The Ramsey Show - There’s a Way out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle

Episode Date: April 8, 2024

💵 Sign-up for EveryDollar today - The simplest way to budget for your life! Dave Ramsey & Jade Warshaw answer your questions and discuss: "I feel like I'm stuck on Baby Step 1," "Should I start a business with my friends?" "My husband doesn't want to do the Baby Steps" "I'm scared to use our savings," "Should we take out a reverse mortgage?" "We have $110K in car loans with $43 income." Support Our Sponsors: NetSuite Zander Insurance Christian Healthcare Ministries Next Steps 📞 Have a question for the show? Call 888-825-5225 Weekdays from 2-5pm ET or click here! 🏦 Take Your 3-Minute Money Assessment - Get a personalized money plan! 🍎 Enter the Teacher Appreciation Giveaway 💼 Find The Work You're Wired To Do 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 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. Best-selling author and Ramsey personality, Jade Warshaw, is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us, America. The phone number is 888-825-5225. Tiffany starts off this hour in Jacksonville, Florida. Hi, Tiffany. How are you?

Hi, Dave. Thank you so much for taking my call. How are y'all doing? Better than we deserve. What's up? Well, I'm calling because I'm sort of facing a bit of a dilemma. So I recently found out I was pregnant. I was dating a guy. And when he found out he broke up with me, I ended up finding out that he actually had a whole different relationship going on while we were together. Yes.

I'm 35 years old. Um, I make about $75,000 a year, but I'm about 40, $49,500 in debt and I'm on baby step number one. So I'm like freaking out right now. A tale as old as time, huh?, my goodness. I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Well, as far as helping you go, I mean, we're just going to say, okay, Tiffany's a single mom, makes $75,000 with $50,000 in profit. Or $50,000 in debt. I'm sorry. How are we going to help Tiffany?

And we're just going to approach it that way. How we got here, sad, heartbreaking, but that's where we are, correct? Yes. So let's just look out the windshield and say go. Can someone who's making $75,000 have a great life and raise a kid and pay off $50,000 in debt? Absolutely. We do it all the time. Does your job have paid maternity leave?

Yes. So I think we have about 12 weeks, except I don't have the short-term maternity leave option from disability. I think it's short-term disability. So I think I get 12 weeks. I think nine of those would be paid. The other three would be on my own, if I'm not mistaken. I haven't confirmed with HR yet because I haven't really told anyone just yet. I'm still 10 weeks. So I'm still early on. You got family in the area? I do. So I actually moved in with my mom last year because I started a business and I was trying to save money on rent.

And so now I'm about to have a baby. So she's, you know, like, okay, well, you have to figure out your situation. So I'm going to have to put the business on hold and, you know, get my own place. So that's sort of where i'm like okay so you're not used to your salary you're not used to your salary supporting your lifestyle that'll be new for you exactly exactly it's very new okay it's very new well here's the thing um you make enough to to live in jacksonville florida with a kid okay um people uh in uh the 12 weeks is a new phenomenon um it's a recent memory so nine weeks eight weeks was the old standard

back in the day uh people did that all the time and um since that's what you have paid uh that's you're going back to work at 9. Right. Because you've got to pay the bills and raise a baby. And so what we're going to do is teach you how to live on a game plan, a written game plan. And Jade can coach you on that and put you on a budget, a detailed plan, what's coming in. Every dollar that's coming in, we give it a name, an address, where it's going, what it's doing, make it behave. So it has food, it has lights and water, it has rent, it has the other stuff, and then we start figuring out how we're going

to begin to whittle away at this $49,000 in debt. How much of that is your car debt? My car is paid off. Oh, that's good. It's pretty much all student loans, I would say that. I think it's about $36,000 in student loans, and the rest is credit card debt. Okay, that's good. That's good, because I was getting ready to sell your car, so that's good. Well, we are still going to cut up your credit card. We'll do that. Yeah, we'll do that.

And so we're going to put you on a game plan, stop the debt. You're going to be very adult, paying attention to every detail, thinking about the future, because now our future includes two people, not just one. And practically speaking, your next steps are you're going to HR to find out exactly what your benefit is, just so you know. And then we're going to make sure, is that Christian over there, that he'll pick up, make sure you get EveryDollar. It's the best budgeting app in the world.

That's what Dave was talking about, so that you're budgeting for every dollar but then on down the line you're going to learn uh we'll tell you about the baby steps we'll make sure you've got financial peace university as well but what i want you to do right now between now and when the baby is born um regardless of what you learn about the baby steps paying off your debt all of that right now is just save up mode you're saving up all your money you're pausing what you learn about the baby steps and you're saving up all your money for when this baby is born and for you because you've got to get out of your mom's house. And so when the baby comes in the next nine months, eight months or so, and everything's good and happy and taken care of, now you have that big pile of money and that might be first

and last month's rent. That's going to be some savings for you to get out on your own feet and start moving forward with this. Yeah, and how much are you – so you've got $10,000, $15,000 in credit card debt, right? Yes. So let's pretend you saved up $15,000 before the baby comes. Baby comes home. Maternity covers it. You don't have any loss. You don't have to use any money for

baby situation. Now, we just take $15,000 out of that account. We pay off all the credit cards. Boom. That jump starts your get out of debt once you get the birth behind you, and there's no issues. But in the meantime, Jade's right. Let's see how big a pile of cash we can pile up, because you're going to lose no ground on your get out of debt plan or on your other plans as well. Now, Financial Peace University is a nine-week class. It's taught online. We're going to show you every detail of how to handle money like a grown-up, everything about becoming wealthy, getting out of debt, insurance, real estate, everything is in there.

If we give you that class for free, do you promise to take it? Yes, I will. Don't you miss one? No. Don't you miss one? No, I promise i would not this is your time this is your time okay and let me give you one piece one more piece of advice what i want you to do is go and start looking just start doing your research on apartments or places

to live in your area and when you make your every dollar budget i want you to start practicing living on that adding that into your budget and going okay when when when real life hits this is really the money that i'm going to have to spend and whether it's you know maybe rent is three thousand dollars so you're going to learn to live without that are you staying with mom until baby comes or you're leaving now um i'm leaving in august okay all right so that's already set okay yes yes all right and uh i don't know does florida have any kind of child support on paternity issues um yeah so i've been that's another thing that i've been thinking about yeah i'm thinking about that too i got a thing about people that make babies have to pay for

them yeah yeah and also i'm just you know he really wanted me to have an abortion and yeah i really want him to pay for it i want him to pay for 18 years of taking care of his child that's like his job if he's if he's such a wuss that he runs as soon as he finds out what he caused then on top of that he gets to pay for it so yeah bring it bring it that's an issue wow it's a self-centered little yeah okay what do i know 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. 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. Jade Walsh, our Ramsey personality, is my co-host. You've never seen a reporter run up after the Super Bowl or the World Series to the star player and say,

you just won the Super Bowl. How'd you do that? They never say, I don't know. I just got off the bus. No one accidentally wins. Winning at marriage, winning at your career, winning at money is a series of intentional acts. Around here, we say you should give every dollar of your money an assignment, every dollar a mission, every dollar should have a name. Use whatever vernacular you want, but make your money behave instead of wondering where it went. Make it behave. That's why we named the world's best budgeting app that we started working on many years ago and have continued to iterate and improve it to where it literally is the world's best budgeting app. That's why we named it every dollar because you give every dollar an assignment and it works wherever you are on iOS or Android

or online. It's free and immediately you can start it for free, and immediately you see where you're staying with your money. You can get organized. And if you're new to EveryDollar, we're going to show you, in addition to doing your monthly budget, a long-term financial roadmap. Track your net worth, your debt-free date, your retirement date, your progress on the baby steps. And we're going to proactively coach you to build wealth.

Download the free app for iOS or Android or go to everydollar.com and put it on a desktop. And Jade, you and George are going to be hosting a live stream on YouTube on the 11th later on this week, this month, and setting people up to answer the top questions. That's right. People have top four questions. We asked you guys and you told us the top four questions are, how do I even get started? So we'll tell you how to get started. We'll show you everything. We'll have every dollar pulled up. You asked us, can I budget and still enjoy my life? The answer to that is yes, but we'll go into detail. George and I will. You also asked us, how do we deal with changes that come up throughout the

month? And so we'll be covering that as well as how couples can best budget together so definitely stay tuned for more details on that live stream we want to hear from you and in the meantime if you want questions if you have questions that you want us to answer on that live stream you can email them to ask at ramseysolutions.com and we'll be sure to take a look at those and maybe yours will get featured on the live stream it's a free live stream this Thursday, the 11th of April on YouTube. And how do they get signed up for it? You can actually, you can't sign up for it ahead of time,

but you can go onto YouTube and hit the remind me. It's like the little bell there. On the Ramsey network. Yeah, that's right. On the Ramsey page on YouTube. Okay, that's what does it. All right, perfect. Very cool, very cool. Open phones here here 888-825-5225 wilson is with us in daytona beach hi wilson

welcome to the ramsey show hi how can we help uh so me and a few of my friends wanted to start a business and we just had questions about what we should do in order to get the money to start it we have about like 25 000 saved up but that's not going to be nearly enough to um completely open it what kind of what kind of business uh it's a rock climbing gym a rock climbing gym okay yes how many of you is it it's uh five of us okay and how old are you guys uh we are all between 22 and 24 okay have any of you run a business before no okay and what's it take to open a rock climbing gym in terms of dollars so in terms of dollars uh between in terms of dollars, uh, between the people I've talked to, cause I'm pretty good friends with two gyms that I go to around here.

It's around 200,000. If you do it like yourself, like you build the walls and you like pretty much do everything yourself around 200 to 250,000. If you get it professionally done, it can be a lot more. So I don't think we would want to get it professionally done. So you're somewhere around $200,000 short? About, yeah. And it's not you buying a franchise of these. It's you starting from the ground up, building the facility. No pun intended.

Yeah, and we probably rent this area, like rent the building, so we wouldn't really need to build a whole facility. It's really just like the holds that you have to buy. $200,000 worth of rock wall. Really? Yeah, essentially. Really? Yeah, it gets pretty expensive.

