The Ramsey Show - App - You're Wealthy Broke People! You Know This Is Insane (Hour 3)

Episode Date: March 28, 2023

Jade Warshaw & John Delony answer your questions and discuss: How much money you can afford for kids activities, Why borrowing money from friends and family will ruin your relationships, What to do when your spouse won't talk to you about debt and finances, from the blog: How To Talk To Your Spouse About Money Crazy ways to get money to save money and pay off debt, from the blog: 27 Side Hustle Ideas to Earn Extra Money Focusing on the Baby Steps to do them in the right order, How to decide between staying close to family or moving across the country for a job, What to do when you hate your job but it's paying for college, from the blog: What to Do If You Hate Your Job Support Our Sponsor: Neighborly Have a question for the show? Call 888-825-5225 Weekdays from 2-5pm ET Want a plan for your money? Take our FREE 3 minute assessment: https://bit.ly/3nInETX Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts: https://bit.ly/3GxiXm6 Learn more about your ad choices. https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

🎵 Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Pods Moving and Storage Studio, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth. We help them do work that they love, and we help you create and build actual amazing relationships. I'm your host, Jade Warshaw, joined by the ever knowledgeable Dr. John Deloney. We're here taking calls about your life and your money. Give us a call. The number is 888-825-5225. We got Leslie in Los Angeles, California. What's up with you, Leslie?

Hi, thank you for taking my call. I was wondering, is it wise to spend overspend or spend without any limits on kids activities since we're investing in them? I'm also asking because we kind of overspent on the house. But other than that, we're very. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a wait a minute well i think you're kind of answering your own question because you said the word overspend hold on i i gotta i gotta dig in this is my favorite leslie i'm gonna get i'm gonna get myself in trouble is that okay come on john when you say you're investing in your kids what does that mean um i mean i i just wanna you know my parents they invested in us like i had opportunities to

try everything so now the career i have is exactly what i want to do and i i have a great job well what if i told you wait can i stop you what if i told you i had the opportunities to do almost nothing when i was a kid and i'm in a job that I love and I love my job. Does that hit you any type of way? When you look at your kids, if you look at your kids as an ROI proposition financially, you're going to get into a mess. You're going to get into a mess. So it gives people license to,

I have to send them to every sporting event all these crazy insane travel sport nonsense um all of the uh not only do we have to do uh music lessons we have to do all the music lessons and by the way my kids are in music lessons and my kids do one thing each right so when it comes to brain development yeah i guess you can call that an investment when it comes to social development having just having fun yes all those things are good but if you're thinking i'm gonna overspend right now i am going to make my house more anxious more chaotic so that they can maybe one day get their dreams that That math doesn't work.

That's good. How much are you spending? How much are you spending and overspending? Okay, so we spend easily up to $1,000 between two kids. And I have three kids, two older kids. And then the youngest one goes to daycare. But I mean, that expense, you have to spend it. Sure, of course.

But the activities for the older kids, like $1,000, over $1,000 a month. i mean that expense you have to spend it sure but the activities for the older kids like thousand over a thousand a month how much debt do you have um so we don't have any debt except for the the house um so we have um uh we're spending we're paying thirty five hundred dollars a month on our house um but But we also had to take out a second loan to buy the house because we didn't have enough to put down. You had to? You just had to, huh? No, we were finally ready to buy a house,

and that's when everything went crazy. I know, but you know what was not ready for a house purchase was math. Math wasn't ready. Y'all were ready, but math wasn't ready. What's your monthly take home what's your take home because i want to see what percentage this mortgage is of your we make about 20 000 from both of us per month yes okay so your mortgage is fine um no no but we have more we have that second mortgage how much is that for 10 years that's for 10 years. That's for 10 years, and it's $2,600.

And we borrowed about $100,000 from a family member, and we're paying them $2,500 a month for the next seven years. So you're paying $6,100 a month for the home. I've got that right. Plus the $2,500 to your friends. Is that right? Yeah, family member. Yeah, so $3,500 for the actual mortgage,

$2,600 for 10 years for the second mortgage, and $2,500 for seven years to a family member. Leslie, I can hear that you know that this is insane. You're paying $8,600 a month to tackle all of the cares of this mortgage? Almost half of your take-home pay? Yeah. And then we're spending it. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay. And you're 20 grand. Is that take-home or is that gross? That's take-home. Okay. All right.

