The Ramsey Show - Financial Momentum Starts With a Shift in Perspective

Episode Date: May 14, 2026

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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 Ramsey Network in the Fairwinds Credit Union Studio, This is The Ramsey Show. George Campbell, number one bestselling author, Ramsey Personality, co-host to Smart Money Happy Hour. Here on the Ramsey Networks is my co-host today. The phone number is AAA 825-5-225.

You jump in. We'll talk about your life and your money. Betty is in Washington, D.C. Hi, Betty. How are you? I'm hanging in there. I can't believe I'm actually talking to you. Well, I'm honored.

How can we help you today? Well, I'm going to apologize up front in case I cry because this has been a really stressful situation. But long story short, my husband and I have a house that we cannot afford. Our mortgage payment is over $6,000 a month, and it's been listed for over two months now, and the house is just not selling. And we got a report back from our Ramsey trusted real estate agents last night. That's not very good. And so we're looking at either having to drop the price again and try to find $30,000 while we're in babysept two to be able to pay to get out of this house that we can't afford.

And the other options that they gave us really were to potentially look at a short sale or a Dayton Lue or something like that. And those options aren't on the table because my husband will lose his job if we go that route. And I don't know what to do. Okay. So what is your household income? My husband is currently working between 24 and 30 hours of overtime each week to be able to bring in $12,000 a month to take home. Okay. All right.

And your payment is $6,000. And how much debt have you got in Baby Step 2? Well, we started out with a lot more than this in July of last year, but we were able to get cruising through December. and now we just have $45,000 left on two personal loans. So how much have you paid off before when you started in June down to 45? What did it start? I think the balance was a little over $70,000. Okay.

So how did you get that $30,000 given that this house payment? So how did you manage to pull that off? That's impressive. My husband did receive a bonus at the end of last year. year and we used all of that. And I was working at the time when we first got started with our debt snowball. But over the course of last year, I lost all three at my part-time jobs. And I have not been able to find another one. And we have a seven-month-old. So I was pregnant during all of that chaos as well. And no one will hire, will hire me, apparently.

Yeah. What is your career field? I am primarily a stay-at-home mom, my home school, so I... No, I mean the jobs, the jobs that you've been getting, what were you doing? I mean, what is your... If you could go get a dream job right now making $6,000 a month, what would it be? I worked remotely doing data entry for the past 10 years. Making what? What were you making? I was making about $2,000 a month.

Okay. All right, good. All right. Okay. Well, and the house you owe so much on it, that's what the $30,000 is, is that you're afraid you'll have to sell it for less than, or you'll net less than you owe, right? Correct, sir. Okay. What did the report say? You said you got a bad report from the real estate pro? Yeah, just that if we didn't lower the price, they thought that we had less than a 10% of the money. success, like likely success rate of being able to sell it. We've been in the house for just under two years. We originally purchased it. It was supposed to be with my parents who were supposed to split it.

And as soon as we closed before the first mortgage payment came, my dad went back on his word and said he had never agreed to split at 50% with us, which was what we were all under the impression would happen. And then since... Is he on the mortgage? No, he is not. And not on the ownership either. No.

Okay. All right. Well, here's the thing. The great news is that with bonuses and finding extra work, both of which could be easily in your future, you've been able to hang on and reduce debt by $30,000. That's fairly impressive, really. And so if we can add the bonuses and the income from you, and I think you can, back to the equation, even if you stop your debt snowball, temporarily and start piling up cash to write a check and get out of this house. You can make that.

That's going to work. You're going to be able to do that. You're not trapped. You're just in a really sucky temporary situation. But you don't, 10 years from now, this will be in the rearview mirror and it'll be going, oh, that's a dumb thing I did. My dad lied. And I wouldn't have done it without that.

And dadgum, what a horrible mess we got in just about the time the baby was born. About the time Rachel was that age, by the way, I filed bankruptcy. So there you go. I mean, and I'm okay now, you know? So you're going to be okay, is my point. But right now, the snapshot that we take has got tears in it, and that's valid. Okay, the snapshot is, oh, this, I can't breathe. But the film strip says there's an end of the movie that's not the end of the world.

The rainbow comes out. So, yeah, so I would say stop your debt snowball temporarily and just start piling up cash. because as soon as you start seeing options, your anxiety level is going to go down. And yeah, he picks up all the hours he can pick up, and you pick up all the hours you can pick up. And yes, you'll find something. You've just gone through a dry spot here, and nobody's hiring people who have seven-month-old. It's not true. You're in Washington, D.C.

You'll find something. I mean, is it easy? No. The job market's kind of slow right now. But I think you can do it. even if you don't get any income coming in, you can make the payment and not go into foreclosure, short sale or anything else for a period of time until you get rid of it. And while pile up $30,000 and get ready to do what the real estate agent said,

let's write a check and get rid of this hell hole. It's driving us nuts, right? Have you guys actually done a budget to see where this other $6,000 is going in your take-home pay? because you might find some $1,000 or $2,000 right there. Yeah, we have. We've actually been pretty locked in since July, which I'm thankful for. But generally speaking with the work that we had to do to prepare the house for sale and everything, I think we're able to put aside about $1,200 a month right now to go.

And then you add your income that you're going to get, and you add his bonus. And you start selling stuff because the house is going to get sold anyways. Might as well clear some rooms out, make some money off Facebook marketplace. And all that can help if you get creative. And again, take the pressure off yourself to get rid of the $45,000, unless it's a $45,000 car. If it is, sell it and be done with it. But I mean, you know, if you're, you know, but I think that the proper perspective on this will give you a lot of,

give you some of your fight back and get the tears back, push the tears back from the edge a little bit and go, oh yeah, we can do this. This is actually doable. I think you can. But I think it's going to be, I think the next 12 months are not going to be fun. And you get rid of the house, you've got $30,000, and then you go knock out the 45 and, you know, you learn a whole bunch of lessons in this short period of time about the time the baby was born. And you'll look back on that 20 years later and maybe he's 27 and you'll go, man, and you were born, our life sucked. And the baby would go, I don't remember that. Yeah, I don't remember that.

What's for dinner? I don't remember that. Statistics show that half of Americans don't have enough life insurance, or they don't have any at all. I don't understand this, John. Why don't people want to take care of their family? They think they're going to die or something? Well, I used to be one of those guys. I didn't even think about it.

And one of my buddies said, hey, the only reason to not have life insurance is if you hate your wife and kids. and I immediately went and got term life insurance. That's a gut punch. And you're telling me, and for decades, Dave, I've sat across people who've lost a spouse. They've lost somebody important to them. Me too. They don't know what to do next.

Me too. I mean, you're going to have a crisis here. And, you know, you've got two options while you're sitting and talking to a young widow. She's concerned about how she's going to invest all this money properly and not mess this up. Or she's concerned how she's going to eat tomorrow. That's exactly right. These are the two options. And term...

Your dadgum family, man. Term life insurance can replace. income, pay off dads, cover funeral expenses so your family can actually have the opportunity to just be sad, to just miss you. That's exactly what it's supposed to be. It's saying, I love you to your family, term life insurance. Jeff Zander and the team of Zander Insurance makes it easy and affordable. I've used them personally for 25 years. They're the only people I trust.

Go to Zander.com or call 800 356-4282. Nate's in Houston. Hi, Nate. How are you? Doing great. Good. How can we help? I have a question about boundaries with parents and money. So I've got to have a family, you know, member. My mom and dad, they want to gift us a vehicle. They had a track, or at least my dad's had a track record of just using parent guilt. throughout my life and it's really created just some tension in our marriage. My dad likes to have control over our life when he doesn't have any really means to it. You know, we have, I'm a breadwinner and my wife stays home, takes care of the kids. We're active in a church, we're active, and we're states away, so it's really nice to just have that distance. But we are

trying to respectfully decline, even though they're very pushy on trying to give us this vehicle when, in fact, they want us to be, you know, going, yeah. So just trying to find a way to respectfully do that. So it sounds like you, over a period of time, have established some boundaries because of this pattern. And now they're like, oh, I think I'm going to try it again. Pretty much. Yeah. And, I mean, there's not any current. they don't currently have any hooks in you, do they? No. Okay.

My brother, though. Well, not you, but I'm talking about you. Okay. Yes. No hooks. Yeah. And so they're like, okay, well, we ain't got any hooks in him, so let's set one, right? Mm-hmm.

Yeah. So, I mean, just don't be a bass. Don't be a bass, yeah. Don't bite, right? Don't bite on the hook, man. It's just, I mean, so. Yeah, when you say they keep pushing, are they, like, calling you saying, hey, we really want to give to this car. What do we got to do?

I mean, yeah, I mean, it's like texting, it's, you know, and then you get on the phone and it's... Can you just say, hey, I don't want to talk about this anymore. Here's the thing. When someone's doing stuff like this, the fewer words and the shorter the conversation you have, the better for everyone, them and you. Because the longer you stay in a conversation, the more likely you are to revisit all. the past sins, and that doesn't do anyone any good because they're not going to change. Yes.

And so, you know, no is a complete sentence and keep your sentence pretty close to that. Hey, dad, love you, man. Thank you for the offer. Not going to be able to do that this time. We've got other plans. Thanks. That's it. And we love the offer.

We have a beater car. No, no, no, no, no. No, you don't love the offer. You spent the whole first half of the call telling me you didn't love the offer. You would like a new car, but the cost is too high on this one. Yes. And you'll open the door to him going, ooh, it looks like there's a chance. I like to have a new car too, but I don't want a $1,200 payment,

or I don't want my dad breathing down my neck again because I just got rid of him the other day. So you know what's inside that Trojan horse. And so you just got to keep it at bay. Don't let the Trojan horse in. So even though you do need a car, then you just go, hey, you know, we're going to, got other plans and, you know, we appreciate it. Thank you. Not going to work right now. Yeah. I don't have to go into a long explanation. And the more you feel tempted to explain yourself, the more you're going to cause issues that are not helpful.

Yeah, I appreciate it. Yeah, it's definitely helpful. No, the whole sentence. Yeah, and we're driving a beater. We went to Yale's course at our train. and it's been very helpful. I'm working a plan. I've got a plan, Dad. I'm going to get me a car, and I know you noticed our old car, but hey, thank you.

I appreciate your offer. It's very kind of you, but we've got it figured out, and you guys find somebody that needs that car over there on that end of the world that's find a single mom and help her out with it, Dad.

Thank you. Thanks for the offer, though. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, what about, what about, no, Dad, Dad, I just told you. We're not going to do it, okay? And it's just, you know,

we don't have to be mean, but just real low volume, slow sentences and short, concise conversations. And all of that's very helpful to bring this to a close. And it may take two or three times because these people are not used to hearing no. Yeah. No one tells them no. And so, but I'm telling you, you're going to feel so much better when you get off that text or off that phone.

