The Ramsey Show - App - You’ve Been Spending Like You’re in Congress! (Hour 2)

Episode Date: August 29, 2023

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the pods of Moving and Storage Studios, it's the Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, number one bestselling author of the book, Paycheck to Purpose, and host of the Ken Coleman Show,

where he talks about your job, your career, you making money doing something you love, and a lot of it, a lot of what you love and a lot of money. He's here to help. The phone number is 888-825-5225. Amanda is with us. She is in Gulfport, Mississippi. Hi, Amanda. Welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Hey, y'all. Thank you for taking my call. Sure. What's up? Okay. My husband and I, we are 34 and have three kids. We have about $70,000 in debt, and we're starting baby step two. So I'm trying to figure out what we can leverage to get this paid off.

Okay. The question was, we have a Roth IRA worth $20,000 that we opened about six years ago. My husband opened it through Fidelity, I think, I don't know, before Dave Ramsey. Anyways, what would be the consequences of us cashing that out? Is that something you'd recommend? Never recommend that. You're taxed. You're at a 10% penalty, and you're taxed at your tax rate on the amount of growth in the case of a Roth that's there.

And I suspect most of that is growth, actually. So, yeah, it's like borrowing money at 30% or 40% interest. So we would never do that. It's actually not a shortcut. It's a shortcut, but it's a shortcut that costs you so much it's not worth it. So that's not the plan. So what's your household income? We gross about $120,000 a year.

Cool. How much of the $70,000 is your car payment? I own my vehicle vehicle my husband's 2022 truck is worth three thousand i mean thirty thousand so he has about a six hundred dollar note yeah and so there's thirty thousand owed on the truck yes okay all right there's your shortcut if you want one uh-huh okay i think she may have floated that idea once before breathe how did he respond well it's a new to him truck this was in our you know our stupid days and about a year ago we did this

i know how did he respond i think i know but i'm just curious how did he respond well this this was a present for getting his master's and getting a big boy job and so typical middle class stupid that's what we did um he how did he respond to selling it as an idea he does not like it uh we knew that okay okay. Okay. That's fine. So here's the thing. Here's the thing. A great guy that I used to listen to when I was a youngster, one of the fathers of motivation and success literature is a guy named Earl Nightingale. He's since passed away. We have a goal. The things we're willing to do to hit the goal are not as important as the things we are willing to give up to hit the goal. So I'm going to quote you on that. You can be willing to do a lot of things to hit a goal.

I'm willing to work out. I'm willing to run in order to lose weight, but I'm not willing give up chocolate cake you know and so that that's the hard part of the goal now it doesn't mean you can't ever hit the goal it just makes it more difficult to hit the goal so if the goal is owning a truck that goal is competing with the goal of being debt freefree. Okay. Same thing for any other asset we own? Yeah, and it's true for almost anything. I mean, now, you know, now, I've had people call in and say, you know, I have a diamond ring that was my engagement ring that's worth $10,000.

Should I sell that? No. You can't get another one of those. There's only one. Can you get another truck? Oh, crap, they're on every corner. You get another truck when you're not broke not broke now can you do this without that okay here's what it takes all right thirty five thousand dollars a year three thousand dollars a month for two years which on

120 000 means you guys are living on beans and rice rice and beans you don't see the inside of a restaurant you're not going on vacation you're living on a tight rice rice and beans you don't see the inside of a restaurant you're not going on vacation you're living on a tight budget you and your husband are both so committed to this that your fingernails are bleeding you are fighting scratching clawing taking every you sold so much stuff the kids think they're next and you can pay off seventy thousand dollars in two years and keep the truck okay but you can't half but do any of those things and get there and keep the truck so okay he's an all or nothing kind of guy so i just need to get them all in right he's got to be all in you cannot there's you cannot wander out of seventy thousand dollars worth of debt you have to go like so angry at the whole

situation that anybody that gets in my ways in trouble you follow me i mean it's like ah you know we're getting out and but you're doing it together you're not yelling at each other i don't mean that we're yelling at the debt we're yelling at the the former version of me that was stupid okay i'm not going to do this anymore and this is how i got out this is how we've let other people out over the years so that's what you got to do and it's almost as if the truck and you could keep the truck if you do all the other stuff i'm talking about that's fine and i'm and it doesn't violate our rules actually but you were looking for, you know, kind of a shortcut with the Roth, and no, that one doesn't make sense. Keeping the truck, yeah, 50-50 if you do all the other stuff.

