The Ramsey Show - App - You're Repeating Your Stupidity! (Hour 1)

Episode Date: October 12, 2023

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. George Camel, Ramsey personality, co-host of the Smart Money Happy Hour and host of the Georgeorge camel with a k big hit show on youtube is my co-host today open phones at triple eight eight two five five two two five well if you didn't hear us dancing in the streets and cheering and didn't see all the confetti going off and you missed all of the uh celebrations uh then we just weren't loud enough when we were cheering for the news

that Dr. John Deloney's book, Building a Non-Anxious Life in Week One, is the number one best-selling book in the United States of America. Woo! Yay! That's incredible. Well-deserved. Congrats, Dr. John Deloney.

Well, cool. And the team did an incredible job, of course. They did. And the platform that you've so generously given us on top of the expertise of the team, on top of an amazing life-changing book, all of that culminates into a number one. Yeah. So it is a great book and the people that get it, their lives will be changed. And so that's the part that's gratifying, but it also helps to just come out and win

the Super Bowl occasionally. That never hurts. Just mic drop it, right? Maybe just do it. So a full number one bestseller. That's John's second number one bestselling book. Wow. And it came out a week ago Tuesday.

And, of course, it takes one week to get the first sales data in. And you guys helped us by pre-purchasing the book a lot of you thank you for that that helps a lot to accomplish that goal and uh it's it's not only an honor but it's also a big marketing help for the book and for john for to land on number one because when people see a number one they're like maybe must be good that out it is good it is really legitimately good so if you uh know of anyone which is everyone that has anxiety in one way or another uh this book is for you building a non-anxious life dr john deloney number one best seller in the nation last week boom that's got to feel good on top of doctor

now he gets number one again yeah Yeah, well, I mean. You got two PhDs, two number ones. The guy just loves to do everything twice. There you go. There you go. Two PhDs. Overachiever, John. That's it, John.

That's it. That's you, John. You're the overachiever. Yeah. I didn't even think about that. That's good. I like that. So you can check it out at ramsaysolutions.com and get it there or anywhere.

Great books are sold. And building a non-anxious life, Dr. John Deloney. RamseySolutions.com and get it there or anywhere great books are sold. And building a non-anxious life, Dr. John Deloney. John will be with us to celebrate, but he's out working selling this book. He's out in another city doing podcasts and TV appearances and et cetera, et cetera, which is what we do when we're out selling a book. So he's out there hanging out in another state doing that. And so we'll celebrate with him proper on the air when he's here next on the air with us. But in the meantime, the news is brand new, and we want to make sure we told all of you that purchased the book, thank you, because it caused that to happen.

Thank you. Thank you for your trust. Thank you for your business. JT starts this hour off in Dallas. Hi, JT. What's up? Hey, how's it going, Dave? What's up, George? Hey. Congrats to Dr. Joloney, too. Thank you. How can we help today? Yeah, so me and my fiance are preparing to buy a house in Dallas, and basically my question is, I'm kind of worried if I'm overspending on my mortgage.

And so the house is worth $350,000. I think it's a great deal. Mortgage, interest, PMI, all that good stuff would be $2840,000. And our combined income monthly, if we're just, because we both work in sales, if we're just saying our salary, that's $7,400. If we do our salary plus 50% of commission, it's around $12,000 post-tax a month. Okay. Is this on a 15-year fixed? It's not. That's the one. Yeah. I'd put it on a 15-year fixed? It's not. That's the one.

Yeah. I'd put it on a 15-year fixed or I wouldn't do it. And I think you can afford to do that and still do it within these numbers. However, you're speaking as if you're already married and you're not. When do you get married? Our wedding is dated for May. Okay. You do not buy the house prior to May. Okay. Because you're going to own the house prior to May. Okay. Because you're going to own a house with someone

you're not married to. And so you don't have a combined income. And dude, you're talking to somebody who's been doing this 35 years. I've had the horrible stories of we bought the house together but we didn't make it to the altar together for whatever reason.

Talk about an ugly breakup. Or I'll tell you an even horrible one, and this will never happen to you, JT, but just to let you know, I'm not just pulling this out of my hat. I actually talked to one guy. He owned a house with his fiance's mother because she was killed in a car wreck before the wedding. And all of her assets went to her family. So now he's partners with his passed away, horrible tragedy, fiance's mother in a home.