And your wife is going to look at you with a beautiful smile and go, I married a man. Look at that. Look at the backbone on that guy. It really is. I mean, that's what's going to happen. So, and if you continue to struggle with it, I always recommend Dr. Henry Cloud's book Boundaries. I've sold, I think he sold 20 million, and I told him the other day, I think I sold two million of them. So for him, because I just love that.

I love him. He's a good friend, but also I love the book. And so, because it's most every family struggles with some kind of boundary violating person. at some time. Sometimes they grow out of it or sometimes they finally get the message or whatever. But you just have to go. And there's a universal rule. People who violate boundaries don't like you setting them.

That's when they throw the fists up and go it's time for a fight. Always 100% of the time, expect pushback. Because their goal is to get through the fence, knock the fence down, act like the fence is not there. and then you put the fence up and it pisses them off. Wait, there's a fence. I don't like fences. And so 100% of people who don't like boundaries don't like you setting boundaries. So when you do and, you know, you just go, yeah, but look, there's a fence.

I just had Jefferson Fisher on my show this morning and he was talking about this of if you start to sort of ramble and talk more and more and more, it just gives them more ammo. It gives them more leverage. And so he said short sentences. It puts oxygen in the fire. Yeah. He gives the same advice. Firm, short sentences. And he's smarter about that stuff than I am. So I might have actually stolen it from him. He's a lot nicer than I am. That's true. For sure. He's a genuinely nice human being. But yeah. But I'm just like, no, piss off. You know. That works too, though. In Dave's defense, that is a strategy that can work. It does work. It's just a little more brutal. Sam's in Bend, Oregon.

Hey, Sam, what's up, man? Hey, guys. I'm a big fan. I've been working your guys' plan for several years. I absolutely follow everyone everywhere I can. Well, thank you. Awesome. I'm going to try and keep it short and sweet and not get too emotional.

I'm at the tail end of a divorce. We'll be able to have access to funds and properly pay for debts and everything. And I'm just trying to figure out what's the best way to go about that with some of the lump sums that I'm going to be receiving when the divorce is finalized. How long were you married? Last Friday was our anniversary, and we're still legally married, but 16 years. I'm sorry. How many kids you got? Three boys.

How old are they? 15, 10, and 8. Okay. All right. Well, rule number one, take care of them and your broken heart. Oh, we are. Okay. That's rule number one. That's the most important thing in this. And then pretty soon you'll be able to laugh about this. I talked to a lady the other day that got divorced. She said, you know, I got out of debt. I divorced him. So there's good that can come of all this. This much manure, you can grow something, right? So, oh, I'm so sorry.

What a horrible thing to go through. All right. And so I'm still going to make sure the household is taken care of, food, shelter, clothing, transportation, and utilities. And then lump sums, if they're in retirement accounts and need to stay in retirement accounts, I'm just going to do rollovers. And other lump sums, we're going to walk the baby steps. You got debt? You're going to get out of this? Well, so I was, that was my.

kind of on the fence part with the retirement as I'm still young in 38. So I have time, I have a full-time job. I would not cash out the retirement. No, I would not pay the penalties. You'll pay penalties on it. And I wouldn't do that. So same as if you weren't getting a divorce. So if any liquid cash, just apply that to your next smallest debt,

make minimum payments on the rest, then just debt snowball it. And if you get in a big chunk of his 401K or something, then go see a SmartVester Pro and just do a rollover and do an IRA into some good mutual funds. George Camel here, let me give you three signs. It's time to stop hoping your debt problem goes away and actually take action to fix it. If you've defaulted on a debt, if collectors are calling nonstop, or if you're facing a lawsuit, or think one's coming, you don't just have a debt problem anymore. You've got a legal problem. And that's why I tell people about Guardian litigation group. Because here's the thing. If you're behind on your bills, doing more of the same is not going to fix it.

You need a different plan. And Guardian litigation isn't just another debt relief company making promises they can't keep. They're an actual law firm. And from day one, you get an attorney who represents you. So when collectors start pushing, you're not guessing. You've got someone in your corner who knows how to respond when your debt problems escalate into legal problems. So don't wait for it to get worse. Go to guardianlit.com slash Ramsey right away. That's guardian l-it.com slash Ramsey.

Attorney advertising. Results may vary and no specific outcomes guaranteed. Well, we wish every call could get through on this show. but I'm afraid right now the lines are jammed, and as soon as one of those people are gone, there'll be four more. And we hope you can get through. The phone number if you want to get in the lottery is AAA-8-255-2-2-25. But if you can't, I've got something that might actually even be better.

It's called Ask Ramsey. It's our free AI tool that's built and trained only on Ramsey answers. So you'll get an answer the same way we would answer it right here on the show. You can ask your question today for free. at ramsysolutions.com, click the link in the description if you're listening on podcast or YouTube. And in case you didn't know, and I didn't, because I'm a boomer, how AI works. I did know that AI is artificial.

It's not real. That's a good start. Artificial intelligence. So it doesn't manifest its own intelligence. It only can speak from the database that has been fed to it. And so that's the problem, for instance, with Google using AI to answer your question. questions because they're so stupid that they're using Reddit as part of their database to answer the question.

And Reddit, if you look it up in the Greek, means not true. So people's opinion, it's like the TikTok in written form, you know, it's stupid stuff. But that's being entered in. So we don't have any stupid stuff in our Ask Ramsey AI because the only thing we put in there was three years of this show, answer all the Ramsey personalities answering your questions, and all the books we've written and all the articles that we've written. And so they're all our opinion, how to work our system, how to work the baby steps. That's the only data that's in there.

So that's the only possible answer that's going to come out. We've almost got it as snarky as I am. It's about at George level of snark, not quite a day level. It's not yelling at you quite yet. It's just snarky. It's kind of funny snarky like George, not me and snarky like me. It is conversational, though. And you can have a conversation with it.

So there's a back and forth, which is great. You can enter your own information. It'll get specific. I'm really proud of our tech team. I mean, it's, it's thinking good. Feedback's been amazing. A hundred percent free. Ask Ramsey at Ramsey Solutions.com.

You can get the answer as if you called in on the show. Ash is with us in New York City. Hi, Ash. How are you? Hey, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. How are you? Better than I deserve.

How can we help? Awesome. So, I'm 26. And I make about 100,000, $100,000 a year in my salary. And I had an education loan worth $65,000. My mom originally promised that she would pay for my education. So I went through school expecting that support.

But now I'm left with the student debt, and she hasn't followed through yet. I'm sort of struggling with how to handle both the financial side and the emotional side of it. I want to move forward responsibly, but I also feel hurt and honestly misled. So what would you do in my situation? Do you have any advice for me? Well, I mean, if you sat down with her over a cup of coffee and said, I feel hurt and misled, what would she say? She gets really emotional, and then she says, oh, I did so much for you. And, you know, this small thing is bothering you.

you make so much money. I don't think a $1,000 in Coleman should hurt you that much. And we just usually end up getting in an argument. And then I... Okay, so this is settled, then. This is settled. She's not going to pay it, and she doesn't care if it hurts your feelings. That's the facts.

That's the facts. Those are facts. Those are data points. She doesn't care. if it hurts your feelings. She's not going to pay it. Now, then you've got to decide what you're going to do. Okay?

I'm not going to give her access to my feelings anymore. So I'm not going to talk about it with her ever again. She's not going to pay it. You are. Okay. Now the next step's easy. Let's attack this debt with our great $100,000 income. How fast could you pay it off on your own?

Well, so I've got about $20,000 in savings. Good. Good. I live in New York, so, I mean, my monthly expenditure is about $4,000. Yeah, great. So you pay off the 40, and you've got 60 to go, and you just lean in and knock it out, and you know that your mom is your mom, so we can't be too mad at her, but we can be mad enough at her to go.

she's not reliable. And if she promises me something ever again, I'm going to laugh and wink and not believe it. Because she doesn't care if it hurts your feelings. Right. And then I had this conversation that if she wanted me to pay it off. And she said, just send me, just pay it off for this year, just to me $10,000. And then you won't have to worry about it from like Jan 2027. So now I

She's not going to pay it, Ash. You're wishing for something It's not going to happen. Okay. Dogs can't climb trees. She's a dog. She ain't going to climb a tree, dude. Squirrels climb trees, okay?

She can't climb a tree. She's not going to do it. And every answer she gives you is telling you she's not going to do it and that it's on you. And so the faster you just go, you know, I hate that I have to say this about my mother, but she's an unreliable person and is not concerned about the fact that she lied to me. And that just breaks my heart, and I have a bill to pay now, and you go pay it as fast

as you can, Ash, and the sooner you get it paid off, and then please don't ever believe anything else she says. So any plan she comes to you with is false. The plan should have a check attached to it for $65,000 if I'm going to believe her ever again. Yeah. And it can't bounce. So that's the only way you go, okay, we're going to rebuild trust here. Yeah, but she's not going to do it.

No. I mean, there's no chance. She probably doesn't have it either, by the way. It was probably wishful thinking, and it sounded like a nice thing to say that I'll cover your education one, you know. I believe in you, Ash. I got your back, yeah. But, yeah, I mean, this happens a lot. We hear this way too often of parents that don't want to.

follow through on the promise of what they were going to do with their kids' education costs. And so it's yet one more reason for those of you out there that are considering taking out a student loan based on the promise of a parent to pay it. That would be a dumb idea. It puts a strain on the relationship even if they do follow through and pay it. Chris is in Fort Collins, Colorado. Hi, Chris. How are you?

I'm fine. Thank you. My question to you is, I let my mom. mom and dad, $40,000 20 years ago. They put my name on their house via a quick claim in 2012. And I haven't lived in their house for 40 years. Well, they've both passed. They have a will that says to pay me $75,000 off the top

and split the rest between myself and my three other siblings. What kind of a tax mess in my end? Are you the only one? on the deed or were they on the deed with you after they quit claimed you? They were on the deed with me after they quit claimed. Okay, so you're going to need professional tax advice, but I'll take a stab at it. Okay. Here's what would happen if they had taken themselves off completely and it was just you.

When you sell the house, you're going to be taxed on every dollar of, above what they paid for the house. Which was nothing probably. Yeah, it paid $13,000, and now the house is worth $500,000. Yeah, so you'd have capital gains tax on $500,000 if the house was in your name. So you may have tax on half of that since the house is in their name and your name. You probably do. You probably have tax on that.

And so what I would do is require that that tax be paid and my $75,000 be repaid before we divvy up any proceeds. And so you need to get tax advice, figure out what your tax bill is going to be. And I would add that and make the estate pay that because you got screwed. If you run a business, you already know this. Bad information leads to bad decisions. And right now, AI is everywhere. but AI is only as good as the data behind it. The best AI is built on the best data.

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NetSuite's AI helps flag cash flow problems, spot inventory issues, close your books faster, and cut down on manual reporting. If your revenue is at least seven figures, go to netsuite.com slash Ramsey for a free product tour. That's netsuite.com slash Ramsey. Recapping, George. Lesson for the day for some of you out there. Do not gift capital assets like stocks or real estate to your children while you're alive, except in rare circumstances. Here's why.

