towards something they got a job and they come correct you're you're you're happy to walk a little further down the line with them yes okay because the dude i described on something i described a dude who may not know anything about the baby steps but is going oh okay that makes sense and i'm willing to talk about this because i know that this matters to you and so whatever that normal progression looks like in a conversation because when you're dating someone uh at some point you're going to start talking about kids you might talk about politics all those things so

listen drop that photo in the chat. Maybe somebody will crop up. You never know because this is a place where people care about their money. That's a very good point. How many dudes are you running into, Danielle, just so I'm curious, that are still living with their parents? I would say there's a couple here and there, not very often. By the way, I fully endorse your decision to immediately call for the check. Yeah.

I do too. If a dude's in your age range, she's 34. 34. If you're 34 and you're still at home, it's a problem for me. I agree with you, Danielle. If you're 34 and you don't have a steady job, it's a problem. So what we're saying is you're not crazy. We're trying to validate the fact that those are fair markers to have to meet. But Danielle, I'm going to put you on the spot now.

Do you feel like you're being as intentional as I laid out to put yourself in a position to meet solid dudes? Not as far as being around good couples. Good. Okay. And I want to back this up because this is actually to single ladies everywhere because we got a bunch of immature guys and they're not stepping up. Let me tell you something, ladies. I'm telling them on to something. Come on, Ken. I'm going to back it up with the longest study ever done, ever done on relationships by Harvard. It's over 80 years. I've been following people from birth to death and it's still going on. And this is the conclusion.

95%, listen to me, single ladies, 95% of your success or failure in life in any area is directly related to the people you spend the most time with. So I could just keep money success or money failure, relationship success, relationship failure. Okay. Spiritual success, spiritual failure, physical success, physical failure. Go down the list of your life. Okay.

95% of your success or failure, they have concluded is directly related to the people you are spending time with so you want to be single people hang out with single people or should single people hang out with married folks they should hang out they should hang out with quality single people okay and they should hang out with quality married people is my point got you the the the the common denominator is quality high character successful people hang out with them. Got you. And good things happen, right? You hang out with people that are debt-free and investing on their

way to being millionaires. Guess what? Good thing's going to happen to you. Hang out with successful people in your profession. Your income's going to go up. This is all proven. Hang out with people who care about their physical health. Guess what? Your physical health is going to be better. This is not my opinion. It's facts. And so, you know, if I'm single, dude or lady right now, I'm going, I just got to step the pool up. The pool may not be big, but I need some depth in the pool. And the depth of quality people is going to come to you when you're hanging around other quality people. Look at you standing on business, Ken.

Good for you. There it is. I never know what that means, but it feels like I did something right. You did. Thank you very much. All right, quick break. We'll be right back. This is The Ramsey Show.

Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm Ken Coleman alongside Jade Warshaw. We're here for you. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm Ken Coleman alongside Jade Warshaw. We're here for you, 888-825-5225 is the phone number to jump in. Ashley is waiting for us in Houston, Texas. Ashley, how can we help today? Hi. So thank you for taking my call, first of all.

Of course. So a couple of, I guess maybe last weekend, I was at my part-time job, and I was actually listening to the Dave Ramsey show because I'm trying to, like, figure this thing out. I am a 44-year-old single mom of two. I have an adult son and a teenage daughter. And one of the people that called in, she said that she was concerned about how her mother was living and how it was going to impact her once she got ready to retire. And that just really hit me like a ton of bricks because I don't want my children to worry about my well-being when they should be living their best lives. I don't. I'm going to be totally transparent. I've never really

learned how to, to budget. I have always made really, really good money, but my money has never made it to the end of the month. And now I'm in a position to where I make more money than I've ever made. However, my daughter is older and she's in extracurricular activities. So I picked up a part-time job and then I do crafting on the side. And I'm just to the point to where it's just like, okay, I know how much money I make a month, but why am I not able to do this? Like what's wrong with me? And I really just want to fix my relationship with money to be successful. Yeah. So how much do you bring in every month? Oh, okay. So after taxes, I bring home about $5,200. Okay, good. Nice. Way to go. And that's between, that's including the side hustles, right? The crafting and everything else? Yes. Okay, good. And then the other, the other big factor for a lot of people is where your rent or your mortgage falls into this. So what are you

paying every month for rent? So right now I'm pretty blessed. I'm currently, we relocated back to East Texas. So I currently live with my parents. So I really don't pay much. And that's the thing. It's like, where is the money going if I'm not paying all of those things? Well, are you using a budget? No. Okay, mama. That's where it's at. It's going here.

