The Ramsey Show - If You Want To Be Successful, Follow This Proven Plan

Episode Date: June 24, 2024

💵 Start your free budget today. Download the EveryDollar app! Dave Ramsey & Dr. John Delony answer your questions and discuss: "I'm trapped in a bad lease," When you should and shouldn't use your 401(k), Why you need to choose your friend carefully, "How can I force the sale of an inherited house?" "How do I stay motivated to pay off debt?" "Does the Bible allow for earning interest?" Support Our Sponsors: BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com/Delony to get 10% off your first month   Health Trust Financial: Discover Top Health Insurance Plans, All in One Place. Churchill Mortgage: Get started at ChurchillMortgage.com Zander Insurance: Go to zander.com or call 800-356-4282 for a fast and easy quote today.  Next Steps 📞 Have a question for the show? Call 888-825-5225 Weekdays from 2-5pm ET or click here! ☂️ Get the right insurance without breaking the bank. 📈 For help with investing, get connected with a SmartVestor Pro.  Listen to more from Ramsey Network 🎙️ The Ramsey Show   🧠 The Dr. John Delony Show 🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💡 The Rachel Cruze Show 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights 💰 George Kamel 💼 The Ken Coleman Show 📈 EntreLeadership Ramsey Solutions is a paid, non-client promoter of SmartVestor Pros. Learn more about your ad choices. https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, resident PhD of counseling, is here to help you. If you have crazy people in your family and you have a question, he's here to help. He's my co-host today. Number one best-selling author, multiple times over, and host of the Dr. John Deloney Show on the Ramsey Networks. The phone number is 888-825-5225.

Brendan is in Detroit. Hi, Brendan. How are you? Good. How are you doing? Better than I deserve. What's up? So I go to Michigan State University, and I had a question about leasing. Last year, about October, my current apartment kind of got us in a chokehold and said that we had to sign a lease for next year within about six hours or else we won't get the apartment and we can't live there. Now their lease is about almost about $250 cheaper and we can't get any

cheaper rate at all because we already signed. Okay. And how can we help? So I was wondering on like what, what would be a good plan to go? I don't know if that's like something that you could get a lawyer involved or if it's something that I should just try to get out of, like get a sub leaser or what I should do because. Why do you want to get out of the lease? A lot of money. Why do you want to get out of the lease?

Because it's about $1,015 a month. And the new lease that they're offering is $799 a month, and that would be, like, a lot different. Well, they're not, but they're not. You signed up for $1,000 originally, and you knew that when you signed up. So the only thing that's pissing you off is they now rent the same apartment cheaper. Yeah, it sounds about right. Okay. I don't know why you would get a lawyer.

It sounds like you just... There's no lawyer can help you, dude. They didn't do anything wrong. Well, I was wondering more on the part of where they told me that I had to sign it within six hours or that I won't be able to live there at all. Well, that's not illegal. Maybe back then it was not. You can put a deadline on a negotiation and say,

I'm going to offer you this for six hours, and after that I can't promise you you can stay here. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just, you know, if you felt like that that was undue pressure or unreasonable, just don't sign it at the time. That would have been a possibility. You know, if you feel like you're being mistreated, go somewhere else, in other words. I think the only way they rip you off is if they said,

you all sign it for $1,000 and they charge you for $1,300. Yeah, they try to charge you more than you signed up for. Now, what I would do is this. Rather than going in with the attitude that they did something wrong, I would just go into the manager's office in person and say, hey, man, I'm a broke college student. This is a lot of money to me. Would you guys show us some mercy and reduce

our existing lease to what you're currently selling for man that would be a huge help because it's a big the difference is a big deal and gosh when we signed it last year we had no idea of course we could get it for this or we would have waited but um man can you help us out here but don't go in there acting like they did something wrong because, Brendan, honestly, I don't think they did anything wrong. So we actually did do that because it's me and three of my other roommates, and we did go in there and we talked to somebody. They told us in person. They said, yeah, we can actually get it down to that rate.

And then they gave us a call back. The general manager gave us a call back about a half hour later and was like whoa whoa actually like we can't do that you guys already signed this other one for this rate and it was just like a regular employee we talked to at the beginning so i don't know if his word has any weight to it no he just misspoke he just misspoke no okay and so and there's three of you splitting this 250 overcharge no no no it's it's 1015 per person oh okay okay oh so it was a 750 reduction you were asking for uh yeah sounds about right overall total for the whole apartment yeah there's three people right four people four oh so it's a thousand dollars a month that you were asking them to cut it okay yeah i can imagine i didn't do that yeah but just just imagine now they're so if uh the marketplace

let's just pretend that they weren't crooks and they weren't trying to screw you, that they just simply thought, hey, we have a really hot property here, and we're going to get people signed up, and if you want to do it, we're going to put it on the market. If you don't want to sign, you've got six hours to do that. And then they discover that they can't rent these apartments and they have to drop the prices on them in order to get them rented uh instead of thinking maybe this was the plan all along um that's a that's a possibility actually i've worked in college housing for a long time and

the number of students who would say yeah we're signing up we're signing up we're signing up and then you start to see the attrition rates throughout the summer like what he's talking about happens all the time in college housing like plans change students don't come back and suddenly you're you're you're faced with a bunch of empty beds that you weren't expecting and you got to figure it out rate wise because you can't have an empty bed i i've just experienced this buying a car and then you look on on an ad three months later and the car is cheaper i can't go back to the dealer and get mad at him. It just is what it is what it is. I think what you had to say, Dave, is the only thing you can control here is your attitude, man.

And if you want to walk around looking how everybody's ripping you off, and instead of going, oh, man, those guys who waited are going to get a great deal. Maybe next time I might consider waiting, which, by the way, then it's going to sell out. The concert, you're going to wait for tickets until the last day, and the concert's going to sell out. So it's just kind of the way life works sometimes. Yeah, but I know, Brendan, an attorney can't help you because nothing was done wrong here. I hate that you guys are paying more than market,

but nothing was done wrong. Open phones at 888-825-5225. You jump in, we'll talk about your life and your money that is uh what we do here and we help folks uh get control of everything going on out there so you can participate with us here we could use your help by the way if you want to um join us by clicking subscribe on the show uh clicking follow on the show, share. If your platform you're on has a share button or just cut the link out and send it to somebody, go listen to these folks over at the Ramsey Show.

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with a licensed therapist. Plus, you can switch therapist at any time for no additional cost. Take off the costumes and take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash Deloney to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp.com slash Deloney. Thanks for joining us, America. We're really glad you're here. If you are on baby step four or further, which means you're investing, you're out of debt, you have your emergency fund in place, you've lived like no one else. If you want to go on the live like no one else cruise, we'd love to have you. Let's do it.

We're going to cruise, baby. We're going March 22nd of next year. And we're going to Turks and Caicos, St. Thomas, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, all the Ramsey personalities, plus Stephen Curtis Chapman, Dina Carter of Strawberry Wine, famous country music singer. A bunch of us are going to be hanging out with you the entire week. The entire ship is devoted to Ramsey, and it's the live like no one else cruise. Now, this is not the cheapo cruise. This is Holland America.

It's nice. I don't is not the cheapo cruise. This is Holland America. It's nice. I don't go on the cheapo cruises, and so you won't find me there otherwise. So I'm coming. John's going to be there. My wife and all the Ramsey personalities will be with us. Of course, a bunch of Ramsey, and we'll be doing special things on the ship all week long

and going to very cool places. It's a way for you to celebrate the milestone of actually starting to win with your wealth building process. So you can only put down, you can put down only a $600 deposit and hold your room. We are approaching a sellout. And so if you're going to go in March of 25, you need to get on the list right now. So go to ramseysolutions.com slash cruise for the live like no one else cruise. Darren is with us in Dallas. Hi, Darren. Welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Hi, David. Hi, John. Thank you guys so much for taking my call. Sure. What's up? So right now I'm currently in baby step three. I've just submitted the last payment for my last debt. So as of last week, I'm debt free.

I make about $65,000 a year. It's just me, so single. But right now I'm kind of going through a bit of a career change. Um, I'm 25 years old and, um, so, so the background information is I work at an airport and I've been going through talking to pilots and things like that. And speaking with our, our, our person that are recruiting, they have a program to where a career path program to where i can become a pilot with the airlines here and pilots make pretty substantial income and i'd like that for myself as well as being able to fly plane um my question for you

is is how do i balance you know saving up for emergency fund and for a future down payment on a house and retirement as well as funding flight flight school and all other expenses that come along with it. How do I prioritize that? What's the best way to go about that? Any information at all would be helpful. Okay. What do you make? Currently, I make $65,000 a year.

Okay. And you said that. I'm sorry. And while you're doing all of this, they're not paying for any of it? They will. So part of the program is I have to have a degree, and my job is paying for the degree. So I won't have to pay for the degree portion of it,

but I will have to pay for the flight school. And that, talking with the flight school all certifications all total should be probably around 50 000 okay and you're going to get 50 000 let's just pretend that that's all we did where are you going to get the 50 000 just out of the 65 income uh well just seeing like how much i should save up or put that off or what's the best way to save up i don't want to take out any loans and get back into debt no i don't want you to either i'm just saying if you if you save 25 000 a year it takes two years to save up the money right yes sir yeah yeah okay and that's pretty strenuous on 65.

I mean, that's living on nothing. Yes, sir. Yeah. So how much debt have you paid off? I've paid off about $13,000. How long did that take? That, honestly, getting super serious about it, it took maybe a year, year and a half, less than than a maybe a year year and a half

less than that just about a year and a quarter well at the thirteen thousand dollar a year rate saving up fifty thousand takes you five years right yes sir so you got to do better than that don't you yeah i get you yeah that's your basic math there so um and for sure don't go in debt to go be a pilot because the pilots you're talking to that are making a lot of money or pilots have been pilots a long time the brand new pilots out of flight school make about what you make yes sir yeah and and i have those figures of what I've talked to and what they've... Yeah, they make about $65,000 flying for American Eagle. Yes, sir. And little commuter planes is what they're doing,

and that's what they put in there is the brand-new kids. New kids on the block, baby, and that's what you'll be. So it's going to be a while. You're not going to be making $200,000 coming out of the chute. You know that, right? Right, right, of course, of course. Okay, all right, so you're going to spend $50,000 to make about what you make now? Yes, sir.