The good news is you've got a great yearly income and you've got a great monthly income. That's the good news. The bad news is you're not being a good manager of this money. And I hate what this mortgage is doing to you. The $2,500 that you're paying to your friends, when does that end? What's the total amount and when is that over? I think we have six more years left um no not six more years left how can you pay it off we need to get that paid off sooner

because you said you had no debt but this is debt so if you said you're paying 2500 for six years how can we get that done faster the only debt worse than owing a friend six figures is IRS debt. It's so destructive to the soul of a relationship. You owe them $15,000 and you make $20,000 a month. How quickly can you get them that money? Yeah.

You owe them $15,000 or you owe them $100,000? No, it was about $100,000 thousand i don't know the exact numbers yeah so it it's kind of and when we did the calculations it was about twenty five hundred dollars for uh seven years girl dude girl here here's where this ends this ends in ash it ends in a huge mess no you like i was gonna say you can't afford to send your kids to that kind of expense yeah you can't absolutely not you got to clean up this this mess y'all are broke what you are wealthy broke people what is this house worth um so we bought it for one 1.35 um i think it's about 1.5 i but you have no equity in it, do you?

We put down, yeah, probably. Because you had to borrow from three different sources just to get in the front door. Yeah. We were supposed to buy like a million dollar home. We had 10% for that, but it just went crazy. We would buy like nothing for a million. No, it didn't that but it just went crazy and we would buy like nothing for a million no it didn't go crazy you went crazy thank you you went crazy it didn't it is just its own thing y'all went b-a-n-a-n-a-s here's the problem here's the problem leslie and

and and i i gotta get i gotta get in my my my jade stance here for a minute because you've got it you've got to you got to start with the man in the mirror. You got to look at this and go, I and my husband did every part of this. The market didn't just happen. Something didn't just up and happen to you. You went along for the ride and you signed up for it and you were like, hey, we'll do this.

Hey, you called in the show and said, I'm overspending, which means you know that you're doing it, but you're still trying to find this external thing to blame for or say that it's okay. If you don't start changing your habits and changing them quick, you're going to be up, you're already up a creek without a paddle. You guys got to get this money paid off. You make too much money to be this broke. If a bank won't loan you money, if they won't do it then something's up something's up because a bank will give money they will lend they will give money to a pet they'll they'll issue a loan for a dead person the bank if the bank won't do it you ain't got

no business getting it i feel for you leslie. This is The Ramsey Show. You're listening to The Ramsey Show. I'm Jade Warshaw, your host, joined by my co-host, John Deloney. And we're taking calls about your life, your money, your relationships, whatever's going on with your money situation. We want to talk about it. If something fishy is going on with your job, we want to talk about it if something fishy is going on with your job we want to talk about it something weird's going on at home with your money and your spouse we want to talk about that give us a call the the number is 888-825-5225 we got Allison in Portland Oregon oh that's my old neck of the woods what's going on, Allison? Nothing much. I guess I'm having some problems with my spouse. I budget. He doesn't budget. I talk about my debt. He doesn't talk about his debt. So I'm

just wondering how to bring that conversation up to him and kind of get somewhere with it. Tell me a little bit more. The way you're framing that sounds like you're talking about a roommate or a business partner, not your husband. That's kind of how it feels right now when it goes with money. So he has, we have access to like debit accounts, but credit, like he has access to my credit cards. If he wants to look, I have no idea what happens with his credit card. Um, it seems like at the end of the month, he's left with a little to no money in his account. And I'm left with, I mean, I'm, I started saving for a house. I've started saving for, you know, emergency funds, things like that, but it doesn't, he hasn't been chipping in. How long have y'all been married?

Uh, since two years. Two years. One of two things is happening. Either he is seeing somebody else or is struggling with an addiction of some sort or has not left behind his former life that he had before he stood before friends and family and God and said, I do.

