The Ramsey Show - No One Accidentally Wanders Into the Land of Success

Episode Date: June 25, 2024

💵 Start your free budget today. Download the EveryDollar app! Dave Ramsey & George Kamel answer your questions and discuss: "How do I stop my mom from taking my grandma's money?" Why no one accidentally wanders into success, "I'm jealous of my friends who don't have student loans," Dave weighs in on a previous call that George & Jade took, "Is the American Dream still possible?" Support Our Sponsors: Zander Insurance: Go to zander.com or call 800-356-4282 for a fast and easy quote today.  NetSuite: Free KPI checklist, visit netsuite.com/Ramsey BetterHelp: betterhelp.com/Delony to get 10% off your first month Health Trust Financial: Discover Top Health Insurance Plans, All in One Place. 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. Number one best-selling author of Breaking Free from Broke and co-host of the Smart Money Happy Hour, George Campbell. Ramsey personality is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Lindsay starts off this hour in Denver. Hi, Lindsay. How are you? I'm doing good, Dave. Thanks so much for taking my call. I'm a huge fan. We're on Baby Steps 4 and 5 and 6. We're going to be Baby Steps Millionaires. Thanks to you. Awesome. Good for you. Yes, and I was just calling because I wanted to know how to best manage my grandma's finances.

I've been managing their bills since 2022 since my uncle passed away. He used to live in the home and he's no longer there. But in the last two years, I've seen my mom, like, spend down their savings and kind of destroying them financially. Hold on. I'm sorry. I thought you were managing the money. Yeah.

How does your mom get the money if you're managing it? She'll grab the debit card, make purchases, and she'll say that my grandma let her buy certain things um they go out so the first time that happened that's on her the second time that happened it's on you because you didn't take the debit card away yeah so this last time i actually made a fraud, and I told my mom if she uses her card again, I will actually make a police report because she is making too many charges without my grandma's knowledge. Shut the account down. Close the account.

Well, I already closed one bank account. Well, close it. Close it, and then she can't use the debit card. It's out of business. That's simple. Okay. How much money are we talking here? I put everything under my name.

Well, she has $18,000 in the savings, and so I was thinking maybe I should bring that down and send the extra to principal, and she also has a vehicle that we could sell to pay down her house. But my mom's also destroyed that, too. So not too long ago, she, like, had the truck, and there was a hailstorm. So I don't even know if the truck's worth $25,000 anymore. But my mom's just, like, ruining everything. Lindsay, it's your fault.

It's my fault? Yeah, because you're letting her do this. I should take away the keys? Take away everything. She should have zero access to grandma's assets. down any any door that your mother is going through physical or lock it proverbial close the debit card take the keys the dad gum truck move the truck to your garage stop her from having access yeah that's what i need to do because yeah you needed to do that like the first time it happened because your mother is not a good person and my daughter doesn't even drive

so i've been wanting to okay sell the truck then do you have power of attorney not yet i've been working on that okay i'm not going to participate in this anymore unless you give me power of attorney, and I'm going to shut down all this bull crap. Okay. This is an act of love for your grandmother, and it's an act of punishment towards your mother who's a criminal. Yeah. Good Lord, girl. And clearly the relationship with you and your mom and grandma and her daughter, it's over.

Yeah, y'all put the fun in dysfunction, man. Yeah. So the best thing you can do is protect everything and just get her out of your life. Yeah. So the truck, it's a $25,000 truck. How old is your granny? She's 80 years old. Okay.

And she doesn't drive anymore? She doesn't. And she wanted to keep the truck around because that was like the last memory of my uncle so she didn't want me to sell it oh well sorry my mom just joined me yeah sorry putting my is it paid for it is okay it's a 25 000 truck sitting in the garage and then got damage because your mother's a doofus yeah she, she took it out that night, and she's been driving it around town. Okay. Is the truck back at your grandmother's?

Yes. Go pick it up and put it in your basement. Okay. Okay. And lock it up inside. Breaking and entering would have to be required to get the truck, all right? And then tell your grandmother that she needs to sell the truck and tell your grandmother that we're cutting your mother off part of the reason is your grandmother's allowing this too but she's 80 and she asked you

to take care of everything and you're going to be a little bit tougher kiddo you're getting walked all over i know i feel bad because it's my mom and and then she gets mad at me. I don't give a crap about your mother's feelings. She's a crook. She is. Yeah. You don't get to have feelings when you're a crook. She clearly doesn't care about yours. She truly doesn't care about anybody except herself.

How old are you? 39. Okay. All right. So your mom has done power plays her entire life over you and over everyone else. No one has ever told this woman no successfully, and you're getting ready to be the first one. Congratulations. You have to.

It's your job. I do need to. Or you need to hand your grandmother the keys and all the debit cards, and you need to turn your back and walk away and just let this whole thing explode. One of the two. That sounds good. But if you're going to have your name on this saying,

I'm helping granny, you've got to do it. You can't just sort of do it. And when I do sell the check, should I apply it to the principal? Because my grandma still is 65 000 on the house how much other is that the only money she's got 18 000 and then she's got the truck and what else has she got oh that's all she has and what does she live on social security yeah okay uh it doesn't matter you can use it you can set it in the emergency fund i'd probably just set it in an emergency fund but you've got to have the 18 000 plus the proceeds of the truck where your

stinking mother doesn't get her hands on it got it yeah a bank account that you open up and it go the money goes in there period okay and no one has access to it period it's for the use of your grandmother to pay her house payment and uh help her supplement her monthly because social insecurity won't do it okay you are too sweet darling i'm trying to get you mean yeah i know i want to cry i'm gonna i'm gonna throw some grit down in your coffee and just stir it in there get you some sand okay you're just a sweet you're just a sweet little person and i'm i'm ready to go get your mom for you my gosh what a woman you love your grandma right lindsay you love her then love her enough to say no to mom and be mean because you're protecting grandma.

You're not being mean. When you tell someone they can't steal money, that is not mean. That is just like facts. That's facts and stuff. George, you can't steal my money. That's not mean. Criminals are difficult to deal with, Dave. I know, but this is a boundaryless moron right here.

This woman, no one ever tells her no. She thinks everything is hers, even when it's not. This is the way thieves think. She's the queen and we're the sorry people. Exactly. Yeah, that's exactly right. Unbelievable. I'm going to teach her a new word.

No. It's a new word for her. She can form it. No. Can you do that, Lindsay? Can you stand up to her and stop all this or not i will tell her no you gotta stop it you gotta set the structures in place where she no longer has access to any of this money she never gets another dime because you're so smart you got it

okay and if your mama's mad so what get in line This is the Ramsey Show. These days, it's not if your identity gets stolen, it's when. And the only ID theft protection plan I have ever recommended is from Zander Insurance. It helps real people with real life situations. Like the call we got on the show recently where a woman's abusive ex opened a credit card in her name and racked up over $8,000 in debt. Then the bank sued her, even though the charges weren't hers. What a mess. With Xander's help, she was able to get the entire nightmare cleared up,

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phones at 888-825-5225. You jump in, we'll talk about your life and your money. AJ is with us. AJ is in Springfield, Illinois. Hi, AJ. How are you? Hello, gentlemen. Thank you for taking my call. Sure. I appreciate it. Sure.

What's up? I need some help. We are just starting off on the baby steps, and I'm trying to get my wife on board. She's 50 years old. I'm 40. We have zero in the savings, and I am just worried that we will have nothing in retirement. She works at a local university in the Treasury Department making like less than two grand a month. I'm military, former military, so I get my disability, so I get about $4,400 a month, and we are about $48,000 in debt.

We are just starting the baby steps. We're on baby step two, and we're just starting off. We have three kids that are all special needs, and they might not leave the house, and I am just pulling my hair out trying to figure out how we're going to survive into our golden years. Okay. And you're unable to work due to your disability? No, I can work. I was a football coach at a college, but my mother-in-law, her cancer came back,

and so I was taking her to her chemo five days a week for a few months and that just finished like a week and a half ago so right now with the kids being out of school I'm a stay-at-home dad taking care of them while she's working and all the jobs are kind of filled up right now so I'm still kind of looking around but I just signed up for a side hustle as being a football referee and I'm still looking around I'm still looking around. I'm going to start doing DoorDash again, just to try to bring in some extra income. But right now with the...

Is it fair to say that with you, your wife being underemployed, and you being unemployed, that you all have an income problem? Well, we make about $87,000 a year. I thought you said she made $ thousand and you made forty four hundred that's not eighty seven thousand well i bring home 55 and her take uh her i thought what happened to forty four hundred did i not hear forty four hundred yeah it's forty four hundred plus her two thousand that's sixty three so yeah after it's seventy two hundred seventy two thousand dollars yeah seventy two thousand but with her taxes and all that, it's like $87,000.

But yeah, that's why I'm trying to get some side jobs and stuff. You're clearly stressed about this. This is a tough life and situation you're in. Does she have any sense of urgency or stress around this? A little bit, but she's more worried about having money in the savings account versus paying off all of our debt. Well, do you have money in savings? We have like $5,000 in savings.

You both have recognized that there's a problem. What we're having an alignment problem on is how to solve the problem. Is that right? She wants to save her way through it. You want to get out of debt. That's correct. But she recognizes there's a problem. She recognizes your situation sucks, right? She wants to save her way through it. You want to get out of debt. That's correct. But she recognizes there's a problem. She recognizes your situation sucks, right?

Yes. Okay. All right. That's a good step. Well, no, she doesn't. She doesn't. She thinks we're doing okay because we finally bought a house. We have, you know, the quote-unquote, you know, lifestyle where we have a car and a house and finally can have some

stability for the kids but i'm like no we're in mass amounts of debt we need to get that stuff paid off how much how much debt do you have 48 000 on what uh two car payments,400 in credit cards. Um, I bought her some jewelry for our 10 year anniversary and, um, a couch. When did you buy jewelry? Uh, about six months ago. Okay. So you weren't freaked out six months ago. I was working. You weren't freaked out six months ago i wasn't until i stopped working and then realized we are completely screwed okay all right so um well i i think that number one we need to back it you don't come at somebody in this situation with the what you come at them with the why. Okay? What we are doing is not working. We are deeply in debt, and we are broke, and I am freaking out.

This is your discussion with your wife, okay? I'm not okay. I think we're going to retire and have to eat Alpo. I don't like this plan. This is freaking me out. You seem to think we're okay. I, I, I get that, but I'm not okay. And you need to hear me that as your husband, I'm freaking out. This is terrorizing me. I see these numbers and I can't sleep. I see these numbers and I have, you know, increased anxiety. My heart rate goes up. This is scaring me to death, honey.