At your entry level. So that's what you're up against, and that's what you're going to have to think through here. That's why, for sure, you don't borrow money on this, because it would be super stupid to borrow money and do this in your situation. So, yeah, you've got to get your emergency fund in place, and then you start working your way through your education ideas i'm just still stuck on an industry that is

struggling to get new pilots in the pipeline having a degree requirement but not helping out with flight school the actual training that we need to support like it's just everything so backwards sometimes yeah just it just it's hard for me to wrap my head around an emerging problem across so many fields and everybody's going to how we solve problems 25 years ago to try to solve these new problems and it's just such it's frustrating it's frustrating well when it gets um uh when their shortage of pilots gets bad enough, they'll change it. Yeah. I just wish there were problems in the world that we could solve seeing them coming instead of waiting until we're hit and then change them. That's called vision. Don't be pushy.

So wild to me. Damien is with us in Sacramentoramento hi damien how are you hello doing good um so my question is uh i got about 30 000 in debt and my 401k has 46 in there no and i think i know no no no don't do it That's just don't. That's what I was thinking. Yeah. Cause it's going to cost too much. It's going to cost me more in taxes. I won't even be able to pay it all off.

I thought exactly, exactly. You got a 10% penalty. Plus you got your tax rate. So it's like borrowing money at 30 or 40% interest to pay off your debt. That doesn't make sense at all. See, I was an easy, that was an easy one. Yep. It was easy. Yep.

And so what you've got to do is get your income up, your outgo down, and that's not easy, and it's working a lot of hours, and that's not easy, and sacrificing, and that's not easy, and then you'll clear the debt. And that is, then you'll look back and go, that was easier than I thought it was going to be. Matt's in Grand Rapids. Hey, Matt, welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hello, Dave. Hey, Matt, welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hello, Dave.

Hey, what's up? Hey, I'm 61 years old. I'm going to retire in about four years. My wife and I have no debt other than our home. We have about $2.2 million in 401K. We owe $300,000 on our home. Does it make sense? We would like the peace of mind of being totally out of debt.

I'd write a check and pay it off today. You would? Yeah. Do you not have any money that's not in the 401K? Not enough to pay off the mortgage. Okay. the 401k not not enough to pay off the mortgage okay all right what do you have what do you have in non-mortgage or non-retirement investments uh just have just have our emergency fund um in a savings account so you don't have any investments that aren't in your 401k no sir wow okay that's weird for two million

dollars but that's cool i'll take it good job by the way excellent job 2.2 million in your 401k you rocked it man you killed it well we did what's the house worth so uh when it's paid off 650 okay you're approaching a three million million net worth at 60-something years old. Way to go. Proud of you. Yes, I would pay off my house today. Pay the taxes on the 401k. There's no penalty because you're over 59 and a half.

So it's a different answer than the guy before for that reason. That's the difference. Yeah. And he's got plenty of money to do that as well. This is The Ramsey Show. You've worked, saved, sacrificed, and been gazelle intense with your financial game plan. But do you have the right defense in place, like the right health insurance? Look, you can't walk past a doctor's office these days without getting a massive bill. And if you don't have health insurance, a major medical situation can undo all of your hard work. That's where my friends at Health Trust Financial can help.

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Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage, Jim and Taylor are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? Good. How are you? Doing great. Thank you for having us. Absolutely. Where do you guys live? So we live in Glassboro, New Jersey, which is about 30 minutes south of Philadelphia. Gotcha. Cool. Welcome to Nashville. Good to have you. And here to do a debt-free scream, how much did you pay off? We paid off $133,536.81. Love it. How long did that take? About 14 months. Wow. And your range

of income during that time? We started off at about $160,000 and through side hustles and overtime got it up to about $197,000. Cool. What kind of debt was the $134,000? All student loans. All student loans. Worth every penny. If not, I would not have met my beautiful wife. Ah, there you go. There you go.

Cool. The stories we tell ourselves, right? It took $134,000 in debt to find her. Way to go, guys. So what changed 14 months ago? What was this, the, uh, makes you do the Ramsey stuff wide open? Cause you guys went for it, man. Yeah, well it started, uh, probably, you know, six or seven years prior to that, I started listening to the radio. I came across your show and, uh, you know, all of the values

and ideas I had about money you guys had as well. well. But I just didn't have the plan to put all those values and ideas into place. And so I started learning more about the baby steps and why I should be saving money, why I should be out of debt, and started making some changes in my life. I started to pay off my car, intentionally saving for specific reasons. And then Taylor you know, Taylor came along and we started dating and, you know, we were, we decided, you know, we started talking more about finances through the pandemic. We took FPU online. We started to do our own journeys and paid off our own cars. And then, you know, not too long after that, well, first off, you know,

I knew she was the one for me from the very beginning. I mean, we, you know, not too long after that, well, first off, you know, I knew she was the one for me from the very beginning. I mean, we, you know, we were in love pretty quickly. But, you know, then she kind of said, you know, this ring or this hand, you know, really should have something on it. You know, it's getting a little bare. There should be something sparkly, you know. And so I told her, I said, I'm not going to go into debt to pay for the ring. And I bet that was a romantic dinner. And I'm not going to have a car payment, you know? And so she knew I was a little crazy and

serious about this from the very beginning. And so, you know, we got engaged and we started talking more seriously about finances and got married and then decided, you know, this is what we need to do right from the beginning. And so we used all of the money we had from our wedding and put that and that got us jump-started. And then we started to work for those 14 months, putting $5,000, $6,000 a month at the debt until it was done. Wow. Way to go, you guys. Thank you.

Way to go. You've got to feel great. Yeah, it feels real good. Awesome. What do you do for a living? What are your degrees in? So I'm a nurse. And I'm a middle school social studies teacher.

Oh, that's so cool. What was the best, the most productive money-wise side hustle? So I had the opportunity to take call. So I would do call like every two weeks. That brought us in an extra like thousand probably. And then I did a whole bunch of side hustles in the summertime being off as a teacher and uh you know I I did uber at the jersey shore I taught summer school and I made the banners that you see flying over the beach on the back of planes oh that's fun yeah

yeah that was a high a job from high school and from college and all of those side hustles couldn't come close to her overtime pay but you know did know, did what I could. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yep. Good job. Yeah. OT when you're nursing is great. Yeah.

That's a big step. Giant step. So, Taylor, you were in love with this guy. Yeah. And then he looks at you over dinner and says, yeah, I'm not borrowing money for that ring. He didn't say it like that. I know, but that's exactly how he said it. And I'm not going to have a car payment.

So, for everybody out there saying, I love him and I love this plan. The idea of being out of debt is cool, but my ring's going to look like this and my husband's going to drive this. You're 14 months. Y'all been married for how long? About two years?

It'll be two years in October. Okay. So you've been married a little over a year and a half. And what would you tell that person on the other side of this? That ring size matters and that, especially first right out of the gate and that cars all that stuff like i think don't look outward look inward focus on yourself you don't know what everyone else's finances look like if you don't look if you look outward it's easy to be wrapped up in the oh i'm

not going on vacation there i'm not doing that but like what does their account look like what did their credit look like you know you don't want to look out look in that's very good very good all right you did it you pay off 135 134 000 worth of debt all student loans in 14 months in your first 18 months of marriage. Very impressive. And now when somebody says, how did you do that? What do you tell them the keys to getting out of debt is? Well, Dave, you asked this question every debt-free scream, and I've probably seen hundreds

of them at this point. And so I was going to come in with something so profound, something that's going to leave the audience in awe that no one else has said. And it's the same thing everybody else said. Have a plan and stick to the plan. And work to make sure that plan comes to reality. There were times in the summer where three or four nights a week, I was away from Taylor as a newly married couple doing my side hustles

because I stayed at my parents' house. And so it was about an hour away, and that was tough, you know, so we had to stick to the plan and to work to make sure it happened. Yeah, and just staying on the same page, things come up that you don't expect, don't budget for, and just learning how to pivot, like, okay, this happened, how do we get back on track to keep everything in line? Doing it together. Yeah. Communication.

Absolutely. So important. Way to go, you guys. Very proud of you guys. Thank you. Who was cheering you on? Oh, all of our family and friends. It was funny.

All of our friends knew that we were doing this. So we would do BYOD. We'd bring our own dinner and we'd all get together and have our own dinners. Instead of going out to a restaurant. Yeah. And our family really helped out as well. Instead of gifts that we might want at Christmas and on birthdays, we'd get practical things, clothes and shoes. So we wouldn't have to spend that extra money. So we could put more and more to the debt. So we had a lot of people cheering us on. Very cool. You guys crushed it, man. I wish you could see us two old guys down the road,

20 years, 40 years of being married. Y'all knocked this thing out so quick, and y'all got to overcome a challenge together, and you don't owe anybody anything this early in your marriage, which means y'all just get to live wide open now. Yeah. And it's so wild. It's mainly from Jim.

He was like the main, he was my nerd, and I was definitely his free spirit, so I gave him a run sometimes but you know thanks we did it thanks both yeah way to go y'all way to go excellent work good stuff all right it's jim and taylor philadelphia pennsylvania area 134 000 paid off Paid off in 14 months, making $160,000 to $197,000. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free!

Yeah! Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo! I love it! Man, that is fun. Very well done. Very well done very well done you guys excellent job and i'll tell you that's a like you said when you can start out your marriage overcoming an obstacle this big as your first order of business in marriage it sets you up it gives you like relational confidence to take on everything else that comes yeah because it's not confident it's not confidence it's not instagram confidence just jaw and it's no we we

did a thing we did it together and now we know oh we can do hard stuff for a year two years we can do that yeah and we can do it together yeah and we can suffer together to for a greater good and we can get through this and we can go we can win you know and gosh if every marriage married couple could get the blessing of learning after two years in that what you that that sentence we can get through this whatever this is we can get through this we can figure out a way to get through this whatever life throws at you my goodness what a different world we live in and they're already there and nobody is going to tell that marriage what to do nobody's going to tell them what to do no car company no nobody's going to tell them what to do

they get to decide what comes next for them i just think it's i think it's amazing it's freedom it's freedom freedom no married couple has that anymore dave and they do right out of the gate pretty cool that's almost uh romantic considering he said no ring until I don't borrow money to buy them. Oh, no, you can look at them. They're gross. They're super in love. Yeah. It's just romance everywhere over here.