Okay. Our last caller, Chris, mom and dad. quit claimed the house over to thinking they were doing her a favor. They were trying to do something nice. And they were ignorant of tax law. So here's how tax law works. If Chris, if, again, in Chris's situation, both names were on it, so it done there. But if it was just her name. So if you gift, if mom and dad gifted that property to her, her basis for calculating capital gains is their basis, what they paid for. It was $13,000 in this case. And the house sold for $513,000.

Then they got a half a million dollars that's taxable. That's a gain in the IRS's eyes. Yeah, it's going to be a 15% gain, or capital gains tax. That's $75,000. So it's a $75,000 error in that case. The reason it's an error is if her name was not on the deed and they give it to her by will after they die, her basis is the market value of the house at the date. time they die. So her basis would be $513,000 and she sells it within six months of death. It's presumed to

have been market value, and it's presumed that there is zero tax. Which just saved her 75 grand by doing it that way. It's called a stepped up basis. So the basis goes to market value if willed to you. So if grandpa has stock, and he's got $2 million worth of Exxon stock, but he paid $10 for it, and he gives it to his grandchild before dying, they have capital gains on $2 million. He just passed the hot potato right over. If he waits until he dies, 10 seconds after he's dead, that stock basis for resale is the market value at the time, $2 million. $10, junior can sell every bit of it and have zero tax. This is huge, y'all. Quit doing crap like this without seeking tax advice and knowing what you're doing.

And it's like, well, I don't want the government to get you. You just made sure the government's going to get it dumb, but. It's exactly what you did. And you can't just practice law and tax law out of your ear and think you're going to get anything except screwed up. So just make a one phone call to a simple, to a Ramsey tax, Ramsey trusted tax person, and they'll tell you, don't transfer this, period. Now, again, there might be a situation where you can use some of your gift tax exemption or you can use some of your estate tax exemption and qualify it under unified estate tax credit

and you have to fill out some forms and you can make the move and not get into the taxes, but you still could set up a problem with income tax on the other end. And so you really need to think this stuff through. It's not as simple as, well, I need to protect little Chris. She gave us that $40,000, and her brothers and sisters ain't right. So I'm going to put the house in her name and make sure it's okay. Boom, without checking. That's exactly what those sweet people did.

And they screwed this up royally. And they meant well. I'll guarantee you they're not bad people. They didn't go, hey, let's screw Chris over. That wasn't what they meant to do. good intentions are the most expensive mistake you can make. Yeah. Just don't be doing this stuff, people.

All right. James is with us. James is in Lexington, Kentucky. Hi, James. How are you? I'm good. How you doing? Better than I deserve.

What's up? Hey, man. You know, I'm really interested in how can I regain control of my finances. I just graduated college. You know, I have a good job, but I feel like I'm in control. Cool. What's the good job? What are you making?

Um, 73's base salary and then with bonus and everything, I'll be, should be around 80. Good for you. Cool. Are you married? I am. Well, fiancee. And then I have a son with my previous relationship and then we have two kids. My fiance and I. Oh, when you're getting married? Um, you know, whenever she wants to, we haven't set a debt day during, yet. Saturday works for me. Dave is free.

I'll send you the invite. Okay. And the, all right, so what does she make? So she stays at home. That is the, that is what's best for us. Yeah, Saturday works for me. All right. And she's in extreme risk right now.

I don't like the position she's in. As her friend, I'm telling her to marry you now. Okay. Okay. Anyway, now we got that behind us. So you got how much debt with your $80,000 job and three kids and fiancé getting ready to be wife? So my student loans, that is the largest, $44,000. I've used that to supplement income all throughout my time at school.

My car made a dumb purchase when my son was born. I still owe about $20,000 on there. And then my credit card's around 12, and then she has around 12 as well, $12,000 on credit cards as well. Gotcha. Okay, $44,000. You got $88,000. You make $80,000. It's going to take you two and a half years.

of living on beans and rice, rice and beans, and you can pay all this off. Okay. And that's if nobody adds any income to the equation. And you ought to try to talk about somebody adding some income to this equation, if you can. And I'm not being just smart aleck only. There's all kinds of data points that says being married is going to cause you to succeed financially. And so I want good things for y'all. I love you all.

I want you to win, okay? So then we're going to list our debts, smallest to largest. We're going to cut up the credit cards tonight. We're going to get on an every dollar budget tonight. George and I'll give you a premium version and let you get started. The two of you sit down together. And since you're going to be married on Saturday, you can go ahead and start doing it tonight like you were married. And you sit down with everything and you're looking at it together and saying, okay, we have this baby and I've got these kids and we've got this stuff we've got to take care of.

And, you know, and we've got a house. and we got to get, you know, we're going to plow through these credit cards, get rid of them, then we're going to knock that car out, and then we're going to knock that student loan out. Meanwhile, paying minimum payments on everything but the little one, attack the little one, everything but the little one, attack the little one, everything but the little one, and attack the little one with a vengeance. You're not going to see the inside of a restaurant unless you're working there is your extra job, and don't talk to me about a vacation.

You are seriously broke. Broke people don't go on vacation. And get this mess cleaned up in the next two years. And if you get kind of, you just kind of hear that anger in my voice, like, right, the coach at halftime? Mm-hmm. That's what I want inside of y'all. Okay, I'm trying to transfer that to you.

And you get that, that swagger going, and you start punching these credit cards out, knocking them in the nose, going, you people are screwing my family's future. I hate you, Citibank. I hate you, fifth third, get out of my life. Then when you kind of get that idea going, then you have a villain in the story,

and you are the hero, you get to go win, and it changes everything. And that's what I want them to do, George. Yeah, what is your intensity level right now, James? One out of ten, would you say, to get out of this debt? 20. You know, last week I sat down and I spent hours on an Excel chart because I hate where budgeting an app and apps charge you a subscription fee. I think that's one of the biggest scams in this industry right now, man. It's mind-blowing. You know, you get on the app store, look up budgeting. In-app purchases, in-app purchases. You know what I mean?

Yeah. We don't have any in-app purchases, but we do charge your subscription fee after we give you this free portion. So we'll give it to you for free for a while, so you don't have to worry about it. But later on, you'll have to pay. I won't hold back on that. But we have to pay, we have to pay the guys that build the app and run the thing. If it gets you at 88 grand in debt, I'd say it was worth the purchase. But if you don't do anything with it, I agree, it was a waste of your money. So I hope it helps you. But I just wanted to see how intense you were and even think about selling this car if it's worth more than 20 grand. Yeah, I'm fired out of that. I think you're going to do it. I'm proud of you, man. Go do it. You can have a great life.

You graduate, you got babies, you got a new wife. Life's going to be great, man. But for now, you've got to keep living like a broke college kid, which is going to be not as fun. I got a new salary. I've got to go buy some things. Nope. You've got to pay off some debt. You'll get there.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So why do people pay to join a gym if they can lift? It's a scam. If they can lift weights at home. Hmm. The environment? Maybe the coaching.

Because they don't lift weights at home. That's why. And there's some skin in the game. If I paid for something, I want to use it. All you do is stub your toe on them. That's all there for it. Stub your toe. I want to see a study.

If it was a free gym membership versus a paid gym membership, who's showing up at each gym? I'd be interested to see. Inquiring minds want to know. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. All right, May is Mental Health Awareness Month. And according to the National Institute of Mental Health,

more than one in five U.S. adults experience mental illness every year. And nearly half of those folks never get any help. These people are not just statistics. They're you. They're me. They're our friends. They're our neighbors. And listen, we're living in a world full of nonstop noise. All the screens, the comparison, all these notifications that are always going off. Our bodies are on high alert all the time. And we're communicating with everyone and everyone's trying to communicate with us. Yet we're not connecting with anyone. And we all feel anxious, lonely and more overwhelmed than ever.

This stress shows up in our relationship, shows up in our sleep, it shows up in our health. It shows up right in the middle of our chest. We were never meant to have this much information and this much communication, and especially, we were never meant to carry all of this alone. Talking to someone can help. And that's where BetterHelp comes in. BetterHelp is an online therapy platform that matches you with a licensed therapist based on your goals and preferences. Their therapists are fully licensed in the United States, and they follow a strict code of conduct.

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George Camel, Ramsey personality. Number one bestselling author is my co-host today. Janessa is with us in Salt Lake City. Hi, Janessa. How are you? I am so good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up?

Oh, wonderful. So me and my husband, we are struggling with a decision to make. We have decided to kind of get our butts in gear on our student loans. But in the past year, we have promised our girls season passes to a local amusement park. And we are trying to decide if we break our promise to our young kids and try to teach them a financial lesson, or we delay paying off our debt. about two to three weeks and keep our promise. Okay. Well, sometimes if you take an ethics thing to an extreme, it'll give you the answer. Okay. So you have information that is available to you today, that was not available to you today, or at least your viewpoint on the student loans was not the same, when you made the promise. Things have changed.

Yes. So if we took it to an extreme and said, hey, mom's got cancer. And so we're not going to get the theme park things this year because we're going to pay the doctor bills. That didn't happen. And I'm not speaking that into existence, okay? But if it was something like that, you wouldn't have an ethics problem because it's new information. Correct. Yes.

And so I think that, you know, I would sit down with them and say, kids, at the time, we were trying to ignore these. How old are the kids? We've got a six-year-old, seven-year-old, nine-year-old, and a ten-year-old. Okay. Well, they're not going to remember whatever it is, much past Friday anyway. But, you know, what I would do is say, at the time we sat down and talked about this, we thought we were able to do it, and now we've looked at the details of our debt,

and I know you don't understand that necessarily, but we are, we're not in trouble. We're not going to be hungry. We're not going to lose our home. But we do have to clean up this debt, and we're going to get serious about it. And that means this year we're not going to be able to do the season passes unless we come up with some other way to pay for them. And you might create some – how am I expensive are they? All in all would be about $1,300. Yeah, okay.

Altogether. And it might be that if we come up with some kind of fun kid-slash-parent participant, patient adventure that is the go-fund me of lemonade stands or something and, you know, teach them away. We got to go find this money if we're going to do this kids. And so we're going to have an adventure by doing these three things and we're going to cut grass or we're going to rake leaves or we're going to do this together and come up with a $1,300 that way because we can't just go buy it after what we've discovered about our debts and we've got to pay it.

And so that's a third option. One option is buy it when you can't afford it. One is just look at them and go, no, we can't do it, new information. Third option is, is there some kind of an adventure that we can turn this into that says, okay, the way, you know, what do we do we? We do it. Let's go to work. Let's find something. Let's all get in here.

And if you all want to do that, we'll be able to do it. If you don't want to do that, that's okay. It'll just be next year at least because we've got to get this student loans knocked out. Okay. When I was 11, my parents sold our boat because they had a bad year in the real estate business. And you remember it. I'm still in counseling. But now Dave has multiple boats, so he's recovered.