If you don't do all the other stuff, it's almost as if the truck is in front of your husband as a test to say, all right, we're going to do all this other stuff, and if it doesn't work, I'll even sell the truck. But let's try all the other stuff first, see if we can keep the truck. But until he puts the truck on the table as an offering puts it on the altar as an offering then um you know that's a test of his commitment yeah otherwise we know he's more committed driving that truck than he has been out of debt yeah our friend john maxwell probably stole this idea from nightingale but he says it so well he says

what are you willing to give up to go up? And that's what you were saying. And at this point, it's like, do I care more about how the truck makes me feel, or do I care more about how the debt makes me feel? And that's the thing about this. When people say stuff, they tell us when we meet them, and they've gone through Financial Peace University, and they've paid off $70,000 worth of debt in two years. They say, you changed my life. I didn't change their life. They changed their life.

But Ramsey didn't change their life. They changed their life. Ken didn't change their life. That's correct. When they say, you changed my career. In order to go through the transformational process to get out of debt, the transformational process to get a different career, you have to go through transformation transformational process to get out of debt the transformational process to get a different career you have to go through transformation that's right and that's it's it's not the 70 000 that's going to completely set you up for winning it's who you become the other side

of it that's correct yeah that's the thing yeah and so when you you know the person you have the the couple the quality of relationship the um, the respect you have for each other that you have to go through to get to the other side of this is the real treasure. It's not the debt-free. That's correct. And it will cause you to go on to build wealth. It'll cause you to raise better kids. It'll cause you everything because it makes you two into a much stronger couple stronger as individuals confident competent you know you have to transform be not conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind this is the ramsey show

ken coleman ramsey personality is my co-host today thank you for joining us open phones at 888-825-5225 dustin is in columbus ohio hi dustin welcome to the ramsey show thank you for having me sure what's up um so me and my wife are currently 25 um we have just taken in uh some student loans that we're kind of like feeling a little uneasy about that it's just now hitting about sixty thousand dollars uh in student loans uh you just took them in what does that mean but it's not a stray dog how what are you talking about like we from biden's plan that he had originally had so we're just now getting to them about the debt loan forgiveness all that stuff so now that it's finally coming in we're like oh we have sixty thousand dollars

in student loan debt okay you always had it yeah we were not paying on it yeah if for three years yeah okay yeah i got you so we were not paying so now it's coming now it's coming down on you okay i got you all right i'm with you yep correct um as well as we have fifty thousand dollars in auto loans so now as well as we just had a a kid yeah we're kind of sitting back. Yep, yep. What's your household income, sir? We each make about $80,000 a year. So $160,000 a year. Yep. And you have $110,000 in debt.

Correct. And you just had a baby. Is the baby okay? Oh, yep. Maybe as healthy as can be. Wonderful. Okay. So you guys are going to get to spend a lot of time with the baby. You're not going anywhere. All you're going to do is work and be with the kid because you're going to live on nothing and pay this off in 18 months. Okay. Tell me about the cars, the 50,000 in car debt. So she was a travel nurse about a couple years, probably two years ago so we were making a good bit of

money and we both decided to go get new vehicles and then decided that we wanted to have a kid so she stopped traveling and got a better nurse job so now we're like what do you owe what are the two cars you owe 50k break them down we have we have a ford f-150ariat. We owe about $23,000 on, and then a 2019 Jeep Grand Cherokee that we owe about $27,000 on. Okay. Are you upside down, or you got any equity in them? The Ford, I could probably get about $30,000 out of it, and then the Jeep probably out of what we owe. Well, I'll tell you, my friend, I'm guessing the F-150 is yours, right? It is. Well, since Dave and Disestablish, you're

not going anywhere. You don't need an F-150 that's super, you know, juiced up. I'd sell that F-150 today. What's your car payment? What's your car payment on that? About $481. We bought them when interest rates were really low.