I think we have a real problem, and we need to do something about it. And what would it be like if we had no payments? What would it be like if we had two strong incomes and no payments of any kind? How much could we save and invest then? What traveling could we do? What cars would we purchase? What would life look like if we didn't have any payments? I'm freaking out. I want us to sit down and determine where we want to be in 10 years and how we're going to get there. How would you like to be completely free? I think it would mean the world to me.

And just no kids. The kids are asleep in bed. You're noting the TV's not on. We have a scheduled appointment to sit down and talk about this. And don't talk about what to do. Talk about why to do it. The why is I want to retire with dignity. The why is I want us to have choices and the things we get to do as

a family. The why is I want to change our family tree. We've got three special needs kids here. Broke people can't take care of special needs kids into adulthood. And we're broke. We've taken on this responsibility. We've got to do something. Help me. Talk to me. Let's talk about this and then and then ask her what she thinks we ought to do once you get alignment on that but and don't talk about freaking dave ramsey i i don't good you just turned me into a cuss word twice but then i stopped yeah completely because i know honey we need to sell your car dave ramsey said this is a real real way to get your spouse on board, you know? No.

Yeah, I'm not going to do that. It's got to be her idea. The two of you, and then I'll tell you what we'll do. I'll have Christian pick up, our associate producer in here, and get you guys signed up for Financial Peace University if your wife will agree to go with you. Okay. I'll give it to you free, okay, and get on the EveryDollarBudgeting app.

We'll give you both of them, okay, as our gift. But if you try to do this by yourself, it's going to make your marriage and your relationship worse. It's going to drive a wedge. So don't do it by yourself. Talk to her. Hey, would you try this with me? It was free. I gave her hey let's would you try this with me it was free i gave it to me would you try it with me would you look at this would you think about this

uh it would mean the world to me and she will do it if nothing else as an act of love towards you once she hears your heart on the why we need to do this not what we need to do this, not what we need to do. You can't talk about the what until you are in agreement about what the future needs to look like. And then together we can discuss, okay, we need to sell this. We need to increase this piece of income. We need to, you know, we need to admit that that was a mistake and never do that again. Whatever it is, you start putting those things together, George. Yeah. You know, AJ, I think we also need to look at what does a career look like for you? You're 40. You're a spry 40.

I want you to really sink your teeth into something you love and make great money doing it. And I'm going to send you Ken's new book, Find the Work You're Wired to Do. It comes with a get clear career assessment. I want you to also step into that and have some mojo because I think you've lost some of that as you've stepped into unemployment. Yeah, agreed. Okay, we'll give you all that. We want to help you, man. We want to help you, but you've got an income problem and you've got an alignment with your spouse problem. And, you know, what I'm saying is have a dream date. Dream again together about what a wonderful future would look like and then what are the difficult sacrificial steps that must be taken to get to that wonderful future?

Because no one gets to a wonderful future accidentally or easily. It's both hard and intentional. That's where good things come from. Hard things and intentional things create good things. No one wanders accidentally into the land of success. It's a, you got dirt under your fingernails, you're scratching, you're clawing, and you're fighting. And the only way to do it is together when you're married. This is the Ramsey Show. What does the future hold for business? Ask nine experts and you'll get 10 different answers.

Economic growth or a recession. Business taxes will go up or down. AI will help us work or it will replace us all. But there's no such thing as a crystal ball. That's why more than 40,000 businesses have future-proofed themselves with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud enterprise resource planning system. Ramsey Solutions uses NetSuite, and you should too. Whether your company's earning millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and seize your biggest opportunities. With one unified business management suite, there's only one source of truth for the visibility and control you need to make quick decisions. NetSuite's real-time insights and forecasting help you see into the future with actionable data. And when you're closing the books in days, not weeks, you can spend less time looking backward and more time focusing on

what's next. And speaking of what's next, download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com slash Ramsey. It's free at netsuite.com slash Ramsey. George Campbell Ramsey personality is my co-host I'm Dave Ramsey this is the Ramsey show in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage Tyler and Sarah are with us hey guys how are you doing great welcome where do you live Omaha Nebraska all right fun and all the way to Nashville to do a debt-free scream yes sir how sir. How much debt have you guys paid off? $200,000. $200,000.

And how long did that take? Four years and nine months. Yeah, good. All right. Making what kind of income range during that time? $171,000 to $230,000. Cool. What do you all do for a living?

I'm a security consultant. And I'm an attorney. I work in-house for a financial services company in omaha excellent excellent oh i wonder who that is good way to go guys good and i love the t-shirts weird people you're looking at weird people what's the bottom line i can't quite make it out debt free since 2024 all right all right it's the uh the new university shirt okay Okay. Got it. Okay. So $200,000, if you're saying weird people, that must mean you paid off your house. That's a house. I love it.

Way to go, you guys. What's the house worth? About $410,000. Okay. And it's a paid for house. Yeah. Wow. I'm so happy for y'all.

Thank you. How does it feel that I have a payment in the world? It feels amazing. Yeah. Wow. How old are you two? 37. And I'm 36.

And the house is worth about what? Oh, 410. Oh, you said that. I'm sorry. And how much in your nest egg? A little over 405. Okay. So you're approaching a millionaire.

Yeah. A baby steps millionaires in your mid forties. Yeah. Way to go. That's incredible. So were you long-term Ramsey followers, or was this a new thing? Oh, for our whole marriage, yes. I had a roommate where I got the FPU CDs from, and so we put them on road trips.

We made several road trips back to her family and my family, and so we would listen to those, and we kind of did it on our own. So yeah, when we started started out we've been married for about 11 years when we started out we had babies to baby step to debt to get through um tyler had a small truck loan and um i graduated from law school with nearly a hundred thousand dollars in student loan debt okay she cleared all that off yes and that's not Yes. And that's not in this 200. That's not in this. Okay. So then you attacked the mortgage beginning four years ago. Yes. Right.

Okay. Yeah. It kind of, like with my truck, I graduated college debt free, but then I rewarded myself with a brand new pickup truck. With a new payment. Yeah. And we both kind of thought that each other's debt was stupid and irresponsible. So we had to deal with that as one of our first marriage financial issues. i your truck's dumb your student loan's dumber yeah whose debt is dumber

it's a new game show so i um my plan was just to pay off my truck as i was because i got a new job income was coming in and um we when we were talking about getting married we thought we don't want to have this hanging around we We just want to kind of fly through it. And so that's what we did is we made a lot of extra payments. We lived off my income, and her income went to just paying off her student loans. Okay, and it got it all clear real fast. It did, yep. And then four years and nine months ago.

So really the start of this is just the start of paying off the house is just the continuation of the baby steps. It was. We took a little break in the middle there to get the other baby steps going um build up some savings in fact um one of the things that we had saved up for was to go on the last ramsey cruise in uh march of 2020 and we were gonna go like it didn't matter that the coronavirus was coming we were gonna go dave too and uh so during that time we got all that money back and then um since we were already in a good financial position and had good solid jobs we were really able to make a lot of progress uh on the mortgage and just decided you're gonna go on the one in 25

unfortunately not we have some other financial goals that are in line before that this time around okay we wish we could how you did me okay yeah so that's cool that's fun it's a huge lump sum we put on there and i printed off our amateur station schedule on the back of a door and when you could see how much progress you're getting because you just get frustrated with how much money is not going to pay off the principal it's called going to interest the the more we were able to move that line you just get frustrated with how much money is not going to pay off the principal it's called going to interest the the more we were able to move that line you just you could see how many months you were skipping you're just dropping down in the schedule yeah it just drops down yeah so we refinanced in 2020 to a really low interest rate which just moved the line even further and so that allowed us to keep on moving on on it. You know, if you think about it,

we're sitting here talking to people that paid off their house in four years and nine months. That's just weird. That's very weird. I'm proud of y'all. Most of culture says, I'll hang on to it for 30 years, then I'll probably refinance, I'll do a HELOC,

we'll pull the equity out, we'll do some other dumb stuff, and you guys went, no, we just want to be done with payments. Yep. Okay, so you're 100% debt-free, you're at about 800 800k net worth you're 47 years old you're making i'm sorry 37 37 years old i'm sorry and uh you're making 230 and you're not going on the cruise what are you gonna do that's fun you got to do something fun this nashville trip was was was one of it good

and then we're gonna buy a minivan oh okay cool i'm a mom very good i like it good for y'all well done thank you well done did you have people cheering you on or is this just a private party it was mostly private um people around us knew that we were doing it because just the way we lived we we weren't frivolous. We said no to a lot of things. And then we led a couple of FPU classes, and so they were able to help cheer us on as well. Yeah, when you lead the class, you've got to do it. Yeah.

Yeah, there's no hypocrite, right? You've got your game on. Built-in accountability partner. That's right. That's the worst. You've got to be hardcore then. Yeah, good stuff. All right, then if you've been leading a class, do this.

Talk to the people out there because even though there are literally thousands of debt-free screams posted on YouTube, thousands with an S, even though that sometimes people still don't believe it can work, tell them, you know, what advice would you give to somebody out there right now that doesn't believe it can work um talk to tell them you know what advice would you give to somebody out there right now that doesn't think it'll work well we've we talked about it really is all attitude if you want to do it you can do it the framework is there you've laid out a lot of very practical things that people can do it's just you have got to have a fire in your belly to be able to do it and uh the stamina to stick through it because for a lot of people it's a lot of years of having

to say no to things um and making sacrifices y'all are gonna be millionaires by the time you're 40 that's the goal yeah i mean you will be you're the math says you are yeah way to go whether you think you can or you think you can't you're're right. That's right. Right. Henry Ford. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. All right. And you brought the kiddos to do the debt-free scream with you, right? Yep. We did.

What are their names and ages? This is Silas. He's eight. Hadassah is six. And Anna is one. And they have been practicing and they've really been sticking with us these four years learning about being content um and wanting our goal is to ultimately just be generous with our money uh and make a difference be good money

managers of the the money that god's given us amen be good stewards well done with the matching shirts for the kiddos too yeah weird people weird people that's right well you changed your family tree we're very proud of you you're amazing people you are weird in a world where normal is broke you're weird so for those of you new to this you don't know weird is a huge compliment if normal sucks be weird right so that that's a huge thing around here and uh we're just you guys are amazing very well done all right tyler and sarah Silas, Hadassah, and Anna. Hey, $200,000 paid off. House and everything. Almost Baby Steps Millionaires already.

Four years and nine months, making $171,000 to $230,000. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free! We're debt-free! Yeah, baby! Wow, I think we shocked baby Anna out of tears.

She was crying and then she was too freaked out. And she's like, what is all this yelling? What is all these people yelling? Because we're free. And that's the sound you make when you're free. It's never a quiet sound. It's a loud sound. Freedom is a big deal.