I have recovered. I have lots of boats now. His boat has its own boat. It's very impressive. So, yeah, this is a, it's just delaying it. It's not a no. It's not crushing their dreams. It's just a not now. And so when are you going to be dead free? In a year. Okay. Great. Will the theme park still be there in a year?

I sure hope so. Can we do something that's an alternative that maybe is free or super low cost that also is fun this year? That's what we've been talking about. Yeah, our local pool has a swim pass for the summer we were thinking of doing instead. There you go. There you go. That's a good idea. So there's still something fun for them to look forward to, and their other thing is just delayed by a little bit.

I like this plan. Our neighbors had a boat. That's what we did. Find a friend with a boat. boat, you just saved yourself a lot of emotional hassle and finances. Boats and pickups. Find someone else that has it and use theirs. That's what I do. I borrow Dave's boats. Yeah. I wouldn't know how to drive it, Seth. You're not getting near my boat. I barely could drive your little sea do. I almost crashed that thing. I know. I haven't been on it since. It's scary. It was a really scary day for me.

I'm in counseling for that too. But, you know, I think the thing is it's a bigger deal. to you, this is grandpa talking, okay, eight grandkids, it's a bigger deal to you than it is to them. This breaking your promise thing. And it's not like, it's not like you have a pattern throughout their lives of setting them up in the disappointing them, setting them up and the disappointing them. You're not that person. Or you wouldn't even be asking this question if you were that person. So they're fine. They're going to be okay. Find an adventure to get them paid for by the pool passes instead, one year from now you'll be able to do it. And you can all talk about the time that we took a year off and got ourselves cleaned up as a family. And that's when we changed our family tree.

And then when you're celebrating your 50th wedding anniversary, your kid can stand up and give a toast because of the character he witnessed when he was 11 that his parents delayed pleasure to change the family tree. That's a great lesson learned and some character built there as well. That's it. That's what's really going to happen. not they're going to be so disillusioned that they need counseling. I would love for them to be in therapy going, yeah, what happened? Well, I got a pass at seven instead of six. That really crushed me, man.

I just don't see that. Never got, never recovered. Never came back from that one. Blake's in Washington, D.C. Hey, Blake, how can we help? Hey, how's it going? Better than I deserve. How can we help?

Yeah, so I just had a quick question about, I'll try to keep the short as well, but I am just wondering. during, I'm still planning out my education, my career path. I just graduated with my undergrad. Oh, cool. What's your degree in? Public health. Awesome. Public health.

Okay. Good. Yeah, and I want to go to audiology school, and that was a three-year program. And I do have some student loan debt from my public health degree. I graduated in three years as well. And so now I'm just working and applying for audio. audiology school. But because of, you know, I feel like current times have changed, and I feel like there's

some things that I also need to change with my plan. So I was just actually thinking of holding back audiology for like two or three years until I work, and then I can save up that money, pay off the moment like debt, and then, you know, save up on that as well. Nothing wrong with that. Try to, yeah, because it's going to be all on my own money. but my family, they do want me to go straight into audiology school starting next year. I'm just a little bit scared because I feel like that one.

Well, they're not paying for it. Right, yeah. They don't get a vote. You only get a vote if you're paying for it. Yeah, I definitely understand. You can have an opinion, but you don't get a vote. And the opinion is that it's no big deal for you to go deeply in debt. No big deal to them.

So I wouldn't let them pressure me unless they're writing the check along with it. I think they mean well, but they don't see this as big a problem as you do or you wouldn't even be calling here. So I like your plan better, Blake. Hey guys, health care is one of the biggest stress points in your budget. It's confusing and most of the time it feels completely out of your control. But there is a better way to handle it. Christian health care ministries isn't health insurance. It's a health cost-sharing ministry where Christians share each other's medical.

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That's CHMistries.org slash budget and use promo code Ramsey. Noah is in Hawaii. Hi, Noah. Welcome to the Ramsey show. Hi, Dave. Thanks for having me. Sure. What's up?

So I am in a bit of a croffle. I have moved home to try to help my dad with his business. We're in construction. And we are digging into the finances. I've been listening to the show for a long time. I am currently trying to get myself out of debt. I'm four grand away. But I have come to find out that father at 61 has saved nothing for retirement.

It is met every time with, I'll figure it out for it's not your problem. But Dave, I feel like it is my problem. You know, he's my dad, and I've got to take care of him at some point. Well, that's sweet, but it's not your problem. He's right. Really? Yeah, really. Okay.

You're $4,000 in debt. You're broke. You came home to try to help him with his business. That's your problem. And you keep that running. he's a grown 61-year-old man, he should take care of it. I mean, he's not mentally disabled. You're right about that.

Yeah. So it's not your problem. I mean, if he was, you know, if he had a brain injury or something, maybe you'd want to go, okay, I need to help my dad, right? But all he is is bullheaded. Fair enough. Did you ask him why he hasn't put a cent away for 40 years? I think the conversation scares him.

I don't think he knows what to do about it, and I think it's gotten to a point where avoidance is the only technique here. I think you can end up helping him, and I'll give you an idea. But first thing I want you to do is release this emotional burden of having to carry your dad, okay? But the way you help him is this. You finish turning this business around getting yourself out of dad, and then the more you get involved in the running of the business, set up a 401k at the business and sign him up for it. Okay. I mean, he's probably going to work another 10 years, isn't he? I'm hoping he's able to.

How many people on your construction team? So right now we've just come down to three. So it's him, myself, and then accounts manager, and then everything else for the most part, we subcontract out. Okay, so he's not physically straining. No, the issue with his... kind of thing here is that he's kind of avoiding technology and you've got a bunch of other companies coming in and kind of taking over on that side. Yeah, but see, you can fix that too, to the extent you take over the running of the business. If you guys keep running the

business and you continue to insert yourself in the operations of the business and you help with the technology and you help grow the business and you help keep it alive. And, you know, if you can't do that, then you all need to shut the thing down and you need to go both go get a job, right? But if you can do that while you're doing that, You could reach over to a Ramsey SmartVistor Pro and set yourself up a simple 401k in there and just sign him up and start dumping company money in his name into it and dump company money in your name into it. Awesome. Okay. You know, it's almost against his will, but you tell him, you go, hey, I just set up a 401k.

I'm going to be putting our money into me and our money into you. And I need you to sign this right here. Shut up. Sometimes you've got to sneak the vegetables in. For their own good. Eat your broccoli. Yeah. Does he have any money saved?

Is he like a tin can guy? Like, does he have anything? Or is he really just can't live on less than he makes? Well, so the company does well enough where when he needs money, he just draws it out. Yeah. So he has got nothing saved, I believe. From what the digging that I've been doing, he's got about $8,000 in debt, which is nice. That's not much, and he makes enough to pay it.

But, yeah, nothing in savings, no emergency savings. No, other assets. Yeah, so part of your business job to grow this business is to take the inner workings of the business and make them more sophisticated. You knew that already, and you were the one told us that. And as you're doing that, you get your debts paid off, his debts paid off, you start instituting some financial systems as part of it. And one of those financial systems is what's called a simple, 401k. It's a 401k or simple IRA. It's a 401k for businesses, for small businesses your size. And, you know, it's real easy to set up, very inexpensive to set up, except for the money that you

stick into it. And so then you guys, when you go make some money, you don't have any debt payments. You've got some savings in the business called retained earnings. That's part of your systems. You're building your technology base. You're competing. You're even getting ahead of the competition out there in the way you're doing the jobs, and in the process, your profits go up and you start chunking a bunch of them into the retirement. That's how you take care of him is almost against his will. But I don't want you feeling like you failed as a son if a full-bodied, full-brained 61-year-old didn't take care of themselves. That's not a failure on your part. You've done nothing wrong. I'm not going to guilt-trip you for, and I don't want you a guilt-trip yourself.

You can't and shouldn't fund his lifestyle for the rest of his life once he's done working. Yeah. That's a bad plan. By 61 or so, somewhere in there you should grow up. Somewhere in there. I'm trying still, but I'm still trying, but I'm getting there. All right. Ricky.

Ricky is with us. Ricky's in Orange County. Hi, Ricky. How are you? Hi, Dave. How you doing? Thanks for taking my call. Sure.

I'll just paint a picture as to what the situation is. So I'm in California. So I'm considered in their world of high net worth based on my income. I have about $5 million in equities, a little over $2 million in $4.1.K. at top of that. So we're looking at 7 income around $600 a year. Good for you. Now, my question to you, my questions to you is this. It's bothering me that based on discussing with my CPA, that the house that I live in,

I guess around 6,000 square foot house. I bought it for two and a half mill. Maybe it's worth 4344 today. The mortgage is about 1.1. And I know I've been listened to you a long time, but I feel that I want to continue to keep the mortgage because it's free money. It's at 2.2, 2.3% fixed,

but that's a separate issue. But the bottom reason I'm asking is, question is I have a lot of equity sitting there. roughly around three million. And I could be, given the fact of my income, it's not allowing me to write off any of the $30,000 a year in taxes for property taxes. I have zero write-offs on that.

They won't allow me to write up any of the interest. So I'm thinking, like, based on my return that I'm getting out my equities with the 401k or the other $5 million, I'm averaging, you know, maybe 12% a year in good, indexes. And the amount of money, I could be making $250,000,000 a year on that equity. I'm better off maybe renting, given I'm not getting any benefit of the right off of being a homeowner. And I don't think in this country necessarily it's a benefit to be a homeowner if you're not getting the ability to be able to. Well, your analysis, the problem is your analysis is based on a moment in time,

rather than projecting into the future. And so your analysis is flawed. Okay. And so I'm calling bull crap on your statement that in America today, it's not a good out of it own house. That's just bull crap. So, because you're looking at this particular moment in time. You forgot the fact that this house has gone up several million dollars while you owned it.

You seem to leave that out of the equation. But true, but then again, if I were to put, you know, based on the money that I put down. California real estate has done better than mutual funds. R-O-I return on investment. Right, of course. Period. Okay, it's done better. Yeah, you can't write off the taxes.

Welcome to your socialistic state. But that's, you know, that's the problem that you got where you chose to live. But the issue is that California real estate remains an excellent investment. And so, no, no, renting and, you know, putting all your equity in an S&P, does not outperform owning real estate. I own a whole bunch of both. I believe in both. And all the people that we know that have $10 to $60 million net worth that we coach, my net worth several hundred million, own a good mixture of real estate and mutual funds, and they've owned their own home paid for for decades. They haven't overanalyzed this.