Yeah, but that's a $481 raise by being a big boy and selling that truck. Okay. Do I get another vehicle? Yeah, you got a $7,000 one. Go get you a $7,000 car. Okay. You have a baby. You're a man.

You have a family to take care of. So now here's the thing $160,000 income $110,000 worth of debt the difference is $50,000 so not counting taxes which we have to count

if you lived on $50,000 you'd be debt free in one year but you guys have been spending like you're in Congress. Yeah. And the student loan thing is your wake-up call to live on beans and rice, rice and beans, ramen noodles, never go out to eat, never go on vacation, and possibly sell your truck so that you can get out of debt in one to one and a half years

okay but if we have 27 000 in savings like that will help that'll help that'll make it go faster that'll make it go faster it off and then just have nothing and like that's where i've i like a padded savings so it hurts me to spend it so i. Well, it didn't hurt you to go $50,000 in car debt. That's when you spent it. You already spent it. You just hadn't admitted it yet. Yeah. Are you familiar with our baby steps?

I am. I haven't started it. I've just been listening on and off for about a year. So, baby step one. I felt guilty about the vehicle. Well, it's okay, but get over the guilt and fix it. So baby step one is $1,000. So that gives you $26,000. $1,000 in your savings account as an emergency fund.

Now you've got $26,000. You guys can knock out that Jeep Grand Cherokee. List your debts, smallest to largest. How many different student loans are there? There's two. Only two what what size are they uh they're each 30 000 a piece okay so that's the two that's the big one so when you list your debt smallest to largest it goes 23 27 30 30 you follow me yeah you're going to pay minimum payments on everything but the little one and attack the little one so we're going to pay off

her car tonight and then you're going to decide if you're going to keep your car if you're going to keep it you're going to start paying on it like a crazy man like i'm talking you're going to set aside eight thousand dollars a month for debt okay and when you pay eight thousand dollars a month on 27 it goes away pretty quick eight thousand dollars a month on 27 it goes away pretty quick eight thousand dollars a month on 30 it goes away pretty quick oh and by the way you don't have any car payments anymore so it makes it easier to come up with eight thousand dollars okay eight thousand dollars a month is a hundred thousand dollars a year okay and that makes you debt free in a year

okay but you're but you to do that you understand you have to have no life Okay. And that makes you debt-free in a year. Okay. But to do that, you understand you have to have no life. Yeah. Yeah. But that's okay. For one year, you can do that. You're young, and you're going to clean up your mess, and you have a new baby, and you have an incredibly bright future.

You have great careers. That's it. Yeah. Okay. And I should sell my truck, not pay my truck and either one i don't care but i think you need to consider i think it would be a good emotional and spiritual exercise for you and your wife to discuss selling your truck tonight after you pay hers off okay and then you got a cheaper one yeah well you can decide you know because here's the only thing it does it cuts down the amount of time you have to live on absolutely nothing and have no life.

Okay. Which right now is about a year. Okay. Now, as soon as you have no debt at all, then you're going to build your emergency fund up and have that comfort again of three to six months of expenses set aside. That's your baby step three. We're going to help you with all this because I've been right where you are, Dustin. I've done stupid things, and I had a baby, and I didn't know what to do, and there wasn't anybody to help me and tell me, and we're here to help you.

So we're talking real straight to you and telling you the truth because we love you, but we're here to help you. So we're going to put you guys into Financial Peace University, and we're going to pay for it, okay? guys it's a gift to your baby you're going to change your whole family tree young man but you two as adults now are going to throw your shoulders back and quit buying everything in sight like you're spoiled kids and be adults adults devise a plan and follow it children do what feels good yeah and so you're not gonna do what feels good you're gonna do what's right what's smart for the future so the 30 and 40

and 50 year old version of you two looks back and says wow see dustin the year i filed bankruptcy i was 28 years old rachel was born and from then on i've never borrowed another dime from then on I've tithed at my church every single week one-tenth of my income from then on I've been on a budget for the rest of my life from then on I don't buy anything unless I pay cash for it from then on because I said never again and the negative thing was I lost everything I owned the good news was it completely changed my life and you got the opportunity to do it without losing everything. It's called growing up. And we all get to do it.