Talk about awkward, messy. Don't do this, dude. Wait till after May. You've got plenty of time in your life to buy a house. You are not required to buy a house right now. And y'all got house fever. You've gone out looking at houses. You've already picked this house out.

You might even have this house under contract, do you? I do. Oh, boy. It's like he's done this before. I do. I'm sorry, JT. I would not close on this house. would tell these folks i'm going to give you my earnest plan i'll walk away and your fiance is going to look at you like you have one

eye in the center of your head but um you know i i am not predicting a breakup or certainly not predicting her death i hope none of those things happen i don't think think they will. But you are in no hurry. The only thing you got in a hurry about is buying a house. You didn't get in a hurry about getting married. We could solve this. You could just go ahead and get married. Yeah, I mean, we could get married and go to court. Is there a big wedding planned, like a huge big deal?

There is a wedding planned, yeah. Yeah. Okay. If you went and got legally married, I'll bless it. I would say do it. But I'm going to beg you not to close on a home with someone that you are not legally married to, just because you're leaving all kinds of potential problems. And then go ahead and have the wedding a

lot of people do that these days apparently i hear more and more i've run into that yeah more that like i'll be sitting there at a wedding and they'll go oh it's not the real wedding what do you mean i'm here i drove all the way over here what do you mean it's not the real wedding no it's a they got married like four months ago and this was the dog and pony show yeah who does that well a lot of people these days i I don't know this stuff. Okay. So whatever. It's okay.

It's old school. I'm just, I thought when you had a wedding, you got married. But it's a new thing. So it's okay. Hey, if you do that, JT, I would, I just don't want you to get in a problem. And for those of you that are just shacking up, don't buy a house with your shack up or whatever you call them. Okay?

Don't do that either. Same problem. Okay? Breaking up is hard to do. But if you own a house together, it's freaking impossible. Well, the fact that JT called after he's already on contract saying, here's the numbers. I'm trying to justify it. It tells me he's even going late.

I don't feel good about this. What do I do? I think your numbers are okay. Your timing sucks. But yeah, everything else is good. This is The Ramsey Show. George Campbell, Ramsey personality, is my co-host. Open phones at 888-825-5225.

Royalty is in the house. One of the top YouTubers in America today, or in the world for that matter. Graham Stephan has become good friends with me and through George. I was good friends with George long before that. I've been blessed to be on his show a couple times, and he's dropped by here once before, and they were in town. So he and Jack and I just did a version of his iced coffee house. Did I say that right?

Iced coffee hour. Hour. It's like smart money happy hour. It would be in the house, but there we go. So if you don't know who Graham is, you need to check him out. He has $130 million worth of real estate he has sold in his life. He does a YouTube channel on finance and on real estate and it's a lot of fun to check out graham stefan be sure and do that and uh they had last month

they had about a hundred million viewers on all of their various forms of tiktok and everything else and four and a half million subscribers on youtube so uh if you don't know who he is it's because you're not in that format and that's the only way it's because you're not in that format. And that's the only way it's possible. You're not that hip. All of us who hang out anything around that know who Graham Stephan is. Welcome back. Thank you so much for having me back on. So good to have you. So first question, because you and I both share this huge love of real estate and these

interest rates ticking up highly unusual across the landscape of the last 20 years. Are you seeing what are you seeing out there? Slowdown, prices, what are you seeing? It's definitely slowed down a lot. So what I've noticed, a lot of the smart money, it seems to be either buying real estate in cash, or they're waiting on the sidelines. And I think a lot of people look at real estate from an investment standpoint and think, why would I buy real estate today making a 6% to maybe 7% return when I could use the same money to buy treasuries without any work, any risk at 5.5%. And there seems to be a tipping point right now where deals are very difficult to come by. There's a lot of competition and sellers are locked in to these very low mortgages. They have very little incentive to sell.

If they have a mortgage that's 4%, why would they sell and replace that with a 7% or 8% mortgage? It doesn't make a lot of sense. Yeah, investors aside, consumer to consumer seem to be having that discussion. Oh, absolutely. They're saying, yeah, I could sell my house. The price is still really good, but then I got to go buy a house at 3x or 4x the interest rate. And yeah, I could refinance it later, but they're really not thinking that way. They're thinking, I'm just going to wait on this a minute.

