The Ramsey Show - Debt Steals Your Freedom - Fight For Financial Peace

Episode Date: December 10, 2025

🤔 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Think you’re good with money? Take our Money in America quiz!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Dave Ramsey and George Kamel answer your questions and discuss: "My fiancé still has his ex on the lease for his home, I feel gross about moving in before he fixes this" "How do we start the Baby Steps when we are behind on our bills and have $120,000 of debt?" "I'm worried about lowering my savings to $1,000 in Baby Step 1" "My parents are tenants in my rental and they don't pay rent on time" "Why should I pay off my house when my investments earn more than the interest I'm paying on my mortgage?" "How do I pay off my debt while in college?" Next Steps:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ✔️⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠Help us make the show better. Please take this short survey.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📞 Have a question for the show? Call 888-825-5225 weekdays from 2–5 p.m. ET or⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠send us an email⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 💵 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Start your free budget today by downloading the EveryDollar app⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 🤓 File your taxes with 100% accurate software that’s less than half of the price 📘 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Preorder What No One Tells You About Money today now and get $100+ in bonus items⁠ Connect With Our Sponsors: Stop paying more and start shopping smarter at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ALDI⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Amazon is making it easier than ever to find top gifts at amazing prices this season in the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Holiday Shop⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Get 10% off your first month of⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ BetterHelp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Boost Mobile⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to switch today! Go to⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Casper Sleep⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and use promo code RAMSEY to learn more. Learn more about⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Christian Healthcare Ministries⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Get started today with⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Churchill Mortgage⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Get 20% off when you join ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠DeleteMe⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Go to⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ FAIRWINDS Credit Union⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for an exclusive account bundle! Debt collectors hassling you? Take back control of your life at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Guardian Litigation Group⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Find top health insurance plans at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Health Trust Financial⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Use code RAMSEY to save 20% at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Mama Bear Legal Forms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ NetSuite⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ today to learn more. For more information, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠SimpliSafe⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Get started with ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YRefy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or call 844-2-RAMSEY. Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Zander Insurance⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for your free instant quote today! Explore more from Ramsey Network: 💸 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Ramsey Show Highlights⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 🧠 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Dr. John Delony Show⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 🍸 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Smart Money Happy Hour⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 💡 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Rachel Cruze Show⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 💰 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠George Kamel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 🪑 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Front Row Seat with Ken Coleman⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📈 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠EntreLeadership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

brought to you by the every dollar app start budgeting for free today normal is broke and common sense is weird so we're here to help you transform your life from the ramsie network and the fair wins credit union studio this is the ramsie show i'm dave ramsie your host george camel number one bestselling author ramsie personality and co-host of smart money happy hour is my co-host today. Open phones at AAA 8255-225. Nicole is in San Francisco. Hi, Nicole. How are you? Hey, good morning. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas to you. What's up? Hey, so I just have a question, a rental question. My fiancé and I've been together for most three years, and we're getting married at the end of December. We're very excited. And after the wedding, we're playing on moving in together, obviously. The home that he's living in is a home that he actually lived in with his ex.

So his ex's name, I just found out recently, is still on the lease. Again, it is a rental. He's tried multiple times to get her to take her name off. He even had a court order via some of their custody hearings that the judge said she had to take her name off. She still refuses to do so. His property management company isn't being responsive.

I'm a realtor, and I spoke with, our property management division and they said that basically we have three options one the property manager company can just out of the goodness of their heart take her name off and redo the lease with just his and my name to get her to sign the paperwork which he's been trying to do unsuccessfully or three terminate the lease likely forfeit the deposit because her name would be on the check and then move out and move back in the dilemma that I have right now is that I'm not it feels really really gross to me to move in to start a marriage and move into a home with this ex's name on it.

Mind you, they also have a child together there's a lot of really gross custody situation going on. So it's not just an ex that we never hear from or speak to. It's, you know, an ongoing problem in our life. And I just, I don't know if it's worth. I'm, like, being dramatic in, like, the potential issues financially and, like, losing deposit. When is the lease up?

Well, it was up, and he's continued to live in the home. They broke up three years ago. No, I mean, when is the current, when does the current lease expire? It's a month to month now. Oh, okay. So you can give 30 days notice and move out? We could. Okay.

And then we would have to find a new place. Yeah, then you just find a new place. That's easy. Okay. Now, however, let's back up a second. She does not have a say in this. Okay. name being on the lease is making her obligated for the payment on the lease. It doesn't give her any

rights to possession. Okay? It's just like if someone co-signs a lease for you to move in, like your dad's signed for you to move in or something. It doesn't give him rights to live there. It just says that he's also liable. And so the property management, company can simply redraft the lease and take her name off of it. They don't have to have her permission to do that. They can just take her off. Okay. And put you on. And so, you know, what I would do is just call the property management company. And I don't know why your fiance's not handled this. This is really bizarre to me. This is on him. Okay. And you're right. This is gross. And it should have been dealt with a long time for you, three weeks before you get married.

geez, call me have a week for it. We're going down the aisle next week, and I'm not going to, well, yeah. So, but anyway, so if it's me, I'm calling the property management company. I'm your fiancé, and I'm saying, look, I want my wife to be on our lease, not my ex. And so we are going to give you two options. One is you redraft the lease with me and the new wife on it, without the X on it, or we're going to give you, 30 days notice and move. Which one do you want us to do? Okay. And I'll get your responsive. I'll just move. Sure. Okay. But you don't need her permission or a court order regarding her. The landlord

simply just needs to agree to release her from liability. Okay. She gets no rights. There's no rights here at all and she hasn't lived there in a long time and so i don't know why why it would even be an issue right yeah i don't know that's just the well apparently this chick has got issues and she's throwing anything she can around to try to take new power plays any any kind of a flex that's possible and you're just worried about that right right and yeah and i right yeah and again it just feels gross moving in with you know yeah you don't want to show up in a house that I live in. It's not going to be good for your health. Don't do that. What's the upside of continuing for him to live there and you to move in there? Why not just get a

different place? Well, as you know, San Francisco is a very expensive market. He has rent of very, very, very little. The property magic of the landlord was very gracious. They have not raised the rent in like the four or five years he's lived here. It's a very, it's a very, it's thousands of dollars less than anywhere else that we found. Well, I don't want to live there. I just wonder, even with her name off the lease. And I don't care if it's thousands of dollars less or not. I don't want to live there unless her name is off this, lease and yours is on it.

Right. Yeah. So I want to move. So either fix it or I'm moving. And that's my direction to your fiancé. Grow a backbone. You should have already done this eight months ago for your girlfriend, your soon-to-be wife, And you've sat on your thumbs. Now fix this, buddy.

That's my direction to him. Okay? Okay. You shouldn't have to be calling me about this. He should have already taken care of this. This bull crap. Okay. But he also gets pushed around by her pretty regularly.

And that's what's really bothering you at the core of this. And I'm not sure that's going to stop, even with this lease situation fixed. Nope. Not until we run down to Walmart on aisle three and pick up a backbone. That's what that's going to happen. So, all right. Open phones at triple. 825, 5225. So a lease is an obligation. It is not a blessing. Being released from the obligation

would be a blessing. Is that the opposite of a lease? Is it a release? Yes, here we go. Released from the lease, yes. But I mean, so, I mean, think about it. It's like a loan. Okay. If you go through a divorce and you have a mortgage loan, your spouse is liable on the mortgage loan. The mortgage company doesn't, won't let her go. Won't let her. him go, right? Unless you refinance and take them off. They won't just release you from that and prove that you're responsible enough to handle the more. But you don't have any rights because you're on the mortgage. You have lost rights because you're on the mortgage. Same thing with a lease. Yeah. So there's no benefit to. It's just risk and liability in her part. Other than, I guess,

control to stay intermingled in his life. Yeah, just to be constantly flexing. The only reason I can think of of why you'd want to stay on that thing. Which is all the room or reason to put up. Because he could stop paying and it's on her. Yeah, exactly. There's one move. Yeah. Well, it's just, I'm moving.

I'm moving. Yeah, not worth the drama. That's for sure. Nothing. Nothing is worth the drama. Oh, goodness. Don't sell your soul for a couple thousand bucks savings on something. Don't sign up for lack of freedom and drama and call that a good deal.

That's not a good deal. I'm going to be you know, bork, and I'm a bork,

You know, I'm going to do. I'm going to be able to be. Hey, it's Dave Ramsey. You've heard me talk about the importance of giving, and I love that Zander Insurance lives that out. This month, Zander is donating 25% of all ID theft protection sales to Team Rubicon, a veteran-led disaster response organization that deploys wherever disaster strikes, boots on the ground, helping families rebuild, and offering real hope for communities in crisis.

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it's not a matter of if but when zander's plan is comprehensive affordable and you can even give it as a gift so protect your family and support a powerful mission this christmas go to zander dot com or call 800 356 4282 that's zander dot com Rachel's in Columbia, South Carolina. Hi, Rachel. How are you? Rachel? Earth to Rachel. Rachel?

Three, two. Oh, we got, we had her right there. There she was. Okay, I'll try her again. She came up. We'll try it again. Rachel, are you there now? Yes, I'm here.

here okay how can we help um i'm actually calling because how do i even start the baby steps when i am absolutely drowning and even trying to get caught up on my bills well getting caught up would be the first step before you start the baby steps you're right you're you're on to something there so why are you drowning um i actually had some health issues over the past year um that i'm I've missed so much work. I've had to find another job of because I believe my last job was killing me. And that required a pay cut, and I'm working from home now. And it's just getting caught back up.

Okay, well, you've got the exact wrong solution for being behind on your bills, taking a pay cut. We want to go the other way. So what in the world? What's wrong with your health? Um, well, I, my job was very unsteady where I was at, and they, working from home to being pulled back into the office, and I just started having a bunch of anxiety attacks and... Working in the office caused anxiety?

It was the people I was around, and then they started doing layoff, and it was just a very stressful situation. Okay, what were you doing? I do medical billing. My job is not hard. Okay, so that's what you were doing at the other place. Correct, and that's... And what were you being paid? I was being paid around 45.

It wasn't a huge pay cut. I'm at about 40,000 now. Okay, and how much debt do you have? I have about 120,000 without mortgage. Okay, and what's that on? 6,000 is about my medical debt, 14,687 for a boat. I have student loans in about, that's about 10,000. We have a truck that's 37, well, it's about 38,000. And then I have a Jeep that's about 40,000.

$1,000. I have two credit cards. You just said we. What's your husband make? He makes about $70,000. Okay, so you have $110,000 income currently. All right. And you've got a Jeep, a truck, a boat.