Let me tell you something I see all the time. People are working hard, trying to get control of their money, and then their phone bill shows up higher than expected. Again, and they don't even know why. That's why I want you to switch to Boost Mobile. Here's the truth. Your phone bill should fit your budget, not the other way around. Your wireless company is counting on you just paying it without asking questions. With Boost Mobile, you can unlock big savings compared to the so-called big guys. Bring your phone, keep your number, and pay just 25 bucks a month forever on their unlimited plan. No contracts, no confusing fees, and that $25 price is locked in forever. And if you're skeptical, that's fine. Boost Mobile backs it up with a 30-day money-back guarantee, meaning you can try it

without feeling trapped. So stop overpaying for something you use every day. Go to boostmobile.com slash Ramsey to make the switch today. That's boostmobile.com slash Ramsey. $25 forever requires customers to remain active on Boost Mobile Unlimited Plan. So George, the Ramsey Show live recordings that we've done in all these different cities, Charlotte and Denver, they're a big hit. Oh, yeah, we had a blast doing them in April, and we finally released the very first one. Charlotte dropped last week. Denver episode releases later this week. We got Phoenix and Anaheim coming in the next few weeks. And I was on that one with Rachel and Ken. We had 300 people filled with live questions. So you actually get to see the person asking the question. And even better, we bring

the spouse or boyfriend up and... Does that make you meaner or nicer? You have to be nicer. You have to be a little nicer. You can kind of poke a little more, which is fun, and be a little snarkier with a live audience because they can tell it's for entertainment purposes. And you kind of get the crowd on your side or against you. And so that kind of adds a whole other element to it. So my favorite was how much should my boyfriend spend on an engagement ring? And, you know, Rachel and Canada. And he's there. And he's there. So we bring

him up to say, hey, you tell me, bud. And so that got into some juicy debates. That's a good one. So if you want to go watch it, it's live on our Ramsey show YouTube channel, Spotify, Ramsey Network app. Go check it out. It's like nothing you've seen before on this show with a live audience like that. That's fun. Very fun. Yeah. We've got four cities.

Denver. Charlotte's already up. Denver will be up this week. And then you'll see Phoenix and Anaheim come on in the next few weeks. You don't want to miss these. Every one of the Ramsey personalities had a blast being out there with you, folks. So thank you all for showing up. We appreciate you.

John is in Nashville. Hey, John, what's up? Hey, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. I am 23, and I am debt-free. When I first graduated, I took out a truck loan and all that, and I got it all figured out. So right now I have no debt. I got about $35,000 saved up and trying to figure out what I should do next.

Wow, that's impressive. Good job. What do you make? I make about $60,000 a year, and I work for family business, and that's part of my issue is coming up with that. What's the issue? So at first it was me, mom, and dad in the restaurant every day, and everything was going great, and it seemed like more of the responsibilities were getting pushed my way, and now it's me in there every day, and mom and dad don't really work anymore. and he gave me a business card that said I'm owner-operator, but I'm making about $20 an hour. And my mom, you know, I don't want them to work all the time, but, you know, mom's working no days a week,

and that'll work, you know, one day a week. They own it. That's stuff. They own it, right. So it's a formality that it says you're not an owner-operator. Right. You're an employee. But I have business cards that say I am.

I don't care. And that's what I was... That's of no value whatsoever. Okay. Well, I mean, could you get a job at another restaurant? If you were the general manager of another restaurant and you were responsible for the operations, what would you make? Well, I'm not exactly sure. I applied for Buckees in Murphysboro.

I applied to be the assistant manager up there, and it does pretty good. What does that pay? But I hadn't... It pays 33 plus benefits. and retirement. See, right now, I'm a 10-90... See, here's my issue, so he kicked me out of the house. Understandable.

I'm 23. You know, it's about time. And so I came and got an apartment and started looking at one day getting my own home. And I'm a 1099 employee. No, you're not. And I... You're not supposed to be.

Oh, I'm not? Yeah, y'all are screwing that up. You're going to make a mess. You're not an employee. I mean, you're not a 1099. 1099 is an independent subcontractor. You're an employee.

They're going to get their but fined by the IRS. Big time. You guys are going to end up with tax penalties and all kinds of stuff. Your family needs to get some professional tax advice on how they do payroll. Okay. Yeah, this is going to, that's going to get ugly. It's going to end up with a mess. But I think we got a bigger mess, and that is that your parents walked off and handed you

this thing, but they didn't really hand it to you. So I think y'all are just going to be. I sit down and go, okay, dad, what's the plan? I'm going to need to get with a tax person. I've gotten a financial advice that says I'm going to get messed up on this 1099, and you're going to get messed up when we get audited. You're not going to like it. So we need to get that fixed, and then we need to get me in there as the general manager,

and I need you be paid like a general manager, which is a base salary plus a percentage of profits. Okay. And it's not an hourly. It's not an hourly rate. And, uh, what kind of, I mean, I'm sorry. I hate to keep interrupting you. What kind of revs is the restaurant producing? We do about $2,000 a day, so that would be $12,000 a week because we're closed Sunday.

So that's about $50,000 a month, roughly. Now, we've got a food truck, so sometimes those numbers can change. But just in the restaurant, that's what I do. They'll do the food truck when we do it. Now, this year they decided we're only going to do it about five times this year. Is this their retirement plan? Like, is all, are they basically getting paid from the business and don't have anything else? I'm not sure if we got a plan.

That's my fear. It's really starting to bother me. Yeah, I think you need to sit down and say, okay, Dad, we need to formalize this. Buckees is going to make me an offer at 33 plus benefits and properly pay me on a W-2. And so if I'm going to stay in here and I'm going to do all the work, I'm going to need to be paid like a general manager because I'm your general manager. and that's going to be a base salary that's the equivalent of $40 an hour for a 40-hour week, but you're probably going to put in more than 40 hours plus a percentage of profits as your bonus. And then you need to close the books on the restaurant each month and tell what the profits are each month.

Well, see, that's part of my problem is I pay all the employees, I buy all the supplies, so I know I can do simple math. I know how much it's making. And it's a lot more than me, you know. And I mean, you are only 23, but you are doing the job. And so regardless of your age and your experience or whatever, if you're giving a job, you should be paid to do that job. I'm not asking you to be paid more than the job is worth. But if you weren't there, they would have to hire a general manager for a salary of 30, 40 bucks an hour average.

and some kind of a bonus kick based on profits. That's what you would get paid in that business. Agreed? Yes, sir. And if you weren't there, that's what they got to do. So if you take the job at Buckees, that's what they're going to have to do. They're going to have to do. They're going to have to hire somebody.

Right, and I'm about at the point to where I'm about to start looking and applying just about anywhere. Because it's getting, it's been a little overwhelming. I think you sit down and have a cup of coffee before you do that and say, mom and dad, I got a problem. I'm about at the point that I need to. go do something else. The way we can solve that is, I need to be paid for being the general manager, and I'm going to close the books, and we're going to get a base salary and a percentage of profits for being the general manager, and we're going to develop a plan where I become the owner of this a little bit at a time, overtime. And meanwhile, you guys are going to make a lot

of money, and you don't have to work as much. I'll take care of running the thing. But if you don't want to pay me the proper amount to do the job that you've got, then I need to go work somewhere else and you need to get somebody in here that's going to enjoy doing this, which, by the way, you can't get for $20 an hour. Right. That's fair. I mean, you say, and have that conversation with them. And if they say, screw you, you're supposed to work for free, then go get a job somewhere else

and let them figure it out. They're not going to say that. They're not going to say that. Hey, when I told him, hey, I'm looking for a new job, it's kind of like he got aggressive. He took it as a personal attack. Right. And I didn't want to, I don't want to mess up my family situation, you know. You're not messing it up.

They are. Okay. All you're doing is talking about it. And I wouldn't say, I'm going to quit if you don't do this, but I would say, Dad, if we can't work something out that's reasonable here, I'm going to be forced to do something different. And if he wants to get aggressive based on that, then go do something different. Because you're going to get aggressive every time you have a conversation about this business.

And then you're going to build resentment. Can't have a conversation. They can ruin the relationship anyways. Yeah. I mean, my son and I get in arguments. We run Ramsey together, but we don't get an argument every time we're together. Most of the time, we don't have an argument. But occasionally we just like, no, we fuss and fight back.

You can fight like grownups. Yeah, we fight like grownups. We're arguing about an idea. We're not personally offended like a four-year-old. Okay, guys, let me ask you something. What would it take for you to switch your bank? Because if you're still earning next to nothing on your savings, you need to check out Fairwind's credit union.

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But why refi helps you borrowers explore a fresh start with low. low fixed rate refinancing and a payment plan designed around their ability to pay. Visit Y refi.com slash Ramsey. That's the letter Y-R-E-F-Y.com. Slash Ramsey might not be in all states. Today's question comes from Dylan in New Mexico. I'm aware of your recommendation to invest your money evenly in four funds, small cap, mid-cap, large cap, and international. I also hear you guys regularly reference the average annual return of the S&P over the last 30 to 50 years. Can you provide some insight into how his investment protocol has performed compared to the S&P?

If mimicking S&P performance is the key metric, why wouldn't he recommend just parking your money in an S&P index fund? That's a great question. He, I assume, meaning Dave, per your recommendation for many, many years now. All right, so insight how this investment's performed compared to the S&P. Well, the small cap, midcap, large cap international, there's not a one fund that we can look at to compare. to the S&P, but the S&P largely is a bunch of, you know, mid-cap and large-cap companies, if you look at the makeup of that. So it's just not as diversified as what you're mentioning. Exactly. So here's the thing. Individual mutual funds in the growth mutual fund sector,

less than half of them beat the S&P. And that was the guy that started the Vanguard S&P Index Fund, Bogle, John Bogle was brilliant, and he discovered that. And so he came up with this idea of where you hear the phrase passive investing. That's where it first came from. Where you don't have to worry about it, you just buy the S&P, screw it. Because half the mutual funds don't even beat it. And those people that do that are passive investors. Versus active. Sometimes called Bogleheads. Because John was actually on to something. His actual data was correct and is correct. to this day, half the growth stock mutual funds do not outperform the S&P. But that also means it's kind of like there's a 60% chance of rain.

There's a 40% chance of sunshine. Hello. So I have picked in the four categories for mutual funds that have outperformed their indexes. Now, the small cap, the index would be the Russell. Because a small cap is not necessary. it's more like an aggressive growth stock mutual fund, right? A mid-cap would be like a growth. That's more like a typical growth mutual fund, large-cap, typical growth stock

mutual fund. Like you said, the S&P is a mix of those two. And then obviously international, a foreign fund, that's a different index. Okay, so what I want to do is pick a fund that outperforms the no-brain way of doing it, the passive way of doing it. And so if I've got a mutual fund that for 35 years has out-performed, form the S&P and it's a growth stock mutual fund and I put that in my four. I've got a S and I've got a small cap that's outperformed the Russell and I put that in my four and so on.

Well guess what? The four of them as a group are going to outperform the group of indexes unless they don't do as well as they did in the last 25 years or whatever the number was of the history on the things. So my particular four mutual funds that most of my stuff is in that has outperformed the indexes, has outperformed the S&P, because I didn't pick one of them that didn't. That's why. And the other piece of this that we're not factoring in is that international fund, which we recommend 25%. If you look at the S&P 500 and it's down in a given year, the international fund usually is up. Yeah, it pretty much runs the inverse. And so even in a given year, if the index beat your mutual fund set up, you're not factoring in the long term

of what could happen in the market. But it never has. The four I picked has always outperform the S&P every single year. So if the average in the S&P is 10 to 12, you might be seeing 13-14. Yeah. I've not gotten 10 points more.