Really? You'd be surprised, yeah. I am surprised, yeah. I'm shocked in it all all i'm aghast um yeah yeah no way uh okay um i we coach through entree leadership i do a podcast also where i answer small business questions on entreeleadership.com okay and you can tune in that podcast once a week but been coaching small businesses we coach about 10,000 small businesses across the nation I love small business people so I love your entrepreneurial

zeal and my job is to not be a dream killer but I love killing nightmares yeah and what you're describing has two major three major faults to it. And you're walking into a nightmare. Okay. None of you have any business doing this together. The biggest disasters I ever get into coaching are partnerships. And that's with two people, much less five guys in their early 20s who climbed walls together, drunk beer together, and decide now we're opening a business together, and that's all the more thought they put into it.

It's a bad idea, okay? You're getting ready to destroy relationships. Of the five, four of you aren't going to do squat, and I don't know which four it is, but it's going to be awful, horrible. The only ship that won't sail, Wilson, is a partnership. Okay. Okay. Number two, you have, and I don't mean this, I don't want this to sound disrespectful, okay?

But the ability, but I've run PNLs on businesses. I run about 15 businesses inside this one. Uh, plus a couple other things I'm involved in the chances of you getting a return on investment from individuals paying you to climb a rock wall of $200,000 is almost there's no way this roi's yeah there's just no way and and so um i mean you that one you might overcome and i might be wrong on but the partnership you won't overcome and the fact that you're two hundred thousand dollars short and here's the problem you if you go borrow this money you're absolutely you'll'll borrow this. Here's the thing. Two things are going to cause this business to fail. Three things.

Borrowed money, a partnership, and a bad pro forma, a bad business plan where the return on investment is not there. The third one I might be off on, but the other two, a hundred percent are going to doom this endeavor. You ain't going to make it. I'm all about killing your nightmare here. Don't get into this. You're going to get in a nightmare. Now, let's figure out another way to scratch the entrepreneurial itch.

You know, finding someone that has a gym with rock walls and how can I go in with them, become the promoter, own a piece of the action with them. That's a bit of a partnership, but maybe we can have a joint venture here. And you get out there and learn how to run the business in a gym of something as nuanced as rock climbing. Okay. And get in there and get some chops, man. Get some calluses, no pun intended, some mental calluses to figure out how this whole world works. Because you guys are standing back watching it,

and it looks like to you looking in from the outside that these guys with these $200,000 or $500,000 rock walls are making bank. I don't think they are. Yeah. I want you in the inside of I don't think they are. Yeah. I want you in the inside of the beast looking at the details. Yeah. Well, I appreciate it. So what are you going to do?

I mean, obviously, I was curious of what you thought. I mean, like, to me, it's similar to, like, opening up just a regular gym, and it is, like, one of the fastest-growing sports in the country, but I definitely hear what you're saying about... You know what the failure rate on gyms is? It's pretty high. Yeah. You ought to look into that.

And this is a nuanced piece of a gym. It's not a whole gym. And so it's an add-on to a gym. That's what it is. So you need to learn everything about the gym business. It's like the restaurant business. It'll scare you to death. The failure rate is astronomical.

It's one of the beauties of the CrossFit thing is they don't buy nothing. They just open up a place and you go in there and sweat. They don't have any equipment. They don't have any equipment. You're the equipment, you know? That's one of the reasons that thing's working. This is The Ramsey Show. I've been doing this show for over 30 years and some of the saddest calls I've taken are from situations that are completely preventable. Yeah, and what's so hard is I feel like one of those, especially the ones that I'm like, oh, it's terrible. People that call in and their spouse has passed away suddenly

and they don't have life insurance. When you have to think through how am I going to pay my bills in the middle of next week, in the middle of all that grief, like it's just it is it's terrible. So life insurance is the one thing, especially as a mom with three little kids that I'm like so big on for people to get because it's inexpensive. Zander is the place that Winston and I actually get all of our life insurance. And it doesn't cost much because Zander shops among a gazillion different companies. It doesn't cost much. You just have to admit that someday you're not going to be here. You got to say it out loud and you got to say, I'm going to say I love you to my family by taking care of them and taking the time to put this stuff in place. The cost of stinking pizza to get a free quote, call 800-356-4282. That's 800-356-4282,

or go to zander.com. Jade Walsh, our Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us, America. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Nicole is in Philadelphia. Hi, Nicole. Welcome to The Ramsey Show. Hi, guys. Thanks for having me. Sure. What's up? So my question today is how do I proceed in moving forward in the baby steps when my husband

does not want to be involved whatsoever? Can I rephrase that and see if it's still correct? Sure. her how do i can i rephrase that and see if it's still correct sure how do i proceed in building wealth if my husband doesn't want to include me and talk about money is that still correct yeah okay so it's not really getting to do with the baby steps is my point it's that you're trying to figure you're trying to figure out a way to move your old life forward financially and he doesn't want to be involved. Yes. Why?

It seems to overwhelm them every time we talk about it. Our, you know, we've been married for seven years together. Why does it overwhelm him? Grown up people do it all the time. I mean, I've tried to talk to him about it many times. I don't understand why it overwhelms him. Do other things overwhelm him?

Yes. Like what? Getting a job. He's currently home with our um two children right now full time is he depressed um i don't know how to answer that um you know we've tried to go to therapy there was a big event that happened this year um for us that kind of decided hey why don't you stay home with the kids for a little bit try to figure out where you want to work and what you want to do and um

you know this uh this is just kind of a symptom of what i'm not sure the bigger issue is but you can't get them to go to you can't get them to go into counseling no okay um big events pretty vague i don't want to put you on the spot but um it sounds like what a guy that i learned a lot of this stuff from 30 years ago used to say money problems are not the problem they're the symptom yes and um so him not wanting to be involved in this is one of many things he doesn't want to be involved in and all of those not i don't want to be involved or i'm overwhelmed or whatever phrase we want to use is um is due to a problem and those are all the symptoms does that sound accurate yes absolutely okay so we can't solve the symptom until we solve the problem.

So now your question changes to, how do I get my husband to address his issues? Because until he addresses those, he's not going to get a job. Until he addresses those, he's not going to feel robust and have a swagger to go enjoy life and take life by the horns. Until he addresses those, he's not going to feel ready to draw his sword, pull his gun, or whatever metaphor you want, and attack the world alongside his wife to go build wealth and have a great future together. This guy's hiding because he's scared because stuff's happened, and he's feeling pretty broken right now am I missing something right no that's a very specific to conversations we've had we've talked at length and that was very close to a

conversation we've had recently so I we're we're I mean dr. John Deloney is our guy that talks about relationships and emotional health. He has the Ph.D. in counseling. I have a Ph.D. in D.U.M.B. because I've done stupid stuff half my life and tried not to do the same stupid stuff over again. So that makes me older and wise now. But I'm not qualified to help you with this. But all I can tell you is just as the old guy here um and you can speak to if sam was this uh if this was happening with sharon or if this was happening with me i can tell you what sharon would do because she's pretty freaking proactive um the um i mean we would create a different crisis

to that that uh and define the crisis and say we're going to address this problem, whatever it is, and we're going to find a solution to it. And it sounds like that involves, if it's in my world, it's meeting with a therapist, with a counselor, and getting very involved with your pastor at your local church and having a spiritual approach and a psychological, emotional, relational approach to getting to the bottom of whatever's going on so that he can have a wonderful, sustainable life going forward. Oh, and by the way, that's going to rub off on you. Does that sound right?

It does. I'm going to start throwing grenades around there until we're in counseling and sitting down with a pastor and in church. And we're not going to hide at home with the children and call that nurturing instead of addressing my crap. Is that too blunt? Does that mean? No, no, not at all. What's his reason when, when, when you've said to him, Hey, listen, you need to go to counseling. You need to go therapy. What, what what's his reason when when when you've said to him hey listen you need to go to counseling you need to go therapy what what has been his reason for decline not for him so so sitting at home with the kids and doing nothing and hiding and hurting is for him yeah uh-uh not okay with me yeah i listen so i want to deputize you to love him well enough

to create a problem that's and that's you know dave that's what i've been trying to do i don't i don't know how to do that i mean i've been praying i've been well i've been praying and that's good for months since you know for us since october and then it was funny because he said he was the one who sent me something from you guys, a reel on Facebook. And I was like, oh, gosh, maybe I should start listening to these guys. And I've been binging everything since the end of January. And I've gotten very intentional.

He's been on board with some things and thinking I'm crazy on others. And I sold my car a couple weeks ago. Wow. I've got hundreds of stuff on Mercari and selling a bunch of stuff but you're you're lonely you're lonely very proud but I'm alone you're lonely so yeah I'm sorry you guys are facing this um well I I um yeah I just you you go to counseling if he won't and talk to the counselor about a proper way, because I'm not qualified to tell you, to draw him out and to create the crisis that leads him to healing. Because you're not going to lead him to healing.

If you go fix all the financial stuff, it's not going to fix this. No, and I understand that. You're just going to be wealthy, dysfunctional people. Yes, I've been in counseling since October, too. No, and I understand that. You're just going to be wealthy, dysfunctional people. Yes. I've been in counseling since October, too. Okay, yeah. Well, ask the counselor how to give you language and how to properly draw boundaries and timelines

on your demanding as his wife, who loves him more than anything, that he start making progress in these areas. And it's not progress in the symptoms, it's progress in what's going on inside of him. Because these other areas aren't going to fix until that does. I've been doing this a long time and I've watched that. Yeah, definitely. I mean, Sam and you, I know how you and Sam work.

Listen, I'm holding my tongue a little bit because I'm not a doctor and I'm definitely not a counselor, but I can tell you what I would do. Well, what would you do? I'd make, I would make life more uncomfortable with him not changing so that it's more comfortable for him to, it's like you have to like flip the script a little bit and be like, okay, you're not going to change. Life's about to get real uncomfortable. I'm not going to go over here and try to do life without you and be lonely and fix all

the money stuff while you sit at home yeah there's ultimatums and judge my actions yeah you twerp yeah i mean come on listen mom will put out the ultimatum in a second so hey it's is it right or wrong i can't say but it's worked for me yeah it's you know we're gonna we're gonna do that this is not okay you know, and it's clear communication and it's not an act of anger. No. It's an act of love. Well, there's two people in the relationship and she has as much validity to have happiness and have health in her life as he does.