He's propping up a lifestyle at your expense. Or he has such a huge debt mess and the shame surrounding that is so big he's trying to do everything he can to hide it from you. Okay. And I don't, like as your friend, you and I just having nachos hanging out, I don't believe you that this is, everything else in your marriage is great except for money. That never is the case. What else does he not talk to you about? I wouldn't be able to tell you. I feel like we talk about everything. So if there's something

he's not talking about, it hasn't been brought up to me. Do you think that it's more of the latter, that it's some sort of debt mess that he has and he doesn't i think i think there's some shame around i mean i make more money than him how much more uh 40 grand more okay can you just tell me the the full number that you make in the full number that he makes so i make about 90 okay a year okay he makes about. Is he insecure about that? I think so, but it's not a conversation that I've been able to have. He doesn't like to have that conversation, so I think that's part of it. So I'm like, hey, you know, I've saved up this much for a house.

And you have no debt. He doesn't want to have that. No, I do have debt, and I'm still paying off my debt. Okay. But I make quite a bit. no debt. No, I do have debt and I'm still paying off my debt. So if you had been my sister or my daughter, I would have told you to have this conversation before you get married. And if the person you're about to marry won't talk to you about money and won't combine accounts with you and won't partner with you on a life together, but wants to, is just hell bent on having two parallel lives together,

I would say absolutely under no circumstances should you get married. Zero. Yeah. Couples that don't have this discussion end up in ash, always. And when you bring kids into the mix, it gets magnified. When you put home ownership in the mix, it gets magnified. Because just the way you're talking you're not talking like married people you're talking like next door neighbors his money my money and his account and my account that's not married talk that is two people who are playing house talk and i'm not saying that to shame you i'm saying that i'm heartbroken for you that this

is where you found yourself and i'm heartbroken that you think so little of your safety you don't feel safe in this house because you don't even know where you stand and you thought you were marrying a partner and you married a child and you're yeah the only way this thing turns around is if you sit down and say i'm not going another step until we have this money conversation okay now question allison i have a question for you if you okay aside from um sharing accounts getting his password things like that if you just say to him hey i just want to talk about our beliefs like what do you believe about debt what do you believe about like is he willing to have any stitch of a conversation with you? Or is it just simply, and if you asked him, hey, is it just a total brick wall? Or is it like, hey, I just don't feel comfortable sharing my,

like on a scale of one to 10, I want to know how ironclad this is. I would say if we like sit down and have a, like, I can bring stuff up about it and he'll answer, but the answer is very vague. So if I was like, hey, this is my goal, like for, you know, my five year goal, my three year goal, whatever it might be, he's very supportive of it. He'll be like, okay, like I understand that that's kind of something I want to do. I'll be like, oh, so how do you plan to do it? And that's where it kind of shuts off. Okay. And if you were to say, hey, you have debt, how much? He'd just be like, yeah, I have debt, but he's not going to give you a ballpark. Yeah. Like I know there's some student loans. I know there's credit cards. That's what I know. I don't know if there's like a loan or anything else. He

doesn't have a card payment, anything like that. Here's what I want to ask. And I'm asking John on your behalf, because I've seen this before. Is it just a sense of control? Because some people just like to lord over finances and they just like to control it. And it's just their thing. You're not going to tell me what to do. This is my thing. I make my money and it's just a control thing. It becomes about power, right? This is my life. I can do whatever I want to. And by the way, I can control your life. And, or number two, it's about shame, right?

It's, I've dug myself a hole. I'm in a mess. My wife makes twice as much money than I, you know, right? It becomes this whole faulty narrative. But listen, I was getting onto him, Allison, but when you sit down and you tell your husband, here's my five-year goals, he has, what's he going to tell you? No, you can't do those things. If he loves you, he's going to say, great. You got to stop having these mine and yours.

You got to start having our conversations. Yeah. That's a big point. Allison, when I got married to Sam, he had far in the majority of student loans than I had. He had about 230 and I had about 34. And so the conversations about money, it was like an onion. It was like, all right, in this conversation, I get this layer. And then the next conversation, I'm discovering something else. And then, and over time he was sharing more and more. The source of that was a lot, a lot of shame, a lot of regret, a lot of, Hey, I'm holding you back in your life. Like if it wasn't for this, we could be doing like, that was the source of it. And the best thing that I was able to do is every time we had those conversations, I was just like, thanks for telling me, like, let's, let's do more. Like, and, and, and I actually started getting mad at him