It's not 20%. And here's the thing. Let's go back on this too. It's very interesting. I mean, the way I'm doing it is actually mathematically beating it. So it does answer the guy's question. But the problem with this discussion

is always that somebody's having this hypothetical, if I had done this thing. And when we actually have figured out that people who invest in slightly substandard mutual funds, way outperform those who never invest. Or those who jump out or those who are in single stocks. Those who analyze everything to the point that they've got an anal problem with it, right? And it's like, you guys, would you should, shut up and invest. Because 100% of the people that invest end up with more money than those that don't.

Every time. And that's the number you need to concentrate on. And so if- It's not mutual funds versus index funds. If you actually do the index fund versus the person that believes what we believe and doesn't do anything, I'm on your side. I'm glad I got you to invest in something. Because if you just put money away, you'll have some money. It's magical. And so like, for instance, we studied all the millionaires we studied. Most of them were not super sophisticated investors. They didn't spend a lot of time analyzing like Dylan is what this is and what I should do and da-da-da-da-da. There's not a lot of theoretical mumbo-jumbo.

They weren't prodigies. They just said, I got a 401k at work and I'm going to put some money in a gross stock mutual fund. And now I'm a millionaire. And that's exactly what they did. I mean, they really didn't, they picked out their mutual fund based on what the guy in the cubicle next to them was doing. They did not do some kind of sophisticated think tank analysis. But here's the trick. They did put money in investments.

They didn't sit around and talk about it and not do it. That's the problem. So, you know, the percentages all go out the window until you actually do it. Yeah. Whether it's 12 or 13 percent doesn't matter. if you have no money in the market. So all that to say, Dylan, I have four mutual funds that have outperformed the S&P for 30 years as a group.

Not hard to do. It's really not that tough to do. You can have your SmartMester Pro say, show me some mutual funds that have a 25-year track record of outperforming the S&P. They can do it. They're there. Not all of them, less than half, but they're there. Okay?

And you can put that little portfolio together, and if it does what it did in the past, it will outperform the S&P. mine half. But if you don't want to do that and you just want to put it in the S&P, you're going to end up with a lot of money. We'll all end up rich. And we'll be happy for you. We're not mad at you. But that's the answer to your overall question. What a great nerdy discussion. It is a fun. By the way, you actually cover how to pick mutual funds in our investing essentials virtual event. We've got one coming up later this year. So if you guys want to learn more about that, you can sign up for updates at ramsysolutions.com slash events. But that's where if you want to nerd out like this, you're interested in this kind of conversation.

You want to know how to build wealth the right way in depth. We'll walk you through it in that event. Yeah. But here's the thing. I go, we have talked more people into putting money in their 401k and Roth IRAs than anybody in America because we got them out of debt so that they could do it. And then they believed just so they went and did it. It's a margin issue and a little bit of education. And then there's some, not Dylan, but there's some, you know, moron on the internet going, Well, Dave Ramsey's created more poor people. No, he didn't. He got people to invest while you're sitting with your thumb in your ear.

You weren't listening very well if Dave Ramsey made you poor. I mean, that's pretty wild. That's just, but that's the, they say, you know, because he doesn't understand, he doesn't understand. Yes, I do understand it, you idiot. Of course I understand it. But what I'm better at than you are is getting people to actually invest instead of discussing freaking theory. Theory doesn't matter until it's applied, you know?

I really don't care what you think about swinging a baseball bat until you swing one, honey. And then we'll talk about whether you can connect. That's how this works. You got a lot of theory going on out there. You got a lot of people that have an opinion out there that have no stinking money. It's all these life coaches that don't have a life. It's the same thing. And so, guys, just invest.

Even if you do it wrong, you're doing it better than the moron who talks about it and never does it. It's a bunch of out of shape people talking about workout routines and Which one's better? It's like, great, let's go work out. How about that? Arnold Schwarzenegger has created more fat people. No, he didn't. No, he didn't. It's just, it's just dumb, okay? Seriously. But here's the trick. If you invest, you're going to have some money. Ooh. And if you don't invest, you're not going to have any money. Take the money away? You're not going to have any money. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fair Winds Credit Union Studio. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, George Camel, Rans. Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author, is my co-host today. Joshua's in Houston, Texas. Hey, Joshua, what's up? Dave, thanks for having me on your show.

I appreciate you taking the call. Sure. How can I help? Let me give you kind of like a brief backstory. I'm 31 years old. I work as an HVAC technician. I make around $92,000 a year. But I still feel like I'm drowning financially and living paycheck to paycheck.

check. Over the last year, I spent $22,000 fighting Kest D. Battle for my son, which I ultimately lost and kind of wrecked me financially. Right now, I have about $17,000 through a loan, another $28,000 through a firm loan, and then I have some credit card debt, about $3,500, and then I owe some family members around $7,500 because they help with my $1,000. attorney fees. I have some student loan, but I'm in a forgiveness program with them, which I have like $0 payments, but they're expected to be forgiven in about 30 years. I've also been in a debt settlement program for about a year now through national debt

relief, and I paid them about $603 a month while they're working to settle my debts. I pay about $2.50 a month in rent, $650 in child support, and they also may be increasing that soon. I pay $750 a month in health insurance through work, and I pay $520 a month for my truck, which is about to be paid off in two months, thank God. And other month with bills, obviously, but I feel like no matter how much I work, I can't get ahead. And I also want to buy a house soon, but I feel stuck. You're not buying a house soon. You're not buying a house any time soon. You're broke.

You've got a lot of cleanup due for you by a house. So let's just set that on the side. And then, I mean, and you're getting ready to have the truck paid off. So that's going to free up a bunch of money. You do know where your money's going. It wouldn't take you long to build your every dollar budget because you've got most of the numbers in your head that are pretty clear. And I still hear room in this.

I still hear room in what you've got. But what you've done is you've been focusing on the heartache of a custody battle, and you've been focusing every single dollar that you could towards that, and that's been a valid distraction for a year, and now that distraction has passed because you lost, and now you know where you stand, and now you've got to turn around and focus back on cleaning up your mess. but you really weren't working on the mess before,

and so it was sitting there or getting bigger, and now you can work on it. I think you're going to be okay. Well, my question really, truly, is like, now should I get out of the debt settlement program and pay the $603 that I paid then and just paid my creditors directly? Probably.

You can do what they're doing on your, own without tanking your financial world because they told you to stop making payments, goes into collections, and they try to settle. Yeah, I've done that for about it. I've been doing, because I did it, I've done it like twice now. I've gone through different programs, but I've been doing it for about two years. Yeah, you keep looking for one of these programs to straighten you out and you've got to straighten you out.

And that's kind of where it's like I've never really had any real instruction on how to put money away while trying to pay off those days. Well, you don't need to put money away. We need to clean up the debt. And then don't go into any more debt. Yeah, first thing is don't borrow more. The second thing is we're going to get on a detailed written budget. We're going to give you every dollar, our budgeting app,

once you sit down tonight and fill it all out. It's really not hard. I actually have that app. Okay. We'll start using it tonight. It's going to guide you through step by step exactly what to do and how to build that out. and then stick to it. And you make enough to pay all these bills and extra on these bills and get rid of them,

particularly when you get your car paid off. That's going to free up another $500 a month to be able to attack this stuff with. And then if you want to stay in the debt settlement thing until you get this moving, that's fine. If you want to step out of it, that's fine. If you want to check with Guardian litigation, they're a different type of program, but they do similar thing. They don't work the same way that we endorse.

You could talk to them and see what they can do. But I think more than anything, you've got to take control of this. And you've been focusing your energies emotionally, spiritually, financially, financially on other things. And that's valid because it was a kid. And you need to take care of that kind of stuff first. But now, now we know where we stand. And now it's time to focus on the best dad you can be,

and that is cleaning up your life and getting this mess cleaned up. Because, dude, if you didn't have any payments, you'd have money to stack. You got serious payments going around that place from everywhere. And no, we're not waiting 30 years pay off the stupid student loans. They're just the last thing we're going to get to. When you get to them, knock them out too. List your debts smallest to largest.

Pay minimum payments on everything but the little one and attack the little one with a vengeance. So hang on. I'll send you a copy of the Total Money Makeover book also, which shows you exactly how to do this stuff. And you can read it to go with your every dollar app. And you'll be fine. And you call us back if you want more help, but more than anything, it's focus and being very intentional.

And I think you can do it with the numbers you gave me. You really do know where you stand, and that's pretty stinking cool. All right, juniors with us in Atlanta. Hi, Jr., how are you? Hey, I'm doing well. How are you? Better than I deserve. How can I help?

Doing well, doing well. So the reason why I'm calling him because a couple of years ago, we went through Hurricane Helene. And unfortunately, with Hurricane Helene, we had a couple of things that ended up happening with devastations to our home in our property. In Atlanta? It's in Augusta.

Augusta hit us hard. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. So in Augusta, we got hit pretty hard with Hurricane and Haleen and, you know, our roof, our deck, again, our fence. And now we had a power surge ended up messing up our AC unit. Fast forward, we've been doing Band-Aid repairs.

Did you not get an insurance settlement at the time? So, so we tried to go through the insurance at the time we had Allstate. And Allstate told us that we had a clause that any typhoon, cyclone, or hurricane-related damage was a 10% deductible on the of the entire dwelling coverage. My home's value is about $360,000. So out of pocket, they wanted us to come out of first, 36 grand, roughly. And, you know, what's it going to cost you out of pocket now if you do it on your own? To do all the repairs on our own?

Mm-hmm. Well, right now we're going through getting all the estimates for everything that needs to be done. We've, thankfully, we've been approved, and I say thankfully, lightly, because... For a loan? Uh-uh. Hang on. We'll be right back with you. We're going to make sure we get all the details, and we'll be back with you in a minute.

All right, let's cut to the chase. It's easy to get discouraged about crazy house prices and interest rates. But when you have the right real estate agent to help you buy and sell the right. right way, you'll have confidence to make smart decisions. Ramsey trusted agents aren't just experts who guide you through buying or selling. They're people you can trust to have your back from the first call to closing day. Find a Ramsey trusted agent near you at Ramsey Solutions.com slash agent. That's Ramsey Solutions.com slash a... All right. We're talking with Jr. He's got a house in Augusta, Georgia. It was damaged by Hurricane Elaine a couple of years ago.

Allstate doesn't pay out on typhoons and hurricanes. He discovered after the fact. So I'm guessing you have different insurance now that you figured out all states. Not a good idea. And they pay out, but they wanted a 10% deductible of $30,000 on a $300,000 house. So now he's got all these repairs that still remain undone. And that's about how far we got in the discussion. Does that sound right, Jr.?