Some people do it at 52. Some do it at 22. In my case, it was 28 with the second kid coming the year I filed bankruptcy. So you don't have to do that. You don't have to be as dumb as I was. We'll help you, dude. We'll help you. You got this. You can do it. And by the way, be as dumb as I was. We'll help you, dude. We'll help you. You got this.

You can do it. And by the way, the straight talk at dinner tonight when we talk about the cars is I'd float the idea of her doing a few nights or weekends with that nursing background while you're watching, baby, because you're not going anywhere anyway. And all of a sudden, we've increased our income to fast forward what Dave has already laid out. So we can beat this in a year, but it is going to take big boy pants and big girl pants that's for sure sacrifice sacrifice your lifestyle lay your lifestyle down and just put it just shoot it just just shoot it live like a college student this is the ramsey show ken coleman ramsey personality is my co-host. Our question of the day is brought to you by Neighborly, your hub for home services.

Neighborly has 19 service brands nationwide and a network of local service pros. Molly Maid, Mr. Rooter Plumbing, and Five Star Painting, just to name a few. Visit Neighborly.com to find available service providers near you. Our question today comes from Corey in Tennessee. I've been a vocational instructor at my current job for 20 years. They aren't interested in learning anything on any level. The students are very disrespectful. The bad behavior is encouraged by decision makers. I have also worked at my church with young people for 19 plus years, and I'm honestly burned out on kids. I need to work, but I don't have much debt, but I do have

some. I just don't want to earn pay being disrespected on a daily basis and seeing the toxic behavior encouraged. The state of Tennessee, my job in the state of Tennessee requires retirement at 25 years. Excuse me, I messed that up. My state of Tennessee requires retirement at 25 years. Excuse me, I messed that up. My state of Tennessee job for retirement is 25 years at 55 years of age or 30 years of service. I'll only be 49 if I stay for 30 years. So I don't know how that will pay out. I think I can do better and start making more money.

I'm currently thinking about pursuing CDLs to start a driving career what do you think should i quit my job i couldn't even get through it because you need to leave my man uh now don't leave without moving into something but there's no question you are not in an environment that you have any control over to actually change uh when you when you put yourself in an environment like this that is very institutionalized and very systemic as it relates to government leadership, you're not going to be able to change it. So quit banging your head against the wall. I love the idea of moving into something else. Let's get qualified for it.

And then let's move on because financially you don't have the margin and you've got debt you've got to pay off. So let's stay in the role. Let's get a couple part-time gigs if you can do it. If nothing else, just to get some relief from this current day job that's just beating the snot out of you. But let's move on to something else and as quickly as possible. So quit working with youth at the church today. That's easy. That's a no-brainer.

They don't need you because you don't like it, and they can tell. Yeah, and so can the kids, right? Yeah. So it's good for the kids for you to quit. It's good for you to quit. So that's one incremental thing. It sounds like you actually like teaching. So I don't know where CDL came from. That sounds like something flew in

midnight cable TV or something. I don't know. That just sounds bizarre. You know what it is. It's like sitting behind an escape. That's right. I don't have to talk to young people. I don't have to talk to anybody. Yeah. And I'm in a big truck, so nobody can make me mad. You know, I mean, oh my God. No, I don't think that's a a career choice i think that's just you're running away sure and so um yeah i i think you need to go take ken coleman's career assessment and figure out i mean it's like twenty dollars or thirty dollars at our website at ramsey solutions okay figure out some things you need to do and then you need to you don't need to run from something. You need to move to something.