Yeah, well, I think 60% of mortgages right now are locked in, 4% or less. Yes. Substantial. Yes, that's almost all of them. I mean, the number below two percent is bizarre yeah that's out there so cool stuff so uh stock market's doing well yeah and as like you said the treasury's there but that's the little secret everybody in the media the mass media in particular is talking real estate and failed to mention that the s&p in the last 12 months has done about what 16 18

percent about that at the peak it was up almost 20%. Yeah. Wow. And that's just the S&P. I mean, if you just bought an index fund, which people do with their eyes closed, right? You know what I'm saying? That's a no brain, no thought thing. If you actually invested and thought about it and studied a little bit, you could do

better than that. Yeah. And Graham, I'm curious. A lot of your videos, of course, for YouTube, we have to be a little salacious, right? There has to be a little doom and gloom to get the people to click. But what are your real thoughts when it comes to the economy? What's going to happen in 2024? Where do you think things are heading?

Are you even dooming and glooming on your YouTube? You have to, because otherwise people don't click. Now, my videos, I like to be pretty unbiased. I like to present the entire picture, let people come to their own conclusions. But if you don't make a somewhat negative title, no one will click. The videos itself usually are pretty positive overall, but you have to lean into that because otherwise people just don't pay attention. But you seem like an optimistic guy. Just talking to you, you are very optimistic about the future, about finances, where the economy is going, and you're invested in the

stock market and real estate. Well, I think you could do well, regardless of how the economy does. I think that's a component of it, and it might be a bit short term in terms of the next few years. I have no idea what could happen. Everything that I would think is going to happen turned out opposite. I would have no prediction in terms of what might happen. But I think long term, I believe in myself, my ability to make money. I think for most people, they have a lot more direct control than they think. And you're betting on the American economy long term. I think so. And of course, I diversify.

I have international exposure as well. But it's a small component. But I do think that's important. The interesting thing is that people get confused between investing and speculating speculating is a purchase that you're going to turn fairly quickly it doesn't it's not an evil word it's just not investing investing always involves a long-term time horizon and when you're investing with a long-term time horizon let's call it five years or more a hundred percent of the time i'm comfortable with the stock market oh it's down then get in it's on sale you know a 100% of the time I'm comfortable with the stock market. Oh, it's down.

Then get in. It's on sale. You know, 100% of the time I'm comfortable with the real estate market. Well, I don't know. Five years from now, you're going to not be doing that. You're going to be glad you bought a property. You know, so a long-term time horizon, like you said, to me, it just smooths everything out and, you know, then you've got historical track records and things start to kick in.

Do I know what it's going to do between now and this time next year so I could do a flip? No, that would scare the crud out of me. That's why a lot of home builders aren't building specs right now. You can't predict it. I mean, economists and weather forecasters, the only people can be wrong half the time and keep their job, right? Absolutely. And then you could be right once.

And then you're a genius. And then claim that forever. You're a genius after that. That was my one thing. You could write three books, yeah. Well, I'm curious, Graham. You're getting married next year. Yes, I am. It's very exciting.

The show didn't know. You didn't know this. I got a note from you. Congratulations. I thought you knew about this. This is public knowledge, right? I didn't break this news. No, you did not break the news.

Well, I'm curious. You were asking Dave in an interview earlier, which little teaser there, about his relationship with his wife, Sharon, and marriage. Is there anything you're curious about, kind of maybe nervous about when it comes to finances and combining those? Not really. Macy and I are pretty attuned when it comes to money.

And she's naturally very frugal. Like you. Yeah. And to some degrees, I would say it's a good balance because I'll certainly go out. I don't fret anymore of like going to dinner and spending $100 on the bill. Whereas like five years ago, that would be like, well, if I spend $100 here, I could cut back $100 over here and then it balances out. And if I skip this over here, then I could, I don't do that anymore so i've really

come in to enjoy your money a little bit yes yeah to sir i'm still frugal but not to the same degree notice that's when he got married ah now it's lightened up a little bit i lightened up just a little bit a little bit yeah so you and macy are both tight wads and so later you'll make little tight wads this is great yeah it's gonna be fun this is great a bunch of cheapskates what are you willing to splurge on these days as you've started to like let go of some of that and enjoy it a little i would say experiences are something that in the past i would usually forego that to work more so i would say experiences uh i would say dinners are something that i've really been enjoying and going out to eat a few times a week. And I would say saving time, which is something that I've never really done before.