And if he doesn't want to contribute to that, then she has choices that she can make. Yeah. That's all I'm saying. Ooh. Ooh. See, that's what would happen at my house, too. Oh, I can hear it now. Except it would be, choices, choices.

It would sound like passive aggressive Southern. Sharon is my girl. I already know that. Man, man, I'm telling you. This is The Ramsey Show. Hey, when you go against what society thinks is, quote, normal, like avoiding debt, for example, it might seem weird at first, and that is totally okay. We want you to be weird if that means doing things intentionally, including how you spend your health care dollars. And one way to be intentional is with Christian Health Care Ministries. CHM isn't health insurance. They're a health cost-sharing

ministry that's helped hundreds of thousands of families like yours take care of health care costs without sacrificing their freedom. Find out more and join at chministries.org slash budget. That's chministries.org slash budget. That's chministries.org slash budget. Jade Walshall Ramsey personality is my co-host today, best-selling author. I'm your host, Dave Ramsey. Thanks for joining us. We're so glad you're here. Hey, we appreciate all the word that you've been spreading out there we know you are because our numbers are up ridiculously on youtube um wow i mean bizarre how many downloads on youtube we're having in a single day uh the number of hours listened is uh the number of downloads over a billion and a half

now uh that's bizarre same thing on the podcast over a billion we were the first we were number four podcast of all time to hit a billion downloads on apple and uh some others have done it since then but that's where we've been where we've been you guys have been keeping us up the top one two three four five on uh the podcast list and uh way up there on the youtube stuff and and talk radio numbers. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. So continue the help. Spread the word. Click the follow or the subscribe button. It makes a big difference if you do that. Thank you for doing that. Watch the show. Listen to the show, however you do it.

Click the share button if they have one or cut a link out and send it to somebody. Say, hey, listen to these crazy people. They're helping people because we do. We are helping people. And people are entertaining, too, if you didn't know. So just listen to the show if you don't believe me. And, of course, leave a five-star review. If you think anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. So, Jade, you know, talking about the trolls.

Yes. The newbies. We had new people start at Ramsey every other Monday. We have a new batch come in, and the newbies, I always meet with them. Their first 10 minutes on the job, the CEO shows up. And so I go in, sit down, answer questions with them, talk to them. And one of the guys is like, how do you put up with the trolls? And I'm like, it's really easy.

They're irrelevant. They're irrelevant. Yeah. The comments. What about the negative comments? They're irrelevant. Here's what I know. Here's the numbers. On Twitter, as it exists today, they call it X.

10% of the members of Twitter do 80% of the posts. Wait, say that again? 10% of the people that have a Twitter account do 80 of the posts on twitter wow oh wow and twitter is a sewer hole right now i mean it's just about all trolls so that tells you how irrelevant the trolls are and uh when i was a kid we read a a story about billy goat gruff and the trolls yeah so yeah that's what the trolls was not something when i was a kid that you were proud to be called you did not want to be called a troll now it's like a badge of honor for some of you people who don't have a job or something but but you know what we have

figured out is you're statistically irrelevant yeah it's kind of sad i always how many times have you written a negative letter to somebody? Never, never. Or comment? Dave, you have to be, you have to have a lot of free time on your hands and you have to have nothing better to do with your time. And you have to feel so negatively about yourself. Self, no, no, self-righteous. Or self-righteous. But I think at the core of it is. Yeah.

The only time I ever wrote a letter, I was 23 years old and I wrote a letter. I was a brand new Christian and there's nothing more pharisaical than a brand new Christian, right? So I was a total Pharisee and I wrote a letter to the local movie theater because they were playing some movie that our church said was a bad, it was a bad, it was bad for people. And I, uh, just dressed the movie theater general manager up and down. And you later, I found out how movie theaters are run. The general manager had absolutely nothing to do with whether the movie played or not. I want to know what movie it was.

Oh, man. Well, I mean, it was 40 years ago. So it had to be some kind of real deep blasphemy. I don't know. But that's the only time I've ever done it, though. I've never written. I don't write hate mail. I don't think I've ever.

I can't think of a time. I just don't have time. I'm too busy doing things. That's what I'm saying. Who has time for this? Luke is in Nashville. Hey, Luke, how are you? Good.

How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Thanks for taking my call. Sure. My question is, my wife and I make about $65,000. We have no debt. We've saved up 20%, and we're looking to buy our first

house we're renting right now. Wow, look at you. How old are you guys? I'm 27. She's 31. Way to go, Luke. Thank you. How much did you save up? We have about $75,000 right now. Wow. Good. And you saved all that making $65,000? Yeah. I've done pizza delivery on the side for a couple years now. Thank you. How long did it take? We were doing it before we were married, too, but between both of us, about four or five years. Way to go.

How can we help? You're doing great. Thank you so much. Basically, we're looking at our first house. Because we don't make a lot, it's scary to see this money go away into a down payment. So I guess we're just trying to make sure that this is a good investment where we are currently at in life, I guess. Awesome. Okay. So you're not using the money to live. Correct. So there's no fear that your life is going to be affected negatively in terms of living because you're used to living on less than you make. Right.

So you don't need the money for that. So that's not where the fear is. The fear is doing something you've never done before, a huge purchase. That's a good fear. That's wise. If that's where the fear is, what else would the fear be? Tell me. I don't know where it's coming from. I think because we don't make a lot of money, it's like a lot of hard work.

And whenever I kind of see that we have that much saved up. It's like a lot of hard work. And whenever like I kind of see that we have that much saved up, it's like a great accomplishment. So I think just seeing it dwindle down to like an emergency fund. Well, it's not dwindling. There you go. That's what it is. Exactly. Take it. Yeah. It's not dwindling. You're investing it into a forced savings account. That's what you're doing when you're buying a home. It's an investment like anything else. You're moving it from one investment to another. And it's still gaining. I mean, I think people are used to Dave. It's going to gain more than it is now. Exactly. People are used to investments being like in the stock market and compounding interest, but real estate is very similar to that. You're putting that money over there. The money is yours. It's in this forced savings account and it's growing in equity month after month, year after year. So it's,

you're just switching it, like Dave said, from one savings vehicle to another savings vehicle. So the area of town that you're thinking of buying in, in Nashville, what area of town? My wife works in Mount Juliet, but because that's kind of expensive, we're trying to go toward Lebanon because it's a little bit cheaper. Okay, and where did you grow up? I grew up in Pittsburgh, but, yeah, I work from home now, so I'm kind of flexible. Okay, is she from the Nashville area?

She's not either. We're both new here. Okay, All right. Go to RamseySolutions.com and pick out a realtor under the Ramsey Trusted Real Estate Agents, okay? Okay. Not a realtor, but a real estate agent, okay? And then when you're interviewing them, interview at least one of them that's old and ask them the house that you're looking at in the Lebanon area, what it's sold for in the year 2014 when you were 17. Okay.

And then what you're going to have to pay for it. Then you're going to see what an investment looks like. Oh, yeah. I've seen some of those before. It's mind-blowing. One lousy decade from now, how much money you will have made is going to blow your freaking mind. You're going to love it. And the good news about moving this money into a home for for the most

part is it's it's harder to get at like we're gonna teach you all the time hey don't take out a home equity line of credit don't borrow against your home we're gonna tell you that all the time but there's something about it being tied up in your house where you're like okay it's over there it's safely growing as opposed to sitting in a savings account with no purpose behind it. You see what I'm saying? I think you rang the bell on doing savings and you said, hey, I just accomplished a big goal. Now when you put it on the house, ding, ding, ring it again. You accomplish goal number two, which is a step up from where you are. Your next goal is a better goal than your first goal.

And so you get the sense of accomplishment. You move on because you can say 10 years from now, that house is going to be worth Y. I'm only paying X. And oh my gosh, the difference in X and Y is where people become wealthy. People like you who learn how to control themselves at 27 years old, you're amazing.

And by the way, you're going to make more money too. You guys make $65,000 now, but that's not the be-all, end-all. As the years go, you're going to make more money too. You guys make $65,000 now, but that's not the be-all, end-all. As the years go, you're going to make more money too, so you don't have to be afraid like you thought you were. Man, I love it, Luke. I'm excited for you. For goodness sakes, go buy you a house. And if you're not a little bit scared when you're doing brand new stuff that's big,

you're a fool. So, of course, you're a little bit scared. First time you got behind a wheel of a car, I was scared to death. Now people drive with their knees, put their makeup on, and eat a Big Mac and text. 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.

Our phone number is 888-825-5225. Jade Warshaw, Ramsey Personality. Number one best-selling author is my co-host today. You jump in. We'll talk about your life and your money. Kenneth is with us. Kenneth is in Amarillo, Texas. Hi, Kenneth. How are you? Hi. Thank you guys so much for taking my call. Sure. How can we help?

So I feel like I made the dumbest financial decision in my life. I bought solar panels with a solar loan, and I want to know how to get out of the loan. I know the obvious answer is to dig deep and pay it off, but I wanted to know if it was as simple as just telling them to come and take the solar panels and we'd be done with it. How much did you spend on this? It is a $41,000 loan over 25 years. What's your household income, man? We made $105,000 last year.

When did you do this deal two years ago okay what happened that made you rethink it because at the time you did it obviously you didn't think it was done hey yes sir um well they i guess i thought about it some more. They had an 18-month spent of where it was a lesser payment, and then after the tax credit thing, they wanted us to submit a tax credit, and we get a refund, and we send it to them. But I did not read the loan. I just signed away and did not know

that so now my loan has increased my payment and i'm paying double in electricity than before solar panels why are you paying double in electricity no he's not he's paying double what he was paying what's your What's your payment? Just curious. It's $200 a month. Okay. All right. So you missed a tax credit because you didn't ask for it on your tax return. Is that what you're telling me? No, I'm saying that I did turn it in as a tax credit.