And the CDL is just you running from something. But you have five weeks to, I'm making this up, to select something to start moving towards, and then I'm going to give you four months to move towards it. So you need to be out of the church teaching business by the end of the day today and you need to be out of the state teaching business by the end of the year yeah yeah and you don't give yourself some deadlines you'll bathe in the sewage yes because you're comfortable with what you know versus what you

don't know and the devil I know and I think, you make a very good point. There was a season of life where you were excited about being an instructor and a guide. And to the extent that you might be able to move to another state agency where you are in training, that is still the heart of instruction, of guiding people. And so look in where you've got relationships, because this is a government job. Certainly kick the tires on that, as long as you're training, instructing. I enjoy teaching. You do, absolutely. But I refuse, early in my career I refused,

but I really refuse now to be trying to teach someone that's there against their will. Correct. So if someone wants me to come speak to their organization and the people in their organization are there against their will, I'm not willing to do that. Or I'm not willing to go speak to a bunch of people that vehemently disagree with me and my job is to be there to piss everybody off. No, thank you. I've got other things to do. I'm there.

I want to talk to people that I can actually help and move the and move the needle for so you know that that's just human nature you don't want to wait bang your head against the wall it's just silly so yeah you you need to be teaching probably i think you'll find that if you take the assessment yep i agree i think he'll probably see the result of influence which is very people-focused work, and probably see communication there, instruction. You'll see those themes. So go get that. RamseySolutions.com is the Get Clear Assessment. And for anybody thinking about that, how do I take those results and put it into a real-time job? Very simple. You take that purpose statement, which is a wonderful gift that we give you there as a result of all of your other detailed reports. And you begin to say, this is what a job description looks like, where I am

on purpose. I am there doing something that makes a lot of sense to me because I'm good at it, I enjoy it, and the results fire me up. That's what you're looking for. And in this case, he wants to engage with humans who want to learn something in order to be able to do something. I've got a friend that was a classroom teacher and got burn up, burn out, and beat up and was done with it. And so she went on to another career in some corporate training and things where she actually enjoyed it. But instead of doing the ministry thing at church, she is teaching the U. u.s um citizenship course oh fantastic and it she

said is the most inspiring i'm sure and i mean these people know more about american history than we do sadly uh these folks trying to become citizens and uh man it's she said they're english is you know second language almost the same course, you know, you're teaching that way. Oh, my. She said, it's just, she's so excited to go down. And by the way, they don't even pay her. She goes for free.

You know, it's just incredible. So, yeah, that's a side thing or ministry thing. And so, yeah, if you get in the right situation where people are begging to learn and you're a teacher, oh, it's just about the most fun you can ever have. It's just chocolate chip cookies straight out of the oven, man. It reminds me of the first time Stacey and I taught Financial Peace University. We were in Atlanta, and we had several young couples we were all working with, and they were struggling. They said, hey, you know this Dave Ramsey guy? Stacey's like, yeah, I worked for him.

And they said, will you teach us? And we were like of course and so we put a class together in the first week we walked in the room and we could see the light in their eyes they were like help us sitting on the edge of their seat and that and we didn't even teach we just press play on the on the tape and you did the teaching but that's the opposite of cory he's not got people sitting on the edge of their seat unless they're trying to leave the room. That's right. Yeah. Crazy.

So that's tough stuff. Tough stuff. That is very hard. But very good advice, by the way, in pivoting, right, to, okay, wait a second. I love instructing, and so it's not instruction I need to get rid of. It is changing my environment, where I'm instructing and who I'm instructing. But I learned from you listening to you coach on the coleman show um it's an amazing number of times that someone thinks they hate what they do and they've because they've confused what they hate where they do it and who they do it with yeah they're doing the right thing in the wrong place with the wrong people yeah absolutely for sure

toxic people for sure toxic environment toxic culture right but doing the right thing and then they go well i'm burnt out on teaching no you're not no you're burnt out on hanging out with stupid people that's right well you know dave i shared this yesterday uh on the show uh we have a shortage of teachers public school teachers in america this is a big time problem and the reason is because the environment has gotten so awful that these teachers who signed up to instruct, to guide the future generation, they're walking away. Well, they don't want to deal with all the woke stuff. They want to teach history.