Use your outdoor voice. You get to make choices. Yeah, you use your outdoor voice for freedom. You get to make choices, man. Mortgage means death pledge in French, and they just broke the death pledge. So they're living now truly in freedom. No lender gets to tell them what to do. Amen. Preach it, George. This is The Ramsey Show. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. This is the season for Halloween. It's October. We're wearing costumes and we're wearing masks. So if you haven't started planning your costume yet, get on it.

And while you're thinking about it, I want you to be honest. A lot of us hide ourselves. We hide our true selves behind costumes and masks all the time. We do this at work. We do this around our friends. We do this around our families. We even do this when we look at ourselves in the mirror. I know because I've been there multiple times in behind masks and costumes all the time, if you find yourself hiding from your true self, I want you to consider talking with a therapist. Therapy is a place where you can be honest, where you can talk to somebody else and reflect and learn, and you can accept all the parts of yourself over time and start living an authentic life.

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That's BetterHelp.com slash Deloney. Years ago, the team came in and sat down in my office as the CEO and said, we want to build an app. I said, if you want to build an app, for what? They said, we need a budgeting app. People need an app for their phone to know how to do budgeting. I'm like, why would you do that? I got a perfectly good yellow pad right here.

You can just get your little pencil out, your little calculator. And they're like, Dave, you're a freaking dinosaur. I know, but I do own the place, so be respectful. I'm sure they didn't use those words. Actually, they did. Yeah, they did. Wow. So how did the Shark Tank meeting go when they pitched this to you?

You know, we actually negotiated with a company that had built a budgeting app and thought about buying one and by the time we got into it we realized the amount of work we would have to do to fix all the stuff they did wrong uh that it was easier to just build one and so we just sat down with our guys and started building one and still it cost us more money to do it that way but it was easier because it reflects the ramsey plan that's from the beginning called every dollar because you know we tell you to called every dollar because you know we tell you to have every dollar needs a name before the month begins and you need to agree on it with your spouse and so no one wins the Super Bowl accidentally it's a series of intentional

acts and in the financial world it's called a budget every month you tell your money what to do instead of wondering where it went every dollar needs a mission every dollar needs an assignment every dollar so we named it every dollar because that's something i've been doing from stage and on the air for years at that point and so um turns out those little goobers in my office were right that was over a decade ago now it was over 50 million downloads ago it's crazy how this thing has exploded. So this app is, and we've of course, every minute are iterating it and fixing it and getting it better and better and better. Now it walks you through the baby steps. Now it does paycheck planning. So if you get paid twice a month, you can divide up what paycheck goes to what bill, all that kind of stuff. And it's, uh,

the thing is stinking amazing. So you can get it in the app store because it's an app there you go baby and i'm not talking about appetizers here so very bad joke but yeah download every dollar for free in the app store or google play and uh you can put it on your phone your spouse's phone you put it on your desktop uh and get started for free and if you want to hook up to your bank you get a whole bunch of other different things and there's a small fee to do all that but man it's uh this thing's incredible it makes it simple to make your money behave too many people don't happen to their money they go out on a sunday afternoon drive and have no destination well every time you leave the house it's a hundred bucks yep so you got to have a plan for where the money's going ahead of time. You're pre-deciding when you make a budget. Game plan.

Every dollar. In the App Store, Google Play, or at everydollar.com. Marcel is with us in Chicago. Hi, Marcel. How are you? Hello, George and Dave. Thank you. How are you doing?

Sure. What's up? So with me and my wife, we started the baby steps three months ago, and we managed to kind of clear $20,000 of credit card debt. Great. Different loans, and $28,000 on a car, which I was having a stupid car loan, $950 a month. You cleared all of that in two or three months?

Yes. Wow. We started pretty intense. Damn. Yes, I was sick and tired of being in debt and not seeing the end of the tunnel, kind of. I was getting more and more and too much in debt. Good job.

So this is part of also we having a five-month-old baby. It's our first one, so I think this kind of woke something in me where I'm like, okay. I've got to be responsible for this. You're a good dad. It's not for this. You're a good dad. You're a good dad. You care about the future of your family. Well done.

Thank you. So I have a trucking business where I'm operating as well in it. I currently have two trucks and two trailers. And one truck is almost paid off with like 7,000 left. One trailer is almost paid off with like 7,000 left. One trailer is fully paid off. And then I have another truck, which is 170,000. And I'm kind of upside down on it because of the economy and trucking business and everything went down.

It probably would be worth like 110 or 120 at the moment. And the other semi-trailer is worth 42,000. And if I would sell it, it will be like $70,000. So going through the baby steps, we also have another car loan, which is $20,000 on a Tesla, but it's going to be paid off in five months. So my question is, since I have also a business and still that debt, I consider it being mine because I put the signature on it. I'm not sure how to plan on paying it. Do I finish the baby steps on a personal level and move on to the business? I'm kind of like a bit lost how to maneuver the business good

question very good question well there's two two parts to the answer one is you've already accurately identified that it's not technically business debt it's technically personal debt because they don't loan businesses your size money they loan you money okay and so you have a bunch of debt but i would separate this and say um i would number one the seven thousand i just try to get that knocked out okay quick and just like the tesla knock the tesla and the seven grand out done and then that leaves us with the two big notes on the newer tractor trailer right yeah okay now what i would do you obviously run your business as a separate checking account a separate pn, a separate P&L.

Yeah. You keep everything over there. You have a good, hopefully a good accounting system on that, right? Yes, yes. Okay, here's what we teach. It's a lot of depreciation, so you have to keep everything in order. Exactly. The maximum tax. Well, and you have to do your tax, you know, you have to do your tax planning because you have to do some quarterly estimates. So what we teach entree leaders in our small business coaching is a little bit of a different

formula on their debt in the business. We won't call it business debt. We'll call it debt in the business. All right. It's a completely separate operation over there. And what we teach them to do is to take a minimum living wage what's it take to operate your household as your salary out of the business not big profits okay not big not big checks not windfall no big bonus money for for you okay but But just enough for your family to eat comes out of the business.

Once you've done that, then calculate net profit after you have been paid, okay, for this month. And then we suggest you put 20% to 30% of that net profit into retained earnings for the business somewhere in there and the other 70 or 80 percent on the debt let the business cash flow build retained earnings a little bit while using the lion's share of the profits to knock the debt down while you make a living out of the business, okay? Yes. You see how I did that formula?

Yes, yes. I figured it would be something like this, because I was worried that if I pay all my money towards the debt, you can't. Your business has to have operating income. Correct, yes, yes. You've got to have more more than just budgeted because you're in a especially in a mechanical world like you're in where you've got equipment because stuff just blows up you know correct and and then you you know you'll lose a contract if

you don't get the load delivered and so on so you've got to perform in business and you and to do that you have to keep a cash position and so the good news is i started doing that we started this business that ran called ramsey it's about a 300 million dollar business now on a card table in my living room 30 years ago um somewhere along the line my wife got tired of us whining about not having any cash in the business because we were broke you know we weren't making much money in the early days and she said the reason you don't have any cash in the business is you all are hypocrites. You tell people to have an emergency fund and you don't have any cash saved in the business for emergencies. Oh, Sharon Byrne.

Yeah, I got trashed. So I hate it when she says stuff like that. And I really hate it when she's right. Which is a lot of the time. So we called our retained earnings the Sharon Fund for a long time. It was nicknamed the Sharon Fund. Today, saving a percentage of, and we've never had any debt, but we always save a percentage every single month of our profits

before we pay out bonuses or anything else to me or anybody else. We put a percentage into the sharing fund, into retained earnings. Consequently, all these years later, that's a big old fund now. It adds up. A lot of money. Especially when you don't need to use it. Yeah. And we haven't hardly used it.

I mean, we've used it to buy some things for the business, and we've used it to, you know, cover a few cash flow things here and there. But by and large, it's just built up. That's part of a healthy company. It's a great cash position is what it is. So that's how we did it, brother. And you're a good man. I'm glad you're thinking like that as a new dad.

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. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, George Camel, number one best-selling author of the book, I can't get it out. I tried to say Paycheck to Purpose, and that's Coleman's book. You got so many children, Dave. It's a stake through the heart. It's a stake through the heart. So it's something about being broke, isn't it?

Breaking free from broke. Thank you. I knew it was that. I'll try to help you at the Paycheck and Purpose side, but our friend Ken Coleman is the expert on that. Yeah, there we go. Anyway, George is also the... You got so many books around here, Dave.

He's the co-host of Smart Money Happy Hour with Rachel Cruz, one of our big hits on the Ramsey Networks, on YouTube, and on podcasts. So he's here to help me answer your questions at 888-825-5225. Just here to help. And it's a good thing because apparently... Okay, anyway, Nate is in Richmond. Hi, Nate, how are you? I'm doing good, man.

Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? So, yeah, I'm in a bit of a position. I feel kind of stuck right now. So I'm 26 years old, Dave. I graduated from a pretty expensive school in 2020, uh, right in the height of COVID. So, and I was actually supposed to get an internship from that, from that school that was actually taken away from me because they changed management and cut the program. So it hasn't been the most stable financial runway for me for a while. At the current time that I'm in right now, for the last couple years,

I've been really struggling with finding a job with my degree. I was a double major. I worked hard when I was in college. I got a marketing degree and a management degree. However, I didn't get a whole lot of real practical experience, unfortunately. That's what I was hoping the internship would provide for me. And most of my, I have like almost $100,000

in student loan debt. And I've been trying to pay them back. I just finished baby step one. So I've been trying to pay him back. I just finished baby step one. So I'm trying to do what I can. However, trying to be frugal, as frugal as possible is not really, you know, it's going to be quite some time before I'm able to actually be able to be debt free. And I didn't know what the best solution would be. My expenses, I try to lower as many of them as I can, but at the time, I wish I could save more and pay these off quicker, but I'm just in a position where a lot of my coworkers,

which I don't really need the degree that I have to be in the job that I'm in, so a lot of my coworkers are saving $500, $600, or just have that much money to play with. And then next month, my loans actually increase. My coworker has hair and I don't, but it really doesn't affect me. Okay. What your coworker does, who gives a crap? If I compared myself to Dave, I'd be really screwed.

Who gives a crap about your coworkers? Nobody. What do you make? I make about just under $40,000 a year right now. What are you doing? So I'm a leasing consultant for a property management company right now. Okay. Because I know real estate is like, that's definitely one of the things I want to get into,

but my credit was crap and I had to fix that. Why not find an entry-level marketing job making $40,000 or $45,000 or $50,000? Or an entry-level marketing job making $40 or $45 or $50? Or an entry-level marketing job making $50 or $60? Well, I made the most that I ever made was probably a little bit over $45, and that was when I was selling cars. But I did not like that position, really. But why aren't you pursuing marketing jobs? I have, but a lot of them want experience with digital marketing and stuff like that.