We got the credit. Oh, you just didn't apply to the loan yes sir i got you okay all right so you got a 41 000 balance on the loan if you don't pay it um they will hypothetically repossess the solar panels which i doubt they will actually do it's because there's not exactly like a big repo market. I mean, they don't have a lot where they sell repoed solar panels. So it doesn't happen like it does with a car. So they may or may not repo them, but they will sue you for the $41,000, plus or minus whatever they get out of the solar panels if they did do a repo. But they'll probably just sue you for the debt okay now you are in texas and so they can't garnish your wages in texas and they can't

take a lien against your home but they can do a lot of other stuff um and by the way uh you signed a contract and made a promise. So you need to honor the promise. So we're going to take $104,000 and we're going to say we went and did something stupid and put $41,000 on a credit card. Now we've got to pay off our credit card. In a sense, that's what we did, right? So let's just put this in your debt snowball and let's get after it and get it paid off. And if this is the dumbest thing you ever do in your life, you're probably pretty smart.

All right. Well, thank you guys so much. I appreciate it. Please, go get it knocked out. You have a pattern in this conversation of not dealing with crap. So I want you to deal with this head on. I want you to get on a beans and rice budget and get this crap cleaned up yesterday,

because every time you write a check otherwise you're going to feel stupid so i want to write as few of those checks as i can feel because i don't like feeling stupid every month i don't like it and you don't like it and don't do that get it cleaned up get it out of your life asap hey i'm not against solar panels boys and girls i am against borrowing for them and there is the reason why okay number one people don't watch what the flip they're doing they buy the wrong thing they buy too much they overpay when they borrow now solar panels in some areas of the country are very efficient the technology has improved dramatically over the last several years and some of you can actually do very well i've got

a good friend that's doing 40 of his house on and it's a big house on solar panels now he's in an area of the country where he gets plenty of sun obviously that matters and um but but the uh um you know it's efficient but he paid cash for him and then you just look at a break even well you would think that there's a situation especially with the caller where you've okay you spend forty one thousand dollars on solar panels you change your mind you realize you're not getting the the value you would think that similar to being an upside down in a car that you could sell it off pay the difference and be done you know that you could sell them to a reseller there's no market for that used solar panels

take them off the top of your house leave a hole in your house yeah i mean it's just there's no market for that used solar panels and take them off the top of your house leave a whole new house yeah i mean it's just there's nothing worse than new solar panels except used ones i mean it's like so now we're listen i endorse a couple of solar companies around different areas around the country and i'm not ashamed of that at all but the the way they sell that crap the way they sell it is crap is what i should say the way they sell it is here's your payment and your payment is going to be less than your electric bill you heard him say that right and now it's more than the electric bill because i didn't follow through and do the thing i was supposed to do right but the idea being that you know you're going to end up saving and then when it is finally paid off in 25 years give me a break uh then from then on you have free electricity no no come on you're

gonna have mechanical dysfunctions and malfunctions we're not going there but anyway can they break even if you can run a situation run a scenario where your solar panels break even in five to seven years you may want to look at that if you've got the cash and you're out of debt your baby step seven i'm fine with it then but if you don't have that level of break even then they're there my house is in the woods no chance yeah and i ain't cutting the trees i like my trees so um i like the woods and woods usually comes from trees so i like my trees so there you go that that but no we're not gonna get that but but if you can get a break even and have free electricity like my buddy does you know yeah essentially he's got about 40 of his big old house is operating free it's like at

what point though he said he's paying 200 bucks a month that which is now double what he was paying before he's paying more and i'm like when i lived in south florida the during the summer that ac bill could be like 3 350 yeah yeah and it's just part of living in South Florida. Yeah. Well, I mean, but if you could, the idea being if you paid $250 instead of $350, and that was a payment on the solar panel, you're still saving money monthly. Yeah. And you're helping the environment and all.

Yeah, right. All this stuff, right? It's a long means to an end. It's just, it's a way of selling it. It's a crappy way of selling it. The proper way to look at it is break even. If you put out $10,000, how quick do you get back $10,000? Five to seven years.

If you want to do that, that's fine. I've not chosen to do that. I'm not against that way of doing it, financing it. It's a problem. It's the dumbest thing Kenneth ever did. That's what he said. That's what he said. And if it is the dumbest thing he ever did, he'll he said that's what he said and if it is the dumbest thing he ever did he'll be all right this is the Ramsey show

Jade Walsh all Ramsey personality is my co-host today today's question of the day comes from Carmen in South Carolina she says my husband is 79 and I am 77 we own our home which is valued at She says, $500 to $1,000 in savings every month. And currently we have $10,000 saved. We have no investments. We are considering taking a reverse mortgage to provide money to work on our home while we continue to build up savings. Is this a good plan? No, it's not a good plan. My first thought is you've worked so hard, you know, you're debt free and you've worked so hard. You're debt-free and you've decided that you want to live a debt-free lifestyle. In many ways, this is you taking on debt by basically saying, okay, we're going to take the equity out of our home and have them loan it to us at a very, very high interest rates with lots of fees. And if you're saving $500 to $1,000 a month, my thought would be, well, why can't we just save up and make these repairs?

They don't talk about exactly what the repairs are, if it's, hey, we need new carpet, or if we need a new roof. But my thought would be, I'm not going to go into debt after I've come this far. I'm not going into debt, period. So I would not do that. I think it's a terrible plan, actually. And with reverse mortgages, honestly, you're putting your, if they have heirs, they're putting them in a bad situation too by taking out the value in this home. Yeah. You know, who falls for scams the most? Old people. And you scam artists that feed on old people ought to be ashamed of yourself. And so the reverse mortgage is a horrible piece of crap.

Stay away from it. The most they will loan you is up to 65% of your equity. And if you do not stay current on the taxes, the repairs, and the insurance, they will foreclose on you. Among regular mortgages, FHA, VA, conventional Fannie Mae mortgages, the foreclosure rate in America today is 1.6% of those get foreclosed on. Among reverse mortgages, 8%. Almost five times as many houses get foreclosed on with reverse mortgages. What does that tell you? It tells you how bad they suck and what a scam it is.

The interest rates are higher. The fees are higher. The process of putting you back into debt after you've worked your whole life to get out of debt is just abysmal. And look at where they're advertised. Where do you see them advertised? On the channels old folks are watching. Yeah.

I mean, when you pick out your investments or financial products from commercials where they are advertising Snuggie and walk-in bathtubs. And gold. This is where you know you don't want to, well, gold's in that mix. You don't pick your financial products where they're doing walk-in bathtubs and snuggies. This is not where you pick out good things to do, okay? And guess who's advertising? Montel Williams.

Ancient actors. Ancient actors. And who got paid to be an actor not a financial analyst and so sorry tom selleck and by the way the company that tom selleck endorses the federal trade commission just hit them uh about three years ago with a huge multi-million dollar fine for misbehavior magnum pi well more of late new york blues or whatever it's called and you know and the fawns well he's not the fawns anymore sorry henry henry winkler i love tom i love henry i think they're awesome but not what they endorse okay i just we can't go there i'm actually a fan of both of their work i'm not i've never met either

one of them but uh but no don't don't buy stuff because um and william devane is the guy with the gold commercial yeah but the uh or whatever his name is but yeah oh god please no please don't do this listen we would never tell you to take out a mortgage on your house to do repairs but that would be smarter than a reverse mortgage yeah lower fees lower interest rate much more generic product not as much scam around it not as much foreclosure around it and you're not even considering doing that because that scares you to death well this ought to scare you triple x that so please don't do it no reverse mortgage is awful i think the rate's even higher now for foreclosure i think it's 10 now is it really yeah no so my my data is old it's gotten worse well i mean it's not

hard to predict yeah yeah it's just it's um oh it's the molly's in. Louis. Hey, Molly, how are you? Doing good. Good. How can we help? Okay. So I feel like my family's in like a big transition period. Um, I just got back from maternity leave two weeks ago. Um, we're currently on baby step two and we've got a little bit of ways to go, um, mostly with my student loans, but I actually just got a job offer, um, for a position that aligns more with my career path. Um, like ideally, and the only issue is it's a further commute and, you know, being a new, not a new mom, it's my second baby, but, you know, being away from my kids a little bit more, you know, just the motivation that taking this job and increasing

my pay is the right, more money. what like um i'm a pharmacist okay how much more money like twenty seven thousand dollars a year wow what's your husband make um currently he makes 45 and what will be your commute uh it goes from 20 minutes to 50 minutes okay one way and what about him one way um he One way. He's a funeral director, so he works locally in our town. So he doesn't have a commute. How much debt do you have? Student loans. So about 220 in student loans. I have been working for a non-for-profit hospital, so I've been there for about four years. So I would only have six years left. I'm going to another non-for-profit hospital. So the public student loan forgiveness it would eliminate about

half of my student loan debt maybe but you're not waiting I'm not banking I'm not waiting if you know I was that would help I mean what about moving um we have a lot of help where we're at, and we like where we live. Our in-laws are only right down the road. My parents, they are retired, and my mother-in-law watches our kids. And my parents live right across the way from us, about a mile. So it's really not an option with his job. He has to live where we are because he's on call if people were to pass away.

I just wonder what about a third option like a different job yeah because my thing is this i you have two kids i have two kids i'm not saying that i feel the way you feel or vice versa but i just know that at the end of the day the difference between getting home at 5.30 versus 6.15 is big. So I would be getting home about the same time. I work 10-hour shifts at my current job, and this would be eight-hour shifts. So the daytime away from my kids is the same. About the same. Okay. So you're there for less time. Okay. So the only difference is just you got to be on the road. Yeah. Which, I mean, we live in the middle of nowhere, so we're used to...

Our Target's 45 minutes away. The mall's an hour and a half away. I mean, the nearest Walmart's 30 minutes away. We live in a very rural area, so a commute is nothing that I'm not used to. So you don't seem like you really have any objections to it. I don't. It's a big, you know, just coming off maternity leave. The only change is just the drive. It's not even the time away. You're not away from your baby.

It seems like your hang up is more about changing jobs than the actual commute. Is that fair? I'm a loyal person. Yeah, very fair. I'm a loyal person and letting people down. And then, you know, transition, you know, period of our life, my husband started a business at the beginning of the year, which is going really well, and we didn't have to take on any of the show. But you're going to be gone 10 hours a day either way. Yeah. Yeah. Either way.