and saying like, what, do you not trust me? Do you not think I'm going to support you through this? You know, like what, I kind of started posing the question to him, like, you not telling me is telling you something, telling me something about the character you believe I have. If you believe that I'm not a ride or die, if you believe that I'm not going to stand with you through this, is that what you think? So I kind of started, you know, putting it, putting it to him like that. And the more that I showed him, Hey, like I'm in this, it's our money. It's our debt. The more we were able to speak openly about it until all of that came out. And the more that I was like, Hey, your debt is my debt. And I don't know the ins and outs of your situation, but I can only tell you my own experience. And as much as you, like what John said, man,

rehab that vocab and start saying we and I, and this is the life that we can build together and what we can do with our money. And here's our dreams and that sort of thing, man, that can tear down walls. So here's what this looks like, Allison. This looks like you and him inviting him out for a breakfast. And I like breakfast just because sometimes these conversations can take two or three or four hours, a lot of twists and turns. But invite him out for a breakfast and say, we need to have a hard two-year conversation, two-year check-in. And when you sit down and say, I'm scared to death and I can't breathe because I don't

know where we are financially. We're living two separate lives. We need to create our future, not mine and yours, but our future, and that starts with you being honest about what we owe, what our debts are, and how we are going to create a new life. But it starts with you admitting, I'm terrified, will you please help me?

This is The Ramsey show what's going on guys it's the Ramsey show I'm your host Jade Warshaw joined by Dr. John Deloney taking calls today your life your money how to build wealth how to budget how to get out of this thing called inflation and rise above whatever it is. We're taking your calls. Triple eight, eight, two, five, five, two,

two, five. When John was the last time that you were excited about a Monday? I'm always excited about Mondays. I kind of, I kind of am too. But if, if,

if, if that's you, if you're struggling, what if instead of waking up exhausted, you felt exhilarated? You can't wait to get to work because it's another day to fulfill your passion. All right. In a world where the bare minimum Monday, I hate that phrase, a trend has taken place of quiet quitting. It's clear people are craving meaningful work,

but finding the career you were born to do can be difficult when you don't have the right tools. That's why career expert and Ramsey personality, my dog, Ken Coleman, created the Get Clear Career Assessment to help you discover your top talents, passions, and a clear mission statement that'll help you find the work that the world needs you to do. I love that. The world needs you. You've got something inside you that the world needs. And after taking this quick assessment, you'll get a custom report with everything you need to take the first step towards a meaningful career. Start your journey and take the Get Clear assessment today. All you need to do is go to ramseysolutions.com slash get clear. And I can tell you, man, the road to finding what you were meant to do,

man, it can be, for me, it was a little bit of a, it was a windy road, John. I'm still trying to figure it out, man. I somehow stumbled into being a YouTuber. Can you believe it? I don't know how long this is going to last. I mean, I know me. A lot of what we did to find our path was so driven by like that financial survival. Yeah, that journey, getting out of debt. And it was all like a blur.

It's like you get out of college and I had a music degree. And it was like what what the heck am i supposed to do with a music degree nobody's ever asked to see my degree ever and it's like you're just trying to trying to make your way out in the world and uh that kind of brings me it brings me to my next segment john they want us to talk about some of the craziest things we've ever done to get money. To get money? Some of our weirdest money stories. Am I saying that right? Yeah. Bro, Austin, the statute of limitations

hadn't run out on some of these things, man. I can't be saying that on the air. There's warrants. There's warrants out. What's the matter with you? I can't say some of this. I've never done anything illegal to get money that I know of. Well, thanks for kicking me while you're down, James.

I'm sorry. I was playing. All my stories are funny stories they're not like involving the popos i mean i i yeah my i i i would do things like i was the associate dean of a college and then on on saturday and sunday i was painting dorm rooms and um like i was doing things in the morning and delivering things in the evening i was all over the place man uh yeah i don't know i've had i can tell you some jobs sam is like in the lobby motioning something to me i'm like i don't know what you're talking about but i can tell you the craziest story that sam and i had is okay so we owed lots of money half a million and uh we were trying to get money um i had an audition that i needed to do and we needed to be able to move

and so sam was like hey we had run out of things to sell we had literally sold everything in the house like to the point that we had no furniture like people would come over and be just sitting on the staircase because we had no furniture. So Sam gets this bright idea. He's like, hey, I know what we can sell to get money. I'm like, what? He goes, I loaned my friend a keyboard back in high school. And I'm like, in my head, I'm thinking it's like, this is back in the early 2000s. I'm thinking it's like a Triton, like one of those nice keyboards.

