The Ramsey Show - True Maturity Is The Ability To Delay Satisfaction

Episode Date: March 6, 2024

💵 Sign-up for EveryDollar today - The simplest way to budget for your life! Dave Ramsey & Ken Coleman answer your questions and discuss: "How do I keep the romance alive with a shared bank account if I don't want my spouse to see surprises I'm planning?" "I have a STEM degree and Starbuck's won't even hire me - how can I find a job with my degree?" "Am I financially obligated to help pay $250k of debt that my 60-year-old sister racked up?" Follow up call with a caller that hadn't paid taxes in 3 years How to choose between a stable income versus your dream career "Is it possible to leverage debt and stay aligned with the Ramsey methods?" How to prepare financially for losing your spouse Support Our Sponsors: Christian Healthcare Ministries Angel Studios BetterHelp Zander Insurance 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! 🏠 Find a Ramsey Trusted Real Estate Agent 🎟️ It's game on! Get your ticket for Total Money Makeover Weekend. 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. We help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create amazing relationships. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Ken Coleman, number one bestselling author, host of the Ken Coleman Podcast on the Ramsey Networks, is my co-host today. So you want to talk about jobs or careers? Well, he's here and we can work that in for sure. Because we talk about all parts of your life here on the show and how we can make it all work together so you get a better one. Open phones at 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Rob's in Los Angeles.

Hey, Rob, welcome to The Ramsey Show. Hey, guys. Absolutely love the show. So, big fan, follow most of your advice. My question is about romance and how to keep it alive with the joint bank accounts. So, my wife and I recently got married and we're doing what you suggested, having one centralized checking account. But my question is, what do you do on Valentine's Day or her birthday?

I don't particularly want her to know how much I spent on flowers or if I take a look for a meal, you know, how much it costs. You'll get over that. The longer you're married, the less that matters. Because actually, Sharon and I go out to dinner for Valentine's after 43 years, and we play guess the check before it comes. We want to see who can guess the closest to what it's going to be. So it'll work out.

Now, I'm messing with you, but that's a sweet, wonderful question. Thank you. Okay. So I guess there's a couple. I mean, we just need a mechanical way to fix it. So you've got some money that is spent towards her, but she doesn't know what it is. And so I guess around Valentine's Day you could, as an example, around her birthday or something like that, you could increase your Rob spending account because you should have a his and her account for blow money, right?

Yeah, we have a guilt-free account. Yeah, guilt-free account. Okay, let's increase your guilt-free account around that time, and she knows that we've increased the amount, but she doesn't know what you spent on the particular items then. Got you. Okay. But, I mean, she's not going to be okay with you dropping $5,000 out of budget.

Okay? Got you. Okay. But, I mean, she's not going to be okay with you dropping $5,000 out of budget. Okay. But you don't want her to know if it's a $200 flower or a $300 flower, right? Exactly. That's my point. Yeah. I understand financial infidelity, et cetera. But, yeah, there's a happy media here. Yeah, I agree.

Yeah, so just build it up during that time. And it's just kind of a stated thing. I get a little more guilt-free money because I'm taking care of your birthday out of that shut up you know right and so that's how that's what i would do i don't know ken what do y'all do i that's what i do i tell stacy especially around christmas time i go hey listen we we plan out a budget for the kids and then i go all right this is a range for us and i said you know you just you just not worry about it and and she loves that and and your wife is going to love that too, because you've had the forethought to say, all right, uh, I'm going to do a little extra over here and it's not going to be crazy.

And then you'll, she'll know all the details once she gets the gift. And so I think the thought that counts around the gift is great, but I think the thought to say, Hey, we're going to stay controlled. We're going to stay disciplined, but you know what? I want to, I want to do a little extra for you. And I think as long as you're communicating you're disciplined the romance is very much there i love the heart of the question but you guys communicating well allows for these month to month changes when you've got a christmas a valentine's and a birthday yeah yeah exactly because in february we have sharon pelusa i know well this is a big month for sharon in february because of her birthday.

Well, our first date was February 6th. Her birthday is the 8th. And then there's Valentine's Day on the 14th. So the whole freaking month is Sharon Palusa. I mean, she just gets – it's like ridiculous. So, yeah, budget for February is – wow. Because, you know – It's a good month for Sharon.

Well, I've got a little category. It's SWI. Sharon wants it. Uh-huh. You know, so there it is. Right. It's one of my budget categories and it works it works it's good is that also the same could you also call that same envelope sharon gets it well that's the same that's the point yeah sharon wants it sharon gets it yeah swi sgi that's it yeah i have to give it all a full acronym like we're in the military yes i. I love it. Good for you. Well done.

Well done, Rob. Charlotte's with us in West Palm Beach, Florida. Hi, Charlotte. How are you? Hi, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. How can I help?