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NMLS ConsumerAccess.org. Equal Housing Lender. 1749 Mallory Lane, Suite 100. Brentwood, Tennessee 37027. Thanks for joining us, America. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Our question of the day comes from Tyler in Ohio. Tyler writes, I just turned 24. I live with my mom and I recently got out of prison. I have zero debt, but I have no direction in my life. I know being a felon is not holding me back from accomplishing my goals and I'm not using

that as an excuse. I have no investments, no stocks, no nothing. I don't know where to start and I have zero guidance. I have a high school diploma, so I'm not a dropout. I just want to know what you would tell somebody in my position who is basically starting over. It's a good question, man. I'm going to assume that the felony, that he has served his time, this is done, and he is able to, the particular felony that he has on his record now this is done. And he is able to, the felony,

particular felony that he has on his record now, he's able to go get a job. And so what I would start doing right now, I think what he needs to do more than anything is go work, work, work, and work. And that might mean that he's got to start a lawn business. That might mean he's got to start a business of his own, but I would just get to work and get to work and get to work. And I think you can sit down and spin and spin and spin, thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking, and you're going to look up and be 25 and be 26 and 27. If he was my friend, that's what I'd tell him.

I'd say, go get a job right now, start working. And then we'll start working on the mentoring and finding people in your life. But you're going to find those people as you are out, um, being productive out in the world. Yes, I completely agree. I'm trying to think, um, you know, it's not, it's not a question that we, you know, his situation is a bit unique in that he's, uh, got a felony. Uh, but basically we all start over every morning. And so what do you do when you're starting over? You know what I mean? What do you do at the beginning of the year for your new year's resolution?

And so, um, Tyler, one of the things I've done, uh, throughout my entire life is I've studied, um, people who became successful and, um, also study people who were the opposite who didn't become successful and that starts pointing you towards several things okay um one thing it points you towards is you become who you hang around with and so start choosing a friend group of ambitious go-getter people who are going somewhere with their life type people. And that's who you run with. You don't run with a guy who gets off on Friday and smokes weed all weekend and tries to figure out how to not get back to work on Monday and end up anything but like him. So you're going to be, you become who you Monday and end up anything but like him. So you're going to be, you become who you hang around with.

That's one thing. So choose your friends really careful. As a matter of fact, one piece of research says that over a course of a decade, you will earn within 15% of the average of your 10 closest friends income. So what your friends, you know, if you, if you hang around, people make a hundred thousand, you're probably have a high tendency to make a hundred thousand. Hang around people making a $100,000, you probably have a high tendency to make $100,000. Hang around people making a half million, you're going to have a high tendency to run around. If you have to run around people making a minimum wage,

you're going to end up making a minimum wage. I mean, it's just, so number one, be careful. Number two, read nonfiction books constantly about subjects that you want to get better at, whether it's success, whether it's marriage, maybe later on marriage and parenting, read books in the area of the profession that you choose to move towards. Number three, if you aim at nothing, as Zig Ziglar used to say, you'll hit it every time. So you need to have goals. You need to say, you'll hit it every time. So you need to

have goals. You need to say, okay, I'm 24. By the time I'm 30, I want to be doing X, Y, Z. And then what are the steps and the things you need to do to hit that goal? My friend, Henry Cloud calls that your desired future. What is your desired future six years from today? And then what are the things you have to do to become that? What classes have to be taken? What do we do? All those kinds of things. And a great place to plug into people with integrity, people that are forward-thinking,

people that are family-oriented is in a good church. Now, is everybody in a church good people? No. That's why they need to be in church. But they're not. And sometimes there's some bad people there like there's anywhere else. But it's a great place to get young men and old men in your life that are of quality and disciple and mentor and develop the spiritual side of your life that are of quality and, um, disciple and mentor and, and, and develop

the spiritual side of your life as well. Your values that you base your life on. And if you do those things, you're going to go a long way, really, really fast. Um, and, and the starting point of that is exactly what John said. It's get a job, but then get another job and then get another job and then keep moving in the direction that, that, you know, what have you got to do? You got to go be an apprentice to do this. Have you got to take a certification class to do this, you know, and then start moving in that direction.

But, um, something right now, if you think about being that person, when you're 30, when you say that person, and you know what that person is, I don't. Your pulse rate changes. You get a little bit excited and a smile breaks out on your face. Now go do that one. That's the one you need to go do. And for me, when I was his age, I was going to be a real estate mogul. I wanted to be a big-time real estate guy.

I wanted to own shopping centers and office buildings. i was going to be a commercial real estate guy and so i started buying real estate at 22 years old now i went broke and lost everything because i did it wrong because i was stupid uh but the end of the story is i ended up owning a whole bunch of real estate you know now today uh it's although it's my second passion not primary, but at least it caused me to move in a direction that ultimately led me to this desk. So it's cool stuff, Tyler. It's a good question. It shows a lot of maturity. It does.

I think he had some time of reflection when he's behind bars. And this is stemming from a call I took this morning on my show, Dave. There's going to be things that Tyler runs up against, or I'll just tell you Tyler direct. There's things you're going to run up against. You're going to really be moving and shaking, and you're going to meet some people and they're going to be impressed by your work. Let's say you start doing electrical work and you keep moving and moving, and then your buddy's going to come take you out to lunch and say, I want you to come work for my company. And then you're going to get

down the pipeline at the company. And then an HR director is going to flag your application because you have to check a box says I'm a felon and director is going to flag your application because you have to check a box says i'm a felon and it's going to get you dropped out of the process i don't want you to beat up young tyler i don't want you to go back i want you to dust your sandals off and go on to the next thing and say all right we all have a great week and i appreciate the opportunity to to move on with you the more you let these past decisions haunt you into the future, it's not going to help anything in the future. It's just going to drag on you. What's the saying? You are not

the worst thing you have done? You're not the worst thing you've ever done. And if that becomes your identity, no. And this will cost you some opportunities. Oh, yeah. It will. I filed bankruptcy. That's right. Every time for the rest of my life that I fill out an application, and I don't fill out loan applications, but there's all kinds of things that come up.

Have you ever filed bankruptcy? You still have to click that box. It doesn't say, have you recently? It doesn't say, was it a decade ago? It said ever. And so forever. I'm a bankrupt person. No, I'm not. I'm a person that did that one time. I'm a guy that filed bankruptcy a long time ago. There's nothing bankrupt about me. That's exactly right. And so don't let this become, you're not a felon. Nope.

You're a guy that committed a felony. You paid your debt to society and now you're back out there making a contribution. And so it's going to depend on you though, to not let this thing haunt you forever. Yeah, that's true.'s good that's good yeah you reset your identity and you read your way and you hang your way who you hang with and you get up and go to church on sunday and you work your tail off monday through saturday and you read and read and read and read and read you know make it a goal to say how many books I've read, not how much Netflix I've binged. And that will change your whole life. Uh, because I, I've never met a successful person that said they were successful because they knew every

show on Netflix. Nope. And I do think, um, I used to be really against this Dave and I've watched some of my friends who didn't read a lot especially when they're in college and with the um how ubiquitous audiobooks are now um there's not now there's super no excuse because some people it's hard to sit there and read through a book but man you can put those headphones in and let's do a book and walk around your neighborhood hey let me ask you something yeah i have a different experience okay when i read than what i use oh much different much different It activates parts of my brain that the audio book doesn't activate. And I always read with a highlighter. Okay.

And so, yeah, it's kinetic. So it's an actual. It's different. It's an actual neuroscience thing. It is different. But something is better than nothing. So you need to do some of both. That's right.

Don't only do audio books. That's right. But audio books are better than no books. Better than Netflix. That's right. 100%. Yeah. Sorry, Netflix.

They're not our sponsor. Can you tell? This is Dave Ramsey Show. The ramsey show from the netflix studios live from the headquarters of ramsey solutions it's the ramsey show where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, is my co-host. The phone number here is 888-825-5225. We're here to help you and tell you the truth, because we love you.

Alex is in Columbus. Hi, Alex. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Good afternoon. How's everybody? Great, man. How can we help? All right. We've got an executor who is the youngest of three sons, all biologically related, and he has not put the house up for sale since he became the executor or had the will in his hands. And he's incommunicado completely. Any relatives he has talked to in the past, they want to know something about the house, when you're going to sell it.

And he says, none of your business, just stay out of it. So we're trying to get out of the house. Who is this? How are they kin to you? He's my brother. Okay. So there's my brother. Okay. So you have three. There's three brothers.

Your youngest brother was appointed executor of the estate. The will, do you have the will? No, he's got it locked up in a strong box in his basement. Do you know what it says? All we have is his now ex-wife was sure she pretty saw, pretty sure she saw all three names as equals. Okay, so he's just basically trying to steal the house. How long has this been going on? All right, at least since mom died in March of 2020.

Okay, so for five years, four years. Yeah, four and a half years, yeah. Okay, so he lived there free, and he won't talk to anybody. Nobody's living there. Nobody's living there. Yeah, it's been unoccupied all this time. No taxes have been paid until, I guess, the county finally figured out that we can send it to Bernie. But his wife, now ex-wife, has paid the $40,000 in back taxes.

So now the house is still stuck. We need to force him to get this over with. The house is doing nothing other than my best guess is it's storing his big boy toys in the garage. So, well, there's an answer to the question, but before, I'm just curious, what's wrong with him? Boy, we're trying to wonder. He stopped talking to me probably 12 years ago.