That's why you go entry level. When I started here at Ramsey, I was entry level. You were an intern. I was an intern. Yeah. And then I got a temp job, and that turned into a full-time job. I feel like you haven't applied yourself enough to actually find that entry-level marketing job, and I don't know why that is.

Over four years, it feels like you've just chased whatever would provide money ASAP, and it's been something i don't know why that is over four years it feels like you've just chased whatever would provide money asap and it's been something you don't really enjoy doing yeah i mean that's the truth here nothing you've described what follows the career path that you're that you studied for yeah you didn't study to be a car salesman and you studied to lease apartments. That's true. Okay. That's true. So marketing is a faster path to income and it's what you studied for. Assuming you get into it, enjoy it, and want to pursue that, it's a wonderful degree field. I mean, you know, it should open up.

It's a broad enough category. It ought to open up a whole lot of things for you. But I think what you've discovered, just listening to the language that you're using, is that this thing called success is harder than you thought it was going to be. Yeah. Yeah. than you thought it was going to be yeah yeah i mean it's it's it's uh out here in the real world you get bruised and beat and especially when you follow a curriculum for a very long time and then you get into the real world and you're like okay what's next i mean it's been tough well you were

you were lied to when they told you that getting the degree was going to make it easy. Yeah. It doesn't make it easy. It just puts a tool in your belt. You just have a big old hammer, but, buddy, you've got to get calluses swinging the hammer at the nail. And that's the hard part. I mean, it is, you know, and so what I'm going to encourage you to do as the old guy in the room is to persevere and really lean into this and go, okay, I'm going to lay out a five-year game plan where I'm making $150,000 a year as a world-class marketer five years from now.

And that means I'm going to have to enter into a field that's going to take me there. I'm probably going to have to learn some digital skills. If you're going to do marketing in today's world, you have to be able to spell digital. I mean, when I, when I was doing this, when I started this company, the internet had not been invented, but I'm a good digital marketer now. And I'm 63 years old. I'm a Tyrannosaurus Rex. I have short arms, you know, I mean, come on. And so on and so it's um you know you've got to um you've got to be able to adapt and lean into what the trends are and today that means even you know you know what this old guy's learning i'm learning about things like called ai you know and you do

too man you're no different because i'll get my butt kicked out here in the marketplace if I don't learn the language and the vernacular and the nuance of the new ways of looking at things I didn't know what a conversion rate was uh I didn't know uh you know that that the uh yeah well anyway I'm not there's no reason to sit here and teach a digital marketing class but yeah thank you George well as a guy who's been but you know it's true i sit in these meetings i'm the dumbest guy in the room well even when i did but at least i'm at least as the ceo i'm at least going to learn enough of it to lead this place because if we don't lead ramsey into a digital world we're screwed yeah you know we can't operate on analog so you you know you're the same way nate your your career is digital man if you're going to sell

stuff guess where people buy it freaking internet man and you got to deal with the monsters called google and facebook and all of you know and all of their greed and misbehavior and you got to deal with them and you got to handle it and you got to work your way you know learn about roaz and you got to learn about whole new ways of doing things. And pull in other people. And so, yeah, get out there, man. Don't just kick back and rent apartments and whine about not getting out of debt and feel like I'm stuck. You know, roll up your dadgum sleeves and get after it here.

I'm going to send you a copy of my book, Breaking Free from Broke Nate. I walk through exactly what you just laid out. You fell for the trap. You fell for the lies. What now? And that book's going to help you do just that. But the key here is margin. You got to spend less and make more. You've done a lot to spend less. It's time to make more. That's the next step. Yeah. You're not making any money and it's killing you. And you're hanging out with people

that aren't making any money and feel like they're winning. That's hilarious. This is The Ramsey Show. You've worked, saved, sacrificed, and been gazelle intense with your financial game plan. This is the Ramsey Show. 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. They work for you, not the insurance company. So they find you the right health insurance, and they save you money. Ramsey has recommended Health Trust Financial for two decades because they're the experts. And whether you're 19 years old or 90, you can trust them to do two very important things.

Listen to you, then find you health insurance coverage with everything you need and nothing you don't. Health Trust Financial is your one-stop shop for unbiased advice about affordable health insurance options. They could save you hundreds of dollars a month, so make sure you're not overpaying. Go to healthtrustfinancial.com today. healthtrustfinancial.com. George Campbell, Ramsey Personality, is my co-host today. Thanks for hanging out with us, America. We're so glad you're here. Open phones at 888-825-5225 if you haven't heard the ramsey

bunch that's us we are going on the live like no one else cruise march the 22nd through the 23rd of next year 2025 29th it's not a one-day cruise what did i say 22nd and 23rd is what i heard oh i'm sorry i was like that'd be a real sad yeah we're just gonna go in one little circle and come back sunset cruise yeah it's a 22nd through the 29th is what i was trying to say you're right thank you george turks and caicos you can't get there in one night and saint thomas you can't get there in one night puerto rico and the bahamas other places well you can get to the Bahamas in one night. But anyway, they do that one occasionally, and I wouldn't recommend that one. But anyway, this one is Holland America. It's one of the high-end ships, and it's a fairly new ship,

and it's 100% Ramsey people going to be on there, nobody else. It's all Ramsey personalities. We're bringing some of our friends from the entertainment world, Dina Carter, who had a big hit called Strawberry Wine a while back, big star here in Nashville, and Stephen Curtis Chapman, good friend, and multi-Dove Award and Grammy Award winner is going to be with us, entertaining. We will all be doing sessions and events on the ship itself,

and these are incredible stops. Manit Chauhan, I was with Manit last night, as a matter of fact, at a dinner. And she's from Iron Chef and all the food channel. You know her from that. She's an incredible restaurateur. Probably might be doing a little cooking lesson on there. I will be at that event.

So going to be some really cool, fun, and funny people. Yeah. A lot of Nashville Sunriders. There's everything. And all the Ramsey personalities all week, including me, all week sharon and i will be on the ship the entire week so we're gonna be hanging out with you guys don't come unless you're baby step four and beyond if you're still saving your emergency fund you don't go on a cruise if you're in debt i'm working on baby step two you don't go on a cruise including ours so't, this is the live like no one else. So if you live like no one else later, you can live like no one else and give

like no one else. So this is for people that want to have that milestone. It's our chance to celebrate with you, celebrate you for being a hero and getting this far. Uh, and, uh, you know, we tried to do this back in 2020 and there was a little problem back that year. If you don't remember that kept people from cruising and so didn't get to do it. Everybody got their money back and now we get to restart and, uh, it's almost sold out. There are still some seats left, some tickets left, but are some suites and rooms and all that.

But you, but you better really get over to Ramsey solutions.com slash cruise. It's going to be really fun. Uh, we're jacked about doing it. We've never done one of these. So, well, actually, I did a tiny little one like 30 years ago. Oh, wow, as an event. It was called the Money Game Cruise, and 34 people went. Wow.

Yeah. And look at you now. Look at that. It's going to be sold out? It took 25 years to talk me into trying it again, and then I got COVIDed. So now we're doing it again, and by God, we're doing it. So there you go. And it's going to be fun.

It's going to be a blast. So RamseySolutions.com, SlashCruise, get your rooms while you still can. Jennifer's in Nashville. Jennifer, how are you? Good, thanks. Thanks for having me on. Hi, guys. So I am looking for advice on how to approach planning a budget like retirement.

My husband and I are on very different pages about where we are financially, and I need to be able to communicate to him that we are closer than he thinks. Okay. What is your nest egg size? Broken up? No, just total. So we have, oh gosh. All your investments that you're going to live off of at retirement.

That's the discussion, right? Sure. We have a SEP worth about $1.5 million. We have another employer-supported retirement fund of maybe $100,000. We have a million in cash. We have zero debt. Why do you have a million in cash? I don't know.

I don't either. Because we don't know what to do with it. Well,'t either. Because we don't know what to do with it. Well, you invest it. We don't know what to do with it. You invest it. We do have another account with $100,000 that we're investing on our own. All right. So if you take $2.5 million, he's afraid you can't live off of that.

How old are you people? We're in our early 50s. Okay. And so the discussion is, do we have enough to live on? And he's the saver, or you're the saver? Well, we're obviously both savers. I mean, we graduated. Well, you both have done it.

Yeah, but I mean, who's the natural? Who gets a high from saving? Probably me. Okay. But he thinks that he just doesn't think that we are, I mean, you know, I feel like we have enough money to go with. What's your household income? $450,000.

Okay. Well, two and a half won't create $450,000. I understand that for sure. What do you actually want to live on? What expenses will you have per year, do you think, in retirement? Just, you know, routine monthly expenses, a couple of vacations a year. Could you live off of, you know routine monthly expenses a couple of vacations a year could you live off of say 10 grand a month do you need 15 grand a month easily okay well now you're more in line with the numbers you gave your house paid off oh yeah it has been paid off

what's it worth uh one and a half good for you well. Y'all have done so good. Over $4 million net worth. Okay, so here's some simple. Well, I'll tell you what. We started at age 30 with $150,000 in student loans and no money. Good for you. So we've worked really hard. Yeah, and you've been making good money, too. That helps.

And you've been wise with it. And so you ended up here with a $5 million plus net worth. All right, let's just do some back of napkins simple primitive math nothing complicated okay i have made tens of millions of dollars tied up in mutual funds okay in decent growth stock mutual funds the s&p 500 which is the baseline of what the stock market it, has averaged for the past 80 years 11.2%. Okay?

My personal mutual funds, and you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure this out, have done a little over 12. I beat the market a little bit, not much, by picking mutual funds that have a long track record of outperforming the S&P. Okay? So you can use some numbers somewhere around there if you wanted to use them. So if you took the million that's sitting in cash stupidly and you put it in that, and your other money was in that, so let's say we take 2.5 and it it's making 10 11 12 somewhere in there okay okay

yep uh round numbers two and a half 10 250 000 20 000 bucks a month uh that's more than that live off okay for sure well i mean and but now and you're not touching the principle doing that you're just living off of it but also that what it will purchase is going down because inflation is eating away at the value of it okay so so that's not a great long-term plan but i'm just giving you round numbers okay so in other words if you pulled 200 000 off and it was making 250 and you're leaving 50 in there every year you're probably covering inflation i would hope so yeah i'm just doing back i'm just doing back a napkin math all right if you want to get a little bit more technical you say okay i've got mine invested at 12 if i pull off eight percent of my investments and i'm making 12 that means i'm

raising my principal balance by four every year, right? Right. That would be what inflation has averaged, 4.2% for the past 78 years. Okay. Okay, so if you make 12 and pull off eight, this is not exact, but it just gives you a comfort level that we can make it on $250,000 a year. This money is making $250,000, $300,000 a year. We're going to pull off $150,000 or $180,000 or $180,000 is $15,000 a month.