Oh, spending money for time-saving conveniences. If I could, like for instance, if I get a nicer seat on the airplane, but that means that maybe I could work a little bit better. If I have a slightly larger seat, I could put my computer in front of me. And if I could get something else done, I see that as a justifiable expense. So there's certain things that I could do to save time. Well, if you need any tips on spending, ask Dave. He's really good at enjoying his money. He loves experiences. He's traveling all over the world. So that's part of it, is give, save, spend. You got to have balance there. That's good, yeah. So what's the biggest advice with

you having one of the largest YouTube channels on real estate and money in the world today? What's the biggest piece of advice in this current environment you've got for folks listening? I think it really just depends on what their objective is. I mean, my big thing is always save as much as you can, spend less than what you make. I think those are just important qualities to have in terms of career though, because that's where I've really gotten the biggest benefit is just the channel and the outreach. The savings certainly helped, but the income that I made from that was certainly a big catalyst. But I truly loved what I do. And I still do. It's like, to me, work never felt like work. It was always something

fun. And that's where things came really easy for me. And I feel like if people could find what they truly love to do, where it doesn't feel like work to them, and they could spend all day doing it, that's how you typically will succeed in areas where others just can't keep up. That's your unfair advantage, I think. You're more creative. You're more energetic. And you have to watch because you work all the time. It's just fun. It's fun. Congratulations.

I'm so proud of you. Thank you so much. And congrats on the marriage. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you. Give M And congrats on the marriage. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you. Give Macy our love. Good stuff.

Graham Stephan. Be sure and check out his shows on YouTube. The Graham Stephan Show. And one more time, the name of the show. Iced Coffee Hour. Check out Dave Ramsey on there. I messed it up. I didn't want to mess it up again.

Be sure and check it out. Thanks for stopping by, my friend. Thank you so much. Good to see you. This is The ramsey show george camel ramsey personality is my co-host today open phones at 888-825-5225 gordon is in flint michigan hi gordon welcome to the ramsey show thanks for having me. Sure. What's up? Well, I'm still working. I'm 61, soon to be 62, and was wondering if I should take my Social Security at 62. I'm debt-free. I should wait until I'm 67. I have about $905,000 in my 401k.

Way to go. So you're a millionaire, so this doesn't matter. It's just a mathematical question. Correct. And it's just knowing to do the right thing. It took me a long time to get out of debt. Here's the way the math works on the calculation. As you know, the sooner you take it, like 62 versus 65,

the less you get per month for the rest of your life, right? Correct. But you get it for three years longer or whatever. If you take it at 62 versus 65, you get an extra 36 checks that you wouldn't have gotten. Okay? So there's two factors that come into play here. One is the longer you live, the more it makes sense to take it later because you're going to get a bigger check the whole time.

Okay? Also, there's what's called the present value of money. Would you rather have $10,000 today or $10,000 10 years from now? I'd rather have it today and invest it, and 10 years from now it would be $20,000. So the present value of money. So you're getting that money sooner, and it is more valuable to get it at 62, even though it is less money. So if you took all the money that you had between 62 and 65 and invested

it it probably would make up the difference throughout your life mathematically you see what i'm saying yes so that the the longer you live the better off you are to get the bigger check but uh in other words if you thought you were gonna if you knew for certain you were going to live to 70, you'd be better off taking eight years from 62 to 70. All right? But if you were going to live to 90, you'd have been better off taking the bigger check from 65 to 90. You follow me? Yes.

So that's the way it works out. The problem is we don't know when we're going to die, and that kind of screws up the whole formula. No calculator for that. It messes up the calculator, right? So the other thing is this. You know, I have not started taking it. I'm 63, and I just now thought about it because it hadn't mattered.

But I didn't not take it for a reason. I just didn't screw with it because it doesn't matter. But I would probably suggest to do what i haven't i'd probably start taking it and just throw it in an investment and i haven't done that i probably need to go do that when i get off the air okay i was thinking about just taking my wife's when she take turn 62 and wait on mine until I'm 67. Yeah, but the point is, let's just say you died at 65. That would be a really bad plan. That would be a bad plan?