I have a question. So during COVID, we decided to put some money in stocks. And now we made enough on the stock market to pay off our house my husband really wants to because florida is going crazy with insurance and taxes and it's just going crazy down here so he really wants to take the money out of the stocks and pay off the mortgage how do you feel about that what do you want to do? I don't know. I'm torn. How much is the mortgage?

I watch it go up and I watch it go down. But we pay $2,500 a month on our mortgage. How much is your balance on the mortgage? About $100,000. Okay. How much you got in stock value? About $120,000. Okay.

Let's pretend your house was paid for and you didn't have any stock. Like you did what he wants to000. Okay. Let's pretend your house was paid for and you didn't have any stock. Like you did what he wants to do. Okay? Would you go borrow on your house to buy stock? No. Same thing. We want to move. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. You drove. Whoa, stop. Stop, stop, stop, stop. You drove right past that. It's the exact same thing. If you had a paid-for house and no stock, go borrow a mortgage to put the money in the stock market. It's just reverse engineered.

It's the exact same thing as you taking this stock and paying off this house before close of business today, which is what I would do. I have never in 32 years of doing this radio show had anybody call me back and go, I paid off my house and I hate you, Dave Ramsey. That has never happened. There's a lot of people hate me for a lot of stuff, but that's not one of them. Okay. Pay off your house. Today. Okay.

Do it by the end of the week. Have a little mortgage burning party with a little dance and stuff in the backyard on Friday night. Pay it off this week. You sound like him. He's just ready. Okay. Okay. Thank you so much.

Sorry, Charlotte. He wins the argument. He's right, and you're going to love it. I figured that. I figured that. Thank you very much. You called me and asked that question. You knew it.

Yeah. That's why I asked. I was like, what do you want to do? Because when you lead with my husband once, we know where that's going. you know it's funny for her to she's kind of reconciling that she's like I'm watching it go up go down but she really wants to ride that wave well they made some money they did and she's going I like the way that feels I want to do that again that's exactly what you do is you take the 2,500 a month that you don't have anymore round that up to 3,500 and go if you're going to want to if you want to do single stocks, I don't, I don't like the risk of it, but if you want to do that, then throw some money in

there and just watch that money grow. And now you've got a paid for house in the backdrop. That's exactly what I would do. You breathe different when your house is paid for. The air goes more deeply into your lungs. It is a physical manifestation of peace financial peace two words that don't go together like airline service right that's exactly it's just you know delta what's that mean it means when you look it up in the greek we're probably not going that's what it means i mean oh ouch deep deep Financial peace. Yeah. Well, but here's the investment reality too, though, Dave. It's that that $100,000 in equity is no risk compared to the $120,000 of the stock. Yeah.

Because that could go up and down, but your house is not going to do that. Not in Florida. Hello. You could get Biden reelected or Trump elected or the world could come to an end, which is probably similar. At this rate, maybe that's the best option. See, see. None of the above. Yeah, I know where I'm going. It's a lot better there. 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 healthcare 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. Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, number one bestselling author of the book Paycheck to

Purpose. He's my co-host today. Erica is with us in Huntsville, Alabama. Hi, Erica. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? So I'm going to give you a little bit of background so you can understand the situation I'm in. I moved to the U.S. by myself when I was 21, and I worked as a nanny until I was about 28. And when I was 28, I finally had the opportunity to go to college, and I pursued a physics degree. And in college, I got as many opportunities that I could because I wanted to build my resume and have actual work experience. So I got an internship. I did three research teams. I was a physics TA.

I published another internship. I did three research teams. I was a physics TA. I published a paper. And I got a job right after college as a developer, and I'm making $40,000 a year. But I'm moving to Atlanta soon. I only have 10 days left at work. And I have been looking for a job since October and I haven't even gotten an interview yet and the people who went to college with me they all got really good jobs they have the same background as me but they found jobs in engineering and tech but I can't seem to find anything and I don't understand why. And now I'm having to pay back my student loans and things are getting tough. Erica, so let me ask you this. What have

you done when you say, I haven't been able to find anything? Does that mean you haven't been accepted in the form of getting hired or you just literally are having a hard time ideating and selecting things to do with that physics degree? No, I actually have been applying to lots of jobs, and I haven't gotten an interview. I applied for tech, engineering. So Erica, I'm interrupting because that's the challenge. So we live in a world today where getting noticed is harder than ever if you're just going to apply. I mean, you could sit and LinkedIn message people all day long. You can apply, apply, apply, and you're exhibit A for applying without a connection and you are maybe not even getting noticed. There was some data that came out, Erica, in 2021 that said 4 million actually qualified candidates never even got noticed by the companies they applied for because of the artificial intelligence software

that we have to use now to be able to process the amount of resumes. So I'm trying to encourage you, not discourage you. The encouragement is you've been going about it the wrong way. And now you need to do it the right way. And so if you're moving to Atlanta, you've got to start to zero in on everybody that you know that lives in Atlanta. Everybody that you know that knows somebody that lives in Atlanta. And we're going to show them the impressive degree that you got in physics. I'm assuming you had a great GPA and some of the papers that you've written.