And that doesn't count everything else. And that's anywhere from like a 6% to 8% withdrawal rate. And that math is perpetual motion. It does not ever destroy because we've never dipped into the principle. The goose just keeps laying the eggs. Yeah, the goose keeps laying the eggs. Instead of keeping it, it's doing nothing for us. Yeah, you just walk that out.

Now, what you need to do, though, is you need to sit down with a SmartVestor Pro, go online at Ramsey Solutions, and find a SmartVestor Pro in your area that has the heart of a teacher and walk you through these basic things and get that million dollars invested and make sure that one and a half that's in the returnments in good mutual funds doing that kind of returns and if it is y'all are just fine you're gonna be fine and you've done a great job you're master savers you know you've become from 150,000 in debt at 30 years old to now in your 50s 25 years years later, you're worth $5 million. And you should be. Way to go.

Congratulations. George Campbell Ramsey personality is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us. It is a free call at 888-825-5225. In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage. Mike and Nicole are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? We're doing great, Dave. Thanks for having us.

We're honored to have you. Where do you live? Columbus, Ohio. Go Bucks. I love it. Love it. Welcome to Nashville. How much debt have you paid off?

$107,000. Cool. How long did that take? About four years. Good for you. And your range of income during that time? I went from 53 to 58 in the first three years and then combined 115 towards the end. Okay, cool.

What do y'all do for a living? I am a installation manager for a HVAC controls company. I'm a part-time music teacher. Love it. Very good. Good for y'all. What kind of debt was the 107? 93 of it was student loan, a little bit of a Discover card, and a small medical bill. Ah, okay. How long y'all what kind of debt was the 107 uh 93 of it was student loan a little bit of a discover card

and a small medical bill ah okay how long y'all been married uh 15 years 15 years okay so after 11 years of marriage what was the i've had it moment what changed everything uh it was about a little bit after christmas uh 2019 we like, let's look at our finances. And we pulled up all of our student loan statements and started looking at it. And the numbers just weren't making any sense to us. We started to tally it up and realized we were $33,000 more than when we started. Interest had accrued out of hand. You were just making minimum payments, and so the interest had ballooned? Yeah, we were on an income-based repayment plan. out of hand and you were just making minimum payments and so the interest had ballooned yeah

we were on a income-based repayment plan and i think some of our loans had variable rates and we didn't really know what was going on so you were peddling backwards 100 throwing money away you're like paying 100 bucks but the interest is 500 and so it's just compounding every day and then we looked at it all and we were just in total shock totally yeah I was just ill when I was like how could this happen like how did really like how did we let it happen um and I spent that week after Christmas uh just prayerfully considering like what to do about this because uh I knew we had to do something like the financial trajectory wasn't looking good for us so um my friend Amanda actually had the total money Makeover on her shelf

and I remember she had read it and she had really loved it. And I was like, I don't know, Amanda read this book. So I, knowing I was broke, went to the library, got the book off the shelf and read it in a day and came to Mike and I was like, oh man, we really, we could have considered doing this. And honestly, it's, the burden's kind of on us

to consider the consequences or the implications if we don't do this uh so january 2020 we got to it uh we decided let's do it let's see what we can do in that month we put an extra thousand dollars uh towards our student loans and then we went to ikea and celebrated because the cappuccinos were free. And that was really the first time we were like, oh my God. We're doing it. Yeah. This is wild. This is working. This is insane. Okay. Let's keep going. And you know, we told our friends what we were doing and man, like we were broke, but we're real relationally wealthy. We had a bunch of people in our corner and rooting for

us and cheering for us. And we knew we wanted to document this event, I guess is what you would call it, like that this was going to be something really monumental in our lives. So we actually started an Instagram account, mostly for an artifact to like document our journey, but it ended up being this like really great support system and accountability system. Like if you tell the whole internet you're doing this, you know, you're going to keep at it. And we actually, what was so fun

in the Instagram journey was that we found this one couple who was also paying off a ton of student loans and they started this hashtag called villainize your debt. And so they named all of their student loans

after Disney villains, which was like such a creative. I love it. Yeah, and you know, they would like track it. Jafar, you are going down. I love it. Yeah, so we did the same thing. Our favorite show.

Yeah, exactly. I love it. Our favorite show is The Office. So we named all our student loans after office characters that you just love to hate. That is so great. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. I imagine Toby had to be the biggest one.

Oh, totally. Totally. Yeah. Toby was the big one, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so right after COVID hit, I mean, they paused the interest rates and were like, this is awesome.

We can start making like real principal payments. And we just really went to town and hammered at it. We went through our budget and just looked at every, uh, every bit of money that was going out. Like how can we shave and cut the fat and really like make everything we can towards these debts and take care of it. And we really went at it hard. I mean, we cut down streaming services and lowered our phone bills and ate off of like $60 a week for a little bit until I got a little too hungry. But yeah. Wow. Well, I love that you guys, number one, you made it fun and it made it more of an exciting journey versus this. Oh my gosh. And number two, you had built in accountability because everyone on Instagram now is like, Hey, are they actually doing this?

Are they paying off some debt this month? Totally. Oh yeah. Yeah. So that was our defense. And I really went to work on offense, just generating an extra income. My friend Mary managed a local Airbnb and they needed a house cleaner and she called me up and she's like, Hey, do you want this gig? You know, you just work on the weekends for a few hours. It paid really well. And I'm like a hundred percent. So I actually just took that job and I put in my earbuds and scrub some toilets and clean do laundry and scrub the kitchens and make money and listen to the Ramsey show and all the debt-free screams to keep motivated and we did gig apps uh like I view it and field agent to bring in money we flipped furniture um kid items household items I had a friend send me this meme that was so great where

it's like well you were uh debating if the glass was half full or half empty, I sold it. And I just felt like that was such a good description of what was happening in our house. Should we just talk about it or should we just do something? Totally. Totally. Our kids were in on it. I would pull over to the side of a curb. I'd be like, I bet I could flip those chairs, you know, for 40 bucks or whatever. And, uh, Or oldest would be like, are you selling that for your student loans? We're like, yeah. You know it, buddy. Oh yeah. So we we actually we did a ton of market research um and actually this december one month before we were done we did some market research for bud light and so we had like 48 bottles of bud light in our house and i'm like what are we going to do with all of this i love that you were like kids it's for science yeah totally yeah totally it's for the cause we i was like well

we need teacher gifts so we actually put little bows on these bud light bottles and gifted them to our kids teachers like there's a story behind this yeah with a little note like explaining what we were up to and you know and how much we were grateful for them and such. Creative, resourceful, what's not to love here? You guys are inspiring. And the kids saw the whole thing. Totally. Some teachers get an apple, yours gets a Bud Light. That's right, yep. And then, yeah, over the last year, I got a new job.

She encouraged me to find something else, which ended up really working out great. And we just kept living simply and didn't really change anything, just had more income coming in and hammered hard at those student loans and we were really uh able to see those numbers going down fast when the terror hit your belly that day and you went this is not good yeah and your hands are shaking a little bit you're making 53 000 and now fast forward little bit, you're making $53,000. And now fast forward four years later, you're making $115,000 with all this hustle and these moves and a permanent change in the way of thinking about it.

And you've completely cleared off $107,000 worth of debt. Y'all are amazing. You're heroes. Thanks, David. Thank you. So really, if I was to ask what your why is it's got to be your beautiful kids uh is our reason for doing this but it really was because i don't want this feeling in my stomach anymore totally totally yeah i mean i think a big a definite big why for us is we really want to be generous givers and it's tough to do when you're indebted like that so getting done with

this is just so exciting because we're able to like, we can give freely to other people who also need help. That was like one of the big goals when we started this thing. We were really looking forward to that day. And so here we are. Yeah.

Really excited about that. What's the first fun thing you do now that you're out of there? Next month, we are going to Banff National Park in Canada. Nice. Beautiful. That's a good one. That one's on the books andff National Park in Canada. Nice. Beautiful. That's a good one. That one's on the books, and we're ready for it.

Yeah. And I've earned every penny of it. Well done. That's a great one. I like it. See, this is what happens, people, when you work on it. Bring the kiddos up. Let's hear their names and ages right quick.

This is Hank. He'll be 11 in August. Nora's 8, and Tommy will be 5 next month. Love it Hank. He'll be 11 in August. Nora's 8. And Tommy will be 5 next month. Love it. Love it. Great looking family. $107,000 paid off in four years, making $53,000 to $115,000.

A bunch of heroes. Look at them right there. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free! Yeah! You want to know how you get out of debt?

You put the earbuds in, you listen to The Ramsey Show, and you clean toilets. That's how you get out of debt. This is The Ramsey Show. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, George Coleman. Now that's a name. George Camel, whatever your name is, is my co-host today, Ramsey personality. So I'm on a trip. We took a little cruise from London to Iceland.

And while I'm on the cruise ship, I get this email. And it's like George saying, would you watch this video clip because i have uh created more hate than is possible since pony gate i mean that's right after after horse gate or pony gate uh because george told some woman to sell her horse one time and like all the horse people came after him you don't mess with the equestrian yeah they really the equestrian community they get really pissed so george said sell the horse like came after him. You don't mess with the equestrian community. Yeah, they really, the equestrian community, they get really pissed. So George said sell the horse like it was nothing. And then now he's pissed off, I don't know, like the entire Internet or something.

George? I think I committed elder abuse somehow over the air. George, I just can't leave you in charge of nothing. So here's what happened. I can't believe it. Let's recap. Jade Warshaw and I took a call. Oh, it's Jade's fault can't believe it let's recap i took jade warshaw and i took a call it's jade's fault an 86 year old woman called in and she was in a bad situation she was making

about 1200 bucks from social security but her expenses are 1500 and she's been using her credit card to cover the gap so now she's in 30k of credit card debt she has a paid for home and a you know car an old buick or something that was worth probably nothing a few grand she's asking us for help what does she do so we were trying to lay out some suggestions for her of you know maybe downsizing in home to pay off the credit card debt maybe she said she was working up until she was 80 and i said could you do something part-time to cover the gap george told an 86-year-old woman to get a job. When you say it that way, it hits differently.

No wonder you got hate. Exactly. So I want a Dave's take on the clip. The team edited this down to about two minutes of our advice. I want to get Dave's take. All right, let's watch your edited version here. Are you at the point where you can move in with your daughter? I could, but I'm not too sure about that.