So what's the difference in all that? I guess there isn't. I just don't know if I wanted confirmation from somebody that wasn't. I didn't have any bias in my situation. Her problem is she feels bad that she's leaving this job. You said it was loyalty. Oh, yeah. I'm a very loyal person, I feel like. Leave the job.

You're breaking even on your time away from home. You're used to driving 50 minutes to everything, so that's not a big deal. I do it. I don't see a downside um and um i gotta tell you the people you're loyal to um they'll remember you for 30 minutes or so this is the ramsey show jade walsh all ramsey personality is my co-host today she is the best-selling author of the book

money is not a math problem one of our ramsey quick reads the real reason you're broke and what to do about it you can check that out of course at ramsey solutions.com we have two new books coming out this month uh on presale, actually coming out early. May is Ken Coleman's new book, Find the Work You're Wired to Do. Now, this is a short hardback book that is designed to walk you through his Get Clear Career Assessment. The assessment is sold online at RamseySolutions.com, and about 100 hundred thousand folks have taken it so far. And, uh, so if you want to learn, you know, get clear on your career direction, what your strengths are, your passion, how to get dialed in on that. This is the best assessment out there on that.

It's very inexpensive, very quick to take 27 minutes or so. And then this book will walk you through the results. That's what it's for. So when you buy, find the work you're wild wired to do pre-sale you're going to get three codes for the assessment one in the book one comes with a book one comes with the audio book that we're going to give you as a part of the pre-sale and one comes with the e-book which comes as part of the pre-sale so you're going to get all of those delivered to you in may and you can get that at at Ramsey Solutions. Rachel Cruz has next week a new book coming out, her second children's book.

Her first was a bestseller. It was called I'm Glad for What I Have About Contentment. This one's called I'm Glad for Where I Am. Home is Where the Heart Is, fabulously illustrated by Lauren Gallagos. Lauren is an absolute world class at this. And these kiddos' pictures are fabulous. This one, the other one's about contentment. This one is all about gratitude.

But the stunning, just beautiful, beautiful illustrations. And I've already been reading it to the grandkiddos. And the smallest one is Papa Dave, Papa Dave, read Papa Dave. And I always want to read to the kids. Because kids that are read to, they always turn out bright. They always come ahead. They're always ahead and everything. Read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read in a culture that doesn't know how to read and in a culture that doesn't know how to comprehend. You give them a huge advantage when you do that. So whether it's Rachel's books or any are the

junior series or anything else you like out there, it's great. I've gotten pretty good at Dr. Seuss. Yeah, Dr. Seuss, I love it. I had put it down for about 25 or 30 years, and I picked it back up now. Wacky Wednesday. Another generation in, and here we go. Game on. Yeah, my kids love it. I do not want green eggs and ham, Sam.

I am. I'm just saying. There we go. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Tricia's in New York City. Hi, Tricia. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi.

How are you, Dave? Thank you for taking my call. Sure. What's up? So I am divorced. I have two kids. One is in college. One is soon to be in two years.

I'm trying to figure out how to make an income of $200,000 per year based on, I guess, my assets right now, which the first one would be my home that I currently live in. It is paid off and the rest would be just really the money that I have in the bank. So I feel like I'm at that point where I'm not sure if I should sell my house and where to invest the money. So what's your home worth? My home is worth between 3.6 and 4.1. Okay.

All right. How long have you been divorced? Two years. Okay. And how much How long have you been divorced? Two years. Okay. And how much money in the bank? About $760,000. Okay. And where do you live in the city? Manhattan? I'm actually right outside the city. I'm at the Jersey Shore. Oh, Jersey Shore. Okay. All right.

Yes. All right. And what do you do for a living? Well, I was on the GC. I was buying and selling homes, renovating them. I've done that for the past 15 years. With the market the way it's been, with the interest rates, it's kind of been a little difficult this past year and a half um so i'm i'm just trying to regroup to figure out if i like i said whether i sell my home and use that money to um reinvest in properties or put it in the market um it's kind of where i am i'm at that standstill of like it's a kind of a a now decision to make. So is $200,000, it sounds bizarre to say this out loud,

but I am hearing someone that's living in a $4 million house and has almost a million dollars in other assets. So, I mean, you've got approaching a $5 million net worth. You've only been divorced two years. So that tells me you guys have been living a pretty luxurious lifestyle for probably quite a while. Am I missing something? I would say, I mean, I think it's all relative. Oh, it's all relative, but that's way above most people.

Would you not agree? Yeah, I agree. How much is it going to shock your system to move down to only $200,000 a year? I think that that is my goal. I actually am very content with that number. That's what I'm trying to figure out. How did you come to that number and be content? The number is not content unless it represents something that you're content in.

Yeah. Well, I think it's a matter of the past few years doing spreadsheets and kind of seeing what my budget is and it looks like you know i've been spending between 170 and 185 per year okay that's a good number then all right all right i like that i like that approach rather than i just picked a number that i ought to be able to live on i'm used to living on three times that but i picked a number that's what i want to be careful of okay all right so if you sold your house what would you live in i i don't know i was thinking maybe i would either um rent something because my youngest son will be in college in two years or maybe buy a house that's more around a million dollars um but i'd rather really maximize the amount of money that... Where's your youngest son in school if he is going to be there for two more years?

Public or private? I'm sorry? Your youngest son. He's public. My youngest is in public. So moving school districts, you can do that at a million dollars and not get out of that school district? Yes.

Oh, I can stay in the district, yes. For a million bucks? Yes. Oh, I can stay in the district, yes. For a million bucks? Yes. Okay. So you have a million-dollar paid-for house. We cleared three, give or take. And we've already got seven. So now you've got three-seven.

Well, that'll generate more than $200,000. You can generate a lot more than $200,000 doing flips with that money. So would you say it would be better to do the flips than to put the money in the market? How many flips have you done? Oh, probably 17 maybe. How many were profitable? All.

How many scared you to death when you were doing them? Because you were afraid you got stuck. Maybe from the ground up, the one new construction one scared me to death. Okay. All right. So you know what it looks like. Because you've got enough experience under your belt. So how much can you make doing flips a year?

Well, I think that's... I'll give you a $2 million budget. Okay. How much can you make if you've got $2 million cash and you're flipping it? Okay, $2 million. I would say... You ought to make a lot more than $200K. Between $200K and $300K would be my goal.

It better be $300K. You better be making more than 10% on this money doing flips. You're taking too much risk. Okay. You've got to have a better margin than 10%, don't you? Yeah. Yeah, you've got to have a 20 20 margin or you shouldn't be doing a flip okay what'd you make on your 17 what was your margins um i mean they're they're so different i never i know but you should be averaging your business model out kiddo i know

i don't have a business model i just kind of like did them and then put the money in the bank of whatever i made and how do you know you made money um well because i know what i put in i used my own money for the investment and you took it back out and you ran a spreadsheet on each job right yeah go back and run your mark go back and run your margins if you're not making 20 you need to be doing something else okay it's not enough you can't you can't take that kind of risk for seven or eight percent you put a stick at high yield savings and not have to go through all this trouble and taking the risk okay so you need to be making 20 or not doing them and if you make 20 on two million i've still got a million seven sitting over to the side

and you're making 400 so sell your house move into a million budget some amount to do flips put the rest of it with a good smart investor pro in some mutual funds and you're going to easily have more than 200k to live on wow there's a lot going on there this is the Ramsey Show. Jade Walsh, our Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. She is author of the book, Money is Not a Math Problem, and bestseller from Ramsey Press. So let's do some Finance 101. All right.

A couple of things. The first thing they teach you in finance class, one of the first things they teach you, is what's called risk-return ratio. The more risk you take, the higher return you should get. So when you put your money in an FDIC-insured bank, no risk virtually, but they pay you almost nothing. Fair enough.

Right? If you move it around a little bit, mess with it a little bit, you could put it in a good high-yield savings account, which we'll sidebar on that for a second. We were talking about this off-air a little bit. We'll come back to my risk-return ratio in a minute, but we'll just turn left for a second and park there. A high-yield savings account is exactly what it says it is.

It is a savings account at a bank that pays a better rate. Ding, ding. That's it. Okay? A CD, a certificate of deposit, is a savings account at a bank. And they give you a certificate of deposit is a savings account at a bank and they give you a certificate yes and you have like perfect attendance you remember that one yeah yeah but you can't touch that one yeah but you can touch it but you won't get all of the high yield okay the high yield savings accounts fully liquid pays more than cws do right now. CDs have just about been run out of town by the sheriff, okay? Ten years ago, we didn't call them high-yield savings accounts at the bank.

We had a savings account at the bank that the bank labeled wrong, but they did it for marketing reasons. The bank called it a money market account at the bank. It was a savings account at the bank that paid a higher rate like a high yield savings account does. Same exact thing. It's a savings account that paid a better rate that mimicked real money markets. But the bank did not sell money markets.

They had a savings account called a money market account that had an interest rate that was similar to a real money market account. A real money market account was only available through and still is only available through something like a mutual fund company. So you could go to Fidelity or American Funds or whatever and open an actual money market account. Now, you can have money market accounts with those that have check writing privileges uh even a debit card attached to them and those kinds of things but the high yield savings account has uh as a marketing methodology it's a better

marketing actually than money market because it says i'm going to give you more money yeah it says i'm going to higher interest savings account that's what it says it is what it says, I'm going to give you more money. Yeah, you hear it. It says, I'm going to hire interest savings account. That's what it says. It is what it says it is, actually. And the money market account was just a misnomer. Yeah. But it was all for marketing. It's all banks selling their wares.

So high yield savings account, simple savings account, little better interest rate, but almost no risk. So back to the risk return ratio um if you want to double your money you know you're pretty much going to leave investing and go to gambling or speculating now some people call speculating investing but it's really not speculating is where i want a short, quick return on my money. That's speculating. Day trading stocks is not investing. That's buying and selling stocks on a daily basis or a weekly basis.