Yes, sir. And then what else was? A student loan and a medical debt. And what else? And two credit cards, and that's about $2,000. Okay. And we do have IRS debt. Well, my husband does, so I'll say we.

And I think that's probably about $8,000. Mm-hmm. Okay. All right. Yeah. Okay. But so your $5,000 pay cut didn't really cause you any trouble. It's all your overspending that's caused you trouble.

And I can agree to that. Yeah. So you're not going to like me. me, sell the truck, sell the Jeep, sell the boat. Okay. Oh, I'm starting to get my life back now. Mm-hmm. I mean, you clear the majority of your debt if you did that.

What stopped you guys thus far from getting rid of these things that are crushing you? I will say the boat. That is all we do. I don't care. I think you should be working instead of boating. You're calling me talking about you're so stressed out. you can't breathe and you're $120,000 in debt you can't afford a boat you're broke go to the park and throw a frisbee yeah you're not going to do any of this are you

you're not really ready you're not really in enough pain to fix this you just you want an easy button I don't have one honey the only button I got someone that'll work I love you enough tell you the truth and the truth is you got to sell this crap you've been spending like you're in Congress and you're rationalizing and justifying and rationalizing and justifying and only when you look up and go, I cause this and I can fix this or you're going to be able to fix it. I can tell from the tone of your voice, you're not going to do any of it. So when you're ready to be helped, we can help you. And we love you and we'll try to help you.

But we're not going to tell you what you want to hear. We're going to tell you what really helps. And so we're really not known for telling people, making people feel good. That's not the point. We want you to feel good at 10 years from now, not today. today i want you to have pain so that you can get free of this trashy life you have your life sucks you make a hundred and ten thousand dollars in columbia south carolina and you gave up a job because of anxiety at the office and really the anxiety was at home sitting in the driveway

with a boat and a jeep and a truck. That's where it was. So, yeah, you just got a bunch of crap you can't afford. You're living like, you know, you're spending like you got money and you don't have any money. I'm sorry, honey. But we can help you when you're ready to do that. But you're going to have to amputate some crap and that'll give you your life back. Until you're ready to do that, though, I don't have an easy button for you.

I can't help you. Kevin is in New York. Hey, Kevin. What's up? Hey, how's it going? Better than I deserve. How can I help? I was just looking for some help.

I'm married 33, and I'm having some trouble with the fear of kicking Murphy out, as you guys would say. So I'm looking for a big old kick in the butt to help me get rid of some irrational fears on that. I'm so confused. What are we talking about? In your book, Kicking Murphy out is one of the chapters for basically lowering your savings to like emergency fund to a thousand and then putting that all towards debt

but like I think it's Murphy's laws to temporarily do that so that you can get the debt cleaned as fast as possible we're not going to live in there forever yeah you understand that I'm in trouble with this I'm afraid that something's going to happen

in the meantime to a car or medically or something It might. It might. How much debt have you got? Right now, between me and my wife, we have about $25,000 debt. And what's your household income? Household income together is $8,600 a month. Okay. So how fast do you clear up $25,000? I'm looking at August. other than the car, August, and then after that, I would say it within a year, about 12 months. Yeah, $2,000 a month and you'll be done. So for 12 months, you've got to make it on $1,000.

And if something during that 12-month period of time happens beyond $1,000, you'll have to stop your get-out-of-deat plan and pile up some cash to fix whatever it is. That's beyond $1,000. The probability that's very close to zero, though. I think the fear comes from childhood or something. Ben, that's my fear. Is that something, just something's going to happen? Yeah, that is a rational fear.

I don't even know where it comes from either, but rocking around with $1,000 only to your name for the rest of your life would be stupid. Because common sense tells you something's going to happen, right? Yeah. So your fear is, I think your fear is justified, but it's not justified enough to stay in debt. How much money have you gotten savings? Right now, about 15,000. Okay, so wait a minute. We have 25 in debt. We're not in debt for a year. If you put 14 towards the 25, that's only 11 left, you should be done in like three months.

Yeah, the 15 was without putting it towards it. Yeah. Yeah. So could you take half your take home pay and throw it at the debt if you cut down your expenses and worked harder? Right now we put, yeah, right. Right now we put $1,800 a month towards the emergency fund. Okay. What I would do is I would throw everything at the debt, and that leaves you $11,000 worth of debt.

You make $8,000 a month, and I would be done with the debt in three months. You don't need to keep stacking this emergency fund. You need to start killing this debt, man. It's just, dude, you're acting like this is a 30-year problem. It's a 90-day problem. I mean, when the leaves turn green, you're going to be done. Hey, it's Rachel Cruz. The holidays are here, which means family time and giving back and remembering what the season is all about. And let's be real. It also means shopping. Y'all, if you're anything like me, December gets really busy and really expensive. It's harder to. It's harder to. to stay intentional with your spending. And that's why I love shopping on Amazon, especially this time

a year. Named the lowest priced U.S. online retailer for nine years running by Profitero, a third-party analytics and research firm. Amazon's prices are up to 14% lower across top categories and beat competitors by up to 5% in key gift categories. Between amazing deals, stress-free shopping, and fast shipping, Amazon makes gift-giving simpler, the holiday season a little brighter, and helps me keep my budget in check. That allows me to get back to enjoying this season. What more can a busy mom ask for? So for more information about Amazon's low prices and easy, affordable holiday shopping, head to Amazon today. One of our favorite things is hearing people share their stories of how they're winning.

We just heard this from Claire and Winston fan quote. This is me and my husband's third month budgeting with every dollar, and we're amazed at how much money we found. We went from feeling like we were living paycheck to paycheck to finding an extra $3,500 in margin each month to put towards our debt. We each had four credit cards and I've been able to pay them all off, never going back. Way to go, guys. That's amazing. Hey, guys, you can do this too.

You can take control of your money. You can change your family tree, and you can live like no one else. Go download the Every Dollar Budget app for free. It will guide you hand holding through the Ramsey steps, the Ramsey plan, the Ramsey process, the stuff you hear on the air. This app will walk you right through it and cause you to do it. You'll get out of debt, become wealthy and outrageously generous, and we'll show you how. Come on, baby.

do this. It's time. Courtney's with us in Los Angeles. Hi, Courtney. How are you? Hi, thank you for taking my call. I'm so excited. Well, we're honored to have you. How can we help? Well, I want to start by saying that my husband and I are completely debt-free minus our current home and our rental property. My question today is regarding our rental property. Okay, Dave, so my parents are the tenant, and it's not going well, and it has not been going well for the past 11 years. years. I wanted to help them out because they could no longer afford their home, so I wanted to be a good daughter and help out my parents. The issue is that they're not communicating with us. The rent is late each month. For example, Dave, I received November's rent last Friday, which was December 5th,

no communication. I have diligently made sure each month I communicate with them for, the past year about the rent, but nothing's changed. I've asked them to move in with us. The answer is no. I've asked them to think about moving into something cheaper. The answer is no. I've asked them, do I need to set aside money to get a bigger home with the mother-in-law unit? The answer, again, is no.

Dave, I sent them through Financial Peace University. Nothing has changed. I only owe $60,000 on my rental property in California. That's really, really good. this is supposed to be part of my retirement, money towards my kids' college fund. We sacrifice so much, Dave. This process and your principals have helped help us so much, things that I had no idea we would be able to accomplish, but we have.

I'm just, I need help, Dave. I don't know what to do. Share your wisdom. Well, you're not shocked that your parents have not paid. this on time. And I'm not shocked that they've not paid it on time. They've never paid anything in their lives on time. And you knew when you stuck them in there that they weren't instantaneously going to become financial geniuses. You had to know that this was going to happen. So you signed up for this trip, right? Oh, my goodness, yes. Yeah. I'm sorry. It's so hard. It's so hard.

when it's family, and especially your mom and dad, and you're trying to do something nice for him. So you kind of got one of two options. One is give up. None of the options are going to be try to talk them into becoming financially responsible. That obviously doesn't work. So that's not one of the options we're going to try. That's ship has sailed. We've been, we tried it.

Okay. So either you give up and you pay the house off. It's only $60,000. Let's get over and get. it paid off and just let them live there and then when they pay and if they pay be surprised okay and just surrender that that's giving up okay if you want to do that that's not a bad thing but you're just saying whatever that house is worth i'm just pissing that money away and in the name of taking care of my parents and that's i'm just going to live with that and i'm not going to fret about

it because happiness comes you know i always laugh when i'm playing golf my golf motto is The secret to happiness is low expectations. Yeah. So if you quit expecting them to be something that they're not going to be, then you can just chill, right? So you're just going to let them live there. And if they pay, we're going to act surprised. Okay.

And that's not a bad plan. You could get the $60,000 paid off in a few years or a few months or whatever and not worry about it, couldn't you? The other option, if you want to be a little more, shall we say, aggressive, okay? then I can help you with that one too. You can call them and say, Mom and Dad, I talk to my financial advisor. I'm your financial advisor.

And he said to sell this house, and so we're going to put the house on the market and sell it, so y'all are going to find a place to live. Okay. And they just go figure out their life because they're like grownups and crap, and they ought to be figuring out their life long time ago without being babysat by their own daughter.

So, hello. How old are these people? um my dad is what 65 my mom is 64 yeah so get a job and go pay your rent shut up i mean come on so let's play the scenario they have they go rent somewhere and they have a landlord now do you think they're going to pay on time well that's up to them that's their problem all of a sudden that's their problem yeah i think they'd quickly figure it out wouldn't they go oh we should probably pay on time we're not we're not giving an option of you have to pay on time where we're selling it you just say i talked to my financial advisor he says we got to sell the house so y'all got to move

We're going to put the house on the market February 1st, so y'all got to be gone by then. So y'all look for a place because we've got to get the house sold. Well, what about, listen, you know, it worked for a while. You were here for 11 years, and now we can't do it anymore. And the financial advisor says, I've got to sell it. So I've got to sell it. Because I'm telling you, you've got to sell it. So you can blame me, just say, my financial advisor.