I know, but what's wrong with him? He was successfully self-employed, and finally that dwindled because of the market. He went to work for a really good company in the area. I'm sure he's got a good pension and good Social Security. Yeah, but that's not what's wrong with him. He's crazy. I know. Why did mom pick him uh let's see the uh older brother me um my life has been a whirlwind of marriages that failed

the brother in the middle he was a little bit of a rebel and uh so i never had kids baby boy mama's boy was at home taking care of business so she put him pretty much yeah okay all right well i mean the only the only answer to your question is one of two things forget it and walk away or hire an attorney and go before the probate court which is the court that dictates wills, and they will force him to get the will out of the lockbox, and they will force him then to execute on the will, and if the will says equal parts, they'll force a sale of the property. Okay, but there's a whole lot of expenses as far as...

Oh, yeah, you're going to have legal fees involved, sure. Oh, yeah, but we've got lawn lawn fees snow fees and you know probably just probably we're probably just going to have to eat those right i'm sorry these are liens on the house from the city doing the work no no it was all private contractors okay have they taken liens on the house? No. Who's paying it? Bernie was. Who's Bernie? The youngest brother. Okay, so he's been paying to keep the house up.

Maintenance-wise taxes, he never paid. I got it. Okay, so what's that got to do with dragging him into court? He got the yard cut, so what? Yeah, but that's coming out of our portions. We don't like that idea. Yeah, maybe. Maybe not. Right now your portion is zero.

Yeah. I know, but with him being executor, he's going to say, no, we're splitting it three ways for the 10 years that I've been in control. Now you're creating a story into the future. He's not been in control for 10 years. He's been in control for four years. Yeah, so mom was in a nursing home for five years prior. Yeah, but that doesn't mean he's, that's his problem.

Okay. He's the executor. It didn't become your problem until four and a half years ago when she died. Right. Yeah. Now, can the courts hold the beneficiaries that are not executors responsible for what i don't know for not getting this through not for not twisting his arm no no no there's not anything the judge is going to look at this and go bernie son sell the house. It's going to be pretty simple.

Now, are you supposed to file these wills within, what, 30, 60, 90 days? Yeah. All right. It's not invalid. Go get a lawyer. Oh, definitely. Alex, just go get a lawyer. They'll tell you every bit of this.

Okay? But you spend 9 million calories analyzing this over the last four and a half years, and you've done nothing about it. Time to be a man of action. Either drop this, no more rent-free in your head, and walk away and forget it, or get a lawyer this week. Get lawyer file something next week wake old bernie up time to give him a little bit of a cold shower here go to walgreens today and get a yellow pad and write down all of these questions that you have what about this and what about this

write them all down. And ask the lawyer. Ask the lawyer. Every single question you could possibly imagine, which, by the way, 85% of them are you creating stories in the future trying to solve in the present, which is a waste of your time. Yeah. But go write them all down, get them out of your body, and go solve this problem. Yep.

I think you're trying to avoid the fight. So I think, like Dave said, walk away. Drop it or do it. out of your body and go solve this problem i think you're trying to avoid the fight so i think like dave said um walk away drop it or do it or go get on with staying in the middle stay in the middle of the sewer patch i mean you're standing neck deep in the septic tank spiritually man get out man yeah it stinks where you are get out get out get out and walk away or get out and sue old burn knee one of the two i don't care either one's fine with me you'd have good reason to do either uh but but sitting where you've been sitting for four and a half years let me tell you if it's me guys here's how this goes you got four

and a half minutes not four and a half years well maybe maybe four and a half months okay but not four and a half years i mean mom just died right i'll give you a minute okay but but you know you're gonna the whole let me tell you what an executor is it's one who executes that's where the word comes from they are not in charge they do not get to make up new terms of the will they take the will and they have to do exactly what it says and if you don't like what it says, be mad at the dead person, not the executor. Because the executor's job is to execute what the piece of paper says. They're not allowed to do anything else. And Bernie, God help him, is not doing this.

So Bernie's getting ready to execute because you're getting ready to execute on him. Here we go, baby. That's how this works. This is the Ramsey Show. One of the questions I get all the time is, which life insurance company should I use for my term life policy? A valid question since there are hundreds of companies out there with rates all over the place and riders and add-ons that are simply a waste of

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Frank, did I push the button? Let me try again. There, I did push it wrong. Hey, Frank, how are you? Hello, Dave. Hello, John. Thank you so much for picking up my call today. Sure. How can we help? So, to give you some context, right, me and my wife, we're pretty much almost done with baby step number three,

and we want to move into baby step three, right? So we want to save some money so we can finally buy a house for ourselves. Right now, we are making, after taxes, around $67 a year. So if we want to follow, right, of course, the ranching method, we definitely need to increase our income since, you know, as we live in Miami, it's a really high cost of living city. And I want to make sure, you know, that we stick to, you know, 25% home take so we can, you know, make sure we own the house and the house doesn't own us. So I was telling my wife that she is currently working as a cook in a kitchen, a Mexican place.

So she's making 16 an hour. I've been telling her, you know, you, I know you can make more than that. You're great. You know, even the people at your work, they say, you know, they, they recognize how good you are, but they just don't pay you to match how good you are. But whenever I try to have that conversation where her, you know, maybe she should look for another job, something that, you know, pays you a little bit better because you can make more with your abilities.

She's always, you know, like she doesn't want to, like, or maybe like she doesn't want to get pressure about it. Like, and, you know, it's been this back and forth and I don't know if maybe I'm in the wrong by trying to like insist or pressure her into you know getting a better paying position right now I make 27 an hour and now I'm in my job they do yearly reviews so they can give me a raise each year so what is it that she could be doing that she would make more so right now we both have a degree in computer science she told me that she didn't like it in the end and that's

perfectly fine so I've been telling her like you know if you want to do like a certification or maybe if you will you really like it like working in a kitchen I can we can get you maybe through like culinary school something like that so you can you know maybe work in a higher paying position and she has a big when i tell her there's like options she's like you know they're so nice okay let me look into it but then a few weeks passes a few months and you know nothing she's not doing anything about it and you know i kind of feel does she work for her family did you say no no no she works for that for a mexican restaurant it's not family at all

no not for me at all donna okay all right so your question is what so i'm at a point that i don't know if i should continue insisting and pressuring because it's causing you know some discussions between the both of us like uh because she's saying like you know maybe i'm like i never i never enough you know i never make enough based on you because like recently she only started working like around a year ago when our daughter got into school so first i was like okay you should you know now that our daughter is in school you should get a job right uh with the cost of living and everything then she got a position and you know i let her on that position for a while and now that i'm having

this conversation like if you want to buy a house we need to increase our income you know, I let her on that position for a while. And now that I'm having this conversation, like if we want to buy a house, we need to increase our income. You know, she's saying, like, you know, I'm never, you know, doing enough based on your standards. And, you know, we get into this kind of conversations. So, you know, I just want to see if I'm maybe in the wrong. Yeah, because it sounds to her like that you are trying to just get more milk out of the cow, and she's the cow. She feels pretty used up here. Instead of you positioning this of, honey, you are worth more than this. They are not paying you what you're worth.

I want to see you succeed for you, not we need more money. You need to give more milk. No, I understand where you're coming from and i i do you know i yeah i know it sounds bad 100 of what you said was about what you could get and she heard you loud and clear does she want to be at uh does she want to stay at home be a mom i think at the beginning that's what she wanted. But then when we moved here into Miami, you know, the reality of the cost.

Because we have family here. That's why we moved here. The cost of living here, you know, catched up to us. So that's why she then got a job. And, you know, we both want to get a house. She doesn't want to get one bad enough to get a better job. Yeah. So let me ask you, like, if I'm in your position and I've had the conversation

and my wife says, this is what I can handle, or this is my capacity. I can work in this restaurant and I come home and I've got to do all the domestic stuff at home. This is where I'm at. What has kept you from going to double and triple and quadruple your salary? I've been trying to do it. The job that I'm at, I got that just a few months ago. I got a raise

from the previous position. I was making $20 an hour. Now I'm making $27 an hour. But I understand. I might come out as being just pushing it. I think that's what she's hearing and I think that's why you're getting a pushback. If she was hearing that you wanted this for your goals, look, you say you want a new house. I'd like to have a new house.

I also would like to see you get paid more, not because I want more money, but because I think you're worth more, and I don't think that – I think you could – I think you'd'd make do something just as fun and make twice the money whenever uh Frank whatever let me let me tell you this this is not about money and this is not about a job it's not about a house this is about a husband and a wife with two different pictures of what success looks like relational success marriage success raising a kid like what this picture is going to look like. Anytime a couple gets stuck like this, I always want them to go out and completely shake up the snow globe. And you've got family there. I've got family on the other side of the country.

It's okay. Do I wish I could see them more? Absolutely. But this was what was best for my family at this particular moment in history. And so I want you all to start there. Do we want to live in Miami? Because if we choose to live in Miami, even though we have these benefits to be around family, here's what it costs us. And if those benefits are worth more than home ownership for the next five or six or seven years to do this the right way, then so be it. Number two, do we have to buy a house? Number three, what's your picture for all these things? What does it all look like? And let's get back on the same page there. And then we get to the dollars and cents and job. And the way Dave said it is right. Honey, I'm tired of seeing how hard you work and hearing how great you are. And I can't stand to look at those managers that aren't paying you what you're worth. And you can choose to stay there for any number of reasons, but I just want you to know I see

more worth in you when it comes down to the money you're making, your co-workers do, the people who patron the restaurant do. And we're going to have that conversation, not, hey, you need to make more money. You can go make more money. Go make more money. Go make more money. Man, that's just a recipe for for burning out for burning out yeah she's tired of hearing it and she told you she's tired of hearing it yeah yeah reset your pictures for the future and then say what must be true about us to hit these pictures and then that that picture is miami maybe house ownership maybe What has to be true to be a homeowner in Miami? Well, it's not $16 an hour. You and I both know that.