Yeah, because if you die at 65 and you never got any Social Security ever because you were waiting until 67, would have they would have kept all your money you follow me yes so that's that's the problem with this thing you can't figure it out so i i tend to take it early i have a tendency to take it early even if you don't need it and turn around and invest it uh and just leave it alone just because i don't it you know i want to get something out of these people because they've been screwing me for 50 years. So I want to get some of it back, right? Right.

Do you know what the amount is, the $62,000 that you would get? I would get right at $22,800. Have you calculated it at $65,000? At $67,000, it was $31,000 because i've been on the social security so it's 900 bucks so it's ten thousand dollars a year difference right yeah and so if you invested uh 2200 which is uh uh 24 000 a year 25 000 a year okay if you invest that but for five years it will create more than one thousand dollars of income per month you should take it now and invest it that's that's why i'm on the phone because i just needed that reassurance so because i'm still working my company bought me out

two years ago and it was too soon then to retire. Yeah. This is not about retirement. This is about just when to take Social Security. It's different. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So if you're not going to need that money, I'd invest it. I mean, even just crunching the numbers right here, 10 years of growth at 10%, you'd have $436,000. That's $72,000. Yeah, just from investing this. Just investing every single one of those checks. I need to go get this money. I know. That's serious, Dave.

What have you been doing, man? People taking my advice, and I'm not doing good. I've got to work on this. Like you said, it ain't worth fiddling with at your level. Well, but yeah, it's worth fiddling with because anytime you can stick it to the government, you want to. That I can see, Dave, going on. For that reason, it's worth fiddling with because anytime you can stick it to the government, you want to. That I can see, Dave, going on. For that reason, it's worth fiddling with.

Uncle Sam's been hanging on to my money far too long. My drunk Uncle Sam. Open phones at 888-825-5222. Everybody's got one in their family, right? Okay. So Anthony's in Raleigh, North Carolina. Hi, Anthony. What's up?

Hey, guys. My wife and I, we're on baby steps four, five, and six. And two years ago, we moved from California here to Raleigh. And we have some money sitting in our savings, but we just don't know what to do with it. I'm not sure if we should chunk some at the house or put some in a 5C9 for our two kids. But it's about $70K and just looking for some guidance on this. And that's on top of your emergency fund? Correct. I have 30K in our emergency fund. Cool. How are the kids doing on the college fund?

We haven't started. He's two years old, and we have a baby on the way. Exciting. Well, there's a start. You can chunk some money into a 529 plan and get that thing going and then use the rest of it towards the way. Exciting. Well, there's a start. You can chunk some money into a 529 plan and get that thing going and then use the rest of it towards the house. Okay. Any recommendations on how much to start off with out of that 70 into 529? Well, they got so much time, it doesn't really matter all that much. Just depends on how heavy you want to do it. It's pretty easy to throw 10K on each of them and you'll be amazed in 18 years what 10K will turn into. Punch that into a little compound interest calculator,

and you'll be like, oh, okay, we're good. Yeah, you really got a real strong head start. Like, you won't have to do much more than that. So I'd probably throw 10K in each of those and 50 at the mortgage. What's your mortgage balance? $230,000. And so you did not come from

California with a huge equity to Raleigh and just pay cash for a house? No, we put about $160,000 down on this house here, and we have the $70,000 left over. So that's what we're left with right now. This house here, is there another house? No, we bought this house for $410,000. Oh, okay. just you mean when you bought the house the house here in herali i misunderstood okay all right so all right so you got uh two what's your household

income uh 120 good okay yeah so you throw 50 at this you got 180 left you're gonna be done about four or five years on the house right that's what i'm thinking ching ching. Yeah, no question. I'm not letting that sit in the savings account. We're going to knock on Mr. Mortgage in the mouth. I like it. Great plan. Get it, get it, get after it. Yeah, that's a common question, Dave. There's not specific parameters we put around baby steps five and six about how much to put in the college fund versus towards the house, and a lot of people have that. Do you have any good parameters around how to look at that because obviously the kids ages matter yes what kind of college they're going to go to matters what your mortgage balances matters yes all of that matters and and it changes so dramatically that i've never been able to come up with an exact formula to go