I'm the bad guy, okay? And, you know, but that puts them back out and to deal with the reality of their misbehavior. And that's actually not a bad thing either. but but then you can't be running and rescuing them every time they stub their toe you got to just let them go i just love you i have to learn how to do that some people need to be loved from further distance than others you need a little more distance between you and them if you stop the enabling then it'll also stop the resentment that's been bubbling up in your life just say gosh you're over there and i sure hope it works out for you i love you be cheering for you and you know i'm not

going to worry about it after that it's their problem you've done all you can do and then 11 years too much right correct so i mean it didn't like you didn't try you're a sweetheart you tried everything so if you want to cut them loose you could do that and and you would not be doing something immoral or unethical or unbiblical or anything like that is you you gave you gave 11 years worth of enabling a shot here and it didn't work so um yeah so either just give up and pay it off and let them live there and don't worry about it and just be shocked when they do pay don't bring it up again don't communicate about it. Don't even mention it ever again. Just if the check comes, the rent check shows up, just be, wow, I'm so shocked. I mean, just to have that attitude about it,

and then you'll be fine. Or put the house on the market February 1st and tell him to go find a place to live. And blame it on your financial advisor. And I'll take that role. Actually, it's George. George is your financial advisor's your family. His name is George. Your financial advisor's name. Last name. I love it. It reminds you, they'll quote, if they wanted to, they would. If they wanted to pay on time, they would. If they wanted to become debt-free, they would. And so you just can't change people. Guy used that on me in my 20s when I was late for everything. He says, you're late for everything. I said, well, I'm busy. He goes, if you want to be on time, you would. And you know what? Piss me off. But he was right.

And I'm not late anymore. You're very punctual. That's actually shocking. It's arrogant to be late. You're making a statement to the people that they don't matter. At the root of this is a lack of respect. It's a lack of respect for their daughter and the kindness that she's offered them to say, hey, we're not going to pay on time. Yep. Even though that's what we agreed to. We're not people of integrity. It smells like a parasite.

Yeah. It's just sad when your parents are qualifies that. It muddies the waters, which is why I personally would not rent to my mom and dad and become their landlord. Nope. Because they remember when they change your diaper. Nope. So it just makes it awkward when now you're demanding rent payment. Yeah, yeah, it's sorry mom and dad, we got to sell the house, yeah.

It's the easiest way. It's the nicest way to evict someone is just to get rid of the whole situation. You don't have to go into, why, and you don't have to go into, you don't pay the rent on time, so you don't have to go into, we begged you, we've tried, you don't have to try to be corrective with it. There's no point in that because it's not going to work. It's just clean. It's just like, gosh, you know, sorry, y'all got to look for places we're selling the house. So either of that or just pay the thing off and quit worrying about it. it. Either one. Either one's okay. Either one's okay. You're a good daughter either way. You gave it a

run. But it's living in your head rent free and currently they're basically living in your house rent free. There's a lot of free rent here. big news guys mortgage rates have finally dropped and they could dip again soon now that's great news if you've been holding off on buying a house but it also means a lot of other people are about to jump back into the market too so if you want to move fast and still do things the smart way you've got to be ready and that's why i recommend churchill mortgage their home buyer edge program gives you more security in this wild market here's how it works you can cap your rate from 90 days so if rates go up, you're protected. But if rates go down again, Churchill automatically lowers yours. So you can't

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Homebuyer Edge and seller guarantee are available for qualifying borrowers and select loan types only, and not available in all states or locations. NMLSID-1591, NMLS ConsumerExus.org, Eagle Housing Lender. Our question of the day is brought to you by Y-R-R-FI. Defaulted private student loans. Don't just disappear, but you can make them disappear by taking control.

Y-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-Mansing that gives you hope and a clear path forward. Go to Y-R-R-R-E-F-Y.com slash Ramsey. That's the letter Y, R-E-F-Y.com slash Ramsey, not available in all states. Today's question comes from Craig in New York. I'm 70 years old, still working, and I'm now a high net worth individual thanks to your principals. I agree with 99% of what you say, but here's the 1% I don't agree with. I have a $320,000 mortgage at 2.75% on a property that's worth $4 million. I paid extra for years, and at this point, over half of my monthly payment goes to principal, and the rest goes to interest. The house payment is a small percentage of my monthly income,

and I'm making way more interest on the over 320K I have in savings than the house interest is costing me. Why would I consider paying off that mortgage? It's like a common core math riddle here. Sleep. You'll sleep better. And you don't even know it. It's a very small problem for you. You're not going to go bankrupt because of this, and you're not going to not become a millionaire.

Apparently, you already have. So congratulations, but you didn't become a millionaire because you borrowed $320,000. You became a millionaire because you saved money and got out of debt. And I got to tell you, you have no idea, Craig. It's going to blow your mind. The peace is going to run down your spine when you pay this off. You're going to feel it physically, and you're going to sleep better. It's that simple.

And debt equals risk. And risk has a math factor to it that you did not use in your little formula. So your formula is naive and incomplete. So if you adjust for risk mathematically, the money that you're making on your high-yield savings over the top of 2.75 isn't spit and won't buy you a biscuit. So you're really not some financial genius here. At the end of the day, you're actually fairly naive about it. But it's okay.

If you want to keep your mortgage like it's a pet, That's fine, but some people keep pet snakes. I don't. I don't have any pet snakes. You got any pet snakes? Zero. Okay. I think they're of the devil.

Got zero mortgages, too. That's true. Yeah, even the math isn't that impressive on this when you go, well, I could make three and a half, but the mortgage is $2.75. So if you make 1% on this, you made $3,200, $250 a month. That's not worth me taking the call for this. It's a biscuit. I mean, really.

And you can now invest the mortgage payment and make. up for lost time. And it's not even, it doesn't matter. It's irrelevant. It's hilarious. It's like, I can borrow $4 and make us and make, and make, and make money on my $4. Who cares? As a portion of your net worth and your income, this is not worth your time. It's irrelevant. It's irrelevant. The property's worth $4 million. You know, it's, so you keep it, you keep your little mortgage if you want to pet it on the head and if you like pet snakes. I don't like pet snakes, even small ones. And so they're all, they're all poisonous as far as I'm concerned. I hate the oxymoron is Lord David, it's a good snake.

I hate the large banks. I hate the car companies financing and putting people in debt. I'm sick and tired of the federal government ensuring 18-year-olds can borrow $100,000 and they can't even buy beer. And so, but we're going to put them in debt because we're going to help you out. We're from the Congress and we're going to team up with the big banks. banks in Congress when they team up is never good for the regular people. It's never good for us regular folk. So I'm sick of these people preying on everybody and then, you know, turn it

into sophisticated bull crap. It's not sophisticated at all. So, Craig, I'd pay it off, but you're not going to. So good luck with that. It'll become someone else's problem. Your kids will deal with the estate planning and pay it off for you. It's not a big thing. This really doesn't matter. So Carolina is in Las Vegas. Hi, Carolina. How are you? I'm doing great. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? So I just wanted to ask how you would recommend paying off $90,000 in debt while in school and saving for my daughter's college fund. Okay. Are you married? Yes, I am. What does your husband make? He makes $2,800 a month.

And you're in school, studying what? I'm getting my master's in applied behavior analysis. To do what? To work with children with disabilities. It would be to be a supervisor. Okay. All right. Making what?

In the future. Mm-hmm. It says on the Internet, right, It says that I would make close to $100,000 a year, and that's what I know. What's your husband do? He is a driving instructor. Okay. And what's his plan for his career?

So in January, he starts welding school. Good. So he's trying to do that. Excellent. How old are you guys? 23? I'm 28, and he is 33. Oh, missed that?

Okay. And your baby's how old? She just turned six. Okay. Well, the formula that we have to work with is income minus outgo. Your income is low because you're not working and he's not working much. Or you're not making much. It's a better way of saying it, right?

You guys haven't got a lot. It's not like you're buying coach purses on the weekend, okay? I mean, you're, you don't have any money. $2,800 and a family of three. and you're in school. How are you paying for school? So I took out a $50,000 loan. And when do you finish school? 18 months.

Okay. And total balance of student loans is 90K, and there's more debt on top of that? No. No, it's 90K in total, yeah. I don't think you're going to get out of debt until you get your income up. But the good news is you have plans to get both of you to get your income up. I mean, his income is going to double when he gets his welding certificate or more, depending on what he's doing. And then you're going to get out in 18 months and make money, and then you guys are going to plow through this. But right now, you're making $34,000 a year, and you have a little baby.

So you're probably not going to make big dense in this 90K. Is that fair? Yeah. But I would work. I mean, you can work, and he can work, and you can do side jobs. And let's do what we can to bring in extra money because you don't have. much money coming in. You have a big hole and a very small shovel right now. I'm looking forward to the day that your shovel is bigger in order to fill up this hole. Right. And that's what I

think, and that's okay. That's not the end of the world. Don't go in any more debt, okay? Yeah, we like turned off our credit cards and things like that. I want to turn off these student loans. No more. Yeah. No more student loans. Oh, yeah. Can you finish school with no more student loans? Yeah, that's $50,000 for the entire course. And to your question, I would not be investing in a college fund right now. No. We've got a priority of knocking out this debt.

And so every dollar needs to go toward that. We'll make up for lost time in a few years, and you'll still have a great runway of a decade to save up for college. You make $30,000 a year now. You'll be making $130 in 24 to 36 months. And you knock this debt out, and then you start saving for college. college, and you work right up the baby steps the way we teach. But today, you don't have extra cash laying around to do either. And so, first thing is take care of your own household,

don't add any more debt. And then if you can scratch together a little bit more, both of you working some extra jobs or something, and you want to throw something at the 90, it doesn't make me mad. But I'm just not going to put heavy expectations on you because, again, you have a $90,000 hole and a small income. That's your shovel. So, But the good news is you're doing something about that. Both of you are going to get sizable upgrades and income, and that's just wonderful, good for you. Congratulations. Very cool.

Man, the trades are the answer for a lot of these folks. A lot of people moving that direction nowadays. And so... People want to where all the jobs are? Trades. Step into the welding, step into the diesel mechanic, step into the heavy equipment operator, and you step into six figures pretty quick. And it makes Mike Rowe happy to hear that.

Yeah. But he's right. He's got he's on to something. He's been on to something since before it was cool. He was an early adopter. But there you go. Good stuff. is sponsored by Better Help. All right, the holidays are here and the holidays are full of traditions. Some of these traditions we love, some of these traditions we just tolerate. In addition to the traditions, this time of year can also bring a lot of noise,

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That's BetterHelp, h-elp.com slash Ramsey. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fairwinds Credit Union studio. John is with us in Huntsville. Hey, John, how are you? Doing well. Thank you guys for taking the call. Sure.