That's right. I don't want to teach gender reform or whatever. They don't want to get screamed at when they give a kid a bad grade because the parent can't handle it. There's a lot of junk going on. Teachers unions, no help. That's correct. And the helicopter parents are coming in. There it is.

I don't know, Ken, did you know this? Do you know where snowflakes come from? No. Helicopters. Think about it, folks. It'll come to you. That's good. This is The Ramsey Show.

Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Jake is with us in Nashville. Hi, Jake. How are you? Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my call. I appreciate it. Sure.

What's up? Well, I'm going through a major midlife crisis, and so I hope you guys don't beat up on me too bad. How old are you? I'm 35. Okay. Tell us about it. Yeah, so I went into the reset button kind of on my life with what I do for a living and also where I live. I guess before I dive into that, let me give you just a quick overview of our finances. So we have a good budget.

I'm married. I have three kids. We're in a suburb of Nashville. We've got our emergency fund of six months. We've got low living expenses. We've got about $32,000 in a 401k. I make about $130,000 salary. And then the last couple of years, I started doing side hustling and I ramped that up to about $120,000 a year doing HTML development. It's kind of a niche in high demand. Doing what?

HTML. Oh, yeah. Okay, good. Okay. Yeah. And we owe about $100,000 on our home. It's worth about $600,000. We've been pretty aggressively trying to pay it down.

It's a 2% interest rate, and we prepaid it two and a half years just to give us a buffer, so we don't owe anything on it till March 2026. We have a hundred thousand dollar HELOC loan that we used to buy a second piece of property out in McMinnville which you guys might know that area. Okay I'll catch up with you in a minute on the rest of it. What's your question? Yeah so my two questions are um so so basically i'm doing work that i just don't like doing anymore your day job or the html uh it's the same the side hustle is the same um so you don't like programming anymore no i i was raised on construction i got a blue collar heart you know i love being outdoors love the sun love getting concrete and paint on me. So what would you reset to? You said you're considering a reset.

What would that reset look like work-wise? You know, so I've been doing this for 10 years, and so I don't even know yet. I'd love to do something entrepreneurial or something more blue collar. You just told us what you want to do. I think you got a couple of ideas, but you're either looking for permission or confirmation. One of the two, maybe both. So what are you thinking about? What are you really thinking about? I guess it's just hard to leave a good income. What are you thinking about doing? Blue collar with your hands. What do you want to do? I'd love to do landscape design. I'd love to do landscape architecture, but it's not a high-paying career field.

Yes, it is. Oh, my goodness. That's not true. I guess when you start at the bottom of the totem pole, you're not going to make anything. Right, but who says you have to start at the bottom of the totem pole? I'm talking to a guy who's making $120. I wasn't doing totem poles. I was doing landscaping.

Yeah, but you're making $120 for yourself in HTML, so you can keep doing that while you get the landscape thing going you don't have to go down to nothing it's a false narrative to do both sure you do both now you have a full-time job plus a job right yeah so just quit your day job and go do landscape architect but dude that you don't have to start making twenty thousand,000 a year doing this. That's right. I mean, you've got all this life experience, so why don't you start poking around about what it takes to be a high-end landscape architect that makes $250,000 a year? Okay. What's the process to do that?

And I don't think it's a 15-year process. It's not. You need to start hanging out with some successful landscape architects in nashville and high some high-end builders and find out what they're paying and what their customers are paying yeah what was their journey how long did it take them to get there so you're operating in a vacuum right now and when we operate in a vacuum of the unknown we get terrified because we don't have answers you got to go get answers and you go oh i'm looking at a five-year journey i'm looking at a three-year journey in a vacuum of the unknown, we get terrified because we don't have answers. You've got to go get answers. Then you go, oh, I'm looking at a five-year journey.