That is speculating. When a builder, a home builder, builds a home that does not have a buyer, they're called spec houses. Spe houses speculating they're speculating they're building an unsold piece of inventory they hope to sell now they're not investing for 10 years when they build that house praise they pray they're not investing for 10 years they they hope you're going to buy the house when you so that's why they're called spec houses they're speculating the builders are speculating that's not investing it's right next to gambling and you can make a lot better money speculating but you're taking the ultimate high risk it's it's kind of an all or nothing play usually it's why i don't buy commodities like gold and um wheat futures or whatever because it's all speculating it's short-term plays with a gain it's why we don't

do bitcoin it's a short-term play with a potential gain and it's got a no track record the only track record it has is filled with fraud and go to jail do not pass go right and so it's just a mess so the whole the whole marketplace is high ultra high risk speculating it's not even investing but along the spectrum of investing the more risk you take the more money you ought to make so if you put money in mutual, I've got a mutual fund that opened in 1934. It has had like, in that 80 or 90 years, it's had like, I don't know, 10 years it lost money out of 80 or 90 years or something like that. Not consecutive.

Not consecutive years, but in the entire time. Right. 10 different individual times, individual years. Never back to back, not a single back to back. And they're always major occurrences, 9-11. Something, yeah. Something crazy. time right 10 different individual times individual years no never back to back not a single and they're always major occurrences 9 11 something yeah something crazy since 1934 yeah okay and it's averaged 12.2 percent since 1934 okay now if i can make that investment by simply pushing enter on my computer that's all i gotta do hit push a button there's no i don't have any effort to go

with it then if you're gonna do if you're gonna flip houses that's speculating all right you're hoping to make a quick buck you dadgum better well make more than 12 on your money you ought to make 20 at least ought to be your margin it ought to be more but at least a minimum of 20 otherwise you're taking too much risk versus the 12 you could make with no with a 1934 historical track record okay yeah um you got it the risk ratio on that is way different and where does the effort play into it, too? Yeah, and effort. And the effort plays into it.

And the worry. Because all speculating involves jumping in and out and involves a level of fretting over it and wringing your hands over it. Mental calories. Mental calories burning. Investing, even in high-risk things, doesn't involve the same level of calorie burn that speculating does. But where you guys mess up sometimes out there in the TikTok land of finance is they confuse speculating with investing. Investing is always long-term. Speculating is a quick gain, but higher much higher risk gain at best and then past that is

actual gambling i mean when you're speccing on a house flipping a house or you're speculating even on bitcoin it is not the same as playing the roulette wheel it's it's less risk than the roulette wheel because you know you're going to walk away from Vegas, the house wins 100%, okay? House wins. Bellagio did not put those light fixtures in there. You know, they did not put those $10 million light fixtures in there with anybody's money but yours if you were in Bellagio, okay?

I mean, Vegas is built on the back of losers um people who lose money that's what i mean and that's that's how it's how the math works so i'm not saying you physically personally are a loser i'm saying you lost your money there right you're a loser so yeah you lost your money so that's it so that but that's the spectrum okay you go all the way from savings account with no risk no effort no calorie burn to the roulette all burn. To the roulette wheel. All the way to the roulette wheel. And the more risk you take, you should make more money. If you're not, you're missing on the very basic tenet of Finance 101, risk-return ratio. More risk should always equal more return.

If it doesn't, well, that's dumb. Don't do that. So our last caller doing the flips, she needs to be making 20%. And it didn't seem like she was. She don't do that so our last caller doing the flips she needs to be making 20 percent and it didn't seem like she was she don't know she might be she might have made 30 percent she didn't know that's true she didn't she didn't even know but you got to know number one and then number two you need to be making that i mean a good residential builder is going to make 20 plus percent uh most of the time depending on what type of property they're doing, if they're doing specs. And if you're not, you're setting yourself up for problems because you're going to hit

these slow times when it takes a little while to sell a speculative piece of real estate. You are speculating. You are a speculator. Look it up in the dictionary. So is this what we can expect from your investing? Yeah, I might go on the same rent. I might put it in there. In the investment live stream?

Investment event. Yeah, I'm going to do that. What is it? May 21, 22. I'm doing two hours each night. Two hours of it will be on real estate. I'm going to go a whole lot deeper into real estate for sure. But I'll probably put this rant in there because I've kind of been noodling on it lately.

That was good. I think it's a problem that people misidentify these things and they call speculating investing when it's not. 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. Jade Walsh, all Ramsey personality, number one bestselling author of the book. Money's not a math problem. Our Ramsey quick read about 70 pages worth on how to put together your life and the real

person, the real reason you're broken, what to do about it. She's my co-host today. Triple eight, eight, two, five is with us in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Hi, Ashlyn, how are you? Hi, I'm good. How are you? Better than we deserve. How can we help? Okay, so my husband and I are both struggling entrepreneurs. Right now we have a yearly income of $49,108 a year. And we have debt of about $111,582.

What kind of debt is it? So, um, sorry, I was just running. Um, we have 38,000 in my husband's truck, um, 14,000 in my car and 52 or 54,000 in a camper, which was, yeah, that was our attempt of living in the camper to save money and pay off things because rent is very expensive. But are you living in it now? Well, it's been in the shop for the last two and a half months, which is very unfortunate. Well, where are you living now? We're living at our in-laws house. And our plan is to sell the camper and sell the truck and stay with our in-laws and pay off the $14,000. Oh, and then we also owe $5,000 in student loans. So to pay off my car and the student loans.

Okay. That sounds like a good plan. How can we help? Well, I guess that's a good question. You also need to make more money. Let me throw that in there, too, between the two of you. That's what I was going to say. Yes.

So my struggle is that we need to make more money. It's hard to track it. I'm a of a year. And then after a couple of years, you'll be able to say, and this is average for me to make each year. Very easy to track. A sixth grader can do the math. I don't, I guess I don't. You haven't been tracking it. I have not been. I switched to an online or I'm making all my people pay card because a lot of people will pay me cash. Okay. And that just doesn't work for me. I can't manage that very well. You won't manage it.

You can manage it, but you won't. So the problem is not that you're tracking. I mean, that is a problem. But tell me more about the problem because whether you're tracking it or not you've just told me you make $49,000 a year combined between the two of you and you've told me that you had some failed self-employment ventures yeah okay so what does your husband do my husband works for his family's construction company, and he was working for someone else in the past. They laid him off, and so our family kind of took him on and was just paying him as a contractor just an average pay of like $800 a week just to do random odd jobs while they asked him to run a lawn care company to help them run a lawn care company and that he would be

20% share in that. So what I think, I'm just going to interrupt. What I think is, I think your husband needs to figure out what he wants to do as opposed to just taking whatever someone will hand over to him and say, hey, why don't you work on this? Or hey, why don't you go do this? I think your husband needs to figure out what he wants to do as opposed to just taking whatever someone will hand over to him and say, hey, why don't you work on this? Or hey, why don't you go do this? I think that's thing one is him figuring out what he wants to do long term. And we can get him hooked up with Ken Coleman's career assessment to figure that out. And I think for you, doing hair is great. But if it's only making you 20 or 25,000 a year, you've got to add something to it or figure out a way that that's actually giving you a sustainable income. Fair enough? Your math's wrong. Yeah. Your math's wrong.

Yeah, that makes sense. Your husband's not making $800 a week. Well, he is, but after tax, I'm so sorry. We set back money for taxes, so a month, he's bringing in $2,720 a month after tax. Is that more accurate now? Yeah, okay. And how old are you two? I am 24. He is 27. Okay. So here's what I'm observing.

You all make a lot of decisions based on what it's going to feel like next week instead of what it's going to feel like 10 years from now. Sure. And so you jump from one thing to another, you jump from a camper to the in-laws and whatever you jumped out of into the camper. And then you jump over here and then you jump over there. And there's, there's a lot of chaos and what I would pray for you guys,

what I would want for you, because I love you is for you to calm down and become very disciplined and very focused being a stylist, whether it's cash or card, because I have to make this money behave to achieve my long-term goal instead of thank God it's Friday. Oh God, it's Monday. And, um, and then that, that, that person has trouble keeping up with cash. Right. But the person who's, uh, who's, who's hell bent on a long-term goal, zero laser focused on a long-term goal, they, laser-focused on a long-term goal, they can keep up with cash. They don't have any trouble keeping up with it at all.

Cash is not a problem for them. They don't care how you pay me. Just pay me often and pay me a lot because I'm going for this, baby. I've got a game plan. I'm doing it. I'm stepping. I'm going. And when you're getting that and you're moving towards a 10-year play

instead of a 10-day play, then it's going to keep you because you guys got a lot of fits and starts. You start, stop, start, stop, start, stop. And every time you do that, you lose not only focus, you lose momentum in your income, in your wealth building, in your career aspirations, all three. And it's very stressful. There's a lot of anxiety with that much chaos. It's stress.

It's just like I'm laying awake at night because i got crap running through my head like what to do what am i gonna jump to next oh my god oh my god instead of like there's a plan we're the tortoise not the hare we're executing the plan hang on we're going to give you two of ken coleman's get clear career assessments take of Ken Coleman's Get Clear Career Assessments. Take them both. They're our gift to you. Sit down carefully and say, who do I want to be in 10 years?

What are the steps to get there? And how does lawn care and hairstyling fit into that? This is The Ramsey Show. Jade Walshaw, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today she will be among the speakers the ramsey personality speakers which includes jade and rachel cruz and george camel and i will be talking about money stuff of course ken coleman dr john deloney uh will be with us as well who am i leaving out and all the ramsey personalities we're going to be doing a huge weekend event, the Total Money Makeover Weekend.

And it is May 10th and 11th. There are still some tickets available. We would love for you to get one before they're gone. Otherwise, you'll experience FOMO. Don't miss this. It's a day-and-a-half, two-day event. You'll leave fired up and wired up and knowing exactly not only how to get out of debt on a budget, but how to become wealthy.