And so he goes, I'm going to call him up and see if he still has it. I'm like, okay. So he calls up Andrew and Andrew's like, dude, I don't know if I still have the keyboard. You're that guy, Sam. He's like, you can search the garage and see if you can find it. So we drive over to his house. By the way, he lives with his parents in like this giant mansion. We get to the house and Andrew's like, dude, check the garage.

So he opens it. My husband is like searching in the garage for this keyboard he finally finds it and it's like a old like walmart casio bro i was like what are we gonna get for this is 20 20 dollars but that's when let me tell you when you're out here trying to get money, you will go do it. When I tell y'all to go sell stuff and when I tell you guys to get crazy, I know. I'm not telling you to do anything I didn't do. I rented a room out of my buddy's mom's house. I was a grown man with a good job. I was engaged and I was waiting to get married and I lived in a house.

Yeah. We sold our house. We sold our nice house and moved into a dorm. We've done some crazy stuff to try to make ends meet. But did you sleep on an air mattress for five years? I did not do that. I slept on an air mattress for five years and I'm checking my text because Sam is like, oh, okay. Sam just texted me the craziest thing we ever did for money. I forgot about this. We used to work on cruise lines. Okay. And we used to get booked to do our show on the cruise lines.

And so we got booked, John, to do a nude cruise. All the passengers. Been there. We've been there. Passengers on the ship were buck naked. And I had to perform with my clothes on i did not participate in this craziness we performed we were on the ship for five days with all naked people oh wow three thousand naked people john that's the craziest thing i've ever done to get money the craziest

thing i'm you're talking about somebody in the buffet no slicing some ham no yes america can we be better than that no naked buffet i'm telling you i went to the gym and your boy was on that leg press he was getting it on the leg press no no this is a true story true story i forgot about it thank you, for texting me that. Man, that's it, John. All right, you win. You win. You win.

When I tell y'all we did some things, I'm telling you we did some things. All right, with that, we need to take a call. We need to get our lives back together. We got Raina in Houston, Texas. What's going on, Raina? H-Town, what's up, Raina? Hello. I was just calling because I just started the Dave Ramsey plan

and, um, prior to this, I used to be really, really poor. So every time I would get my income tax, I would, um, just put it towards my rent. Um, I have a, I have a house now and, um, I owe $46,950. And what I used to do was pay all my bills in advance. So I'm not due till September 1st on my mortgage. And I have a car payment that I'm not due till July. And it's $652,000. And I have a 401k loan for $7,000, which is next in line to get paid. I have a $1,000 emergency fund. And my question is, do I just continue to pay my bills as if I'm not ahead? Or do I just

not pay it to those dates and just put that towards the 401k loan. I'm not sure what direction to go into. Raina, Jade's going to walk you through it. I just want to tell you, I'm so, so proud of you. Thank you. No, listen. Oh, thank you. What you have done is some of the hardest work a human can do. You took a machete and you head off into the woods

and you said, there is no trail, I will make one. And that makes you strong and that makes you brave. And it's an honor to get to talk to you. It's awesome. Okay. I'm so proud of you. It's amazing. Fellow Houstonian here, I'm so proud of you.

It's amazing. All right, go ahead, Jade so proud of you. It's amazing. All right, go ahead, Jade. I think you're doing great. The fact that you're getting ahead, that's letting me know that you've got extra money in your budget to do that. I feel like you're still kind of in that survival mode. And I want you to know that you don't have to operate like that. You can do a month-to-month budget like everybody else. And I think that you're going to get further faster that way because you're really going to see the margin that you have to start paying down this 401k loan to start paying your car completely off. So I want you to walk the baby steps. You've got the thousand dollars saved. That's an excellent job. And I want you to work your baby step two, which is paying off your debt. And I want you to use the debt snowball method. So Reina, with that, you're

listing all of your debt from smallest to largest. So you mentioned a car note, you mentioned a 401k loan. If there's anything else in that, list that debt from smallest to largest, make minimum payments on all of the debt and put any and all extra money on the smallest debt until it's gone and work that snowball until all your debts are gone. And then you're going to be able to stack up a nice three to six month emergency fund to finish this out for you and then go on through the baby steps. You're going to be investing. You're going to be saving for kids college. You are doing a fabulous job. You're going to be one of these people standing on this stage as a baby steps millionaire one day. Hey, let's get her FPU for a year and let's get her every dollar just so we can support her on her amazing transformation.