So these things are incongruent. You can't sit and say, I want to be a homeowner in Miami, and I'm only going to make $16 an hour. It won't work. You can't do it. It's an expensive city. And that's when you get to behavior as a language. And if someone says, I really want a house, I really want a house, but I don't want to get another job, then what they're telling you is, I don't really want a city. And that's when you get to behavior as a language. And if someone says, I really want a house, I really want a house, but I don't want to get another job,

then what they're telling you is, I don't really want a house. And that's okay. That's okay. But let's just call a spade a spade and let's move on. Yeah, let's dial in exactly what this is. And men often get stuck in the spreadsheet part of it. Like, here's the job, here's how much money it's going to cost me to get this house. And there's a bigger picture to that.

So sit down and clear the deck, and let's work it through. Yeah. It's important to reset the picture and be aligned on it. I think I go along with that. That's the thing. And I can just tell, listening to you, you're very ambitious. You've got big goals. You want to do these things.

And when you start talking to her about all of that, she feels like she's a method you're using to get there, not like you care about her. Well said. Well said. That's how she feels. I'm just listening to it. I'm just an old guy who's been married a long time. That's all. Not even a good therapist like Dr. John here.

So anyway, this is The Ramsey Show. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions. On the debt-free stage, Colin and Leslie are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? Good. Hey, Dave, how are you? Welcome, welcome. Where do you all live? We are from Cincinnati, Ohio. Fun. Welcome to Nashville. And on the debt-free stage,

how much have you paid off? We have paid off a combined amount of $89,000. Very good. And how long did this take? About 25 months. Good for you. And your range of income during that time? We took, I think, starting around $78,000 take home and ended at $108,000. Cool. What do y'all do for a living? I am a regulatory coordinator for a clinical trial company. And I'm in industrial automation. Okay. Wow. Good for you. What kind of debt was this $89,000? $5,000 was credit card and then 85 or 84 was uh student loans oh almost all student loans so who brought the student loans into the marriage it was me oh okay yeah all right and how long you two been married uh it'll be three years here in november okay so shortly after marriage you look up and say we're attacking this monster. I don't want Sally Mae in my house anymore.

Correct. What happened? What woke you up? So, yeah, it started actually a few months before we got married. We found out we were pregnant with our first son. We were also about two hours away from each other. We were long distance at the time. And I just kind of had a basically come to

jesus moment i was like i don't want to do this anymore i'm not paying anymore and so we just and i did not want to bring um our son into that so we had a sit down and we're like let's just take this out on so we got married the first month after that we started paying and it's went like that game Game on, huh? Yeah. Basically. How'd you get connected to the Ramsey stuff? It was all him.

Yeah, it was from my family. I grew up in a Ramsey household, went to or did the FPU class through high school, I guess whatever that curriculum was called. So I kind of grew up in and around it and knew that's what I wanted to do with our family when we started that so uh our you know we had a lot of support coming from our side of the family uh my side of the family with everything going on with paying off the debt so it was awesome so Leslie he sits down and goes hey I know how to do this I got this what'd you say um I said okay you're gonna have to help me um I was a little stubborn kind of had the of, if I've got the money in my bank account, I'll just pay for it. No budget.

What's a budget? I'll just pay whatever comes in, and that left my account at zero every month. Not the best way to live. There's definitely some good arguments around finances with the first six months of our marriage, but I think ultimately the progress that we saw very early on and what that was doing kept it, they kept the ball, you know, moving down the court with us.

Yeah, it's hard to keep doing something that's not working. No, correct. Good for y'all. I'm proud of you. Thank you. I bet your family's proud. Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Yeah, setting up the family tree. That's what's kind of been my motivating factor and why to be able to do this and provide for them. It's a good why. A new baby is a good why. Yep. So how has this adventure helped you as a young, new married couple, new parents? I think it just helped us be more mindful about, you know, what's important, you know, um, what we want to just bring into our family in general. Um, and it just setting a good foundation for a marriage too,

was the biggest thing. What was your biggest fight? Ooh, um, groceries. Yeah. I think, I think it was, I was the, the nerd of the budget, um, the free spirit over here. And so I think it was, I was the nerd of the budget, the free spirit over here. And so I think, you know, having those conversations on a monthly basis to just adjust the, you know, the, for the price of eggs going up 50 cents every single month, it seemed like. So, you know, being a little bit, being able to, you know, counter her offer there with something that was going to work out and serve us best in the end. Very good. Well done, you two very good well done you two very well done good stuff so when people ask okay you're how old how old are you two we're both 26 yep 26 100 dead free way to go when people ask how did you do that what do you tell them the key to getting out of debt is just do do it. It's going to be hard. There's going to be rough days,

but you just have to do it. Yeah, I think communication for us was key. You know, sticking to the plan that we had in place, being able to have conversations around it and not, you know, fly off the handle at each other, be able to talk about it and say, all right, this is what we decided we want to do. We're not going to try to keep up with the Joneses and, you know, worry about everything else going on around us. Just focus on, you know on our family unit and what we've got going on and what we're working towards ultimately. And y'all both make a good salary in some pretty cool new industries. What's it like rolling up to work not in the same car as everybody else? So we did actually have a car accident in October of 22 where our family car was totaled

and then through insurance and some of our savings, we were actually able to cash flow and buy cash. I used 2011 Lincoln, so by no means nothing new and fancy, but it makes her feel a little special a little bit to my co-worker i blend in so yeah we you know we don't think that there's yeah something special about you know what you drive or yeah it works for what you need so yeah way to go you two very well done very well done how's it feel to be free just nice and calm like at peace i think it's the biggest thing yeah i think when something does pop up it's not a scramble to figure out you know how are we going to pay for this what's going on you know we had there's a sense of calmness like you said to be able to say all right we'll take this in stride and deal with it so i think that it's so weird when you get out of debt and

have an emergency fund that hardly anything's an emergency yes well and I think like your life's like a country song before that everything can go wrong you know well that feeling y'all just described I don't know that that ROI is calculated anywhere people always want to know what's what's the best return on this and what about this but what y'all just described we're a young married couple with two young little ones the last thing we need is wondering how we're going to pay for stuff or when this bill is due or when this 30-day entry fee turns into we don't have any of that we just got peace in the house yeah and y'all have no peace in your house because you got two little ones yeah yeah two little ones this is carter all Good for y'all. And how old's Carter? He is two.

All right. Oh, and a brand new. Yep. And then this is Everett. And how old is Everett? Brand new, brand new. One month. One month. Yeah.

Oh, baby Everett. All right. Very good. Beautiful. Fun, fun. Well, you guys are heroes. You changed your family tree. Thank you.

Those two little boys, I have no idea what their mom and dad did for them. They sacrificed and poured on it. got it done in 25 months 89 000 paid off in 25 months making 78 to 108 carter and everett's mom and dad colin and leslie did it count it down let's hear a debt-free scream three two one hear a debt-free scream. Ready? Three, two, one. We're debt-free. Yeah. Yes.

Way to go, you guys. Nothing but sunshine, man. That's going places right there. Wow. You know how rich they're going to be? Oh, man. It's unbelievable. And you know how much they don't be oh man it's unbelievable and you know how much they don't care about that it's not what's driving them no they just want they just want that piece

those two little boys to be okay man you know it's perfect very very well done man that's incredible folks if you'll live like no one else later you can live and give like no one else you can change your family tree you can take the steps to do it you are in control no one in washington is in control they think they are but they're not you are in control you talking to you you are in control make different choices change your behavior patterns change your patterns, increase your communication with your spouse. Some of the communication might be loud, but increase all of the communication with your spouse and get this done. People, those two right there are a perfect example of how this works. Very, very well done. Good work. Colin and Leslie, your heroes.

Congratulations. Congratulations. We're so proud of you here at Ramsey. Way to go. This is The Ramsey Show. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us, America. Selling or buying a house in this weird world right now whoa a lot going on it's tough and if you're going to do either sell or buy in this weird world you need a pro in your corner the ramsey trusted program is the only way to find an agent you can trust to keep you on track because we trust them the reason we trust them is all the due diligence we've done to figure out if they actually know what the flip they're doing. They didn't get their license last week. They didn't sell their first house on you. That's a bad idea. It's your largest freaking asset. Your uncle Charlie, who's never sold a

house before, doesn't need to be your listing agent. Think about it. That's dumb. Okay. You need to get a pro in your corner. So we'll send you some of the top agents in your area who we trust because they're high octane, high protein, get her done people. It's that simple. Go to Ramsey trusted, find a Ramsey trusted real estate agent for free at Ramsey solutions.com slash agent. All by is with us in Orlando, Florida. Hey, Alba, how are you? Hi, Mr. Ramsey. Hi, Mr. Deloney. I'm good. Thank you for taking my call.

Is it Alba or Alba? Thank you for asking. It's Alba, like Jessica Alba. Alba. Alba. Okay, Alba. Okay, good. How can we help?

Thank you. I have both of your books. They're amazing. So my question is, how can someone stay motivated in baby step two when you deal with clinical depression and bipolarness, essentially that taints your motivation? Tell me about how it affects your motivation. Well, perfect example was today. All weekend, I woke up at 6 a.m. to start doing my atomic habit of getting up early and motivated for work. I got to work, and I couldn't get out of the car to go to work, so I had to call in sick because I was just stuck with fear.

So I'm always gazelle intense, super excited, super frugal. All my friends know that. But then I go into a depressive slump where nothing matters, and then it's just hard to get back on track. So one of the things I'm going to challenge you on, or number one, I want to high five you for trying to get as far upstream as you can to come up with some daily rituals, some daily routines that are going to help you be successful. Good on you. You've been working on this a long time, haven't you? Since I was 16 and I'm 30 now. Yeah, I'm proud of you. That's a lot of work.

I want you to never, ever care about motivation ever again. Because motivation comes and goes. And for someone who struggles with bipolar disorder, motivation can be a really terrible master, right? Right. It can lead you into some pretty heavy places. And so often, the things I do, I'm not motivated to exercise, I'm not motivated to eat right, but I know those are the things that are going to help me down the road. And so I make my list and I do what I can on that list.