What's up? Kind of stuck in a financial and a moral dilemma, and I don't know which way to go. Okay. Brief backstory is father passed away about 12 years. ago, I inherited the business solely. I've built it up. Now, I've sold it off. The moral side of that is none of my family members knows that I've sold it yet. And they weren't part of it. They had no business dealings with it. But after our father died, it just seemed like I was the sibling that everyone came to for everything, you know, and just listening.

to you guys, you know, I think that with the sell of that business and selling the home I'm currently in, I would wind up being debt-free completely and have quite a bit at, you know, 46 years old to be able to retire with. And I'm just, I'm wondering, I guess, you know, have I been too deceptive with what's going on? Or it's like nobody ever calls to say, hey how are you doing it's always hey i need this or that or the other and i guess i'm too much like my dad in that that aspect okay um i don't know um it sounds like you're um to what extent have you been helping how much money or what have you been doing I've bailed one brother out of two different mortgages twice

to the tune of like 100 grand or something a couple hundred thousand, yeah okay so you gave him a couple hundred thousand dollars it was a it was a loan and I know I know where you're going at that but I haven't been paid back I've got about 30,000 of it back yeah but that was what about everybody else What about everybody else? One sister, if we're keeping track, she probably owes me around $65,000.

For what? Apparently, there were some medical procedures that I was told was dire that was more cosmetic than medical. Okay. You know, our dad always has you made the determination that this was really not. not helpful in the end that their lives pretty much ended up about where they began. And so you really didn't cause them to suddenly become prosperous with your gifts. That is correct. Yeah.

So does that give you the courage, does that give you the courage to say no next time? There's where a problem lies, because I really, it's not a, they always play on that. You know how daddy was kind of thing. Well, Daddy's gone, honey. And so now you're daddy. You've got to grow up and I can't help you. You got, already gave you $200 grand, already gave you $60 grand to have your tummy tucked and I'm done.

I mean, grow up. These are grown people. Now, you don't have to be that mean to them, but that's what needs to go through your head so that you can just smile and say, gosh, I hope it works out for you. But I'm not daddy. Daddy's gone.

Yeah, so I've, And the one good thing was the business broker that we were involved with had mentioned, you know, have you ever heard of this program? And, of course, I'd, you know, I grew up in Franklin, so I'd heard it be all's courses and stuff before. And I just felt like from a deception side of it, because I'm really moving completely out of state. I don't, you know, you could just tell them I sold the business all my house, but you don't, you don't owe them any explanation or cut. But you know that, right? Yes, sir. I think there's some survivors guilt here because you've done well and you've seen them struggle.

And you go, well, I guess they deserve some of this because you're a good person. But the problem is you're being manipulated and abused by these people. And the only time they reach out to you is for more money, right? More money or... So you're Bank of John. There's no relationship to salvage here. If you keep giving them more money, you just continue the transaction. So, no, you don't have an obligation, so there's not real deception, but you're just not wanting to tell them because you think they're going to come for money.

They want some of it. And so you're just going to have to get emotionally prepared because at some point, this is going to come out, whether you make a big deal about it or whether you don't. If you just go, oh, yeah, by the way, I'm leaving. We sold the house. We sold the business. What? Yeah, yeah, that's what we're doing. And so, you know, we'll stay in touch and let you know where we land because we love you.

suggest with the remainder of the money as far as like because like I said I am 46 and you know I just kind of I want not want to retire fully I just want to relax for a while like I've been working with my dad since I was seven and I'm I'm tired yeah what kind of business did you sell it was a a construction services company okay good for you all right all right So the first, let's stay with the first part of the conversation for a moment, and then we'll come to the second part. The first part of the conversation, sir, is you need to pick up Henry Cloud's book. It's called boundaries. You don't have any.

That's called boundaries? Boundaries. Your boundaries. You don't have any fences. Fences are down on your farm, and the animals keep getting in, and the animals keep getting out. And you need fences. Okay. You know what I'm talking about.

You know no button is broken, and you need to fix it. because you're not really helping. You're just being weak. Am I wrong? It's hard to hear, but no, you're not wrong. Okay. So just fix your no button. That's good for your brother.

It's good for your sister. If you want to call, if they call up and say something, just go, hey, listen, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. That money that I loaned you, just don't worry about it. Forget it. Because you're not going to get it anyway, by the way. So just forgive it. But we're done. We won't be doing any more business transactions, okay?

You're my brother, you're my sister. I love you, but we're not doing any more money transactions. Those loans are forgiven. I'm not going to make that mistake again, so don't ask. And just you need to get, you need to fix your no button. It's broken. Now, then that it sets you up with the money that you've made. And so what the business sell for?

How much you got? $1,230,000. Congratulations. That's not enough to retire on it, 46. But it is enough. I already have some saved. How much? Two and a quarter million.

Okay. So you got $3 million net worth. Okay, you could quit. But I don't want you to quit. I want you to take a break and decide what the next chapter is. You know what an encore is after the band has played all their greatest hits and they left off one and the Eagles, everybody's clapping and the Eagles come back out on stage, right? And, you know, they play one more song.

and it's what it delights the crowd. You got one more song in you, or two, or three. You're only 46, and fishing and golf will get old after a while. You need to lay your hand to something. You don't have to work 60 hours a week. You don't have to bust your hump, but you could kind of cruise into something and be a value to your fellow man because you're a smart guy, you're a wise guy,

you're a kind guy, you're a person of character, and we actually need you operating businesses in the marketplace. America needs men like you and women like you to do stuff. So take a little break. A year from now, I want you to start something. Something you've always dreamed of. It's been tickling in the back of your head. And I want you to spend a little of this money, getting it going.

And I want you to make yourself useful because you're going to have more joy that way than you will sitting on your butt. If you run a small business or work for yourself, health insurance isn't just a personal choice. It's a business decision. And the wrong plan can wreck your budget fast. Right now is health insurance open enrollment. And if you want your coverage to start by the first of the year, you've got to sign up by December 15th. And I recommend using Health Trust Financial to help make your game plan.

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Angels in San Francisco. Hi, Angel. How are you? Hey, what's so, God? Thanks for taking my call. Good. How can we help? Some of the little confused. I worked my whole lives and I was probably 12 years old and everything I've done to create money is basically on my back. You know, I bought a property. I had a small house. I built a second home in the back from the plumbing.

to the electrical, to the foundation, everything was me to save some money. Now I'm renting the property in the front, but everything else that I do is always labor. And I make pretty good money, and I'm wondering, what can I put my money in? So it makes me money and I don't go on vacation with my wife and kids. And I'm thinking, man, the truck is parked and I'm losing money every day while I'm here in vacation. So I have that stress of not making me. money if I'm not working. Does that make sense of yes? Yeah. Are you running a business? Yes, I got a trucking business, but technically I'm an owner-operator, right? I make about a yearly,

about $325,000. My wife works as well. But whenever the truck is parked or it breaks down, there's no income coming in. Yeah. And that's where I'm having trouble. So all it is is you own your job. yes that's it yeah and so if you don't work you don't make money because you own your job it's straight commission yeah and so the only thing you can do is to grow that business and have several other people doing that work that work for you and then they're working when you're not but until then you're a one you're a solopreneur we call it a single person small business and it does all depend on you you're you're on a treadmill and so uh you're stuck on that and that's not bad you're making 300 like you said you're making 320,000 so shut up and

take a week off that's okay you can tell you can go on vacation it's not going to kill you you're not going to go hungry if you take a week off when you're making 320 grand no so here's the thing though I'm in California so in California to to get drivers to get other truck's going. The profit is already done it before the profit, it's not there, and it's not worth all the stress and the headache. So, um, okay. So you're going to own your job. And when you're not working or when the truck's broken, you're not making money. I mean, that, that's your reality. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just, you just know what it is. But there's not really a fix for it, except to do something else. Well, that's, I guess that's what I'm, I'm calling you

guys to see where um what do you want to do you want to it sounds like you don't want to scale and delegate this and you don't want to do it all on your own what is it you want to do i want to i want to i want to i want to i want to be able to put my money somewhere where it makes money and it's not it's not on my back all the time do you want you want to quote passive income yes passive income okay um and yesterday i ran into one of you guys's um commercials and You know, I put my link, I put some information, and I got about 40 people calling me, you know, saying everything works for you and this and that, and they're throwing me one way and the other way, and that's why I called you guys today.

I'm trying to figure out. Okay, you did not, you did not get in touch with us. We don't have 40 people to call you. Yeah, that's, you got, you got scammed. You got scammed, some kind of AI bull crap or something, yeah. Be careful what you click on on the Internet. Yeah, exactly. That's why I called you guys today.

Okay, so what have you been doing any investing with this money? Because you're making amazing money. Where is it all going? Where is this $25, $30,000 going every month? Okay, so when I bought the property, a small house, I build a second home for us in the back, and now I'm renting the house in the front. What are you doing with the money that comes in every month?

So I just purchased some, they're called luxury bathrooms, restaurants for events I purchase some of those So you're spending all the money coming in to start new businesses? To start to reinvest?

Because you have a trucking business and now you're talking about buying luxury bathrooms. Yes, just in case the trucking business doesn't feed me anymore maybe the other business will, right? But again, the other business

is always me calling the bathroom from here. there so I wanted to invest on the market or I wanted to invest somewhere where I can So you want to stop investing in all these multi-businesses because you can't be a serial entrepreneur and do it all at once

and so you're wanting to invest it elsewhere like in mutual funds in the stock market? Something like that, yeah. That's what I need. Yeah, but here's the thing. Running a small business always makes a lot more money for the money invested than

investing it in anything else. If you bought a rental property and paid cash for it, it doesn't, you know, put 500 grand into that. It doesn't pay you what, if you took that same 500 grand, it opened a business. It would pay you a lot more, but you've got to work more as you have figured out. So, no, I would not open six businesses and call that investing. That's just serial entrepreneur and they're all going to fail because of lack of focus. I would not do that. Decide what businesses you want to be in and very carefully and very diligently and

very gradually make your move into those and away from trucking so that you can get off the road because it sounds like that's really what you need to do. And then as far as your investing goes, I personally invest Angel in two things other than my business. And I put money in good growth stock mutual funds and you can find a person that doesn't work for me, but that we recommend called a SmartVestor Pro on our website only at not on Instagram. You can't find them there. You can find them on our website at ramsysolutions.com and click on SmartVestor. They'll sit down with you and help you do some mutual fund investing.

But, you know, you're not putting enough money in there right now to not have to work. It's going to be a long time before you get there. And then I personally also buy real estate that I pay cash for, but I would only recommend that to you after your 100% debt-free house and truck and everything. And so I'm going to get you completely out of debt. That frees up all your money to build wealth with and to be generous with. And that's how I have done mine, okay? And folks, if 40 different people call you and say they work for Ramsey and they have things

to sell you, they don't work for Ramsey because we don't do that. You're about to get scammed. Don't fall for it. We don't have that, okay? We have a network of people that we endorse that are real estate people. And so if you click on our website and say, I want a real estate agent that's Ramsey trusted, we'll send that to you. If you click on SmartVestor Pro and want to talk to somebody about doing investing, we'll send those people to you. They don't work for us, but there are also not, there will be 40 of them calling you.