Yes, sir. That's correct. Okay. So what repairs remain to be done today? We are still getting an inspection on our roof. Thankfully, one person mentioned that it's looking good. They still need to go into the attic. I need to replace an AC unit.

Our deck is completely done for, and it's only deteriorated over the past year and a half. So the AC has never been fixed since the hurricane? It's been banned. We've had a couple of Band-Aid fixes, and then finally the condenses finally gone out. Okay. And they said that all that's left to be done now is to... So you've got to put a new Heating Air Unit on it, and you need a new deck.

Correct. And that's what we need. Correct. Okay. And the deck has been that way for two years, and the heating air unit just finally gave up the ghost after some Band-Aids. So have you gotten three or four bids on the heating air unit? Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

And what are those bins look like? What do they look like? Yeah, we're averaging at 10,000, 11,000, just depending on what the, you know, what the type of the air unit is. Yeah, and what's your household income, sir? We're at about 175,000 between my wife and I. Okay, so why can you not come up with 10 grand making 175,000? Well, the reason why is because since the hurricane, we've had, so we've had two major life events in the past couple of years. So one, my grandfather passed, which, anyways, we had some major expenses come out of that.

Unfortunately, we've also had some just malmoney management. So we're currently in debt, what we've truly never had been, as far as credit card debt goes. So how much debt do you have? We've got about $30,000 in debt right now. So why can you not come up with $10,000, with $30,000 in debt making $175,000, man, really? Are you taking home $10,000 a month? No, so after all our taxes are taken out, our take home is probably about, I want to say maybe about six. No, it's not.

You're taking home $72 out of 175? No, there's not $100,000 worth of taxes. Nope. Nope. Are you putting money in your 401K? No, no. We stopped that. How much is your, are you taking health insurance out?

What else is coming out of your check? Yep, so health insurance is coming out. So we do owe on our, on two vehicles. Out of your check? I'm sorry. My apologies. I'm just pointing out the monthly expenses. I'm talking about what hits your bank account.

Here's the thing. $175,000. That's $15,000 a month. Okay? You with me? Yeah. Minus taxes, you should be coming home with 12. And 12, minus your house payment, you should be able to save up 10 grand and fix your heat and air.

But you guys are just running in circles chasing your tail instead of getting on a system and making these, these, these, these dollars behave, as you said, mal handling, right? Yes, sir. Yeah. And so you got, that's how you ended up with $30,000 in debt. I'm sorry your grandfather passed, but that didn't cost you any money. Did it? Well, the overnight travel for the family is in just the stay.

So a few hundred, a few hundred bucks or something, but it really wasn't, I mean, it's not, It was heartbreaking and it's tragic. I'm not diminishing that, but we don't confuse those things with the math impact. So you make enough money to have cleaned up this mess long ago, and that's what you should do. You should cash flow the heating and air, and then you should begin to work on paying down your debt and talking about putting together some money to fix the deck. And out of your monthly income. and are you getting a big tax refund every year?

Yes. Okay. I thought you might be. So you probably need to look at that. You probably have too much coming out of your check and you're getting it back at the end of the year. Correct. We clean zero all year round. What was your refund this year?

This year being the biggest one that's been. Yeah, this year was about 9,000. Okay. Where did that go? So we still have it in a savings. So you can almost cash flow of the AC unit. So use it to buy a heat and air unit. Why are you getting approved for loans?

Well, this one was through the SBA. The loan? So, correct. I don't care what it's through. I don't care if it's through your mama. You don't need a loan. You have the money in your bank account to buy heating and air. Go fix the heating and air.

and start getting the money that you have coming into the house. And you need to change your take-home pay by $700 a month now. And that's the minimum you need to change it by. So at least that and go in and change it. Go in tomorrow at work, tell payroll you need an extra $700 a month coming out of your check, pull the money out of your savings, order a heat and air unit, call the guy and telling me if it's cash, what's the discount? Because I'm going to give you cash like Benjamin's.

What's the discount? And I want a discount. I want you to get over here and get this thing fixed now. Then I want you to get four bids on the deck. And I want you to find some guy at your church that's looking for work that knows how to build decks and get him to build the deck for you at a deal. And he gets work and you get to use some money to do that. And you've got $700 a month now to put towards fixing that deck.

And then you start getting rid of these credit cards. You get them out and chop them up. So you just got to sit down by the way you eat an elephant is a bite at a time. You list these different things out that are going on and you fix them. One, fix that one, then fix that one, then fix that one, then fix that one. And you've been very passive and stood back and all of this has happened to you. And you're being a perpetual freaking victim and you need to stop it, man. It's killing you.

I mean, I talked to you for seven, eight minutes before you finally reveal to me, you have the money in your savings account to buy your heating and air. You buried the lead. That's how screwed up your brain is right now. So dig into this stuff, man. Dig into it and get it laid out like it was your job because it is your job. That's what you got to do. Anna is in New York.

Hey, Anna, what's up? Hey, George and Dave. Very excited to be speaking to you guys today. So I recently learned earlier today that my husband was high. I would say hiding, not being fully honest with $40,000 worth of credit card debt. And I am unsure how to proceed in both our relationship and paying it off. Wow. You're being very calm.

I'm trying. Is he alive? Why did he do this? Let him out of the closet, Anna. You can't lock him in the closet. That's illegal. Oh my gosh. Wow. Well, you rebuild trust one brick at a time by being trustworthy. And so it's not instantaneous and it's not a system and there's not a switch to flip. So he has violated trust,

whether he did it because of shame and didn't want to tell you about it or deception, which is even worse. Either way. I think it's the former. Yeah, either way, he regains trust by being extremely transparent, both of you getting on the same page, and every single transaction is in front of both of you for the rest of your lives. And then you sit down and you go, okay, with our income, how are we going to pay out this $40,000? We're going to cut up a stupid card, and we're going to attack it and knock it out as fast as we possibly can. Hey, guys, Dave Ramsey here. Every day on this show, we help people work through real money problems and figure out what to do next. Now,

You can get that same kind of help any time with Ask Ramsey. Ask your money question and get answers built on Ramsey principles we use on the show. Whether you're making a decision or just want something explained, Ask Ramsey is here to help. It's fast, simple, and free to use. Go to Ramsey Solutions.com and try Ask Ramsey today. That's Ramsey Solutions.com. Well, we love debt-free screams. We love debt-free screams on the debt-free stage in the Ramsey Solutions lobby. We especially love them when it's our own team members. So Gabe is with us. Gabe Fox is a copywriter here at Ramsey Solutions. It's been with us for a whole year over in the Ramsey-Trusted area. And he's up here to do his debt-free scream. Did I get all that right, Gabe?

That's correct. Absolutely. Very cool. So when you moved here, did you move here from somewhere else? I did. Yeah. From where? From Texas. All right. And you came here to take this job? I did. Yes, sir. And how much debt did you have? I had $26,469. Okay. And that's been one year you paid it off then? 21 months. 21 months. Okay. So since you've been here, it's been half of that roughly.

Yeah. Okay, cool. Very cool. And we don't ask incomes on team members because he's got 50 of his friends that work with him standing around here. Don't make it weird. Not fair and awkward. Okay. So anyway, what kind of debt was? the 26,000? Completely student loans. Okay. And your degree is in? It's called Integrated Studies with a minor in business. Okay, very good. Perfect for being a copywriter at Ramsey Trusted. That's right. No question. Good. Okay. So before you came here, had you just graduated? Is that what the 21 months is? No, I moved home for a year. I graduated in 2024. I moved back to Texas for a year and then I moved here. Okay. All right. And so this was your second job, I guess, after college then. Correct. Okay. Cool. And,

So how did you, because you started this get out of that process a year before you came to work here? Correct. I did. And how did you find Ramsey at that point? So I graduated in 2024, moved back home to work a copywriting job for a Christian TV network back there. And right before graduating, one of my buddies is sitting over there. He was like, dude, I was just becoming familiar with Ramsey. I had heard about FPU and a few other books. And he's like, dude, I think that might be something that you should take. And I'm like, honestly. I think you're right. So signed out for it, started taking it. It fired me up. Financial Peace? Correct. Okay. Went to a financial pitch university. Correct. Yeah. Freshly graduated from college. Freshly minted. Right. Yeah, a little like two weeks later,

bought it and started taking it. Wow. Okay. And so from then on, there's no looking back. Correct. Yeah. Because once we suck you into that portal, you're going to do it. Oh, for sure. Oh, for sure. And then once you got here, did it put things into high gear for you? What change once you landed at Ramsey? Lots of shaming. We shamed them. We shame them at length until they pay off their debt. Well, people think we don't even hire you unless you're debt free. And I should tell them that's a lie. Lots of guilt tripping.

No, I'm being sarcastic. There's a lot of encouragement, really, in there. Oh, absolutely, yeah. My whole team was encouraging me. They knew where I was at. My whole onboarding team walked with me through this and encouraged me to do the deaf-free scream. And it was just so encouraging to have people alongside me that, one, had their own stories.

A lot of people here have paid off their own debt. And we're just in it with me daily and catching up with me. and taking me to the end. Very cool. So other than the Ramsey team that you sit with every day, who was cheering you on? I've got four friends over here.

Yeah, went to college with two of them. And they were with me from the very beginning when I realized, guys, I've got $26 grand to pay off, and I have a decision right now that could really impact my future and not only my future, but my family's future, if I go ahead and deal with this now, and they just sat me down

and sent me straight, guy or gay this is this is the time to deal with this um and i said you know what you're right so decided to do it boom game on i love it so mom and dad sharing you on too i'm sure a hundred percent yeah they let me live at home for a year and um i mean that freed up so much money for me to send to the debt um so massive shout out to them such a generous offer very cool very cool good for you man and then you've been here a year and finished off the thing 21 months total for 20 $6,000. Okay, now you write copy for Ramsey trusted.

Which area in Ramsey trusted? Protections. Protections. Okay, so for insurance, for those of you that don't know, out there. And so you're kind of immersed in this stuff every day. But now when you're personally doing this and your buddy from college calls up and says, hey, what's the secret? What did you do to get out of debt?

What do you tell them? That's a great question. I think the idea of ownership, just realize. that this is mine to deal with. I could look away and I could just act like it's not there for 30 years and look back and it's grown to be much larger than it was in the first place. Or I can decide that I have a decision,

an opportunity to transform my family tree, my family's financial legacy. Both are hard, both are hard in different ways, but I think hard things are worth doing. And this was a hard thing worth doing. I decided that this decision is is going to change my life forever. And just deciding that taking ownership is so worth it.

That would be a message that I would share with anybody, teaching them to take ownership. Okay, so for all you people out there that when I say there's awesome Gen Zs and a bunch of them work here, you just heard it. Okay? You just heard it. That was a complete mic drop. That's a good hire right there. That's a complete mic drop. I see myself in your story, Gabe.