You know, personalities. Well, the problem is, let's say if I snap my fingers and got you out of credit card debt, you're going to be back in $30,000 of credit card debt because you're using the credit cards to float your life and expenses. Your options are you either reach out to your daughter and you say, Hey, you told me that this lifeline is here. And the truth is, I need $200 every month in order to be able to live and not spend any more on this credit card. That $200 will help me make my minimum payments and not go over.

And then because the other option is we might have to look at this house, which doesn't really make sense because of the cost of living today. Like, there's not really an option. I know. Could you downgrade in-house? You know, if you sold it for $250, could you go buy a place for $200? I could, but I'm 86 years old. I mean. I know, but we also didn't set ourselves up for a bright future in retirement.

Gotcha. So this is part of it, is we've got to deal with the ramifications. I was a single mother since I was 19 years old with no child support, and I worked until I was almost 80. Is there something you could do to make a little bit of extra money right now? I think we might need to find a little part-time job to clean up this debt and increase our income. If you're able-bodied.

It's not fun, but this might be your only option other than selling the house and downgrading to an apartment that you pay cash for, which allows you to clean up the credit card debt, lowering your monthly expenses. Right. Well, I have leukemia. I've had it for 21 years. I really don't have a high energy level. And I have a dog. And then he told her to sell the dog and sell the horse and sell the house.

Actually, Jay did offer that up. Maybe we need to rehome the dog. Because it was costing her $200 a month for the dog expenses. And so, okay. Let's get Papa Dave's take. It's a lot of fun to make fun of y'all but um but truthfully here's the situation okay um i mean the poor lady what a mess now did i get the numbers right that she's paying she's 1200 months coming in but she needs 1500 including paying her credit card payments i believe that included her minimum payment on the credit i think it did okay i think when i

watched the whole clip back i think i saw that so so basically what she's doing is she's borrowing money on a credit card to pay the credit card mathematically because if she just didn't pay the credit card she could barely eek by correct like if she just ignored the credit card, she could barely eek by. Correct? Like if she just ignored the credit card. Sounds like it. At least she'd have less of a gap to cover. Okay. Yeah. So you told her to get a job.

She said she was working up until 80. She's 86. She said she was able-bodied with a car and can drive. You activated the entire troll network of Reddit. I think Dave might be working at 86 doing something. It's hilarious. I will be, but I don't have to be. But yeah, so here's the thing.

Okay. The problem is, is that she's stuck and y'all are fishing around trying to figure out, and I would have been too, trying to figure out how to help her. I mean, because there's no good answer in her story. There's no like magic bullet. We don There's no, like, magic bullet. We don't sell magic wands here, people. We have to deal with the math. We have to deal with your reality.

And facts are your friends, not feelings. And so I don't know about getting an extra job. That one's kind of funny. Well, that was before she told me about her health problems, to be fair. I don't care. She's 86. But so, yeah, sell the house is one option that's a good option and pay off the credit card debt um two is don't pay the credit cards anymore you're 86 just don't pay them

what are they gonna do sue you what are they gonna do take a lien on the house they're gonna sell a house for credit card debt no so you just default on the stupid things is probably what i would do uh and uh or sell the house move down in house and pay them off one of the two but yeah you know i can't live with my daughter i have a dog i can't afford i have this i can't afford i have that i can afford. But I won't do anything about any of those. She was really not giving you all. You know, you're trying to help her, and she really wasn't giving you. She's not willing to do anything.

No, I can't live with my daughter. We have personality issues. No, I can't. And I don't want to sell my dog. I love my dog. And I don't want her to sell her dog. But I also don't want you to not be able to eat. So prioritizing your budget when you're in that kind of situation

to say first thing we do is eat foods first lights and water second uh house payment or house property taxes insurance anything associated with shelters third transportation if there is any fourth uh clothing you shouldn't need many clothes in a situation. And then you pay other bills. If you're out of money after you eat and pay your lights and water, you just don't pay the other bill. Don't pay the creditors. Until you figure out something to do to pay them. And that could be selling the house.

It could be the kids chip in and start working with a credit card company. It could be you just let the cards go into the default. And now I'll be the cold one and let everybody pile on me too because that's what happens around here. But if you're 86 and you're a leukemia-recovering patient, statistically, you know, four years would be a long time to live. And by then, they're not going to get around to doing anything if you just quit paying them but cut up the credit cards and stop using them because continuing to use them

with a plan to not pay them and die in debt is uh going to uh would be stealing so you can't you can't do that with integrity but you could just stop paying them they shouldn't have loaned an 86 year old broke person money so that's what they get uh you could just default on it um and you know she dies with it when she dies with it the house will be sold and the credit cards will get paid before any money is distributed to her kid who she has personality issues with after being a single now another option which we do forgot to mention on air is having a housemate someone who lives there maybe a young college student who gives her 500 bucks for rent i would be great that could solve some of these problems at least for her expenses on that later though that was that yeah we didn't we couldn't get to everything that's a better that's better than the extra job i do i agree i agree in the moment

you know i just say man i've done 30 000 hours of talk radio helping people i mean 30 years of doing this more than 30 000 hours i'm sorry tens of hundreds of thousands of hours for 30 years i've done this show five days a week three hours a day so the number of times i gave out advice that some of you didn't like is like every day Some of you don't like the advice. So what you're going to find with the Ramsey bunch, George, Jade included, is that we're here trying while you're sitting at home bitching. So we're trying to help. And you just over there on the internet got an opinion.

So good luck with your opinion because we're going to keep trying over here. Do we get it right every time? Exactly, no. Good luck with your opinion because we're going to keep trying over here. Do we get it right every time? Exactly? No. But we can laugh about it and go on and chill your butt out and go do something with your life, people. I heard you in my head saying, you know, my grandma used to say it was a great place to go when you're broke to work. But I wasn't talking about grandma. I heard grandma, broke, work.

I put three and three together. That's where it came from. This is so bad. 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 the phone number is 888-825-5225 george camel ramsey personality author of the number one bestseller breaking free from broke and co-host of the smart money happy hour big hit on ramsey networks he's my co-host today open phones at 888-825-5225 thank you for

joining us dylan is with us in New York City. Hi, Dylan. Welcome to The Ramsey Show. Hey, Dave. Hey, George. Thanks for having me. Sure, man. What's up?

So my question is, is the American dream still possible in your opinion? Because I've seen a lot of things and headlines recently that have made me really scared as someone who's 18 years old, seeing things about how like $100,000 a year just doesn't cut it anymore to get by, and I'm just kind of scared for my future, so I wanted your input. Okay. I think if you go back and had some fun and went back and read headlines at any time in the last 150 years, you could find headlines that say that the world is coming to an end and that the dreams are dead. My friend Zig Ziglar used to say, he said,

every morning I read the Bible and I read the newspaper so I can tell what both sides are doing. So whatever you look for, you will find. And so this part of it is there's a mindset issue I can tell already here. But let's lay out your your financial situation as to why at 18 you're already feeling this cynical. finished that up. Um, and I accumulated $16,000 in student loans. Um, they're all federal, but, um, I'm obviously, I wasn't happy about that. And I started listening to Dave's and, uh, kind of realized that was a poor decision. So I came back home and I'm going to be going to a community college and then transferring to, um, an in-state university to cut down that cost and not go into more student debt. Good for you. What are you studying? What are you studying?

Finance. Good for you. Okay. And so what makes you believe that if you get a degree in finance that you can't prosper in America today other than headlines? Well, I don't know if one of my issues, too, is where I live. I live on Long Island, and, like, a good house around me would be about, like, $600,000. And, you know, I'd want to follow your rules, paying 20% so I don't have to pay for the private mortgage insurance and stuff.

Yeah, and again, at no time in history has an 18-year-old bought a good house. In Long Island. That's fair. You know, I mean, unless they hit the lottery or something i mean so it takes a little while to get out there get your career moving get your income moving and you know maybe when you're 30 you buy something on long island because long island's wonderful but it's one of the most expensive real estate markets in the world i mean manhattan long island um silicon valley orange county i mean there's you know you

can go into some of the major cities tokyo london uh and and you know normal people uh making normal incomes can't afford to buy a home in those markets never have been able to by the way that's not new when i was your age you 18-year-old making a normal income couldn't even think about living in Manhattan or Long Island. It's called an ultra-high cost of living area, which means you need an ultra-high income. But that does not translate to the American dream is dead. The dream of an 18-year-old owning a $600,000 home on Long Island is dead, but of an 18 year old owning a six hundred thousand dollar home on long island

is dead but that dream was never alive all right that's a fair point okay so what is your definition here what are you actually looking to achieve um i think my goal really is to just um you know kind of everything you guys say be able to i, now I just have a little bit of debt, but get out of that debt, stay out of any future debt, buy a home, you know, just finish my good career. So everything you just laid out for us is very much possible. Can you get out of $16,000 of debt? Yes. Can you stay out? Yes.

Can you build an emergency fund fund making a normal salary and working in something related to finance yes now the house is going to take longer to save up for depending on where you're going but it always has taken a long time to save up for right okay so maybe i'm being a little too a little too ambitious i don't know i don't know why an 18 year old's glued to the headlines anyways i'm not saying you're. I'm not saying you're too ambitious. I'm just saying don't base an overarching statement of the American dream is dead or you can't, meaning you can't prosper, you can't win, based on you can't afford to do something today. Those are two different things.