And we don't have stuff that we're calling you to sell you, okay? It's not what we do here. So that's some of the AI crap. There's something on there the other day. Somebody sent me the, apparently, it's like a kung fu movie or something. My mouth doesn't even match the words. Is it like a car loan? It's a car insurance thing.

Dave doesn't believe in insurance agents or something. But how stupid is AI? Because they said, this is Dave's mouth. I love my Tesla. And I went, wow, AI, do better if you think that's what. No, it wasn't even AI. It's just a bad, it's a bad edit by some Russian scam artists or something. something, I don't know. But yeah, that's probably what you've gotten into, honey. So we're just

don't get into all that stuff. We're very simple people here. All right, open phones at AAA 825-5-2-2-2-5. Hey, Christian, just for the fun of it, send him a copy of building a business you love with the five stages of business. He's stuck in treadmill. Maybe that book will help him. It's a bestseller angel on how to operate a business and the stages of business, my latest bestseller. It's the last book I did, matter of fact. And so I'll send that to you as a gift. And you're a fellow entrepreneur for sure. You just need some clarity, some vision, some direction.

He's just doing all of it. Don't do everything at once. And Jack of all trades, master, a nun. Don't lose your focus. Just figure out a couple things. Do those well. And just keep pushing. Keep pushing the rock.

You're going to be able to be. Everywhere you turn this time of year, someone's telling you to swipe a card now and pay later. But that mindset always leads straight to debt and post-holiday stress. Fairwinds Credit Union takes a different approach. They're here to help you win with money. Fair wins doesn't push credit cards. They help you build savings and stay debt-free, just like we teach, with the baby steps. And to do that, Fair Wins created the Smart Bundle with Ramble.

fans in mind. It's more than a bank account. It's a tool to help you live with intention. The smart bundle includes a no fee checking account, a high yield savings account, and the exclusive Ramsey Be Weird debit card, which says debt is normal, be weird, right on the front. So every time you swipe at this Christmas season, it's a reminder that you're choosing a different path. To spend no more than you actually have to avoid that January budget hangover and to be free from debt traps go to fair wins.org slash ramsay to open your smart bundle and get your ramsay be weird debit card today that's fairwins dot org slash ramsi insured by the nc ua In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage,

Alex and Amanda are with us. How are you guys? Merry Christmas. We're doing great. How about you, Dave? Better than I deserve. Where do you all live? Live in Altoona, Pennsylvania.

Basically in the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania. I love it. That's a pretty area, actually. Oh, awesome. Very nice. Very cool. Welcome to Tennessee. And how much debt have you two paid off?

$100,000. I love it. And how long did this take? Five years. Five years. And your range of income during that time? Between 80 and 130. Okay.

And what kind of debt was the $100,000? That was our mortgage, Dave. You're weird, people. It's a little bitty mortgage. But you knocked her out. Congratulations. What's that house worth? About $400.

Very cool. And how much in your nest egg these days in your? retirement accounts. A little over 150. All right. Very cool. So sitting right there at $5.50 heading towards a million dollars. How old are you two? Thirty-four? I'm 35. And I paid four house. How weird are y'all? Very cool. All right. Tell us the story. What started this five years ago or more? And how'd you get connected to Ramsey? So it's really started about nine years, almost 10 years ago now. Amanda's parents, my in-laws, for one of our wedding gifts, got us Financial Peace University. and we started

Davish and then we had our never again moment which we had $12 in our bank account we weren't going to get paid for about a week and we were looking through our couches looking for change and basically living on beans and rice we got paid

did our first baby step did our first baby step number one $1,000 and we never looked back we paid off about $85,000 in a car and student loans oh good at that point So we got rid of all our consumer debt. And then after that, we decided that we were going to move to, we were living in New Jersey at the time.

And we decided that we're going to move to Altoona, Pennsylvania. Yeah. Now, during all of this, we really struggled with infertility. So we purchased our house. We put a really nice down payment on it. And then we adopted embryos during that time. Oh, wow. We cash flowed everything.

Wow. And our three littles are sitting right here and our testament to that. I love it. Very good. Cool. That's awesomeness. Proud of y'all. About as good a use of money as I can think of. Absolutely. Well done. Good for you guys. That's so powerful. How's it feel to be 34 years old and completely dead free? It feels so good. It's awesome. It's awesome. Very free. It's doable. It is. What do y'all do for a living? I actually just got promoted. I'm the chief financial officer of a small startup held in health care.

And I'm a social media coordinator. All right. Good for you. And a lot of mom. Yes. Three littles run around. Enjoying every moment. I love it. So what was the hardest part over five years? Because that's a longer journey. You know, baby step six. It's not as aggressive. Did you ever lose steam? What kind of kept you going? I'd have to say it was just communication and just leaning on each other.

And every time we just, we have these little thermometers. Every time we'd put another chunk on the mortgage, we'd color some more. Oh, there they are if you're watching on YouTube or Spotify. So making a visual really helped you guys. Yeah, the visual really helped. And every next, you know, $10,000, it's like, oh, my gosh, we're one step closer. Yep, we're getting closer. We can do it.

Yeah. It's, I mean, even another piece of this about, what, almost a year and a half ago, I got laid off from my job. And we weren't nervous. We weren't scared. And we were pregnant with twins at the time. Oh. And we were like, okay, what's the severance look like? We'll make it happen.

and that was an absolute blessing because my job was super stressful. It took away from my family. At the time, we had a young daughter and obviously a wife as well. And it was an absolute blessing because we were able to take a little bit of a risk in the next job. And that's been unbelievable for us. Such a blessing. Gave you options. Absolutely.

Absolutely. That's amazing. Well done, you guys. All right, when people hear that you've been on this journey and you've done all of this, and now you're dead free. What do you tell them the secret to getting out of debt is? I'd say being on the same page. Yeah, working together.

You can do anything if you work together and you communicate together. I mean, anything is possible. It really is. So why did you move from Jersey to Altoona? Amanda's family lives in Altoona, and we were traveling there about two, three times a month. Oh, okay. I'm putting a lot of mileage on the car. Okay, all right.

But I'm guessing it was a major cost of living shift. A huge, huge cost of living shift. Yeah. tax base and everything. Absolutely. It was crazy. We both got jobs on the same day. God sent us jobs.

It all just worked out. Just worked out perfectly. Yeah. In Altoona. In Al-Tuna. To facilitate the move. Exactly. Okay.

Wow. No income to dual income. Just like that. Yeah. I like it. Very cool. That's fun, guys, because we often are talking to people and going, you know, you may have to move, you know, and you don't, you know, what you're trying to do

doesn't fit there, and you may have to move. And so I always wonder, because, you know, you made the choice. to move to a more rural area and obviously a lower cost of living area and that kind of thing. But it's a great place to build a family. Absolutely. But you've got to have an income. Exactly. And so it's all worked out and you figured out how to do it.

Perfect. I love it. Because that's inspiring for other people listening right now. Some people are stuck in a market they can't afford to live in. And they need to unstuck themselves. And then that'll get them moving. That's good. Good for you guys.

Six figures in a low cost of living area. I mean, that's a wealth hack. So you guys are, you've cracked the code here. and it's only uphill from here, or I guess, downhill. Way to go, guys. Fantastic. Proud of you. Who was cheering you on along the way?

I would say us, too, are our biggest motivators, but also our families were huge to us as well. I mean, they gave you a financial peace university. Exactly. Ten years ago, so they got to be going. I'm glad it worked. Yeah, they are. A lot of support. And you brought grandbabies to my neighborhood, so that's good.

Everybody's happy, right? So there you go. I like it. Grandpa's happy. My grandma's happy. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, they got to be cheering. hearing you on. I'm proud of. Good for you guys. Well done. Well done. Very good. All right. You want to bring up the

littles? Are they going to cheer with you? They're going to cheer with us. All right. What are their names and their ages? We have Isabella, who's three. We have Alex and Regina, who are 10 months. All right. Come on up, guys. Oh, look at this. All right. Oh, look at these guys. They're great. That's a good reason to become dead free. Very cool. There's a good why right there in that picture. Good job. See, those kids are not old enough. They're even going to remember that this happened, but their parents were heroes and changed their whole family tree by deciding to do this.

Sitting here completely debt-free at 34 years old, be millionaires in another four and a half to five years. Pretty impressive stuff. Very well done. Alex and Amanda Isabella, Alex and Regina from Pennsylvania. $100,000 paid off the last portion. That would be their mortgage. They're weird. Did it in five years.

making 80 to 130. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. All right, get ready. Three, two, one. We're debt-free! Yay! Woo-hoo!

Love it! Oh, man. Those little 10-month-olds are going to be watching this on YouTube in like 20, 38. Yeah. Going and watching vintage clips. This was one the old man,

an old lady, made us rich. It's when we got out of debt. Your show is. going to be vintage. That's pretty cool. You never know. At some point, everything becomes vintage. Yeah, well, I don't want to talk about that right now, but I was vintage a long time ago, George.

I'm way past vintage. Now, I'm over into antique. Oh, man. You got a special license plate for that at least. Yeah, that's right. Oh, that's so cool. I want the license plate that has no speed limit. That's the one I want. That's the auto bond. I can't get that one. You guys are incredible. Alex and Amanda, look at these heroes, man. That's so powerful. Are we seeing more and more people

in their early 30s because they had their financial peace babies. The parents got them onto financial peace. They actually believed that it could happen. They grew up in a household, so when they got married, they had to apply it. And 10 years, nine years later, here we are, including, you know, three babies on the way. And there's a lot of cash flowing going on with this story. Oh, yeah. These guys, but I just want to encourage, we hear all these people talking about affordability and they can't afford to live. And, you know, these guys make 80 to 130. And they moved to Altoona, Pennsylvania, and they're doing unbelievably well. It's still possible.

There's a formula here that notice the correlation, boys and girls. Now, they can afford to live there. It's affordability. Wow. You can choose where you live. You can choose the job you have. Interesting. But it's going to take sacrifice.

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Christmas is going to be here in about 20 minutes. Are you guys ready? I mean, it's here. Boom, just like that. I mean, where 20-25 go? I mean, I just blinked and it's gone. Yeah. And consequently, we are running all the appropriate Christmas sales at the Ramsey store here at Ramsey Solutions.