It's going there. It's going everywhere. Let me tell you, the best thing I can liken it to, and I don't know if you've ever done this, Ashley, but if you've ever kept a food diary, like if you've ever thought, eating pretty good like I'm eating pretty healthy then you start keeping a diary of what you're eating you're like oh see I heard food diary and I thought I would sit down and write about how much I enjoyed the burrito no no no you write down everything you ate for the day and if you're thinking I'm on track you realize I thought I really enjoyed that pasta I thought that's what yeah you could I mean you can write your emotions about it too, but my point is the budget does that. You think,

I'm sorry, I'll stay out of the way. Keep helping her. I apologize. The point is, uh, when you do that budget, Ashley, you start to realize, oh my gosh, I spend a lot on Uber Eats or, oh my goodness, I spend, like, I didn't realize that once I put my hair and my nails and everything together it's a lot of money like hair in the nails you start to see that um and so my number one recommendation getting off of this call is we're going to give her every dollar so that we'll give you a couple months of premium for free so you can see how much it truly does help you and what you'll do in there um Ashley is at the, it gives you a place for your income. And what's good is it'll ask, you can break it down in as many checks as you want. So the check that you get from your main job, the money that you get from the crafts, the money that

you get from other things, and that way you can see and you'll plug in when you actually get paid for those items. So you can see what your cash flow is throughout the month. Or is it lopsided? Do you get a lot at the top of the month, but none at the bottom of the month? And all of that is going to help you figure out how to make this work. Then you'll go in, you'll plug in everything that you could ever think that you'll spend money on in a month.

So not just the fixed things like your phone bill and whatever you pay rent to your parents, but you'll also do the variable stuff like groceries. And I don't know, maybe you get your nails done, whatever that is, but everything everything you can think of you plug it in and you're gonna see it's like i likened it earlier to a food diary but it's really about like blood work when you go get your blood drawn and they're able to see okay here's where the problem is your collect it's the cholesterol it's always a cholesterol yeah well but um back to the food diary that's

what it's going to do the budget is like blood work for your money it's going to show you where the problem is but then and i'm going to stick on this analogy because i kind of like it but then it's going to be up to you to fix the problem because don't we all sit in the doctor's office and they're like all right you got to get it under control you got to cut down on the salt you got to cut down on the bacon yeah right and then it's up to you to actually do the thing and say okay i have to cut back on uh uber eats i have to cut back on you know what we're going to the drive-thru every day every night because of her sports whatever it is you're gonna see what those patterns are because you're right 5200 a month is too much to feel

like you're living paycheck to paycheck. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you can do this, though. You got it. Yeah, I'm trying. Like, I really want to, like, because my daughter, I want to send her to school debt-free. I mean, she's super smart. I know she's going to get some scholarships, but I want to be in a position to help her to graduate school debt-free. Yeah, and you will.

Ashley, can I? I'm in a public service program, so I'm just like, please. I just want to do something with her. Right, right. Well, one thing I want to encourage you on, if I could speak this over you, you said something for the first time in your life, because you've been a single mom, not any support at all, and you've been doing a good job. And I think you've just been surviving for so long

that now you're actually making really good money, And I think you've just been surviving for so long. And now you're actually making really good money, a take home of $5,200, but you haven't changed your mindset about money. Because you've just always done, and you've just kind of made it through, and you've not been intentional because for so long, you were just surviving. And so now you've come into some money, and it's kind of nice, gave you a little bit of freedom and you've not changed your mindset. And I think you just said something that's the key to this turnaround. Okay. Cause again, we're going to get you set up on the budget and that's really going to help you. But I think the mindset needs to change today. And you said it. If I change the

way I use my money, I'm going to have a chance to set my baby girl up. I think that becomes the mindset. That's the why. You've got to have a why. If you start to go, I've never paid attention to money before because I didn't have any. Now I've got some money, and I really haven't been paying attention because I had enough margin to where I could spend, spend, spend. And now it's like, whoa. And so this is a quick mindset change. And I think if you change your mindset and you begin to say, if I budget, then budget allows me to take care of my baby

girl. That you've got to have a reason for doing it. It's like casting vision. If you don't say to people why we want to go somewhere, then they're never going to go with you. And that's why, by the way, that New Year's resolutions never work. People say, oh, I got to exercise because it's the first of the year. No, that's not a why. A why is I got a health problem. And one of the number one things I got to do is I've got to drop weight or I've got to lower my cholesterol. Now, all of a sudden, I've got a why because I want to live longer. I want to be around. And so all of a sudden getting up early, there's a very clear why. And I think if you just change your mindset going forward, because you can do it, you now have to move into

why am I doing it? It's not a function of can you, you can. I hope that helps you. Yeah, it does. Thank you. Yeah, you can do this. It's just a function of why are we doing it. Let's get into the numbers then. How much debt are you working to pay off? Oh my goodness. So I'm in the public service student loan forgiveness. I have about $180,000 worth of debt there, but I only have five payments left so i just need to get back on track with that to pay that so that that will be totally forgiven um i have i have a car note that's i have about ten thousand dollars left on that and then i have um i have like little credit card bills

maybe about four thousand total that's what they. Okay, so we're listing this stuff out smallest to largest. I wouldn't want you, by the time you come up on these student loans, this forgiveness, I want you to hold that really loosely, okay? Because there's a chance that it'll come through the way you expect it to, and there's a chance that it won't.