That's all we're saying. And so, yeah, you can get there, but the way you win this stuff is one step at a time one step at a time one step at a time it's not very few people leap into success most people do it by degrees and by you know of course correction and a little bit of time and this and move and keep scratching keep clawing and um you know you work your butt off for 20 years and you look up you're an overnight success you know that kind of thing and that's um that that's what you're facing is there's an incremental process in this journey that um and you know we're i was talking to somebody about this this morning it was deloney actually we're talking about uh and with one of our producers as well that um since the

advent it was at 2003 the smartphone came out if i remember right apple did the smartphone 2003 so it's original one 20 years that we've all been living yeah with uh increasingly with a magic wand in our hand we can access the entire breadth of the world's knowledge, give or take idiots on the internet. You can access and purchase, push a button, things show up on your front porch. You can book a tea time. You can book a restaurant. You can book a Uber. You can, all with this magic wand in your hand. You can send a text to a friend anywhere in the world, and they'll get it instantly. You can send a text to a friend anywhere in the world and they'll get it instantly you can send an email to a friend anywhere in the world and they'll get it semi instantly um never in the history of mankind have we been able to do things so efficiently and so

quickly and what it's done to all of us including me at 63 not just dylan at 18 is it that has spoiled us and we have no patience i have absolutely no patience my my reasonable you know there was a day i could actually stand in line for something i i refuse to stand in line for anything and i think it's because of this stupid smartphone i think it's atrophied our delayed gratification exactly i am unwilling to wait for anything and dylan i think you got a little bit of that infection too and so does george and so does everybody listening to this we're less willing to wait for anything than probably in the history of mankind because we don't have to we've got a magic wand in our freaking hand it's magic it just touch it and stuff happens man and dylan i'm gonna send you a copy of my book breaking free from broke i wrote it for that exact reason to

show people it's still possible and most people they overestimate what they can do in a year they underestimate what they can do in a decade go that was me from 23 to 33 i was broke to millionaire i thought it wasn't possible and i followed a proven plan that's the quote dylan you're gonna be fine you're gonna be very prosperous You're the right kind of guy. You're thinking and you're asking the right questions. Turn off the news. It's never caused someone to be successful yet. This is the Ramsey Show. George Campbell Ramsey personality is my co-host today thanks for joining us open phones at 888-825-5225 George I had an additional thought because it comes up in my argument with Rachel

over housing right now that that is really that people are really struggling struggling to get a home because it's a real tough time to buy a house and gen z has to buy their first home has a really difficult market to do it in it's one of the toughest markets maybe in 40 or 50 years okay legitimately it's tough but they um but then it goes to where dylan was and and that translates with drama into people's minds and say oh well that's it this whole thing called america's over because i can't buy a house right now when i want to so by definition that means this thing's over because you know wages have not gone up as fast as house prices and so we're just screwed and that that just is the end of times jesus is coming back that's it we're going to be left behind do it i

mean that's all kirk cameron that's it and so uh so they what happens is is that i can't do it right now turns it inject a little drama into that fact and that translates to this whole thing is over it'll never happen yeah the american dream is dead home ownership is dead it's unrealistic and you boomers who bought your house for a box box basket of strawberries don't understand so the actual and that's all over you know stupid tic-tac and everywhere, right? The whining and the victimization of the Gen Z, right? If we don't laugh, we cry. So you got to make memes about it. The truth is, it is very tough.

And the truth is, for Dylan right now, he's looking at some very tough things. But the truth is, is that you can never, in your decision-making paradigm or your philosophy or theology of life take a snapshot a still framed snapshot of a moment in time and declare that to be true about life that's not true about life that's true about a moment in time because life is not a snapshot. Life is a film strip. So the next frame in the film strip, something has moved and changed. And then the next frame, something has moved and changed again. Thus we get a movie, right? Frame by frame, by frame, by frame, by frame. So if you took a snapshot, when I came out of college, so slightly older than Dylan, with a finance degree, as a baby boomer. I'm the last of the baby boomers. I was born in 1960,

and that's the last date of baby boomers. Everyone after that is another generation. That's the last date of boomers, okay? So I'm the youngest of the boomers i came out of college in 1982 interest rates for houses were 17 percent so you know hey six percent hold my beer. Okay? They were 17%. And so if I took that as a snapshot at 22 years old and said, I can't afford a house because guess what? Nobody could. If I took that as a snapshot at that moment in time

and extrapolated that because of drama as a new way of looking at america how wrong would i have been it's inaccurate it's inaccurate if you believe that then your actions will follow and you'll never right because it's over why would you're screwed but but you know what you can be sure of at 17 next year it's going to be higher or lower but it's unlikely to be 17 by the way by 1984 i was selling homes i was 24 years old with a real estate license i was selling homes in a 14 fixed rate market and people were buying them wow wrap your brain around that i can't even get my brain around that today and i i did it i was there but i can't get my brain around but if you took a snapshot of that that's the year by the way that

adjustable rate mortgages were invented wow when we were at 14 fixed we came up with i i the very first time i was 24 years old i heard of an adjustable rate an arm mortgage and we could sell them for 12%, 2% less than fixed rate. And people ran towards it. And they were running towards anything to get the stinking sky-high rates down. And then before we knew it, we were back down at 10, and then I said, we'll never go below 10, and, of course, we sure did.

We went to 9, and then we'll never go below 9. We'll never see. And then we're at 6, and we stayed at six forever. And then 2008 happened, and they jammed the rate down to try to recover the economy down into the threes, and it stayed down in the threes. So all of that to say there's a little history lesson, boys and girls, of interest rates. But interest rates affect house affordability, home affordability, because a lot of people borrow to buy a home. Not everybody does, but a lot of people borrow to buy a home. Not everybody does, but a lot of people do. And so you cannot take a snapshot in time and say,

this is your whole life. This is your life today. What about 1988 when I filed bankruptcy and I had a brand new baby, a toddler, and a marriage hanging on by a thread? What if I take a snapshot of that and say, this is my entire life? And you extrapolate that as if it is the future as if it's your identity your current crisis into the future and you say this is all there is that's not glass half full that's inaccurate critical thinking skills

they're improper critical thinking skills because it's not how things work it's not a snapshot boys and girls it's a film strip and so yes it's very tough right now for a Gen Z to buy a house. I completely understand that. Is this a permanent problem? Absolutely not. 100% sure it's not. How is it going to be solved? Well, heck, I don't know.

I didn't know how they were going to solve 17%. I didn't know. I had no idea george would be driving an electric car what do i know didn't know those existed when i was 18 i i thought that was a you know a battery with wheels that catches fire but you still drive it and so you know i mean it's there's you know see what i saying? It's just that this is, and I think that's worth talking about, y'all. I think it's a big deal because hope deferred makes the heart sick. That's Proverbs.

Hope deferred, hopelessness, hope deferred makes the heart sick. And when the heart is sick, you were saying exactly right about it affects your decisions, it affects your behaviors. So you don't engage in things that are going to cause you to win because your heart is sick and hopeless. Well, it's cynicism at the end of the day. That's what this generation is facing. And that just means it's negativity wrapped in fear.

So I'm going to be negative and I'm scared. It's never going to be any different. And therefore I'm going to tweet about it and make fun of it because it's the only way I know how to cope with it. And I think we also meet people who are 18 who are rock stars who go, yeah, it's hard, but you know what? I'm going to get the second job for now and I'm going to get out of debt. I'm going to stay out of debt. It just points back to the Ramsey plan. If you really believe that there's no hope, then stay out of debt and get out of debt is your best bet to get to where you want to be. It works in down times and it works in up times.

It's the only plan that works in both. And so that's the thing. And it's distressing because I want to, and I'm going to be as best I can, empathetic, not sympathetic, but empathetic to people's, you know, if you're 26 and you're distressed because you can't buy a house right now, I get it. That's what empathy is.

That means I get it. I see you, okay? You're seen. I am not going to let you engage in my presence with improper critical thinking skills, inaccurate critical thinking skills, and that is to extrapolate with drama your current stuckness into the future. You are not stuck forever. You're stuck today.

Some of you can't do it. But, well, you know, I was on a stinking TV show doing an interview, and the guy's like, well, the median household income in America is $80,000, and the median house price is $426,000 or whatever it is, $400-something thousand. And that means that a median house price, a median income can't buy a median house. And I'm like, yeah, but real people don't live in medians most of them anyway it's just a stat yeah because i mean well median includes median is the middle it's not an average it's the middle number and so that includes silicon valley in that number it includes and most people

aren't dealing with silicon valley it includes orange county and most people aren't dealing with orange county and certainly with a median household income you're't dealing with Silicon Valley. It includes Orange County. And most people aren't dealing with Orange County. And certainly with a median household income, you're not dealing with Silicon Valley. Just like we were telling Dylan. So it's just an inaccurate way to analyze the situation because it's not proper. And then it steals people's hope. And when you start stealing people's hope, I will make fun of you because you piss me off. This is The Ramsey Show.

Thanks for joining us, America. George Campbell, Ramsey personality, is my co-host on the debt-free stage in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions. Tom and Cheryl are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? We're so good, thank you. Welcome. Where do you guys live? Colorado Springs, Colorado. Oh, wonderful town. Welcome to Nashville. Good to have you. And here

to do a debt-free scream, how much debt have you paid off? We've paid off $237,317.12. Wow. How long did this take? That took 156 months, 13 years. Okay, 13 years. And your range of income during that time? When we started, it was $90,000. And when we ended, it was $110,000. Excellent. What do you all do for a living? I'm assistant administrator. And I'm the director of short-term missions for a nonprofit organization. Very cool. Good for you.

Good for you. 13 years. $237,000. So I'm going to guess and say that was your house. No. No. No. What in the world?

What kind of debt was this? Stupid debt. We had a very high student loan. We had several credit cards, car loans, and a second mortgage. Wow. Wow. Well, what got you started 13 years ago? What was the I've had it moment, and why in the world did this take 13 years?

That's the other thing I want to know. Well, Christmas had snuck up on us and came out of nowhere, had no clue it was going to happen. And right around the time that that happened, we had a credit card payment that got messed up. And so we missed a payment. And that put us over our limit. And they were freaking out and wanted all this money. And we had no idea what to do. We were completely broke.

And we were just a breath away from having to file bankruptcy and our church started offering a dave ramsey class so we thought you know what let's do that what else do we have to lose so financial peace university yep correct all right 13 years ago. Wow. So like 2002. No, that's 20 years ago. 2010, 2011. 2011. Yeah, okay. Wow. All right, I can't do math.

That's bad. And all right, wow. So you went into the class. You're broke. What happened? It took us a while to get traction. That $1,000 took us quite a while to get traction it that thousand dollars took us quite a while we we did our budget and we went okay we have an income problem we know we have a spending problem

so what are we going to do so we plugged all of the holes where everything was leaking out and then we said we need more income because i work non-profit i'm you don't go into non-profit ministry unless you're called. And so we both got side gigs. I started cleaning houses. He did a computer business on the side. We even opened Etsy stores. And so we sold everything.

It was just, we knew we had to do both. We had to increase the income. We had to completely stop the spending. And that's what we did. And it was just month by month, where is every penny coming from? It's going to go completely to debt. And so we feel like, oh, my goodness, this took us forever. But we just kept after it every day, every day. Was there a time that you felt like you hit the wall, like you ran out of gas?

No. Thankfully, because we did it together. We said we were in this together, do or die, we are going to get rid of this debt. And there was never a time where we hit the wall together. Thankfully, there were times that I hit the wall and Tom was steady. There were times where Tom hit the wall and I was steady. There were times where we're like, we can't do this. It's never going to happen. And Tom would say, but look at how far we've come. Look at everything that we've paid off.

We can do this. And then I would think of this moment and I would say, we have to keep doing this because I am going to go and I'm going to scream. That's a strategy for a 13 year payoff. So what was the second mortgage for?