Ken's going to talk about increasing your income from a professional growth standpoint. Dr. John Deloney, our expert on relationships and emotional health, he's got a Ph.D. in counseling. He's going to be walking you through the relational aspects of this whole thing, and you're going to have a total money makeover so bring your reluctant spouse um but be careful what you wish for because they may turn into more zealous than you and bring your crazy friend who thinks you're crazy and they will leave crazier than you the person that's making fun of you for doing the dave stuff bring them bring them and buy them a ticket because they'll they'll believe me by the time you finish spend the weekend with us

you're going to not only believe that you can become wealthy but that you should and could and can become wealthy so it's going to work may 10th and 11th get your tickets at ramsey solutions.com it's on the hill here at ramsey campus in our ramsey event center come in a little bit early on friday and watch the show happen we'll be doing the show live on the hill here at Ramsey Campus in our Ramsey Event Center. Come in a little bit early on Friday and watch the show happen. We'll be doing the show live on the glass. We do every Monday through Friday from 1 to 4 Central Time, and I invite you to drop by and hang out with us. About a week later, 10 days later, I'm going to be doing the first time ever,

Dave Ramsey's Investing Essentials, where I'm going to go into the basics of investing, which I've done many times, but also what I do with investing. And so that includes not only mutual funds, but other things. I'm going to show you and help you understand some really basic tenets, the principles of how you choose investments, the way you analyze an investment. And I'm going to go deep into my real estate playbook, how I look at real estate. And I own several hundred million dollars worth. I'm not on TikTok and living in my mother's basement trying to sell you a real estate course. I actually have done this hundreds of millions of dollars worth. So come join us. I'll show you

what to do. And this is a virtual event. And so you're going to watch it from the comfort of your home. George Campbell is going to help me with it, and it's going to be incredible. So you're going to really walk away with not only more knowledge than you've ever had, but some really to-do list of what to do with your investing. And then Rachel Cruz and Dr. John Deloney will be doing their Money and Marriage Getaway October 24 and 26 here in Nashville. It's a whole weekend of money and marriage. It's fun and funny. Believe me, if it's those two, it's got to be fun and funny.

They just don't do it otherwise. RamseySolutions.com slash events for all these tickets. Be sure and check them out. Austin is in Phoenix, Arizona. Hi, Austin. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Thanks for having me. Sure. What's Austin. Welcome to The Ramsey Show. Thanks for having me. Sure, what's up?

Just to get to the point, I'm looking at, you know, getting engaged and married to my girlfriend, and she is coming in with a considerable amount of student loan debt, and I'm thinking about

is it a good idea to maybe sell the house that I have a bunch of equity in to kickstart the, um, you know, debt snowball, uh, uh, plan and, and, and knock out a bunch of this debt and, uh, get it paid? Or should we stay in the house and just go all in on the debt now? You said you're, you're looking at getting engaged and marrying. Are you engaged yet? Not yet, but I have the ring and everything. Good for you. When does that happen? That should

happen within the next month or so. And then how long do you think before you guys would go through with a marriage? You know, a little thing is not off the table, but within a year or two, I would assume. But you said a little thing is not off the table but within within a year or two i would assume but you said eloping is not off the table okay cool um how much student loan debt does she have or i'm you said it was student loans right how much yeah four hundred thousand yeah yeah okay

and do you have any debt what is she uh she's uh she just is graduating to be a veterinarian. She has a job, but yeah, she's a vet. I do also have a little bit of loans. I have $13,000. $400,000 to be a vet? Should have been half that. Yeah. Good God. Okay.

That's a lot. And what's your home worth? My home is worth probably $6,000 to $650,000. And what do you owe on it? $3,200. Okay. And you said you had some debt, too. What was your debt, by the way?

$13,000 in student loans and a $30,000 car payment. Okay. And does she have anything else besides the loans? $10,000 car payment. Okay. And does she have anything else besides the loans? $10,000 car payment. That's it. What do you make? $133,000 base. Okay.

What does she expect to make when she graduates? $135,000. She's already getting paid, yeah, $135,000. Okay, cool. Oh, boy. Okay, yeah. So when you guys get married, all of this is going to become both of yours,

but not a day sooner than that. So up until then, you guys need to both make separate headway on your debts. It sounds like you're already living together. Is that true? Yeah, she's moving in currently. Okay. So just because you're living together doesn't mean you're married yet. And so for that reason, keep this very separate until legally you're married. And I would do that sooner than later because at this point, why wait? Right? Yeah, of course. Like pick the next romantic time and propose and then the next romantic time and get married. Yeah. Yeah. And then, yeah, that's, um, and then, yeah, after you're married, I would sell my house.

You hear that real clearly after. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Not before. Because we've heard all the nightmare stories that people that do stuff acting like they're married before they're married because they think cause they're shacking up, they're married. You're not married. You don't have any of the legal protections or anything else. And so no, no, no, and no,

you do not pay off anybody's debt, not a dime of it until you are married to them. And as soon as you're married to them, now you took on their debt with them. And now we're going to do everything we can to clean it up as fast as we can. So you're going to be making close to $300,000, and you're going to be 100% debt-free pretty quick, and then you're going to be saving up to buy a house. Exactly. Did you have any other money saved? Yeah, I have a $20,000 emergency fund and then $120,000 in my 401K. Okay.

Don't touch the 401K, but the $20,000, 19 of it is up for grabs as well for you clearing out your debt. So if I were you, I'd start working on my car and get as far as I can until you guys get married. And same thing for her.

Whatever she can clear out before you guys get married, you guys need to keep working separately. And then when you get married, yeah, come together and do this house deal. Sounds good. Wow.

And never go into debt again. And look, it's not to pick on or shame somebody, but it should be noted that she paid twice for her degree what she should have paid. Mm-hmm. Yes, I have pointed that out. Okay. Don't point it out again.

Once is enough. And a cautionary tale, because it's worth noting, when we talk about people living paycheck to paycheck, a third of people who make $250,000 a year or more live paycheck to paycheck, which is crazy. I think what happens is you get this good salary and you're like, we're living the good life now. And before you know it, that lifestyle creep starts creeping up and you're right there living paycheck to paycheck, feeling like you make $80,000.

I think being a veterinarian is an excellent career track, but $400,000 invested to make $135,000 is not a good ROI. A girl called in on Friday. I was on with George. And the girl called in. She was a veterinarian. And she was already $250,000 deep. And she had two years to go.

And by the time it was over, she's going to be $400,000 in. It's not necessary. You can get a DVM for $200,000. I mean, for God's sakes, you can get an MD for $250,000. Yeah. So, you know, it's just watch what you're doing, people. These schools will charge you anything and you don't have to look at it because you're borrowing the money.

So it's not necessary. But, yeah, I'm a big fan of the idea of being a veterinarian. But keep in mind, welders with a high school degree make $110 in America right now. This is The ramsey show

jade washaw ramsey personality is my co-host in the lobby of ramsey solutions on the debt free stage chris and angela are with us hey guys how are you hi how are you we're doing well dave how are you doing great man welcome where do y'all doing well, Dave. How are you? Doing great, man. Welcome. Where do y'all live? We're in Reedfield, Maine, just outside of Augusta. Ah, very cool. Good to have you in Nashville.

It's a bit of a trek from Maine to Tennessee. A little bit. It is. It's a bit of a trek from Maine to anywhere, though. It's true. Really. I mean, wow. Yes.

Good to have you guys. So how much debt have you paid? We paid off $157,000. All right. Wow. And how long did that take? 13 months. Good to have you guys. So how much debt have you paid? We paid off $157,000. All right. Oh, wow. And how long did that take? 13 months. Good for you.

And your range of income during that year? We started off at $230,000 and ended up around $300,000. Excellent. What do you all do for a living? What do you do for a living? I'm a finance director. Uh-huh. And what do you do?

Angela. Angela. Hey, her headset's not working boys and girls okay are you hearing me can't hear me you can uh Chris can you hear me you can't hear me okay how in the world is he answering my questions he's a good lip reader barely very barely hey turn up his volume to his headset please okay all right um so i'm sorry it's all right technical glitch oh that's never happened before oh my goodness okay so can you hear me at all i can hear you a tiny bit okay what does angela do i work in ministry ah okay now you can hear me or a tiny bit. Okay. What does Angela do? I work in ministry. Ah, okay. Now you can hear me. Or a little bit.

Okay, good. All right, cool. So what kind of debt was this $157,000? Yeah, we had a smart car loan, a tractor loan, and our house. Ah! You paid off the house! You're weird people! Way to go, you guys!

That's cool. What's the house worth? About $550,000. Wow. Excellent. Excellent job. Okay. Very cool.

And how much do you have in your nest eggs? A little over $600,000. Millionaires. Yay. Baby step millionaires. Way to go. Way to go. How old are you two?

43. All right. We're both 43. Way to go. Very cool. Congratulations. Excellent. Wow right. Way to go. Very cool. Congratulations. Excellent. Wow.

So tell us the Ramsey story. How'd you get started on this whole thing? Yeah, so, well, 14, 15 months ago, we started listening to the podcast, started hearing all these debt-free screams, and we started getting emotional. Yeah, we kind of got hooked listening to them. And we had this thought that that could be us one day. Wow.

Yeah. So we decided that, you know, it was time to stop making excuses and just go for it. So, oh, YouTube sucked you in. What's that? YouTube got you in. Yes. That's what did it okay so did you just learn from youtube or did you do total money makeover did you do uh financial peace university anything like that we did look at financial peace university but really we we knew the baby steps

already and we just decided now's the time to really put them into practice and and hammer it out awesome yeah way to go way to go congratulations you guys thank you how's it feel to be free it feels great it's great it feels really good it's real it's a it's a release yeah peace right financial peace it is oh wow way. Way to go. What do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is? $157,013 months. Yeah. I would say your what's next has to be important, more important than the what's now. To be content in what you have.

Not to be jaded by the stuff right in front of you and to look to the goal in the future and really have your eyes set on that and to, to work as a team, um, to, to get there. Yeah. Yeah. Way to go. Very cool. Absolutely. So you listen online, you know, the baby steps, I got to believe that you started budgeting. What was the hardest part walking through this? What was the biggest sacrifice? What was the thing that made you think, oh, this might be too much? What was the hard part? Well, to be honest, I'm super cheap. I'm super frugal and super conservative. So cutting back on things wasn't hard for me. Second nature. It was second nature. I actually have the opposite problem now.

I'm still super cheap. He's like, but we can afford it. And I'm like, it's expensive. I love it. I love it. I love it. So house is paid off. Everything's paid off.