Because when I started here, I was 23, 36 grand in student loan debt. And we did good to get a continuous sentence out of you. That's true. I was on the struggle bus back then. He just preached a sermon. Gabe's a stud from day one. It took me a while to blossom. But I just, I love that story because I go, okay, he's on this trajectory to be a baby steps millionaire

now, probably in your 30s if you continue down this path. Or sooner. And so it just encourages me that we're going to see a whole new generation of Gabe who go, I'm not going to wait on the government or student loan forgiveness or make it someone else's problem. I'm going to look in the mirror and go, I can clean this. up. I own this. I'm not a victim. Yeah. And in 21 months, it's done. Most people go 21 years in mediocrity hoping that someone else changes their life and you decided it's my job. Yeah. Amen.

Amen. Well done, sir. Thank you. Very proud of you. The gang is very proud of you. Got a few hundred people. Is anybody working anymore? Does anybody work here anymore? They all come out and watch debt-free screams. I love it. Gabe Fox, Copywriter for protections and Ramsey Trust have been with us for the last year, but 21 months ago, he started Financial Peace University, started the process, and he's now paid off $26,000. Debt-free Gen Z, ready to rock and roll. Count it down, let's hear a great debt-free scream. Three, two, one, I'm dead!

Crowd goes wild. That's pretty cool. Man. I loved his answer. Ownership. Own it. I did it. I got to fix it.

I own it. Personal responsibility. You call it whatever you want call it. But I mean, that at any age, once you look in the mirror and you go, you're the freaking problem and you're the solution, your life has changed. But until you look in the mirror and you say that to you, you're going to struggle the rest of your life. And getting people to do this at any age group, that's an emotional maturity, a spiritual maturity that is necessary to be other, I mean, to just have a world-class impact on things.

Yeah. I mean, if he can do this with money, now he's going to be. and I can take ownership in every other area of my life. And so it really gives you agency, maybe for the first time, to go, I can affect change in every other area. That's encouraging. I'm not going to wait 30 years to pay off my student loans. I'm not going to wait on the government or Biden to forgive my student loan debt.

I'm not going to just knock it out. Just draw back and smack it in the head, man. Just go, you, you're going down. I own you. You don't own me. And when you get that going, you get that thing going, You understand the borrower is slave to the lender, and I don't need any more masters. I am so done with masters.

I'm so done with people tell me freaking what to do. What's in your wallet? Jump off a cliff. I don't want to care what's in my wallet. What's in your wallet? Millions of dollars for doing them stupid ads. That's what's in your wallet. So no, we don't want to listen to some broke actor.

This is not, no, no, no. I'm not living like this anymore. Not board motor company. Keep it. We don't need a payment, you know? No, no. It changes everything when you take that ownership. I love this guy. Yeah, when you have that level of focus, just for a short time, in an ADD culture, you'll be shocked at how far it'll take you. Just being focused on one thing at one time, you will get so much done and be so successful. Yeah, but it starts with this idea of your spiritual ownership and Gabe nailed it. So proud of you, Gabe. I love it, man. Glad you're on the team.

Man, we are definitely proud of you. I'm glad you're here. Yes, yes, yes, yes. This is how it works, ladies and gentlemen. What's up, guys? It's Jade Warshot. Listen, summer spending adds up so fast between vacations and road trips and camp fees and events. And all the extra gas and grocery runs, money can get tight before you know it. To really get your money under control and keep it that way, you're going to need a plan. And that's what you'll get with the every dollar budget app. It helps you track your spending, free up cash to put toward debt and savings. And it's the simplest way to make a plan for your money before the month begins. So no more wondering where your money's going. You're telling it where to go. Download every dollar in the app store or Google Play and start for free today. Our scripture of the day, 2 Corinthians 4, 8 and 9. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed, perplexed, but not in despair. Persecuted, but not abandoned, struck down, but not destroyed. Aretha Franklin said, it's the rough side of the mountain that's the easiest to climb. The smooth side doesn't have anything for you to hang to. Which makes a good point. Not bad, not bad.

Hey, the right insurance acts as a shield around your loved ones, and if your wallet and your wallet, if disaster strikes. Our free insurance coverage checkup helps you figure out if you have the right coverage by giving you a personalized action plan with clear next steps. Ramsey Solutions.com slash checkup is where you go to get the free coverage checkup. And be sure you do that. Ramsey Solutions.com slash checkup. Andrew is in San Francisco. Hi, Andrew.

How are you? Hi, good. Good. Better than I deserve. What's up? Good, good. Just kind of calling about the issue I got myself into. A little bit of a backstory.

About two or three years ago, I put myself in a bit of a hole. I had a very good financial year for myself, and then I lost someone who meant very much to me, a good friend. I decided then to take the money that I had after becoming debt free and buying a car. You know, they went to spoil myself route to feel better. I now have a remainder of a balance of $34,000 on a car loan at a horrible interest with a $795 car payment per month, not including insurance and the rest. I also have about $5,900 in credit card debt included with about $7,000 in personal loans debt. and I have a baby coming up that is due in August.

Cool. How long have you been married? I am not married. Okay. What does your fiancé make? She's actually a stay-at-home mom. Okay. All right.

And how old are you? 23 years old. Okay. One more time, tell me what you make? I make $83,000 a year gross. Doing what? up to about what do you do i work in i'm working sales okay all right cool all right fun okay um well you're probably going to get a little more than you asked for on this call um but i'm going to try to love you

well if you were uh my son is 10 years older than you but if you were my kid here's what i would tell you okay the data tells us that people that are married and work together have higher net worths and higher income and live longer than people who are not. This is statistical data. Okay. So when we study millionaires, we find almost none of them shacked up. Almost all of them are married is what we find. That's the data.

Okay. So it's a financial advantage, a relational advantage, an advantage for your child, a legal advantage for your wife, because she has some protections then. And so my first recommendation to you would be to get married Saturday. That's my first recommendation, okay, to help you move forward and build your family, and let's go from here.

Then you've got 5,900 in credit card debt and $34,000 on a car, and you make $83. Is that your only debts? Those are my only debts, along with the credit card. Yeah, credit card debt, personal loans, which was $7,000 and the car loan. Okay. Yeah, personal loans as well.

Who are the personal loans to? Me. Okay. No, I mean, who are they, who'd you borrow them from? Oh, it was an online company called Upstart. Oh, crap. So this is like a payday lender type thing? Not necessarily.

Yeah, but it's a crappy interest rate, yeah. It's horrible interest rate. Yeah, that's the one I remember. What's the car worth? car is worth an estimated of about $30,000, so I've already looked into getting rid of it. I'm about $4,000 upside down. Okay, good, good, okay. So I think I would scratch up the $4,000 first, pay minimum payments on the other stuff.

Let's get rid of the car and get you a $2,000 or $3,000 car that you pay cash for. Getting rid of that car mistake does two things. one obviously the mathematics are horrible the interest rate and all of that the payment's crazy all that stuff it's dragging you down but the other thing is that car is tied to pain it's tied to psychological trauma for you so every time you get in it every time you write a check for it you know i got ripped off because my heart was broken and i made a bad decision and it's a reminder of that i'd want that reminder out of my life. Am I right? Yes. Yeah. And with that, an $800 a month raise. Yeah. Yeah. So the first thing I'm going to do is pay minimums or just quit paying the $7,000. I don't care. Doesn't matter to me. But I want you

to get rid of the car by scratching up $4,000 working overtime. You got anything you can sell? Do you have any money saved? I don't have any money saved. I've been trying to work continuously to save up a little bit extra money on the side. How old is the baby? The baby isn't here yet, luckily. So we're due in August. Oh, great. Okay, so you can get married before that.

That's even better. Okay, that's very helpful to the data. Okay, good. Yeah. Well, I mean, anything she can do to earn money until the baby comes. I know she's in her third trimester. I'm not trying to put her in the salt mines. But if anything she could do to earn money, it adds flavor to this, right?

Because here's the deal. The faster we get rid of this car, we got $800, and then the two of us sit down, we do a tight budget, we work what we, and then all we got to do is just, you know, knock out like $10,000,000, and you can do that in a few months. Yes. Because most of this debt isn't tied up in this car. Think about what it would be like to get to Christmas and have zero debt. Man, it was so good. Yeah, that's what I want for you. And a new baby and a new wife, life is good, I'm smiling right now.

Now we're moving forward. I like this a lot. And you've learned your lesson at 23 to never go on in one of these rip-off interest rate personal loan sites. Like you got screwed. And you got screwed on the car, too. Yes, I did. It was a very bad decision that I've been doing with. The good news is you got the whole rest of your life to never get screwed again because now you know what it looks like.

You go, I'm not signing up for that. I don't care what you do. You can do whatever you want to do. I'm not signing up for that. You can have a gun. I'm not signing up for that, ever. Again, I'm not going to let myself get screwed. ever again. You got a beautiful life ahead of you. Only 23. I went broke when I was 28 and filed

bankruptcy. I've had a beautiful life since then because I learned a lot of stupid bust stuff about myself during that time. And there's a lot of stuff I never do again, you know? You got a great thing going here. I'm so proud of you, young man. You're going to be great. This is going to be so good for you. All right, I'm going to give you a wedding gift. Ooh, so kind. I'm going to give you a copy of George's book. Oh, perfect. Yeah. Happy to give that away. And a copy of the Total Money Maker. book since you and are the ones that took the call. And the baby's going to have a mommy and a daddy and they make $85,000 a year and he's 23 years old and he's going to get rid of people screwing him all these car companies, all these payday lender types. What was it? Upstart. Upstart.

Chris. Yeah. Upstart just had 30 million people say you suck. Upstart. I hope you heard that. We just told 30 million people you suck. You screwed us. a 23-year-old kid and you deserve for everybody in America. Oh, and I bet their marketing is like, we're the lifeline. We'll give you the financial freedom you need. Their marketing is like, we suck, but come do it anyway. We'll screw you, but come see us anyway. That's their marketing line. It's like SOFI, right? Yeah. We have a stadium. Who do you think paid for that? Yeah. You and your interest. And you and you and you. There are people that we help. Yes. We're helpful. That's what we are. Oh, man. I tell you

what? The villains are run amok in this cartoon. Well, it's funny that the villains will happily show up in your life when you're so desperate and they'll act like they're the hero. That's the scary part. We're here to help. You'll get an Instagram ad going, oh, finally, relief is here. No, that's not relief. That's 600% interest on your payday loan.

Relief is when I get upstart out of my life. Unless you're selling heroin cream. We don't want relief. What a name. You people ought to be, I bet your mother's a shame to you. if you work it upstart. Oh my gosh. Wow. Hey, hang on, Andrew. We're going to give you a couple wedding gifts and congratulations on your wedding this weekend. That's exciting. I love that Dave just planned the wedding for you. The man should be in the wedding planning business. Totally

assumptive clothes, yes, no question about it. I wonder how many people were you convinced to get married that otherwise wouldn't have. That's a beautiful thing. It's a wonderful thing. And you're not even ordained, I don't think. Not yet. You never know. You never know. I'm a lot of things. That's not one of them. 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.