The stats are not in your favor. I'm just going to tell you that to be real with you. I hope it comes through. I've talked to people where it has. I've talked to people where it hasn't. My sister-in-law is waiting for it to come through. So hold that loosely. Pay off this $14,000 as quickly as you can. And let me tell you something. If you start investing 15% of your income as soon as this debt is gone and as soon as you've saved up a little bit of money, you're going to retire with a million dollars. But you got to get on it. Let's do this in two years or less. Dear diary, pumpkin spice is overrated. Ken,

this is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm Ken Coleman alongside Jade Warshaw. Thrilled to have you with us. 888-825-5225 is the number. Our scripture of the day comes from Proverbs 9, verse 10. Fear of the Lord is the foundation of wisdom. Knowledge of the Holy One results in good judgment. David Brinkley is our quote of the day. A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.

Wow. Whoa. That's boss. Wow. I like that. All right, let's get right to the phones. Megan is up in Chicago, Illinois. Megan, how can we help today?

All right, so I'm in a little bit of a pickle, and I just got to get your guys' opinion on this one. Okay. So I have a really old house. It's 113 years old. I moved in last year, and I know for a fact there's mold in the bathroom. There's only one bathroom, super tiny, connected to the kitchen. Issue is, you know, I got pregnant.

I've got a four-month-old son now, and the mold's just gotten worse. It doesn't just go away. It's definitely to the point where I'm going to have to rip out the entire bathroom. Okay. You had someone come in there and... I just did all those. Go ahead. You had someone, a professional, come in there and look at it?

So I noticed that the shower was, like, separating from the shower pan, and so I removed all the old caulking and went to go redo it, and just black mold was coming out. Okay. It was coming out. Okay. It was so hazardous. By the way, that's a function of water. Mold cannot live without water. So you've got a water problem that is creating the mold problem.

But to Jade's point, I would get an expert out there and get some type of quote because that needs to be fixed. The water issue is first, then we kill the mold. Yeah. And so what's that that did you get a quote so yeah and then i also have already figured out the water issue um when i first was moving in and got the inspection done the wax ring on the toilet was blinking so they did go ahead and fix that but they didn't remediate anything and then i noticed on the shower wall it was actually cracked so the same day that i

went ahead and reclocked everything i took a can of uh flex seal uh-huh and flex sealed over it you're industrious i like that by the way i gotta tell you i've got a can of flex seal kind of like that commercial guy sprays the boat together is that what happens it's pretty awesome yeah i like this so you've been kind of of doing your Al Borland things around the house and kind of making everything come together. Nice reference. Home improvement. Sticker for Jade.

That's awesome. I try. I try. So you've been doing your Bob Vila things around the house. Okay, stop showing off now. All right. My point is you're to the point where you need real help. So what's it going to cost? What's the quote so so here's the thing uh i got a quote from my dad's buddy who

would do it you know it kind of is a side job yeah for like anywhere from like five to ten grand depending on how fancy i want to make it and obviously i'm not trying to go into debt so we're not gonna make it that fancy right um the other half of it is, you know, my dad used to do our job. I know how to tile. My dad knows how to do plumbing. I do have a lot of help on that side of things. Okay. Where's the issue?

The issue is the cash for the materials. I've got about $1,000 liquid after paying all my bills this month. I've got about $1,300 in savings bond. And I just paid off all the debt on my credit card. So now I have $3,600 available from there. Oh, that's not an option. From the credit card? Go ahead.

Did you say you paid the credit card off and now are you telling me now you have an open credit on it? Is that what you're telling me? Exactly. So I have no credit card debt.? Is that what you're telling me? Exactly. So I have no credit card debt. The only debt I have is the house. Okay. Do you have an emergency fund? Yes.

How much? That's $1,000. That's $1,000. Oh, I see. I got you. Okay. So what's the question? What's it going to cost?

We're still flying all around this thing. What is the cost to fix this thing? About $5,000. around this thing what is the cost to fix this thing about five grand but the thing is with mold you don't really know how bad it is until you rip open the wall yeah but you got to get somebody out there you haven't had anybody you've looked at it and i believe you that it's black mold it's a problem but i think that you need to have a professional come out and say what's it going to cost to remediate this and that that way you can get some real numbers because somebody's got to come out there and eliminate it.