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Go to ramsysolutions.com slash store, or if you're on YouTube or podcast, just click the link in the description. You know how to do that. Savannah's in Omaha, Nebraska. Hey, Savannah, how are you? great great to talk to you both you too so my question is my husband and I are in our early 30s I stay home with two toddlers and my husband works he makes 75,000 a year we have no debt other than our house and we are currently not saving for retirement we make enough just to cover normal expenses without living too uncomfortably and then some months we can save a little

some months we aren't able to put anything into savings um how much is your house payment we be living what's that how much is your house payment uh we have 150 left no your payment oh it's uh 1300 a month okay and you make 75 000 a year yes so seven thousand dollars a month So he's getting home with five. Right? It's about $4,500. How much was your tax refund? I think about, we just had a baby, so $2,000, but this year it will be about $300.

Okay. Where's the money going out of his check then? Because that's not, your taxes are not that. high. Okay. We have insurance, HSA. We contribute about 150 or 200 to our HSA each paycheck. So maybe that's it. No. How much was the insurance? I believe, if I recall correctly, 250. Still not right. That doesn't add up to your, that doesn't add up to $75,000 a year. You're missing something. Okay. Okay, something's gone.

I'm trying to find out why you've got a pinch because your house payment is reasonable and given your income and you don't have a single of the debt. You don't have a car payment. You don't have anything. No. I don't know where your money is going then. I think you need to be on a written budget because you should be able to save 15% of that, which would be about $1,000 a month and retire with dignity.

Does he get paid twice a month? He does. yet it's about, yeah, it's $2,200 a month, or sorry, every two weeks. We are on a written budget. I watch all our money coming from his paycheck. I don't know. I'm less familiar with what happens to his paycheck before it comes to us, so taxes and everything. I sit down tonight with him and just take a look at it and see all the deductions that are coming out, because what should be happening, if you invest 15% into his workplace retirement plan, that's about $468 that would be coming out for the 401K. So now the goal is how can we live on?

the rest that actually shows up at the bank account and then budget off of that. That should become your reality. And that might mean we need to cut some expenses because all of a sudden it's too tight. And so with the remaining, if you're $1,300 mortgage payment, you still have another, you know, $3,300 a wiggle room here to use to cover all of your other bills. And that's the part I think we can drill down on and figure out. And in every dollar budget will help you guys do that. So I would sit down tonight and make that much. What does he do for a living? he's an operation supervisor at a manufacturing plan okay all right well and the other question I'm going to begin to ask myself is what are our career plans right now you're a full-time mom right

yeah our plans are I would love to go back to work when they get in school and he would love to leave his job any day okay yeah so I'll be working but obviously for an upgrade we don't want to leave his job for a downgrade that that's kind of counterproductive to this whole discussion. So, yeah, so as your careers increase, you're going to find more wiggle room, probably. And, but, you know, you're making an average American household income. 78,000 is the average right now. Okay. And you've got a decent, you've done a great job, by the way, to stay out of debt. Most people in this situation call me up with a car payment or two and a student loan hanging around and then can't figure out why they're broke. Or their mortgage is three grand, and they

make 4,500 a month. Yeah. And so you guys don't fall into that. Yeah. You should be about $5,000 a month take home right now. So I still got, I'm still tickling my brain because it's $6,300. Now, I'm not talking about every two weeks. I'm talking about monthly.

So that throws it a little bit because you've got two magic months if you're getting paid every two weeks, two magic months where you get three paychecks and that throws the numbers off a little. So that might. that might get you back to where you need to be. I might, you might be right. It might be about right. So, because you're not really making 4,500 a month.

You see what I'm saying? You've got two months where you get extra $2,200. So we do a four-week budget and a five-week budget based on the projection. So we do 12 of those. So I think we have about two or three, five-week budgets, and the rest are four-week. So four-week budgets are $45. There should be two, where you've got a five, three-paycheck. and the rest of them are not.

So 10 otherwise because that's the way the two-week cycle works. So, yeah, if you're doing that with your every dollar, the extra $2,500 a year might make up the difference and mean that I'm, see, I was running everything saying you ought to come home with more than $4,500 a month and you do because it's actually about 5,000, let's say, 4,500, it's about, it's almost $5,000 a month average that you're coming home with, which is what it needs to be. So you're probably not going to find a bunch of stuff in this check. But look at it anyway, be sure. So, yeah, what I would be very concerned with is those two months when you get that extra check, if you could just invest all.

of that and live on the 4,500 every single month, you'd be okay. That would get you started on your investing. Okay. You see how I'm doing that? Just pretend like you didn't get those checks. Just live the whole thing on 4,500, take home pay, 1,300. And, you know, it's not, you're not living opulently and you've been very responsible and have done a very good job.

I don't want to leave this call with you thinking we've judged you. it's quite the opposite. You're impressive. I really like what you've done. You've done a lot with a little. And you've got a good long-term plan where he upgrades and you go back to work and your income's going to go through the roof. You're going to be at $150,000 when those two things happen. So, and then Zoom, Zoom on building up your retirement at that point. Okay. You'll be fine. So you're not in trouble. And you've done a very good job avoiding debt and managing the money that you have. So congratulations. Thank you.

Yeah, but maybe the hack is, for now, take the two magic months, the third, that have the extra check, and throw that whole check into a Roth IRA. And so that at least gets $5,000 a year going, at least gets something moving that way. And then as you see some increases from whatever, make sure you start jacking up 401K contributions steadily as you get to more and more room in the budget. And for God's sake, don't go into debt. So you've done a great job avoiding it so far. So, Savannah, you've really, I mean, I would put them in the top 5% of Americans and how good a job they've done.

Oh, yeah. I mean, that's a solid income and no debt, and they're living very reasonably. That's a key for success. Very carefully. Yeah. It's not opulent. I mean, they're not living some kind of fancy pants life. You can't at that point.

No, it's not room. You dial in that investing and learn to live on what comes after that. You're going to be just fine. Amen. You're going to make a red shit. But I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be.

Welcome back to the Ramsey Show, and the Fairwins, Credit, Union, studios. George Camel Ramsey, personality is my co-host. I am Dave Ramsey. We're glad you're here. Thanks for joining us. Hannah is in Indianapolis. Hi, Hannah. How are you? I'm good, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Well, considering I'm doing okay. I recently lost my job last Friday. Wow, what happened? And, well, they said that I wasn't productive enough in downtime, and which we had a lot of downtime, but not a lot of busy work. So all of the work that I was given, I would always complete on time and just wasn't, like, super engaged. It was a really great job.

I don't feel like I extremely enjoyed it. But it was a small office setting, and there was just a lot of downtime and really not enough work to go around between me and the other office administrator. So did they give you a severance package? They gave me a two-week severance package, which I'm really grateful for. I wasn't expecting it. I have about 4,000 in savings. My bare bones, no extras, budget is about $3,500 a month. I had just recently went back to working a part-time job last month and was kind of using that to, you know, kind of keep...

Not a whole lot, it's $12 an hour, it's a serving job. It brings in, you know, between $4 and $500 a month. It was just on the weekends. I'm a single mom. I don't get child support. I don't get court ordered supposed to get 50% of their expenses paid as far as like medical, extracurricular and things like that. But I currently have quite a balance that's owed to me that, you know, hasn't been paid

and I'm not getting any financial help from my ex-husband. I am going back to court within a month due to other reasons. What were you making at the job you lost? I was making 27 an hour. What kind of role was it? And they paid for my insurance fully. I didn't have any out of pocket for my insurance. What were you doing?

What was your job title? AP, AR, payroll, regular office type duties, things like that. Okay. And so going back into this job. Four weeks before Christmas is when they decide they have to do this. yes and I actually had to stop back in there yesterday and a family member was already in their training for that spot so I don't know if it's something that they had had planned I don't see them in that light like in general I think they're really great people um but uh it was definitely

kind of a shot to my pride a little bit um so I don't know but um so I'm kind of freaking out um it's also court ordered that I'm the one that has to carry the insurance and they paid for my insurance fully. Yeah, well, you'll get that in the next position. So really, this just means that we have to just really, really, really, it's, you're forced to set the emotions that normally go with this aside and just dive straight into a job hunt. Yeah, I was really sad Friday. Saturday I was, I can do it. I redid my resume, did my cover letter, and then Sunday and yesterday I started a panic. I went back, I used to Uber on the side,

so I went back and I Ubered yesterday and it was kind of depressing. I didn't really, I was out in about for about four, five hours and just didn't make anything. The big town that's next to me is, can, the traffic's congested, so it's just hard to get run. It's just hard to make money with it. So I don't think you need to panic, but I do need to think I'm with you. It's fair to be very concerned because, you know, this is going to run out. And, you know, you got two weeks and you've got a little bit of money. And that's it. And so you got, you got, you got six weeks minus, you probably got eight weeks because you can add to it with your server job, which you can probably gear up. And that's probably going to be more productive than Uber.

actually. Yeah, it really is. It really is. And I'm putting miles on my car and I have a nice car. It's paid off. I don't think Uber's your plan. But what we do need to do is land the next full-time gig that has the insurance and it has the, you know, the $30 an hour thing. And so, and it sounds like you've got some accounting training. So I was in banking for eight years. I loved between, I started out as a teller, moved to a banker. I was an assistant, manager or branch manager. I did retail support. And I feel like I really thrive in that busy environment. When there's too much downtime in a slow setting, I get really distracted. And it is hard for me to maintain like a productivity. So I just, I like to be busy. And I do like as draining as

customer service can be. I feel like I excel when it's, you know, customer focused or just people focused. I enjoy, you know, leadership roles. I've been a trainer before. It's just really hard in the area that I live, because I don't live, I live about an hour from Indy. And a lot of the jobs that I know that, you know, I can get hired, you know, in a couple of days, it's, you know, $15 an hour. You may need to be moving to Indy. Yeah, if you got a job making $80,000, would you just move and go work there what's stopping you from moving um if i got a job in indy or like a close because there's some like distributions stuff up there that i could maybe do um i would just i would just have to commute as far as um my it really comes down to how important my home is i only owe 80 000 on it

it's probably worth 300 um if you can get a job in banking making 80 and indi sell it and move yeah I well I applied for a branch manager position um about 45 minutes away and the salary is between 70 and 100 there you go um and you can you keep your house and make that commute yeah I'm fine with that the the management position that I held um it was a more of a it was like a community bank a state bank and they didn't do a lot of like outside relations um that like relationship management portion that a lot of the credit unions do so I applied to a credit union and their they're they're managers or branch managers are rarely ever actually like in office they're kind of out rubbing elbows and things like that so that's stuff that they don't have a whole lot of experience in i would love to

yeah i think that i think that is your answer so you're right on track we can hire you so i'm not going to interview you but the but i do want you to continue down that track and here's the thing i'm going to send you ken coleman's book and i want you go ken coleman dot com and look at his website on all the different things in the letters and the resume covers and all that. It's very, very important that you figure out who you know from somewhere, kids soccer, wherever it is you know them from. You know them from church that works in one of these companies. Or if you know someone that knows someone that works in one of these companies,

that they can get you, they can handwalk your resume into the boss's office and say, hey look at this lady she's sharp give her a look please she's a friend of a friend give her a look and that doesn't get you hired but it gets a look and it gets your resume out of the stack and so the proximity principle is the idea and it's a book that ken wrote i'm going to send you a copy of that i'm also going to send you a copy of finding the work you're wired to do hannah you're going to be fine because you're so proactive you're going to be just fine that's the key It's one of the best times of the year, but it's also the time of year when people let their money get totally out of control. Everywhere you look, it's just buy, by, buy.