okay baby step five here's your formula but ten percent down to the yeah it's not it's not it doesn't work because it doesn't it you know i don't even want to pay for my kid's college. I can't factor that in, you know. That's an option. You know, so the thing is, what I have found, though, is that once we get people on this track and they're like him, they're thinking about it, they're generally... People don't make mistakes when they're thinking about it. They make mistakes when they aren't paying attention and don't bother. If I go deal with bother if i go deal

with college they go deal with college you know so it works out okay and that's how baby step five has been successful even though it's super vague but people come in all the time and say dave we put our kids through college debt free yep they do it we hear it all the time they figured it out because they dealt with college. This is The Ramsey Show. George Camel, YouTube star, Ramsey personality, is my co-host. Check him out at George Camel with a K. That show on Ramsey Networks on YouTube is blowing up. He's having a blast with it, and the listeners, viewers are as well.

And he's, of course, the co-host with rachel cruz on smart money happy hour so i ran into your smart money happy hour producer as i was leaving yesterday and i yelled across the building oh that's the smart money happy hour producer and she went yeah you can't just yell at team members david frightens them i was like trying to act like a crazy fan or something and it just blew her mind. My favorite is when your wife Sharon will text Rachel and I and let us know her feedback on an episode and it's always entertaining. She loves it. Yeah. She actually does not do that to other shows, Joe.

George, that's- It means the world. Yeah. Well, it's dangerous territory. That knife can cut both ways. Can I be truthful? It's the only fan I need to keep the show on the air you're not going to cancel your wife's favorite show can't do it yeah but that knife cuts both ways that's true

if it ceases to be her favorite show oh gotta keep sharing happy dave you know that she's a hard woman i'm just saying george is also a star of the EveryDollar webinars where we teach people how to do a budget. Those have been fun. And it's completely free. They are funny and fun. And Jade Warshaw, Rachel Cruz, George Camel, and the EveryDollar team are hosting free online budgeting trainings, webinars, and teach you how to run the EveryDollar app. It's all free. We'll show you how to get on a budget, show you how to get on a plan,

show you how to get – tell your money what to do instead of wondering where it went. And, you know, George likes to talk about creating some margin. They go through actual examples. But the cool thing about these webinars is you can talk back to George and Rachel and Jay, whoever's doing it. Yeah, we're reacting to the live chat, the Q&A. We have people come on audio and ask their question live like the Ramseyay show oh there you go so we're having a good time with them modified version of this all right there we go every dollar.com slash budgeting uh there's

there's one almost every week um and one of the personalities you know two or three times a week is not unusual so be sure and check them out every everydollar.com slash budgeting, and sign up and be a part of those. All right. Justin is in Salt Lake. Hi, Justin. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. How's it going, guys? Thank you guys for taking my call.

So I am on baby step number two of paying off my debt, and I have about $38,000 worth of debt, and I'm 21. So I'm going to call you guys and see if I can get some advice on my situation. What kind of debt have you got? So I got a past due phone bill of $1,900. I got a credit card debt for $700. I got a personal loan out for $1,500. I got two repossessions, one for $5,000, one for $10,000.

I got a current car loan for $12,000, and I owe my girlfriend's grandma $7,000. You owe your girlfriend's dad? Grandma. Grandma. $7,000, yeah. Oh. She helped me get down payment on my new vehicle because my old one blew a motor on it, and I am employed by her. You're employed by her?

What do you do for your girlfriend's grandmother? So they own an audiovisual company, so we run the equipment in Park City, Utah, for hotels like St. Eric's and Lodge and and a couple of places we do weddings and business meetings. So I just go in and I just... How have you managed to get two cars repoed in your 21 years old? So when I was 18, I bought my first auto loan out and it was for $10,000. We actually had a lease.

Made a bad mistake on that one, and the vehicle had issues, and the motor went out, and I said, okay, guys, I'm not paying on this anymore, so I let them repossess it. So that was a voluntary repo. And then the $10,000 one was I got into an accident, and the remaining balance on the loan is what my insurance wouldn't cover. Because you didn't have enough coverage? That is correct.