And then you guys, you use all the skills that you have to make the bathroom pretty again, right? Yeah. Am I understanding that? When I first bought the house in like respirators and hazmat suit, I could do the remediation myself. It's just I've got a fear of going into that emergency fund

because after that, that's it, you know? Yeah, but that's what it's there for. This is an emergency. You've got a little guy with black mold in the house. Like, this is not worth thinking about this for a couple more weeks. Right. I mean, whoever you decide to get in there, hazmat suit, mask, whatever you decide to do, this has got to be done. And I will suit, mask, whatever you decide to do, this

has got to be done. And I will just tell you, you still have to do this. And even if you have to leave the bathroom wall unfinished for a while, that's okay. It's your house. It's just you. Yeah, the pretty stuff can come later. Yeah, get the mold out of there. And I will tell you that the mold is only going to go where the water is.

That's what I'm trying to tell you. It's not like you're going gonna open it up and then see unless there's a water problem somewhere else the mold it is only gonna you know i mean i i my point has got to be dealt with yeah you gotta get rid of it yeah if i'm you i'm spending you said you got a thousand dollars margin plus the 12 or 1300 and a cd i'm not putting this on a credit card i'm gonna say okay what can i get done have the guys come out and say okay let's start's start the job. I can pay you $1,200. If it's $4,000, I'll pay you $1,200 now and $1,200 when you're done. Yeah, I had a situation like this. Or whatever it is. In our current house, when we bought it, we did some renovation and we found a massive area. I say

massive. It was a whole wall. Had mold all over it because we were having a leak from rain because there wasn't a proper flashing done on the outside of the brick so water was getting in the outside wall here's the point hired a good construction guy came out we looked at i got several opinions did some research and um you know if you want to go buy a little mask you know one of those real nice masks whatever that's fine but we sprayed bleach all over it yeah killed it stunk stunk to high heaven stunk like bleach in the house for a couple days but again we killed it and so we ripped all the bad junk out all the and you guys could do that yeah they could open up the wall she'd go in there spray it with bleach

spray it to kill it plastic over the wall you know put plastic over the doorway and do all of that and then have somebody come in and say is this good like are we good what and at least at that point maybe you're mitigating a lot of your costs because you've already done the demo. You've already maybe eliminated a good portion of it. They're just going to go in and make sure it's fully dead. I think you can remove this really cheap is my point. I'm speaking from experience and I am not a handy guy.

But I mean, what we just described, it's not that much. I've even done the research. You can write an air scrubber, which is what they say you need to, you know, spread the mold spores all over your house. Yeah. To me, it's the mold. I'd rip everything out and do the mold stuff. And then we sit back and breathe because now the bathroom's functional, you said, and the water has stopped. The water leak has stopped. I wouldn't be in any kind of hurry to spend thousands of dollars to fix anything. I would just get rid of the mold and let's cash flow our way through it. Is this your only bathroom? It is the only bathroom. I mean, I'm pretty sure I could

stay with my parents. They're only like a 20 minute drive. It's just, in all honesty, it's probably going to be minimum a week project that's okay yeah dishwasher yeah and the kitchen has like five layers to the walls before we got through and like we were able to put an outlet in so i just know it's going to be a can of worms being an old house i know but here's the deal you got to get rid of the mold and start ripping out all that stuff right away and you're handy you've got handy people around you i i think that's good. But I would. The emergency fund, I would use it. 100%. And this is for you and anybody.

The emergency fund is there for emergency use. You should not feel guilty about it. You should not feel bad about it. That's what it's there for. Because the emergency is the mold. That's the emergency. Not fixing the bathroom. Yeah.

That's no big deal. The mold with the little dude, that's that's no bueno i would absolutely get rid of that quickly and i think you can so this would be a committee you know what if jade and i lived in your area we'd be over there tonight i'd be over there with a crowbar knocking stuff out a little sprake i got the little i'm gonna be in my recliner tonight i'm not gonna go remediate mold you wouldn't go help megan come on megan i love you but this is the way i help really i'd be over there i'd be over there you know why because i got the experience i have the little uh you know like your weed sprayer you just put the bleach in there air sprayer you get all

that take care of tonight i'd be ripping insulation out i mean i can destroy anything okay well that's all you gotta do yeah well i don't know since you weren't able to help megan i don't know that i'm gonna help you ken i'm gonna to sit in my recliner tonight. You're heartless. I'm going to be watching Married at First Sight. There's a new season. I've been to your house. You do not have a recliner.

I have two recliners in our bedroom. In Sam and I's bedroom. You've never been in there. I ain't been in there. But I'm just picturing you with this giant lazy boy in the living room. I was like, I haven't seen one of those. The little hand crank. Yeah.

They're not cute. They're definitely not cute. What are you watching? Murder, She Wrote? No, Married at First Sight. Oh, very good. All right. Great show.

This is The Ramsey Show. Talk soon. I'll see you next time.