This is The Ramsey Show. You're listening to The Ramsey Show. I'm your host, Jade Warshaw, joined by Dr. John Deloney, taking calls about your life and your money. Scripture and quote of the day. Proverbs 18.22 says this, by your endurance, you will gain your money. Scripture and quote of the day. Proverbs 18, 22 says this, by your endurance, you will gain your lives. Let that one sink in. Like it. ACDC, come on, son. It's a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll. I feel like they did that for you, John.

I'll take it. Maybe they did it for me too. It's a long way to the top if you want to rock it. I don't know. Usually when you have an ACDC quote next to a Bible verse, the paper just catches fire, but whatever, guys. It did catch fire earlier. I put it out already. We're taking your calls. Give us a call. 888-825-5225. We got Ryan in Indianapolis, Indiana. What's going down? Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my call. Of course. What's up? My question is, my wife and I are 27 and 26. We're in baby steps 3B slash 4, kind of in the house saving slash investing 15% step. We are wondering if we should leave our family and kind of like everything we have behind in our small rural Indiana town for a government job kind of across the country, whether that be in Texas, North Carolina,

and of course the benefits that come with that, housing stipend, pension. Why would you not do this? So the only thing holding us back is our family do you even like them we love our family yes that's good gross that's the hard part that's the hard part that is a hard part i don't you're talking you're talking right you're talking to two people who have done this we love our families where. Yeah, but that was where I was at. We love our families, and we've moved across the country for work and for opportunity.

And I don't know. I can't speak for you guys, but it's been great. I think it's been, yeah. I'm not going to say that it's always easy. It's hard. Because community, I mean, you can't buy community. You cannot, you know, that's one of those things that takes time digging in and creating and what you've created over time in indianapolis that's not going to just crop up for you you know like six months

into it or a year into it that takes time to build so i'm not going to lie to you and say it's going to be easy but you've got to sit down with your wife and kind of sort through like what what are what do we want and what does that look like and what are we willing to sacrifice? Because you've got to take the bad with the good. Yeah, so you actually just renting, of course, in the beginning. So we have about $60,000 saved up for a house. Absolutely rent. Absolutely rent. Yes.

And you've got two variables here. One, you don't know the ins and outs of the community you're going to be landing in. And so you don't want to buy a house and then realize you wish you were on the other side of town or you wish you were more rural or more downtown or whatever and two you don't know if this is here's here's what a lot of folks box themselves in especially as 26 and 27 year olds it's either we stay here forever and die or we move and we never come back and those that's a false binary narrative it's not true you can move for 18 months you can move for six months and both you and your wife look at each other and say that this is a disaster we got to go back and in a small rural town two awesome folks like they'll take you back they sure will or you can move and realize and when you don't have a

house payment you're renting the, there's no pressure sitting on, on you, on your chest and on your wife's chest, you can't breathe. And then you can actually live your life and decide, is this, is this for us or not? When me and my wife moved from Nashville to, I mean, from Texas, Nashville, we rented, we rented for a couple of years. That's such a good point, Ryan. And Sam and I did the same thing when we were making the decision to come here to Nashville. One of the things that gave me so much peace is I was like, if we hate it, we can go back. We just leave. Like we're adults, like no one's going to stop us. And so I think that, yeah, I think it's exciting. Yet again, we talked to somebody who has done well with their money. They've got choices

that they can make and there's not a right or wrong choice. You can just up and decide what do you want to do? They got options. I love that. Thanks for the call, Ryan. It's up to you what you want to do. It's up to you and your family. You can do either one. All right. We got Ryan in Lansing, Michigan. What's going on, Ryan?

Matthew. Matthew. I got to put my glasses on, John. What's going on, Matthew? How can we help? Hey, I'm doing well. I just, I'm a new listener to the podcast. Been listening for a month or so.