Okay. Well, when I went broke at 28 years old, Justin, and lost everything, I had two babies and a marriage hanging on by a thread, I made the decision I was going to do a detailed analysis of how stupid I had been so that I didn't do it again. You seem to be repeating this pattern. Like cars are killing you. Oh, I've been through 18 cars in the last four years, so...

Yeah, cars are killing you. yeah yeah okay what do you make uh i make about 37 000 annually every year okay are you getting side jobs uh no i've been picking up a lot of overtime that this uh my current job i've been working 80 100 100 hour weeks and you're making 37 000 doing that yeah that's just my base without my over my overtime my overtime wages are about 3300 every two weeks okay all right so another 36 000 you're doubling your income that would make sense if you're working 80 hours instead of 40. That would be logical. Yeah. So, good. So you're making it like 70 as long as you can continue to get the OT,

and if you can't get the OT, pick up something else, right? Yep. Okay, that's good news. We had a slow season about November, so I got a second job lined up. Okay, are you paying payments on the $1,900 old phone bill? Yes. I actually am paying $300 a month until I get enough to watch that one out. And I know my credit card last payment is going to be coming out next week on Thursday. So I'll be losing that $600 credit card debt. The two repos will settle with you for pennies on the dollar, lump sum.

And so if you have a $10,000 repo deficit, the big one, you probably could offer them $3,000 cash and they'll take it. You're going to have to argue with them and act like you're broke and carry on and whine and I can't pay it and this is all I can do and otherwise I'm going to have to file bankruptcy and you're going to have to threaten them and all this stuff. But you flop around on the floor and foam at the mouth a little bit and then now you can eventually get them to settle for about three grand okay and the same thing on the five thousand you ought to be able to do that for about

a thousand fifteen hundred bucks get it in writing offer them a lump sum nothing no payments no payment plans i can't put you on a payment plan. I don't have room to have another payment plan. I've already got a car payment. That's why this got repoed, because I'm a broke guy. But broke guy's 21 years old, and I want to settle this. I can give you $3,000 cash, or I can give you nothing, and you can get nothing. Which do you want?

Do you want nothing? I can do nothing. I can hang up the phone, and you'll get nothing. What is it you want? And this is how you have to talk to them because they're brain damaged all right you got to really lean in dude you got to really lean in and then get it in writing from them before you send them any money and do not allow them to have electronic access to your checking account because they will take everything in your account, not what you agreed to, because they lie.

Okay. Okay? It's an industry of scum. And so you have to treat it like you're dealing with pure evil, even though you're the one that didn't pay your bill. But you still have to go treat them like you're handling an alligator, okay? Okay. And so get it in writing, no electronic access to your checking account, and then you can give them a one-time prepaid debit card number,

put the amount on there, or you can wire it to them, or you can do whatever. But no, do not give them where you work. Don't give them your Social Security number. Don't give them your current address. Don't give them anything social security number don't give them your current address don't give them anything except three thousand dollars and if you want that i'll give it to you but if you don't i'm gonna let you talk to a dial tone i got another repo i can call and talk to okay and this is how you have to negotiate hard hard ball and then get these things out of your life and then quit

borrowing money on cars yeah that's my uh that's my uh not yeah never do it again okay yeah no you're 21 and you're already a two-time loser don't do this anymore no learn the lesson yeah which was my situation my car insurance is $700 a month on top of my car payment. Why? 92 tickets? Close. Okay. 91. Okay.

I think we've got to stop you from driving around, man. I think you don't need cars at all. Goodness gracious. There's nothing in your life about cars that turned out good. You even got them loaned from your girlfriend's grandmother who's your employer. This sounds like four guns pointed at your face to me that's a country song girlfriend you lose the job you lose the car everything could go wrong if granny gets pissed here this is bad oh man let's clean this up man get it out of your life get this stuff go make a bunch of money clean these debts up as soon don't do anything else i don't want to

hear about you going out to eat and you certainly don't need to see happy hour. There's nothing to be happy about. You need to get this mess cleaned up. This is The Ramsey Show. Hey, it's George Camel. If you like what you heard in this episode and want to know more about getting started on the Ramsey Baby Steps, go to ramseysolutions.com and click on the Get Started button. We'll help you figure out the best next step for you

based on your specific situation. That's ramseysolutions.com and click Get Started.