Well, because we thought this will eliminate our debt, and so let's get the second mortgage to pay off the credit cards. I know, right? Life hack. And then we ratcheted up the credit cards again. The second mortgage was gone. Like, I don't even know where the second mortgage went. So you didn't change any habits. You just thought, thought well let's use some debt to pay off other debt

and hopefully that solves it and it didn't it was you guys that had to solve it with that future income way to go yeah so at one point we couldn't even tell our kids no and so we used to tell them dave ramsey said no that's a strategy use dave as a customer somewhere eventually there's a child in therapy that's right eventually man used to run into our house and say no exactly eventually we got the power to say it ourself but early on we didn't have that ability so you were totally our scapegoat and it worked perfect that's okay i've been scapegoat for better worse things yeah well done you guys. I'm so proud of you.

Thank you. How does it feel after all this time? It feels so free. Like, nobody owns me anymore. Our money is our money. Like, that first cleaning job I did after we were debt-free, it hit different. I went, that is our money for our big emergency fund. It just feels free. I am never,

ever going back. You're building for the future instead of paying for the past. Amen. Amen. That's the best place to be. And we set our girls on this beautiful trajectory. They did Dave Ramsey with us. They are all debt free. College paid for by paying cash. It can be done a wedding paid for in cash by saving and hustling and we did our garage as a venue for a rehearsal supper because free venue right and so i'm so proud of them and so for us just changing our family tree is everything to me yeah you did you did you sacrificed and scratched and clawed and all of this so when you first went at it it was just because of the desperation of being broke yeah what kept you going though later once you knew you had control what kept you moving we started coordinating classes and so we were we our church is a church of house churches so we

were doing them in our home and so they're smaller classes but that helped us just stay focused and keeping our eyes going the right direction and reminding you of what you're there for well and when you're teaching a class you can't be a hypocrite so you got to do it all right i mean it's just there it's it's different than being a student yeah you can get away with a lot of stuff when you're a student you think but yeah way to go guys very very good very good so proud of you so what are you gonna do now what's the fun thing you're gonna do to celebrate this yes after this after this we do have tickets for the grand ole opry tonight because it's our 30th wedding anniversary today. And so we thought, thank you.

So we thought, what better way to celebrate 30 years of marriage than to come here, do our scream, and then we'll go to the Grand Ole Opry

for a concert. I love it. Well, you guys enjoy it. It's a great show and the folks, we do a lot of stuff with the Opry here and absolutely incredible

team down there. You all have a great night. Thank you. Yeah, it'll be great. That's very cool, very fun. The Tuesday Night Opry. Oh, yeah. Hey, guys, so proud of you.

Absolutely, absolutely amazing. We've got a gift for them, too, two every dollar subscriptions, good for a year. So you can use those. You could pay it forward, give it to someone else, maybe gift it to someone in an upcoming class or a co-er you run into to give them a little bit of hope. Amen. Very cool.

Thank you. So somebody that's listening and they're saying, this is going to be hard, talk to them. It is hard. It's very hard. We had to change everything. Was it worth it? Oh, completely worth it. So worth it.

Do it. Don't delay one more day. Get up off your couch. Get it done. You will be so blessed that you did it. And teach your kids while you're doing it. Yes. Amen.

Amen. Well, congratulations, you two heroes. Thank you. You took control of your life. Well done. Very well done very well done tom and cheryl colorado springs colorado 237 000 worth of debt done in 156 months making 90 to 110 count it down let's hear a debt scream. Three, two, one. We're debt free! Yeah!

Yeah! That was 13 years coming. Wow! We've been bottled up for 13 years trying to let the genie out of the lamp. That's it, man. Get it done. Wow. Just get it done. This is the Ramsey Show.

Our scripture of the day, Proverbs 9.9, Instruct the wise and they will be wiser still. Teach the righteous and they will add to their learning. Jim Rohn said, Formal education will make you a living. Self-education will make you a fortune. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with doing both that was that was dave ramsey there we go hey ramsey trusted pros shop the market for insurance quotes if you're going to look at your homeowners your car insurance you ought to shop it among a

bunch of different companies and a insurance broker, not just an agent, does that. They work for you. They shop among all the different companies out there and get you the best deal. And they're not trapped by one particular brand. In the insurance world, if you can only sell one brand, we call you a captive agent. Who wants to be a captive? So that means that you can always beat state farms rates is what we're saying. That's exactly what that means. So Ramsey Trusted Pros will help you do

that. We interview them, we vet them, we coach them to make sure they're market experts and that you get the right coverages and you get them at the right price. So find out who the Ramsey Trusted Pro is in your area, ramseysolutions.com slash coverage. Today's question comes from Tara in Nebraska. Tara says, we have a $1.2 million net worth, but we don't have three to six months of savings in cash. The majority of our money is in investments, but we do have cash in our sinking funds for vacations, insurance, etc. We also have stock in a utility company that my husband was gifted from his grandparents and it's valued at what a three to six month emergency fund would

be for us could we consider our sinking funds and or the stock as part of our baby step three or does it need to be cash it should it should be it should be liquid yeah it should be liquid should be in a high yield savings account not utility stock i would stock. I would never tell somebody that called up and said, I have $15,000 to put in my emergency fund. I want to put it into a utility stock. I would always say no. Now, why? Why?

Because let me tell you, the weirdest thing happens in life. At the exact time you have an emergency is the exact time the utility company had one. And their stock price dives and now you don't want to cash it out because it's down you want to wait on it to come back up but you got to fix your transmission so you use a credit card even though you're a millionaire because you do all this mental gymnastics crap instead of just getting money and paying for something and that's what people do that's why you don't do it but and you know you don't put it in a cd a certificate of depression because there's a penalty for early withdrawal in those things right so we use a high

yield savings account so what would i do if i were in your shoes i would sell these stocks and turn that into a liquid savings account. And as far as sinking funds, don't conflate the two. Because what happens is you have an emergency and you go, well, I'll steal from my vacation. Or you have a vacation and you go, well, the vacation's an emergency. So separate them. Keep them all in separate savings accounts. And you have a $1.2 million net worth. I don't know what's going on here that you guys don't have this in cash but get it done today so let's have a little

bit of cash come on come on man i mean really so either either develop a game plan to out of your income to have an emergency fund in place with the next few months or cash out this utility stock but no you can't call your utility stock an emergency fund it's just not smart it's never an investor emergency fund so and here's the thing to remember about emergencies emergency funds and it really doesn't apply as much to her as it does just in general your emergency fund sucks as an investment a high yield savings account is not exactly high-yield. What are they paying right now? Right now it's about 5%.

Yeah. So that's not high-yield. High-yield's 15. What you can get in the market. That's high-yield. So 5% is a joke in a 9.8% inflation market. Your normal bank savings account is 0.something percent. So comparatively. It beats it, but it's still not high.

That's like a marketing term. High yield. How about just we're going to pay you a little more than nothing and call it something cool. They suck as an investment. So your emergency fund is not an investment. When I'm speaking to a large crowd, I always make them say back to me, 5,000 people in the arena, not an investment when i'm speaking to a large crowd always make them say back to me 5 000 people in in the arena not an investment and then i make them say your emergency fund is

insurance everybody say insurance insurance right and so why do we do that because insurance costs you money to protect the things that make you money the fact that you're only making you five percent only making five% on your money, you don't look at this as an investment. You look at it as insurance. You could be making a lot more like in a utility stock or in mutual funds, but that's not the purpose of this fund. The purpose of this fund and the purpose of your Christmas fund is not a high yield. Purpose of Christmas funds pay for Christmas. Purpose of purpose Christmas funds pay for Christmas purpose your car funds pay for your car that's what you're saving for so that that's the thing you got to

get you need offense and defense investing is offense your insurance your emergency fund that is defense and they cost you money defense costs you money to protect the things that make you money so that that's how you keep that straight Dwight is with us in Louisville, Kentucky. Hi, Dwight. What's up? Thanks for having me on. So I'm looking for some career advice. I'm a retired, medically retired veteran, and I'm currently serving in law enforcement. I've been doing that for about 10 years now, and my passion is teaching law enforcement.

So I've been looking at potentially going that route and teaching for the state. So it's the same retirement program for the state. But doing that, I would take about a $20,000 pay cut. What do you make now? About $66,000. Okay. Okay.

So just running the numbers, I mean, so my current with my wife and I and my military retirement, we're about $150,000 take-home. Yeah, you're not going to go bankrupt doing this, and it's not a horrible thing to make less money. I just don't like the premise that in order to do something i'm passionate about i have to make less money and everybody seems to think that's true it's not true i'm very passionate about this and i make a lot of money why and so i want you to make more money when you're passionate not less so let's rethink how we might touch this teaching passion in a way that doesn't make you a state employee making less than you make now. So how can we do that?

Is this individual gun classes, private security classes? I mean, I know several guys that do tactical training on a private level. I've been involved in a lot of it um you know we do hand we do a tactical handgun teaching class here at with our security team at ramsey just as a team building thing because we're all we all like shooting a lot of us do anyway and so we're you know and and that pays a lot more than what you're talking about somebody coming in and leading that kind of thing so i don't know maybe maybe you take the state job and you supplement it with a side hustle teaching security. All right.

So I do have a side hustle where I do privately. I have a business where I teach private classes and stuff. And what I've noticed is just the reliability of dealing with just people in general and getting people into those classes and not having my own range to do that so that's that's that's my biggest struggle is not having a primary range to go to and having that that marketing yeah but that's just a problem to solve that's not a philosophy of life right so yes i would go take the state, but I would also take it under the auspices that when the smoke clears, no pun intended, on this whole thing, but when the smoke clears on this whole thing, then you're making more money because you've got the side hustle private thing going to go with the state, and all of it is about teaching and fun our director of security is a

world-class teacher and he would tell you that the most fun thing he gets to do at his job is when we do those classes at our range and um we had one last weekend as a matter of fact we had 30 people out there learning how to shoot and he would tell you that's the most fun he has and he's world-class at it he's good at it so i mean that that that kind of thing is available and you know i know he went and learned from other people how to do it so he paid somebody else to learn and so um you know there's all kinds of ways you can extrapolate this but in general i'm not ever going to tell i'm not going to fall for this thing that oh in order to do what i love i have to make. I'd keep doing some homework and see if there's other opportunities that are similar that could pay what you're making now or more. Exactly. Before you make that jump. Well, and or add to

the thing and get the side hustle problem solved. So you're making double what you're making now. That's a sweet deal. In total, between the two things. That puts us out of the Ramsey Show and 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. If you're a leader, your personal growth matters for your organization, because whatever you lead can only grow as much as you do. I know from experience. I've been CEO of Ramsey Solutions for over 30 years, and now I'm sharing that leadership and business coaching experience with you on the Entree Leadership Podcast. I'm taking your calls and helping you figure out how

to overcome challenges within your organization. One episode could change your business. Check it out on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or on the Ramsey Network app.