I'm looking at a three-year journey. Whatever it ends up being, I've got to get this qualification. That's going to cost me this much. It's going to take me this long. The great news is you guys are in a pretty good financial situation, and you can make this happen. Jake, Ken and I have talked about this a lot, and I don't know what it is, but it seems to be human nature that people, when they, you know, you started into programming at some point because you enjoyed it. When the joy started leaving that and you were making good money, there's an emotional handcuffs that people automatically assume.

I don't know why we do this, but it's human nature that that the next job, that if I'm doing a job I love, I must get paid less. Like you must be punished for liking what you do. But that's not true. You can make more money ultimately doing what you love. I'll give you an example, okay? I was buying and selling real estate again, or helping people find foreclosure

real estate and making deals, and after my bankruptcy, I'm 28 years old. I was up to 30 years old, 31 years old. At that time, that's 1991, I was making $120,000 a year, okay, in 1991 doing that. I felt like that God had his hand on us to teach people how to get out of debt, live on a budget, and become wealthy and unbelievably generous, showing God's ways of handling money. I started putting together the pieces of that, and after a year of working on it, we figured out that we could quit doing real estate and work on financial peace stuff full time, but we would probably only make $60,000 the first year,

but we could see how we could make millions. So the first year I made $62,000. The next year I made $140,000. The next year I made $240,000, and I've never looked back. So you may have to take a temporary step back but this idea that you must make less throughout your life to do to have joy is ridiculous that's right simple questions jake what do i need to learn that's the certification process that's also sitting with successful landscape architects to figure out what the journey is. Now we've got some wisdom, not just knowledge. That's what I need to learn. And then

how do I get about doing it? What do I need to do? What do I need to learn? What do I need to do? When you get the answers to those questions, it's not so scary. And again, you've got great side income right now. And I want you to get rid of that HELOC, by the way. Let's get rid of that and work the baby steps to do that. Turn it into the snowball. That is it. And just move forward with confidence. He's talking about moving as well, and you may want to move.

That's okay. I want to, sure. So I'll move to something cheap. Listen, if you take your day job of $120,000 and you get rid of it and you move into a landscape thing and you only make $60,000 the first year into a landscape thing and you only make 60,000 the first year yeah then the next year you make 120 and the next year you make 240 and you quit the side gig that's a three-year plan yeah and he'll be thrilled and you know and you're not stuck no and you yes you should do this you absolutely should do it you got to honor that by the way

it's very interesting dave you and i've done done this different ways, but I've never had somebody call in and go, oh, I'm not sure. And then when I push them and you go, what are you thinking about? Then he spits it out. He's been thinking about it, but again, it's that permission thing to say, wait a second. I can change. I can leave a job doing HTML, making really good money, and I can go do something that's completely different, blue-collar, to use his phrase. You don't have permission to assume that you're going to make less correct

let's go remove the permission for that you need to assume you're going to make more we've taken that away because you're going to be good at it and you're going to choose your clientele that has money we're not doing landscape architecture for poor people. We're going to do landscape architecture for rich people who give us big, juicy checks for putting their bushes in the right place on their house. Oh, my God. Come on. Seriously. You can do this. And you don't have to dig all the holes in order to be gratified.

That's silly. So you can do this. You can absolutely do this. Landscape architects in an area like Nashville can do very, very well. You're talking about you can be a solopreneur or you can build a nice company with all of the building. And you know real estate better than I do. Oh, yeah. You do quite well around here.

Very good. I mean, you take a commercial building like this. We paid the guy to do that. Gee. Well, I tell you what. That's serious, man. Here's something I want to encourage people with. You feel stuck, but you're not stuck. What happens is you've chosen to stay put because you're afraid that something bad will happen if

you move forward, or you don't believe that something good will happen. That's just good old-fashioned fear and doubt, Dave. And you're not stuck. You've just said, I'd rather stay still than deal with confronting those two false narratives that's how it's done boys and girls this is the ramsey show Dave here. You can find all of our shows with the Ramsey Network app on your smartphone. It's the only place to listen to the entire back catalog of episodes. Download the Ramsey Network app in your favorite app store today.