Welcome to the gang. I'm 18 years old and I currently am working for state government and I really don't like my job, but they're paying for a lot of my college. So my question to you is, should I leave my job because I don't like it and then have to pay more for college? Or should I stick with this job for a few more years and get the college paid for? How old are you?

18. What are you going to college for? Uh, cybersecurity. Is there, are you enjoying your coursework? Is that what you want to do? Uh,

yeah, I, it's, it's not necessarily my dream job, but it is, um, probably the, what I would want to do do that's actually going to pay the bills. Okay.

If I'm you, I would tell you to stay and get your job. Keep your work and get your college paid for. And here's why, because you're 18. If you quit, you're going to go to college and you're going to be waiting tables and mowing lawns. I mean, you're going to be doing work on the side to make these payments. And so I would say, man, get all the experience you can. See if you can get involved in some of the IT work or some of the cybersecurity work or go to coffee with those guys. So it may not be the ins and outs of your job that you love every day.

But do what you can, like Ken talks about with the proximity principle, to rub shoulders with some of these folks in the security work or the government work, how it all works. None of that's going to go to waste because I can see you getting done with your four-year degree, getting a certificate in cybersecurity, and then having four years of government work on your resume, and that's going to look real good. Okay. And with that, it is possible for me to, to transfer, um, within the government to other positions. Um, would you recommend me look into that as well? Why wouldn't you? I don't know. I just, I'm not sure if, if that would leave, like, I've only been at the job I'm at for, for six months and I don't want to. What about it do you not like? What was that? What about it do you not like the job? Yeah. Uh, it's very mundane work. Um, I don't feel like I'm really accomplishing

anything. And then at the same time, uh, there's very few achievable goals. I don't have, uh, there's not a set, uh, I guess, completion of a task. It's just kind of work on it, and it never really gets done, you know? Yeah. I guess what I'm asking is, and Jade Hoppin here, you're currently seeking a degree to get qualified for the job that you want to do. And so you are not at this current job for any philosophical reason other than they provide you an experience and a paycheck. And that paycheck is being used to fund your qualifying – your qualification path so that you can get this this job you want when you

we are expecting on all of us do this but we we've created a culture where we expect our jobs to give us all of our purpose and all of our meaning and all of our all and sometimes it's a means to an end and right now you've got you've got a you've got a date that a finish line here and that's graduation and then you're done right i agree it's a means to an end like you said if you were older and and you were calling in just saying hey i hate my job i need to get out of it that's different but you're young you're using this to pay for your education you're trading one thing for another i think it's a great trade because you're getting your school paid for yeah you're not gonna have student loans coming out of this now i think that that's worth it um if there's some reason that you get out of this,

then you just got to swear to yourself that you're going to pay cash from here on out. That's really where the give and take of this. If you're not going to keep this job, how are you going to pay for school? I actually, this is me. I like that you need to sit in a mundane, boring job for a season. Man. To show yourself, I can do this. I can do tough stuff.

I can do boring stuff. I can do exhausting stuff. There's a strength in character on the back end of this that I think would be worth your time. And as an 18-year-old, you're rolling your eyes right now. I can feel them through the phone. You're like, oh, gosh, this old idiot. I get that.

That's fine. But raise your hand if you've ever worked a job that you hated. Exactly. I can feel them through the phone. You're like, Oh gosh, this old idiot. I get that. That's fine. But raise your hand if you've ever worked a job that you hate it. Exactly. I mean, come on. Everybody. And, and especially when it's a means to an end.

So if, if you have an opportunity to move or move in there and find something that's more, you think absolutely, but I wouldn't go applying and saying I'm through with this terrible. I'd ride it out, man. You've got a pretty sweet setup right now.

And it's, it's adjacent to what you want to do for your, for your career. I'd ride it out, man. You've got a pretty sweet setup right now, and it's adjacent to what you want to do for your career. I'd let it ride, brother, and take the free tuition. I'd do the same thing. Look, there's purpose in the process, and a lot of times we want to try to skirt that process because it's not fun or it's boring or it's not all that it was cracked up to be. But in this case, it's serving a greater purpose. All right, that does it for this hour. Be sure to join us next time. And remember, when it comes to changing your life and your money, you can tell me that you won't do it, but please don't tell me you can't do it. With Christ,

all things are possible. Hey, what's up, guys? It's Jade. Look, 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 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.