You guys are baby steps millionaires. Tell us what's next. I can't hear you. I didn't hear that last question. What's the biggest thing you're going to do now that you're completely free? Well, we have a couple of things we want to do. First, we want to travel and we want to do some repairs on our home. But the biggest thing that we want to do is now we're able to give like no one else.

Amen. We have big plans for that. Amen. Way to go. I love it. Very cool. When we first paid off our debt, we were both, the first thing we want to do, we want to give like nobody else.

I think we were shackled by debt, which impeded our opportunity to glorify God with our money. Now we're at an ability to, with God's will, glorify him and and and bless others the way he has provided for us he's blessed as uh you know more than we deserve uh we want to we want to be able to reciprocate that to others amen way to go yeah that's what it's about right there i love it congratulations thank you all right bring the kiddos up and introduce them and give us their ages. So this is Manny. He just turned nine while we were here. All right. Happy birthday, Manny.

And Warren is 10. And we also have a 19-year-old at home. She had too much college work, so she couldn't make the trip with us. But Dave, cool thing about that, she's cash-flowing her college. All right. That's it. And Audrey and Brianna both paid cash for their vehicle way to go guys wow we're passing that along i love it the whole family tree has changed yeah excellent job way

to go you guys very well done all right it's chris and angela manny audrey and lauren from augusta and Lauren from Augusta, Maine. $157,000 paid off in 13 months. Baby Steps millionaires, house and everything, $230,000 to $300,000 income. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free! Yeah!

That's how it's done, boys and girls. Yes. Yes. That's amazing. They did an incredible job, man. That's just super. That's like having a superpower now. I mean, to be 43 years old, be millionaires, paid for house, $300,000 income.

They can do anything they want to do. And like she said, they can be outrageously generous now. Yeah. Think about how much you can give when you don't have any payments and you make 300K. As much as you want to give. I mean, it's like live like no one else. So later you can live and give like no one else, right? Wow.

I mean, they really are in a position to do that. It's a beautiful, beautiful position of generosity and they caught that idea that we're going to give god the glory uh and you know we are blessed that we can be a blessing like abraham of old right yeah and you're seeing it drift through their family tree already with children going to college debt-free buying vehicles debt-free now that's when you know the cycle's broken yeah it's not just we did it but then the next generation does it too that literally is a that's a literal representation of changing your family tree oh yeah and this is i mean these are core memories for these kids they're never going to forget what they saw their

parents do you know we drove all the way to tennessee and that weird guy and stood on that stage and the microphones didn't work and we screamed debt free. And that's right. There's a whole, it's all marked right there. I mean, it's pretty incredible, you know? So, uh, absolutely perfect. Absolutely amazing. Very, very well done. Doesn't get any better than that. So here's the trick out there. Uh, you could be 43, you could be 63, you can be 23, you can be single, you could be 43 you could be 63 you can be 23 you could be single you'll be married with four kids you could have no kids you'll be married with six kids every shape size color background history of family has stood on this stage now and done a debt-free scream yep so whoever you are that's listening or watching,

you've got no freaking excuse. None. What. So. Ever. You gotta do this, folks. You gotta do this. Well done, Chris and Angela. You're heroes. We're proud of you. This is The Ramsey Show. Our scripture of the day, Matthew 6, 26. Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? George Bernard Shaw says, Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the airplane airplane and the pessimist the parachute.

That's good. I've never heard that. That is a great quote. Oh, I'm a quote collector and I've never seen that one. Oh, that's fabulous. Very well done. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Jade Warshaw is my co-host today aj is up next in denver hi aj

welcome to the ramsey show hey dave hey jade thanks so much for taking my call sure what's up so um thanks thanks again um i have kind of a crazy thing that i'm thinking about doing and i wanted to call because i listened to this and i want to call before i of a crazy thing that I'm thinking about doing, and I wanted to call because I listened to this, and I want to call before I do the crazy thing, and I want to hear your advice. So I'm an engineer right now. I work in dams. I've done really, really well as an engineer, but I am still pretty young. But honestly, I never felt like that was the Lord's calling for my life.

And actually, since I started, I always wanted to do ministry. And as time went on, it's been about 10 years now that I've been in this engineering job. It's given me a lot of opportunities to travel and do those things, but I've had a consistent vision to kind of start a Christian coffee shop near campuses to kind of help students with hard questions. And I don't know, it's been a burning passion of mine, and about every six months for the last 10 years, I've panicked and thought, when am I ever going to do it? So recently, I made the move, and I just asked a campus ministry if I could join them. They said yeah, and no more than a week later, someone approached me and said, hey, would you like to start a coffee shop below this place? We have a place. You can have it for free. Do you want to do it?

And now I'm panicking, and I don't know if I have the finances to do it. I don't know what route to take, and really my question is, do I, option one, I could start my own independent consulting thing and probably just for 10 hours a week, make really good money and keep my engineering job at a part-time capacity while I tried to do these other things? Or do I need to just be more bold and go ahead and go for it? My only concern is that it's time. So if I start my own thing, it's going to take a lot of time. And no matter what, I'm looking at starting my own thing. And if I'm divided, on one hand, if I'm divided, there's a greater chance it will fail. And on the other, if I keep this engineering thing,

there's always this for sure lower risk income that I can keep. So those are the risks that I'm balancing. And I'm really curious what you guys have to say. Is it just you? Or do you have a family, a wife? I have a family. Yeah. I have a wife and two kids. My wife works at home, but has a little side gig that doesn't really bring in much income, and so I'm the only one that's pulling in income. What do you make as an engineer? Right now I'm making about $130, $140. And how does your family exist if you quit and do coffee? Well, we can raise funds with the ministry that we're going to be a part of,

or I can go drop. So basically I work for someone else now, and I could try to work for myself, and maybe if I'm lucky or blessed, whatever you want to call it, make the same working for myself, working 10 hours a week, and do these other things on the side. So those would be my options. Okay. All right. and do these other things on the side. So those would be my options. Okay.

All right. Without being lucky or blessed, but just being very intentional about doing consulting, how confident are you that if you said, look, I'm going to go out on my own and I'm going to do this so that there's that and the coffee ministry? The coffee shop. Are you going to and the coffee ministry. The coffee shop. Are you going to own the coffee shop? Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, that's right. So hypothetically, it could actually be profitable. Yeah, and I think it will be a number of years, and that's kind of the other thing I'm kicking around. We have for the last 10 years been saving. I mean, it's been our sole focus, but I only have maybe 60K put away. And I don't know that it's enough. How are you going to end up owning the coffee shop?

How does this work? Yeah, so the space itself is another ministry called the Colorado House of Prayer. And they offered us a spot. So they basically said, if you want to come under our umbrella, it's yours. But the question for us is, do we even have enough? It's not just the space, it's also floating our family in the interim. I got that. I got the family part.

What I'm trying to figure out is, so if you set up a coffee shop and you put your money into this space, do they own it or do you own it? They'll own it. But do you pay any rent? You don't pay any rent or anything. Okay, so you're not talking about opening up a coffee business, a coffee shop as a business and doing ministry in that setting. You're talking about going over to a ministry place

and putting in a coffee pot and doing ministry. Basically, yeah. Well, it putting in a coffee pot and doing ministry. Basically, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's not a coffee pot. It's a, well, it's got other pieces to it. I didn't, I didn't want to take too much time. Well, I mean, the bottom line is, is you're, you're giving this ministry a bunch of equipment.

Right. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. I think you can do a different model than this and still live your dream. Okay. What do you you think i think this could be a hoop i mean it could be a snare um the uh i think you open a coffee shop and do ministry from it there's plenty of people that do that um in the christian world you would not be the first

by far i have a question if if you the ministry that was giving you the space once you were to put your materials in there they own it would you be able to have your materials back if you wanted to mike what i'm getting at is would you be able to use that space to test figure out hey like this is doing well and then if you if you once you're ready to move on and see hey i can really create a business of my own out of this does that make sense yeah what could that be a good testing that's actually the exactly and that would all come down to like a contract with them but yeah the idea your contract with the ministry that you own the equipment and it's yours to take with you when you go to open your next deal okay that that's okay if you want to do that as a little test market and then keep the other open so um when i'm looking for uh i run a business that i believe as a believer

as a christian person that god owns it and when i'm looking for his will for that i get a 5 000 ideas in my head and lots of things that push on me uh just like you have with this and um some of them five years later turn out to be god and some of them turn out to be last night's pizza this one has been persistent enough with you over a long period of time that it's probably god it's what it sounds like to me okay i might be wrong too you and i both might be wrong aj but i think you're probably onto something now but that does not necessarily mean just because it's god it does not mean methodology needs to be sloppy because jesus said don't build a tower without first counting the cost lest you get halfway up and you're unable to finish and all who see you begin to mock you and say this man

began to build and was unable to finish so a lot of people in the name of spirituality in the name of christianity do a lot of half-cocked half-planned impulsive crap and blame God for it. Don't be one of those. Yeah, you said it. That's good. You're an engineer. You know better than that. Well, that's exactly it, and that's why for the last 10 years I've been putting it off. I'm not saying it's wrong, though.

I'm just saying do it in a way, build the bridge. You're an engineer. Build a bridge, right? I mean, there's a methodology here to opening a business, running a thing, and that would require that you pull the boat closer to the dock. You don't just jump and call it faith and hope the boat pulls up. So, no, you keep your income from engineering coming in from some source, whether it's 10 hours a week over there, whether it's side stuff.

And you may have to put in a lot of hours to make this dream come true. God's not above working you. That's true. And so you may have to, because your first job is to take care of your own household first or you're worse than an unbeliever. Scripture. Yeah. So he's not going to give you something to do in a way that it violates scripture.

That's a good word. So have a good plan. Don't do it in a way that puts your home at risk your kids at risk they're first they're first they're your first ministry then you can so you walk into this very gradually and very slowly but i kind of think it is god just talking to you and if you need a new a good name for the business, you could call it Hebrews. Oh. Hebrews. Hebrews Coffee. It's probably been done, but I like it a lot. Same.

Pretty cool. It's not bad. 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. Hey folks, Dave here. You want to hear even more life-changing content from Ramsey? Download the Ramsey Network app so you can catch all your favorite shows all in one place,

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