And then are you heading off into a low season? Yeah, I'm kind of going into mania. I wanted to reopen my business out of nowhere. Okay. So yeah. How long do your low seasons usually last? They could last two months about, and then I go into a few weeks of just kind of bad decision making.

Okay. So one of the things I've seen people be really successful over the years when I've walked alongside folks in your same situation is they have people that they trust and they have some really high hurdles for themselves. What does that mean? That means they may give their debit card or their, I don't know, their Amazon login to somebody that they trust. Because they can be irresponsible with spending during some of the manic seasons. Or they have a boss or a supervisor that they talk through a little bit more than I would recommend someone to talk to their boss about, hey, this is, this is where I struggle. And I may, may go go on a downhill slope for a while,

but here's what I'm going to do to manage the situation. Here's, I'm going to get my work done. But I have that relationship. Thanks for me. And he knows you guys like, I appreciate it. So the thing I want you to do, if you're waiting on motivation, your motivation comes and goes. I wasn't motivated. I don't have bipolar disorder. I was not motivated to exercise this morning. But I knew coming off the weekend of travel I had, if I didn't do that this morning, it was going to cost me a whole week.

So I do the things upstream. For you, that's more challenging, which means you've got to get more resources and more support and more people around you. And then you've got to do the next right thing on your list. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah.

Just when it manic, it gets scary because, like, today I live in Florida. I wanted to drive to Texas, and I've done that before and moved there. Or I wanted to reopen my business yesterday. So it's, you know, I don't have credit cards. I don't have anything like that, so I don't go crazy shopping. It's more like drastic life choices. Are you taking your meds? I guess that's kind of scary. Yeah, I am. Okay, good on you. I'm proud of you for that. Thank you. I'm proud of you for that. Don't stop taking them. Okay. Good for you. And did you drive to Texas today?

No, I drove south instead and visited my mom. Okay. Did you start a business today? No, I didn't. Can I celebrate that with you? Yeah. Because 10 years ago you would have. Yeah. And listen, this tells me. That's progress. You felt something.

In fact, you were motivated to do something. You didn't do what you're motivated to do. You're the opposite. You drove to see your mom. That's a safe place for you. That's one of those accountability partners I was talking about. You felt like starting a business and going and going, and you exhaled and you did the next right thing.'m proud of you that's a big deal thank you this is what growth feels like and it's not fun and it's unpleasant at the time yeah and here's what's

interesting um we are more we're celebrating the fact that you didn't do it and you're hanging out on I wanted to do it. Yeah. Yeah. I want you to hang out on you didn't. Yeah. That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. I think it's a big place to hang out.

I like what John's saying there. This awesome teammate of ours brought this box. It's not even a box. It's basically like a trunk of donuts this morning and put them in the middle of the of the office and of course kind of a devil worshiper i mean she was pretty awesome but this was of course this was my i declare moment alva this is my like i'm gonna get back on track this morning and this was i walk into the offices but they're there there's a temptation from hell right there in the middle of the room and they weren't just regular donuts these are like handcrafted nashville unicorn dust donuts but here's the deal i wanted to and i did the next right thing right i'm gonna go look for the box i know it is

don't do it dave don't do it dave step away from the donut let me tell you this and i'm gonna can i give you some hard truth some hard love yeah okay you know your challenges and you know the things that set you off and you know when i'm starting to get manic and you know i'm starting to get in a season of being pretty low none of that is an excuse to blow baby step two those things are a context they're not an excuse okay your mission in life is not to is not to say well i got this thing so i can just i can just do whatever i want your mission in life is to say i've got these challenges and all of us have challenges you've got some significant ones and so how far upstream do I need to go to put hurdles in my way

so that when those challenges are right in my face, I'm not going to make the next wrong choice for me and my future self? And I always want people to remember it's a context, not an excuse. I'm an anxious guy. I like to count locks. That means I've got to start counting five minutes early because I've still got to be at work on time because Dave says to be here. And so all of us have challenges. We just have.

It's our job to do the next right thing. There you go. Well done. Well done. I'm proud of you. That's what I knew. So. Someone that actually has bipolar, which apparently she really does.

I mean, it might be one of the things that on financial crisis side I have seen of all the different psychological things you can run into. I've seen that in here with crisis more often than anything else except addiction. Addiction is number one reason to put you in financial trouble. But bipolar, she's really walking a road that's full of mines. Yeah, it's very challenging. A minefield. And so it can be done, though. And the other thing is that just to not accept it as an identity

and say this is a, you know, she's come a long way. She's got everything dialed in. She knows exactly what's going on. She's intellectually managing her way through this, which is what you've got to do. And you've got to have progress. It's not a thing. It's not an excuse.

It's context, like you said. And there needs to be continual progress in that, or you've got somebody walking with you that's doing it wrong. And I want you to call somebody and celebrate your wins like today. That was a win. You did it. Two wins. Two wins. Proud of you. Didn't open a business. Didn't drive to Texas. This is the Ramsey Show.

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions it's the Ramsey Show where we help people build wealth do work that they love, and create actual, amazing relationships. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us, America. It is a free call, and some say the advice is worth exactly what you pay for it. The number is 888-825-5225. Wes is with us.

Wes is in Fort Worth, Texas. Hi, Wes. How are you? Good. How are you? Better than I deserve, sir. How can I help? Honored to speak with you both. You too, sir. Hey, I'm not ready to begin investing yet, but when that time comes, I want to get past a moral hang-up with earning interest that I have had for a while based on some of the things I read in the Bible. And if I can't move away from that persuasion, just want to know what direction I should take to invest for the future. I got you. Okay.

So the only segments of Scripture that talk about not loaning for, not gaining interest are in the Old Testament, correct? It's Levitical law. It's Levitical law. Are you Jewish or are you Christian? No, I'm just a Protestant Christian, but I'm, I'm mainly looking at Psalm 15 verse five.

Yeah. He that put us not out his money to usury nor take his reward against the innocent. He that do it, these things shall never be moved. Yep. Okay. So that's old Testament.

Okay. And, uh, there's a bunch of levitical law that says the same thing if you go through leviticus you can find similar passages just to help you uh or hurt you or whatever further deal and so uh most evangelical protestant christians uh are of the doctrinal stance that we do not follow Old Testament dietary laws, meaning I eat shrimp, I eat lobster, and it's expressly forbidden in Levitical law. Okay? And I charge interest if I were to loan money. I don't loan money, but if I did, I would charge interest,

and I would pay interest or gain on an investment without any fault at all because I'm under the New Testament, under Christ, and I don't follow Levitical law on anything, and I don't follow. And that psalm is referring to that. That's part of the answer, and that's really the big answer. There's another substrata, if you really want to get into the bible study carefully on it usury is uh not technically a biblical term it's technically an old english term and it comes from what you're reading there's the king james version agreed

yes yeah that's right and so that's an I just read that in case there was a copyright. That's okay, but 1600s was when that was translated, and it was translated in Old English. And so there's a lot of cool Old English words in the Bible, the King James Version of the Bible. And so if you go

under that and you read the Hebrew, what usury means in the Hebrew is not to charge interest. It's to charge excessive interest. And so we have, for instance, in Tennessee, we have usury laws to keep people from charging excessive interest. And when people are, for instance, going to pass legislation in a state to stop payday lenders who are six and eight hundred percent interest, they usually fall under some kind of a usury law or an exemption from a usury. So usury in modern terms is not interest, it is excessive interest. So that's a substrata of the study on this. But the overarching strata is I eat lobster. I don't, I'm not bound to the dietary laws of the

Old Testament and I'm not bound to the, uh, I don't have to stone an adulterer. I'm not bound to the Levitical law and, uh, and, and because of Christ, because in the New Testament, those things are fulfilled in Christ. And so I'm walking in a liberty, a freedom, and that's a doctrinal stance. And that's the belief of most evangelicals or Protestant Christians. For that matter, Catholics would fall into that category as well. The only time you might run into this would be certain segments of Judaism where they're Old Testament only.

And for instance, I've got a friend who's an Orthodox Jew who is a great friend of mine, Dr. Rabbi Daniel Lappin. And he eats kosher. He stays exactly kosher because he's Orthodox Jew. And so he's maintaining that dietary law.

And it's beyond shellfish, believe me. But it's fun. It's cool. But that's a good discussion. So you're going to be fine biblically. And as far as, you know, most teachers would tell you that. I mean, you may find some sect of Christianity somewhere that would tell you you can't. But I've been studying this for 30 years through the lens of Scripture,

and I can't find anybody that's credible out there that says it's biblically wrong to charge interest. Excessive interest, yes. Take advantage of the poor, yes. Take advantage of a widow, yes. Kick people when they're down, yes know all of that and so that's where like your payday lenders get in a biblical squeeze not much less a moral squeeze but it's a great question it's good discussion and i'll tell you who else is um who cannot receive interest under any circumstances, they cannot receive interest, is a law-keeping Muslim. The Koran expressly forbids it, and you have to avoid it, period.

And so they can do things where you get gain or something goes up in value if you're in the Muslim tradition and you're following the Koran to the letter, but you cannot open a high yield savings account at the bank nope not a chance can't do it and so it's interesting to study these things and the different uh i guess religions is the right way of saying it um not it's not a tradition it's a religion uh and what their what their book says you know that's fascinating um yeah i'll have to think on that i had a couple of guys that were um uh devout muslims that came through some of our coaching and training because they wanted to take the ramsey christian biblical concepts to the muslim world and they

and so we had this wonderful discussion uh what lined up with the Koran and what doesn't. The Koran hates debt, by the way. All ancient traditions hate debt. Yeah, that's true. That's true. That's true. Mortgage is French for death pledge. Wow.

Yeah, that's actually where that word comes from. So the etymology is just something else. But yeah, it's very interesting. Very interesting. Yeah, I got asked in a deposition if i eat shrimp by a lawyer trying to prove that i wasn't a real christian oh gotcha yeah yeah and it's like yeah honey you don't understand how this works but now so you get to have a doctrinal lesson right here in the middle of a deposition there we go so anyway all right brianna is with us in Phoenix, Arizona.

Hi, Brianna. How are you? Hi, I'm doing good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? You know what? I goofed.