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Start every dollar for free by downloading the app today. Jack is in Kansas City. Hi, Jack. How are you? Life's good. Good, man. How can we help? Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Thank you. So I'm a 76-year-old retired electrician slash contractor that has found the lady that he had liked to marry. And I was married for 53 years. My wife passed away for the last five years. Didn't think this person would be there for me, but she is.

that's kind of where we are. My children now are becoming concerned about trust funds, pre-nap, wheels. And all my children are followers of Dave Ramsey. And I said, well, do you ever listen to Dave where he says, you're one? You don't need two checking accounts. You live together. You talk about, in people. things like how we spend the money, church, God, those things. So we've had some hard feelings of things that have been said, mostly negative things about my fiancé of not supported but in their minds. And in my position, I go to her defense because it was a founded and still unfounded, but you do background checks on people's name, and you find out

there's a lot of people with the same name. So, am I hearing this correctly, Jack, let me summarize this for you. Your kids think your new fiancé is a gold digger, and they want to protect their gold. That's absolutely right. As a matter of fact, we had those. How long have you known your fiancé? we have been talking for 12 months we've been seeing each other for nine months where did you meet her online okay all right i'm 65 and i've been married 43 years um i can't imagine being in

your shoes because i've not been there but i can imagine maybe being there someday um absolutely And so what is your net worth? I'm at, without property, I'm at 1.3. What about property? There's another mill, maybe. Okay. And what is your fiancé's net worth? Less.

I can't tell you the exact number. Okay. Well, I would want to know that. If I were in your shoes, here's what I would do, okay? And you can do whatever you want to do. You're obviously thinking through this clearly. And your children, if their only motivation is to make sure that you are safe, I appreciate their motivation, even though I might disagree with their tactics

and certainly disagree with them being insulting. Okay. But the, but, but, but if their, if their motivation is to protect what they think is theirs and it's not theirs, well, that's just greed and you lose your vote. You lose your ability to give input at that point. Okay. But people in my life that, that are close to me and that love me, if they have a concern for me, I have to say thank you for that, even if I disagree with it. Okay. So what would I do? Okay. So I've got a substantial net worth. If Sharon passed away. and if I were in the exact same situation and I met someone that I didn't have a long history with and you don't and I would hire a company and do a full background check and I would also tell her that I will pay for her to do the same thing on me it's not an insult it's I want to know what's going on and I want you to know what's going on and you do need to know her entire net worth in detail she needs to know yours

and you do need to have a shared checking account and share your incomes together towards your future. But I would do a pre- I would do a pre-nup on existing assets. Okay. Just because it keeps the weirdness out, okay? And it's not because I'm afraid of this lady. I'm more worried. Anytime, the only time we recommend pre-nups at Ramsey is when there's a substantial difference. and you've got a $2 or a $3 million net worth, and she doesn't.

So there's a substantial difference there, and that can create weirdness if you don't have the clarity of a pre-nup. Okay. So I probably would do that. And then, you know, and that's not for your children's sake. It's for your sake. Well, that's what they tell me, too. I mean, even though I get irritated, I know they're trying to protect me in their way that they do. do it. Yeah, their tactics might be good, but their motivation, I mean, their motivation might be

good, but their tactics suck. Is that fair? Yeah, that's generous, I'd say. What's the age difference, Jack, between you two? We're the same age. It's very unusual. Okay. I'll tell you, she's younger. At heart? Or she looks younger? No, well, she does look young. She is six months. We're both very active. We're We walk, we do, you know, I mean, it's like, it's very unusual. I think you found a companion, and I think that's wonderful, and I want you to pursue it. But let's just do it.

This is not puppy love. Let's just do it with some wisdom. And I would do a detailed background check, because you and I both have lived long enough. We've seen friends get scammed. Oh, yeah. And one of my good friends got scammed out of a couple million in a situation like this. It was crazy. but um yeah it was wow but so and i don't i don't even smell that here because i what i what i could

and you know why because i trust you and your judgment after talking to you you've got a level of wisdom and i think you've probably got a pretty good nose for stink and i don't and you don't smell any stink so i don't think there is any but i think it would lay everyone's head on a pillow carefully hers as well tell her look it costs 500 bucks to do a full detailed private investigation background check here's 500 bucks and I want you to hire this company to do a check on me and I'm going to hire a company to do this check on you and that way everybody will shut up and let's do a pre-nup for the assets and we're going to combine our incomes and live our lives in a combined manner but the actual assets that we both enter in with we would leave with

and and I think that's probably a smart thing and that'll give you both a lot of peace and maybe I'm not really doing this for the kids the kids can jump in a creek but the but but I'm trying to give them a little bit of love saying if their reason their motivation is to to protect you that's okay but also if you go to the point that you have to be a jerk about it then that's obviously out of control so anyway that's what I would do so good good question very interesting yeah it's pretty neat to see that you can find love at that stage of life and it's not a romance scam which is a breath of fresh air today because we've seen so many of those where they go well i never actually met her and she asked

for a bunch of money and i wired it over to her that i can understand kids concern this is different that's a scam is why yeah yeah but he's clearly met her several times yeah and uh she's at the same age so it's not this like you know well she's in her 40s and you know she she just likes me for me and my personality the kids sniff that out this is very different so there's some i wish them well there's some celebrity versions of that that are downright funny that's just frightening Yeah. To see those age differences. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's, it's, yeah.

Okay. Anyway, we all know, we all know. The pop culture news. Yeah. But yeah, I think that's not what we're dealing with here and or it doesn't sound like it is. So very interesting. Very interesting. Good discussion.

So in this case, protecting the assets is wise because you've, this is your entire life's work of building wealth, you know, building these assets up, which is different than I'm 25 and I want a pre-nup. Because, you know, I feel like she's going to take me to the cleaners. No, yeah. This is a very different moments. And again, there's a major difference in any time there's a big difference. One of you have substantial wealth and another one doesn't. Yeah. That's one of them most worried about it.

And I've heard you say it protects from the crazies. The outliers in the family they're going to come after. Which apparently have shown up. They're already here. Welcome. Do you want to keep more money in your pocket and not uncle samms? Then listen up. There are tax deductions and credits you could maximize before the end of the year by connecting with an experienced tax professional like a Ramsey

trusted tax pro. They know the tax code inside and out so you don't have to, and they can help you file when tax season rolls around. Get a trusted tax pro by going to ramsysolutions.com slash tax pro. Ramsey Solutions.com slash tax pro. On the debt-free stage in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions, Christopher is with us. Hi, Christopher. How are you? I'm doing wonderful. How about you? Better than I deserve. Where do you live? Tucson, Arizona. Oh, beautiful. Well, welcome to Tennessee where it's cold right now. It's a nice change of pace. Yeah, I guess. Good to have you. And here to do a debt-free scream. How much you paid off? $104,500. Good for you. I love it. And how long did that take you, sir?

it took me four years and four months love it man your range of income during that time so i started around thirty thousand dollars and ramped it up to 70,000 wow what are you do for a living i'm an accountant for a local government okay very cool and what kind of debt was the 105 my house whoa looking at a weirdo that's a low mortgage good for you that's two of them in a row we've had like that yeah i love it what's this house worth it's it's i would probably say about 225,000 right Good for you. It's paid for insurance. How old are you? 30. And you have a paid for house? Yeah. But millennials can't afford to buy a house, George.

Look at this guy. He didn't just buy a house. He owns the house. Shut up. Way to go. Christopher. I love it. All right. Tell me the story. Four years, four months ago, what made you decide I'm 26. By the time I'm 30, I have my house paid off. So I started working, and part of it was the smart dollar. offered $20 off every week for my insurance if I went through it. And so I did it. So your governmental agency bought Smart Dollar in? Yeah. Very cool. What's the agency? What is it? Pima County government. Oh, yeah. Well, thank you, Pena County government. I love it. For those of you don't know what we're talking about, smart dollar is our class on how to handle money. It's like Financial Peace University, but it's taught as an HR benefit in corporate America. And sometimes

in county government. Look at that. So they bought it for all the employees and said, if you go through it, we'll give you $20 off your insurance. Every week, yeah. Boom. Every week.

That's quite the benefits. That's 80 bucks a month right there. Every, yeah. Every paycheck. Okay. Wow. Oh, okay. So two paychecks a month.

Okay. So did a bunch of people do this? I don't know. You guys don't talk. It's not like all my coworkers. I encourage my coworkers to do it. I was like, you know, it's 20 bucks go for it yeah well you're the poster child you have no mortgage they must be looking at

you like who is this guy well after I mean an employer that furnishes this and then the result is their their team members pay off their home at 30 years old I mean that's called an HR benefit that's pretty cool so I'm proud of our this isn't pizza Fridays I'm proud of Pima County and I'm proud of you everybody gets a proud of your man this is pretty awesome this very cool how's it feel be 30 years old and have a freaking pay for a house it feels great like when i first started i was like oh it's going to be 40 and then it's going to be 35 and then i made it my goal to paid off by the age of 30 and i i did it and i i am so happy i it's gone i every month at the start of the month nothing's coming out that's so weird you don't have any bills electric you know i mean you just eat buy a little

electricity and a little food and life is good it's it's so nice you are seriously a low this dude now that's amazing I'm so that's so cool man I take it your single yes okay very cool and extremely eligible at this point ladies I'm just saying wow pretty stinking cool all right now you've been at this and you're making 30 to 70 thousand dollars a year during this during this journey so I started working at the library and of course at the library you can get free books so I was like hey you know as part of the the course it's helpful I'm going to go check out those books free, read them, and it kind of just got me started and used the proximity principle, like the job that I have now, I sort of just used that

and got the job that I have now. And it's been wonderful because I love the job and it's so much easier paying off debt when you go to a job that you absolutely love. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It does. That's very true. but the bottom line is I mean you were not making $400,000 a year no you're making 30 to 70 and you still go and pay off your home by the time you're 30 what do you think the secret to that is

the secret is just to have a goal and know what you know what's in store for you like listening to the other debt free screams like people are like you can't buy a house when you're 30 like people think that it's unaffordable but it really is not you have to have a goal in mind you have to know what you want to do instead of door dashing or you know going to all these different Taylor Swift concerts or whatever so and you bought a very reasonable house yes key to being dead free by the time you're 30 avoid Taylor Swift concerts it's not the worst wealth building hack I've heard I think that's one I can abide by I'll go with that one you invest that ticket price in a good growth stock mutual fund seriously you'll be a millionaire wow shortly yeah wow man so the house you said's worth two and a quarter approximately yeah okay Tucson is a nice place I've been there a couple times does that buy a pretty good house in Tucson um it's it's a two

bedroom two bathroom okay it's a condo okay yeah so all right and how long have you owned it I about four and a half years okay so you bought it and then immediately started on this yeah a little bit after so how much has it gone up in value in that five years 50 This is almost doubled. $50,000. Oh, no, it's gone up like 25% in that period of time. Yeah, roughly. So great investment then.