I didn't look down at my clock. That music playing says that a guy that's been doing radio 30 years shouldn't have picked up your call because he's stupid. But I'll be right back to you after I go make a little money. This is The Ramsey Show. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us. Brianna is with us in Phoenix, Arizona. Hi, Brianna. What's up? Hi. So I'm 20 right now. And last year when I turned 19, my dad gave me $10,000 to go buy a car with.

And I went to the dealership, and instead of buying a $10,000 car, I decided that I actually wanted a shiny $30,000 car. So I financed $20,000 and used that 10 grand as a down payment. Um, and you know, the car payments and everything were fine at the time cause I was working full time. But now that I'm back in school and I can only work part time, um, these car payments are like eating me alive. Half of my income every month goes to this car between insurance payment and gas. And I just can't do anything else. Like I can't live. So I'm like, I'm not sure what to do with this car now. Sell it? I, so that's the thing. So I went to go sell it and, like, look into it, and they told me that the car was, like, only worth, I think,

like $12,000 or something, and I still owe $17,000 on it. So I would be. Well, that's what a dealer would give you for it. Okay. So your dad, you refused to accept guidance from him, or he just didn't give you any guidance? just he didn't really give me any he kind of just was like here's ten thousand dollars go buy yourself a car and i went with my brother who's like only two years older than me and he was supposed to be mr finance guy and like tell me what to do and help me with it um that was the

whole point of him going with me and you know that's how I ended up in a car loan. Okay. Car dealers buy cars at wholesale, and they resell them at a profit at retail. You know the difference? You understand the difference in that? Yeah, I think so. Okay, so if your car is worth $12,000 to a dealer,

it's probably worth $17,000 think so. Okay, so if your car is worth $12,000 to a dealer, it's probably worth $17,000. Okay. But you've only owned it one year and you paid $30,000 for it? Yeah, so... That's a little weird too. Well, so yeah, so I financed $20,000 because I used the $10,000 as a down payment. I know. And I've only had you paid thirty thousand dollars for the car

and you think it has gone down fifteen thousand or so thirteen thousand or whatever i'm saying it might be worth 17 in one year yeah that's what like they're telling me and when i did like a like a kelly blue book thing too it essentially spat me out the same price and i'm confused as to how that could be too like okay a private sale or trade-in value on kelly blue book um i clicked i think i just clicked sell i didn't yeah i think you click sell it and they gave you a wholesale because that's you going over to to uh carvana or you're going over to car max or just the dealer, and they'll always buy a car from anyone because it's what they do. They buy them at auction.

They buy them for the purpose of reselling and making a profit. So your goal is not to be inventory for them. Your goal is to sell the car at retail on something like Trader.com or craigslist or whatever i'm either you dramatically overpaid for this car when you bought it at 30 000 or it's the worst piece of crap on the planet or it uh or the information we're getting so far is wrong yeah because the car that goes in half in one year is highly unusual they suck but they don't usually suck that bad yeah that's what yeah that's what i've been told i mean there is like a decent amount of miles that i put on it because i had to drive what's a decent amount of miles maybe like 10 000 miles that's not a decent that's not that's not big miles that didn't

that did not devalue the car in half. Okay. Normal usage is 12,000 to 15,000 miles a year. Anything above that might start devaluing it, but somewhere in there is normal usage. Did you buy it new? No, it was used. What is it? It's a Cadillac.

Which one? XT5. That car did not go in half in one year. Okay. So either you overpaid for it or you've got bad information. You put the wrong year in maybe something like that. Yeah. I want you to keep poking around on this

and your older brother's not your source of information. He's not wise. We've already discovered that and um so uh i i need you to get somebody your dad or somebody in your life to help walk with you on this anytime i'm in an area that i don't know anything about i bring try to bring someone along beside me to help me do it the first time yeah i'm yeah you tried that with your older brother but i'm saying here but i'm saying here you need to get somebody that actually can help you look at this value go to kbb.com look at private sale

look on trader.com and uh you can look at uh there's a couple other sites you can poke around on and talk about selling a car individual to individual used and that's what you're going to need to do and get it sold okay and then you may be walking or you may be getting a thousand or two thousand dollar car save up what what are you making and who's paying for school so my dad is completely like funding my school um so i don't have any like student loans or anything um so why don't you talk to him about this too and just say hey i made a huge mistake when i bought this can you help me figure out okay how to get out of this thing

you know just i just yeah go in there and say you know i i admit admit the error i don't know what charles relationship is on this but um hey um yeah i wish he had gone with you rather than your brother and you'd walked out with a $10,000 paid-for car. You'd have been in a lot better shape. Obviously, you know that already. But, yeah, that's – Something's rotten in Denmark here.

That didn't go down that much. So, anyway, check it out. The answer to the question is you do need to get rid of the car, and you shouldn't have bought it in the first place, and you already know that. So, cool. Not shaming you, just walking with you. All right.

So, you coached this age person the whole time you were dean of students in higher education in different universities around um i raised three that went through college and through that age group um and i got criticism from my uh from from a few of our friends that dave and sharon were too controlling of their college-age students, college-age kids. My kids never really pushed back, and we really weren't that controlling. But we did not just turn them loose in the wild. I'm paying for your college, so your life is going to reflect my value system. Otherwise, I'm not paying for it.

And that includes making decisions like this. There's no way I would have. But, you know, I would have gone with one of them, and they would have picked out their own car, but it would have been within the $10,000 budget, and we wouldn't have gone down this with all that kind of stuff. But what I find a lot of parents doing is just taking their hand off the wheel. Okay, you're 18.

You physically look like you're grown. And just turn them loose. And they get, I i mean poor brianna she got filleted by a car dealer she got she got and her older brother stupid i mean young and dumb and you know so she didn't do anything wrong she's not a bad person at all she just didn't know and some they saw her coming she got flee fleeced, right? So I think parents ought to stay involved. They should absolutely stay involved. And it's funny, when you separate the parent part, we all as a society have agreed,

you got to be 21 to buy beer or guns or bullets, whatever. But when it comes to your kid, it's like, hey, they're 18, man. I'm finally done. I'm tired. Go get them here's 10 000 bucks get a car i'll cover your tuition go make good choices and man those critical those you're not done those are critical times you're not done parenting no no you should be done controlling that's right but you should be done controlling by the time they're 16 i'm gonna start walking next to you with you yeah i'm walking beside you and uh you know they're

but there's still a rope attached here absolutely it's just a long one you've got a lot of latitude as long as you your life reflects that latitude but um this idea that you're just go do whatever the crap you want all of a sudden yes that's bad parenting boys and girls i'm sorry if y'all think i'm a dinosaur that's fine. Or just look at this. A good kid. A T-Rex. That's what I am. A good dad.

But you hand a kid $10,000, and the chances they're going to make a good choice with that money. Yeah. It's tough, man. I'm not saying you're a bad person. It's just a dumb parenting decision. This is The Ramsey Show. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage. Dima and Rhonda are with us. Hey guys, how are you?

Hey Dave, how are you? Better than I deserve. Where do you two live? We live in Durham, North Carolina. Oh, I love Durham. Great town welcome to nashville and good to have you guys how much debt have you two paid off um we paid off 266 192 dollars how long did this take um oh my god uh four years and eight months golly all right and your range of income during that time? Our starting salary was $138,000, and our ending salary was $284,500.

Look at you two. What do you all do? What do you do for a living? Oh, well, I'm actually in compensation. I work for a medical tech company, so I'm in the compensation role. Okay. I don't even know what that means. That must pay really well. Hey, I think that's why I get in the compensation role. Okay. I don't even know what that means.

That must pay really well. Hey, I think that's why I get paid the big bucks. For real. I'm a licensed clinical mental health counselor. You ain't making 280,000 dollars. I'm also a professor as well. Okay. There you go.

Very good. Good for you guys. That's awesome guys. Thank you. Way to go. So what kind of debt was the 266 yeah so it was a uh car loan uh credit card and deem is grad school absolutely student loan yes so my um my um student loans were 150 000 and ronda's were

100 100 yeah that's um undergraduate graduate and doctorate yeah and so for me I went out of state Dave and a private institution and then I went on and got a master's after that so talk about like piling it on yeah on it on okay so how long have you two been married oh this year so we're celebrating 10 years so halfway through five years ago yeah something happened. What happened? What set you off on this? He decided to go get that last degree.

And we were already, like, if you want to think about it, we were like 800 and something in student loans, just me, with DEMA student loans being in forbearance. And we're like, what are we going to do when your loans come out and we have to start paying? Like, mind you you we had just had a little one in 2017 and Deema started school and like we cannot take on my loans daycare and then when Deema get like his student loans we were scared like what's that gonna look like yeah they just kept stacking up till I got scary yeah it got really what happened

what you do i mean we were graduates of the financial police institute university so i think we were just kind of taking it baby steps baby steps but when we realized what we're going to be under with all the student we were just like we've got to use the principles and really get serious and intentional time to get hardcore yeah absolutely all right so you lean in Yeah. And what was the first thing you did and what was the radical stuff you did? Oh, we started doing the monthly, monthly meetings talking about our finances. Hard conversations. Hard conversations.

I mean, credit cards, of course, we put them in a jar in the kitchen and we're like paying with cash. And if it wasn't on our monthly monthly you know things that we had talked about then we weren't doing it um what would you say who's the spender i was hoping you would let me say this he um for his birthday he um was like oh let's go let's get this car let's let's test drive it on his birthday we ended up walking away with a car so I would say Dave after we got intentional that car we sold it and we were upside down so we're like but we can't and we made sure that anything else we had we were paying

cash for as far as cars and that was really the testament that he was able to say hey I love the car but I want us to get us out of debt and sold the car. Being debt free was more important. So y'all have made an incredible combined salary together. Both of y'all are rolling up to places where people are seeing y'all drive up. And y'all ain't driving quarter million dollar cars. No, we still own, have a 2010 mazda yeah runs great it runs great going to your mysterious compensation job yes yes absolutely you know

we're like hey we can't get rid of this like you know we're thinking about gas prices and things like that but it's making us more intentional and saying like now that we've paid off debt what else can we do definitely humbling ourselves and um having faith in the process was a struggle but you know i'd definitely say be persistent and resilient absolutely because you know what dave like we're all taught to like pay off debt but then it's like what do you do after you pay off debt and so we're loving these conversations because we're just been so used to paying off our student loans and paying off four years i mean that's a habit pattern right there right right four years of doing nothing yeah basically but you know what one of our happy experiences when we challenged ourselves to say

what are we going to do and i remember our birthday we had a hundred dollars and said what are we going to do with that we went and we did a day trip to the beach and that's been the most memorable trip and it's like we packed sandwiches we we everything was free and we're like wow and i'm like i'm still talking about that birthday so it's like be humble and you'll be surprised i think even dima made me a birthday cake so it was box but you know you know it was it was good and it was humbling to us and dima can i tell you being professor, being a mental health practitioner, I've always wondered, if you want to do this scientific study,

I'll put it on the air for you. I always wondered, if you're somebody in the helping profession, if you're a professor, how much do you have to curb what the research says? How much do you have to curb what you actually believe how much you have to curb what you actually believe is the right thing to say because you're not really supposed to say that and i owe somebody money yeah and now the students that you're going to be teaching they're going to get an unfiltered you because nobody nobody you don't you know nobody's telling you what to do anymore no knife over you and you're going to be able to sit there and tell these these clients of yours here's the

truth because i don't know anybody anything man i can i can speak from here now does that make sense yeah absolutely and i think that was one of the motivators in wanting to be debt free just the freedom if you will like like you mentioned dr john like that freedom that you have um to kind of um you you have that discretionary income if you will um it's we're still working through the baby steps but you have more freedom and there's no there's no one um there's no loans or things of that nature that you have to pay awesome yeah yeah i'm proud of you guys well done we're proud of you excellent way to go heroes thank you how does it feel oh i mean dr john you said it it just to not owe anybody anything.

Like, we're like, what can we do now? It's really challenging us to say, what do we want to do with our careers? And like, how do we give back? It's like, it's making you just want to just pour out all of that knowledge. And so we're just like, just ready and fired up about it. It's refreshing. Like our budget meetings are, it's a different, it's a different vibe. Oh, yeah. You different vibe. Oh yeah.

You can just smile at me. And we can't thank you too. Thank you to Ramsey crew. Yeah. Thank you all. Way to go y'all. We're proud of you. Thank you.

This is one of the rare couples that they both married well. Y'all both did all right. Thank you. Thank you. We won out in our marriages, but y'all both did real well. That's awesome. Thank you. Appreciate it. that's great very well done you two very well done all right it's Dima and Rhonda from Durham North Carolina 266,000 paid off in four years and eight months, making $138,000 to $284,000. Count it down.

Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free! Yeah! Let's go! Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo! I love it. Well done.

Very well done. Yeah, I guess the number of things you can do when you have that liberty is changed dramatically. But particularly, I never thought of it in a university setting. That's very interesting that you don't have this 266 breathing down your neck. So you can just kind of go, eh, here's the truth. Well, and you sit at the table, and this is how we're going to teach this, or this is how we're saying this, or if you have this belief, you're stupid. And if you owe a whole bunch of money, you kind of got to put your head down and go on to the next thing.

Got to bite your tongue. And so now, DEMA's been unleashed. It's going to be fun to see it happen, man. Way to go, heroes. This is The Ramsey Show. Our scripture of the day, James 1-4, let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

Henry Ford said, Obstacles are those things you see when you take your eyes off the goal that would be true very cool hey folks the best way to make the most of your money is by telling it what to do money is a good slave it is a horrible master you don't want to work for it you need it to work for you the way you do that is called a budget and every dollar is the world's best most robust budgeting app and it is exploding millions and millions and millions of people are doing a budget now it's very cool very excited of the results of this it's happening really fun so uh keep a pulse on your spending make your follow

your progress through the baby steps be in control be on the same page with your spouse every bit of this download every dollar for free in the app store or google play today oak is with us oak is uh in charlotte north carolina hi oak what's up hi can you hear me? Absolutely. How can we help? Two years ago, 2022, I kind of jumped the gun a little too early getting a house. I saw how fast prices were rising, and I got a little scared that they weren't going to stagnate. And I bought a four-bedroom house with the intention of doing house hacking, which has been going pretty well so far. I have no complaints.

It's been pretty simple. So you filled it with roommates? Yes. Okay. I stayed with my parents an extra two years. I could have put down double, maybe 50% on a one-bedroom, two-bedroom house and worked on aggressively paying that off instead of having a large house that is reliant on tenants. I was wondering, do you think it would be best to continue as I'm doing now or just cut my losses, sell it, and try it. Why is there a loss?

It should have gone up in value in Charlotte, North Carolina. Yes, yes. Cut my losses is the incorrect. You mean emotionally cut your losses. Yes. Okay. But financially, you would sell the house and make money, would you not? I would, yes.

So what's the house worth today? About $5,000, $20,000. Okay what's the house worth today? About $520,000. Okay. What do you make? $100,000 a year. How old are you? 26. Okay.

And what do you owe on it? $370,000. Okay. Okay. So you would make $100,000 or more net of the sale well if you sold it right yes kind of sounds like 50 down on a one or two bedroom okay so what i meant is should i sell now and get a new mortgage on a smaller property or stay here and keep saving up to try and pay cash for my next house

i don't care does it matter either one will get you there all right as long as you're not having trouble with roommates and you're not having trouble collecting rent and that kind of stuff i i'm with you i would not have signed up for the trip you've taken but now that you're not having trouble collecting rent and that kind of stuff. I'm with you. I would not have signed up for the trip you've taken, but now that you're in that vehicle, I don't know that I'm going to force it to jump ship unless you just hate it. Do you hate it? No, I don't hate it.

Okay. It sounds like you're real pissed off at a couple of years ago, Oak. Less pissed off and more I realized I made a rushed decision. Okay. And I would say instead of walking around regretting it, just you're 26, man. You're not even in the same ballpark with stupid money decisions that i've made over the years you got a long way to go man if that's your last one that you made at 26 you win and so i would say you learn something at 25 or 24 years old good on you

and it's it's made you a hundred grand i wish i had more of those errors in my life that made me a hundred thousand dollars yeah so stop regretting it man it's made you a hundred grand i wish i had more of those errors in my life that made me a hundred thousand dollars yeah so stop regretting it man it just is a different choice you you know in the future i'm going to make a different decision and you sound like a smart guy i just don't want you beating up my friend oak anymore oak are you uh are you making enough on the rental of the bedrooms to pay the current payment without you putting in any money? No, $300 less than the mortgage. Okay. So you have $300 out of pocket.

And so if you sold this and put $100 down on a $250, you'd be out of pocket more to live there, right? But you'd have no roommates. Yes. No risk and no hassle. Yes. All right. What are you making again you said you make a hundred yep you know how quick can you you don't have any house uh cost much how quick can you save

another hundred um i'm not sure uh i've kind of taken life a little too casually and i realized i kind of have a spending problem a shopping addiction so it depends on how quickly i can get that down well i agree with that i kind of been using the income from tenants to supplement my like lifestyle kind of oh so instead of paying down the mortgage you're taking what house payment you don't have and you're just blowing it on nonsense no not all of it just kind of offsetting it a little bit okay you're 26 you did you learn a lesson yeah okay let's be done with that and again congratulations yeah i'll just lay down lay down what you want to do and say, I need $100K to go with the $100K from the house.

That's $200. And how quick can I do that making $100? Sounds to me like a year and a half to two years if you're very careful. Yeah. And if you have a true addiction, if you are over your head. They just spending. Yeah, but call somebody. But I think you're just spending it. I think you're having fun as a 25 just spending yeah but if you call somebody but i think you're just spending it i think you're having fun as a 25 year old like most of us did casual that's

what he said like casual he's just casual you know it's time to get what you need is a goal that lifts you and causes you to be a better version of you that's right and so something to aim at and if this house move is something to aim at, you say, OK, I'm going to do this for two more years and 18 more months and I'm going to save one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars. And so I need to save X number of dollars a month. And until I've done that, I'm not having any fun. And until I've done that, there's not going to be anything casual about me. I'm going to go after it. And that's, you know, you got lay lay yourself into uh into a plan and then that'll keep you moving in the right direction jada is with us jada's in virginia beach hi jada how are you i'm good how are you better than we deserve what's up good um i was just calling um

just i guess to get an opinion uh my husband and I, we want to buy a house next year, but we are about $75,000 in debt with the car and credit card bills and whatnot. We've thought about trying to do credit booster programs, debt consolidations, you know, selling stuff back. None of that will work. We were all over. Yeah, and I felt like we were all over the place. You are.

I didn't really get into it. And so, like, I just kind of needed to, like, take a step back. How much do you owe on your car? My car is about $18,000. How much on the other car? $22,000. Okay. And what's your household income?

So he just started working back full-time again. So within the next couple months, we'll be at $5,100. Okay, and you work full-time? I do. Okay, that's $60,000 a year. Right? Okay. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Your cars are insane. Yeah. You can't breathe because of your cars pretty much yeah so the the way you get a house is magical you sell the cars and then you'll suddenly have some money get you some cheapo two2,000 cars to drive to work, and both of you need to be working more. You're not making any money. Right. So I've looked to sell my car,

and I heard on a previous call you were on about the Kelly Booba private sale, but mine was worth about, I think it was like $12,000. So you're going to have to borrow the difference or you're going to have to save up the difference. But you guys don't make enough money to be driving these cars. These cars are driving you. So we've got to make that move one way or another. We've got to figure out how we're going to pull this off. But that's the thing.

More income, less outgo. You're not buying a house next year. You're not going to be ready by next year. It's going to be the year after that and that's only if you lay into this hard that puts us out of the ramsey show in the books we'll be back with you before you know it in the meantime remember there's ultimately only one way to financial peace and that's to walk daily with the prince of peace christ jesus Hey folks, Dave here.

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