Yeah. Yeah, that's very cool. Good. Good for you, man. Who was encouraging you along the way? You know, I do have a coworker who also has a paid-for house. He's in his probably early 40s. And also my dad, he paid off his house early.

And I, you know, I grew up listening to this show kind of on the radio, maybe not all the time but you know it kind of got the gears turning and and when it came time it's like you know why not you know yeah yeah we have to lose did you bring your dad with you yeah he's he's a little camera shy okay that's fine he doesn't have to jump in but but uh he ought to be here and be proud of you that's good i'm glad he's here cheering for you that's neat to have your dad do that very good proud of you man good work good work good work all right so let's just reiterate. It's really important for your employers out there to not miss this. I don't know. We've got major companies like U-Haul and Costco and others that have all their employees

going through Smart Dollar, but we also got a lot of police departments, and this is a county. I didn't even know this county was doing this, but we've got all kinds of different organizations that are taking and paying for their employees to go through these courses, and it's very easy to implement. We've got it really dialed in. It's a quality product. I'm proud of the product. And obviously, I'm proud of the ROI is right in front of us. I mean, hello, that's awesome. And so if you're an employer and you could have an employee end up like Christopher standing here, that'd be something to do.

Smart dollar it's called. You can check it out at Ramsey Solutions. And our team will get in touch with you and help you if you're an employer. So there's my advertisement. But just the same, Christopher, you're the walking billboard, buddy. So good stuff, man. Good stuff. So what's the first big thing you're going to do to celebrate the fact that you don't have any

freaking debt. Well, first of all, I came here, but I have an old car. It's an 03. I've been driving it since high school, so I probably... Oh, you need a car. Your car is a piece of crap. What's the next car? Do you have it in mind? What are you going to buy? It's still up in the air. Okay. I need to figure out what's in my budget. Yeah. Well, you don't have a house payment, so you can stack the cash, right? Yes. Okay. It's stacking so much faster now. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you'll be able to buy a car any good for you. Well, that's fun. Yeah, get you a good car. That's a good idea. I like that. You've earned it and you've been conservative and you've taken your time and, man, that's impressive. Very good job. All right, ladies and gentlemen, Christopher from Tucson, Arizona, $105,000 paid off. That would be his house and everything in four years and four months, making $30,000 to $70,000 a year. And he's 100% debt-free, house and everything at $3,000. 30 years old. Shut up, you whiners.

This guy dropped a mic on you people out there. Well done, Christopher. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. I'm debt-free. Yeah. Boom.

Man. Boom. This is this entire show. 30-year-old mortgages, 30-year-old people with their mortgages paid off on the air on this show today. Reasonable home. It's as if we had the answer to the affordability crisis in America. Oh, we solved it. Hey guys, Dave Ramsey here.

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27 for one thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple. George Carlin said, some people see things that are and ask why. Some people dream of things that never were and ask why not. Some people have to go to work and don't have time for all that. That's good. I was like, this has got to be taking a turn somewhere. Come on, George. We know George Carlin is going to turn somewhere there. All right. Hey, buying or selling a home is a big deal. And with all the clickbait headlines and conflicting data out there, it's hard to know what is really happening in the housing market. We'll help you with that.

It's moving, by the way. You don't want to miss this. It's kind of quiet, but there's this little revolution of brewing. And we're here to make the latest trends easy to understand. Median home prices held steady around 424,000 right now. And in October, about one in five homes saw a price. cut, which means buyers might have more room this winter. Christmas, I'm a great time to buy a house, by the way.

Not a lot of buyers out there bumping around. Mortgage rates dip down to four, five and a half now. So you learn all about this by going to Ramsey Solutions.com slash market or click the link in the show notes. We'll help you with your real estate decision making. Yep, walk you through the whole thing. Travis is with us in San Jose. Hi, Travis.

How are you? I'm doing good. How are you guys? Better than we deserve. What's up? So I traveled for work, and, you know, when I first started, I had a little bit of debt. That's why I started traveling for work. And my truck broke. I had to get a new one with the bad credit already. And so anyways, I paid off the, I had 20 grand credit card debt, paid that off.

But now I have the high-interest truck with high mileage. And so I'm just wondering what you guys would think on, should I pay off the truck? and then just ride it out until a break and then get a new one again, because I'm going to, it's pretty bad, but it'll do it until now, or should I just... What do you owe on it?

I owe 25, so... What do you make? 1800 a week, take home. Okay. How quick can you pay the truck off? Well, realistically, because I got school coming up, so probably like March,

March or April to be paid off. So you can pay it off in like six months? Yeah. I would pay it off. Yeah, the thing is that the head gas is blown and the transmission like flips. And it's kind of like

here's the other thing is I live in it. I travel forward so I live in the truck. And so I kind of always need it so it's like a predicament of ride it and if it breaks then I lose more equity on trading it in or... You don't have equity because whatever you

drive, you're destroying its value. Yeah. You've expedited the depreciation. So you're way underwater. Yeah, you're going to, you really have, whatever you drive, you're destroying it, and that's a cost of doing business.

So you want to destroy the least expensive thing that will get the job done. Now, get the job done means you live in it. It's got to have some comfort, and get the job done means to be reliable. But other than that, you don't need a truck. I mean, you don't need to spend money on it. All you need is reliable and

comfortable. That's it. You don't need to be impressive. If you buy a $100,000 truck, you're going to destroy it. If you buy a $30,000 truck, you're going to destroy it. If you buy a $20,000 truck, you're going to destroy it. Yeah. So why not destroy the cheapest thing possible as a part of doing business? Agreed? No, that makes sense, yeah. So fix the head gasket and the transmission drive this thing. I think Travis just wants a new truck. Can we admit that? wrong, I do. But the interest rate 16. You're going to pay it off in six months. It's an irrelevant

interest rate. If you were hanging on to it for a decade, you'd have a point. But I think you're just jonesing for a nicer, newer truck, and the real solution here is to pay it off. Because right now, here's the thing. You're probably underwater by 8 or 10 grand, right? Well, I sold

25 on it. You owe 25, but what's it worth? 15, 17? Well, it has 430,000 on it. That's the part that's $400,000 miles on it. So it's worth Jack Squad. Yeah. Do you understand what I'm saying?

You're so far underwater that if you sold it, you'd have to cover the difference. So you're better off putting a new transmission in it and eating that $8,000 versus spending $15 to get out of the difference you're underwater on. And let's get this thing paid off. Get it paid off. And then I want you to save up and pay cash for whatever you move into. Well, that was the old point. Okay. Okay, so better than get a new one and drive it and get it paid off and then save up and pay cash for whatever you move up to and move up to the minimal truck that will have reasonable comfort and reasonable reliability.

Because whatever you drive, you are destroying its value. You have driven this thing into the dirt and you have to drive it all the way into the dirt now because you trapped yourself, you got screwed because you got impulsive and bought a truck at 16% and they screwed you. So next time, walking with a check, with the actual amount you have saved up and no more because that dealership will talk you into a nicer truck. Do not take on debt again for a truck that you're going to destroy. Don't do it. So, yeah, I'd clean this mess up and then I'd save up and move up from there. And that probably means you're almost a year from buying a better truck. And because you've got to get this one paid off and then you've got

to save up for the next one. You got a great income. It'll happen faster than you think. Yeah. That's what I would do if I were in your shoes. You've got to break the cycle of this because otherwise it's going to break you. Kimberly's in Charlotte. Hey, Kimberly, how are you? Good. How are you? Thank you for taking my call.

Sure. What's up? So about six years ago, I got divorced. In that divorce, we had one daughter, and I have her full time. Her biological father is not in the picture. He's not a safe person to be around. And we get about $150 for child support a month. It does really not anything for us.

And so since she was born and I started getting those child support payments because I had to leave when I was pregnant, I've been putting that money into a savings account. And at first, I put enough to have like a money market account. because at the time, that was the highest interest rate, and then I moved it into a CD. So currently, I'm saving that money for when she goes to college or when she goes to college. How much is in the account? Okay. What I would do is jump online at ramsysolutions.com and click on SmartVestor Pro and open up a 529 and a good mutual fund, move the 13 into there, and then add to it periodically when you have.

some more money come in and that'll give you a much better rate of return and it grows tax free okay how old is that one of the she's six it's a mutual fund and a 529 plan 529 means it grows tax free and it has to be used for college or education of some kind and so um go ahead sorry go ahead no that's it i mean um so with the 529 plan I've heard that they have to use it for college or it gets rolled over into like a retirement account. I would not do that. You can do that, but instead they need to use it for college, which is what you just said. You were saving it for her college.

And it's a wide variety of expenses connected to education. And so you do trade school. She could do code school. She could do a lot of different things. It's school. And she's going to need some kind of school. Okay. It's just based off of rough estimates, I was imagining she would end up with like 36,000 in... She should have more.

No, I'm, I just crunch the numbers for you. At this right, from 6 to 18, you invest it wisely into those mutual funds we talked about. Even with just your 150 a month, you'd have like 90,000 plus. And that's if you didn't add any more than that's because you're going to be earning more than you're earning now. That's an 11% return instead of a savings account making three or three years. or three and a half. That's the difference with compound growth over those 12 years. Yeah. Just click again at Ramsey Solutions.com and click on SmartVestor Pro. And by the way, Kimberly, there's no moral or ethical reason that you have to put the child support aside. You're allowed to use it to support the child if you need to. But if you want to keep investing it, that's the way you can do it. That puts this hour of the Ramsey Show in the

books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace. Christ Jesus.