All these things are impressive, correct? Right. That's what I have been doing. I have been trying to network there. And I even went in person to a few companies to deliver my resume, introduce myself. No luck yet. No, but sweetheart, listen, the days of walking into the street and to the receptionist, while I love the hustle factor there,

it's just not the way things work. So what has to happen is you've got to have somebody who is making an introduction for you to somebody who has a say in the job. Is this hard work? Absolutely. Is it harder than submitting resumes all day, every day? Yes. But with your background, your pedigree, your issue is not qualification. Your issue is connections and getting in front of somebody who gives you an actual interview. And so there is no, there's no silver bullet advice here. This is you literally locking in on, this is where I'm moving to Atlanta. And so if I draw a circle around Atlanta and I know the North side, South side, you're looking at all of the companies. And one of the things you probably need to do is narrow in on what is it that I

really want to do with the physics degree? Do you have an answer to that? Give me top of the list. If you had three things, what would be number one at this very moment? Well, number one at this moment is what I have been doing right now to work as a developer. But I know that things have been tough for developers at the moment. So my second option would be engineering. You're doing code with a physics degree? Oh, yes, because in my university, we have to have a lot of i know but i mean background yeah okay but you want to do you want to be a developer that's the long-term ladder for you i want to keep taking my developer skills and move up because your current developer job sucks

yeah you're not you're on the low end to be a developer? That's awful. Yeah, it's because I was hired for a non-profit company. Okay, so Erica, not only are we not fishing properly, when you have fished, you've been fishing in the wrong pools. Non-profits, by the very nature of their existence and operation, there's just a lid on you financially you should be in the 75 85 range he's very soon with a path a dev one six figures a first level dev yeah yeah for sure yeah that's what i'm trying to find i and developers are not hurting there there's a shortage i don't know who told you the market is dried up for developers there's a shortage oh it's because i could hire five today if i could find them that were competent i just went on listen i just went on a popular job site i'm not going to say their name

but there's 977 developer jobs on their site in the atlanta Not exactly a shortage. 977. Yeah, so I have been applying for these, though. So you're not listening. That's why you're not getting an interview. Yeah. For 10 minutes, Ken's been telling you that applying for jobs doesn't work unless you know somebody inside the building that takes your resume out of that stack that's nine feet high and walks it over to their friend's

office and says hey i don't know if erica will be great or not but you ought to at least talk to her she's my buddy that's right that's who gets you the interview otherwise we get 15,000 applications into ramsey every year we hired 170 people last year what do you think your chances of getting out of that needle in a haystack are so it's not because we're mean or heartless so something erica just said and this applies a lot of people so i want to break this down so erica just said i don't have any buddies well first of all it's not true so let me give you all a really quick example of what i've talked what i've done a thousand times on the ken coleman show someone says ken i don't know enough people so i say to them dave how many people do you know give me close ties close network social media friends from college and they usually say the every time they say i know about 100 150 people 200 people okay great how

many people do those 200 people know and then they say 200 and i go quick math that's 40 000 people yeah so when someone says this, and Eric is still listening. So Eric, here's what I want you to understand. You know everybody that you need to know, but this takes work. Let me give you a classic example. Here's what people do wrong, Dave. They go on LinkedIn and they fire a bunch of emails and connections and they feel like, I did good today. I put some hooks out in the water. What you got to do is no bait on the hook no you got to go to LinkedIn and you go okay so I'm looking at a job right here folks I'm not going to say the company it's a lead full stack

developer she's not qualified for that but this is developer job at a company in Atlanta Georgia and it's listed via LinkedIn so what you do is you go to LinkedIn you go how many people on LinkedIn do I know at that company if If she comes up with zero, then she goes, all right, let me start looking at the connections of people on LinkedIn that work at that company. And I will guarantee you she's three or four degrees on LinkedIn from that one person who's at that one company. Now, folks, our advice here is practical and it's doable. We don't give out this kind of you know mary poppins kind of pollyanna advice this takes work i know but you point my point is it's not just uh go out there

and do it it's it's you got to work it and work it and work it to the point where someone goes all right i know fred over there and fred knows the hiring manager fred's going to connect you based on our relationship. Here's a copy of Ken's new book, number one bestseller, Proximity Principle. That'll help. The Proximity Principle is what we're talking about. Find someone that you're in proximity of the job with that can pull your resume out of the stack

and walk it down the hall to their buddy and the hiring manager and go, hey, I don't know if she'll work out, but at least look at her. That happened to me last week. An old childhood friend texted me and said, a friend of a friend's daughter has her stack, stuff in your stack, would you pull it out? We pulled it out. It did not result in her being hired, but we pulled it out and let them look at it. This is The Ramsey Show.

Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. So, Ken, I'm thinking about Erica's call in the last segment, and she's applying to a bazillion jobs and not getting any reaction, and your goal is to get her to go to a human being and that she knows that knows a human being or that actually does still work does currently work inside the company and let the human being take her uh resume and walk it to the hiring manager and um you've made a really good a huge huge impact on social media. And the podcast is very successful telling people that simple idea among several others on the whole idea of a job hunt. Um,

I never, and you and I've talked about this for, I don't know that that book is three years old, two years old, the proximity principle. So we've talked about this concept on air and off air a long time it just suddenly hit me coming back from that break and and she was couldn't seem to get her head around what we were telling her to do it was almost like it was impossible for her but you know how much of this this is a passive-aggressive question because it's actually a statement, how much of this need to do things digitally instead of relationally is caused by a generation or two that grew up doing everything digitally instead of relationally? Yeah. I think it's a portion of it. I'll tell you the biggest

cause is the sting of rejection. So every time you have to put yourself out there and ask somebody to help you, one of the hardest questions we know to ask is, will you help me? We don't want to feel like we're a burden to somebody. And we also don't want to potentially hear the word no. So actually the fear of rejection is what's really driving most of this. Now, to your point, social media and technology and devices has made it feel as though we are being more effective. People have digital courage. I mean, they'll say crap, trolling, and do crap that would get their dadgum nose broken were they to do it in person. Somebody punched their freaking lights out if you said that in person to somebody, right? But you know, you got digital courage behind and behind your little avatar that's living in

your mother's basement that's right and so and it's a generation that breaks up with their boyfriend or girlfriend instead of doing it in person a with a little class and d b dealing with relational conflict properly they do it with a text well let's go a level deeper now we have ghosting where you don't even actually send the breakup text or whatever you just don't show up ever again it's a scourge we have literally there are story after story of businesses hiring people and their start day arrives and the person doesn't show up they get worried about them they reach out to them they never hear from them i'm not kidding this is called ghosting you know i know it's called

ghosting but it's ghosting on a new hire. They're not showing up. We've had people start here two times in the last year, and I have raised cane with our recruiters and our interviewers because they shouldn't have got in the building. They started here, and they quit on the first day because they found out, like, we work and stuff. Right.

Yeah. Like, whoo. imagine taking a job and then dave ramsey's place and discovering i had to work right why would that be a shock right right uh but i work but i think you make a very good point the rejection feels less when i'm submitting a resume online i feel good about myself because i submitted it i did nothing further than that i'm saying not everybody in these generations i'm not throwing a whole generation on the bus that's right but the skill of personal relationships you're right has been stunted that's exactly right it's hard though by this technology instead of enhanced by the technology and you're right and i'm agreeing

with you but i'm saying what's really going on underneath all of that is this fear of rejection and fear to ask for help and to your point they've not exercised the muscle to where it's no longer scary yeah so you're absolutely at at the pinpoint of why it feels better and feels easy to do what this young lady said because i'll never forget i was like my 20s and i went to a sales conference and the guy was talking about the guy with there was a big in my 20s there's a huge real estate company called Century 21 yeah oh sure and the guy that won the award for selling more houses than anybody else in this huge company was a uh a Vietnam veteran and they called him up to stage and he kind of was just this little guy not real impressive

looking and they got him in front of the microphone he really wasn't that impressive and they're like so how do you the number one guy in the nation i mean you think a guy would be a dynamo right and how are you the number one guy and he goes well just talk to people about houses and they buy houses yeah he goes what do you mean he goes well like example the other day he goes i was in burger king and heard this couple sitting over there talking about houses looking at homes magazine i walked over and told him i'm in the real estate business and three days later i sold him a house they're like well weren't you scared to walk up to a stranger in burger king and he goes i mean i did two tours of vietnam burger king ain't scary and not the truth so it's a great example you know it's a muscle and that's exactly right so

we all have to understand that when we put ourselves out there just in the act of applying what you are essentially doing is you are in a place of vulnerability and you're kind of going i hope they like me and so now what's happened with this caller and we hear this all the time is she has tasted rejection so much that now she has really begun to believe the narrative that i can't find a job and developers you can't nobody's hiring developers in atlanta and in a two-second search live on the air you get 977 jobs to come up so what's happened what's happened is the warped reality right but from what i can't find anything nobody wants me and we believe it as opposed to

what's really hard is to go taste rejection i'm going to tell you something when i was a kid my dad i remember my first job he walked me up to a drove a, drove me to a McDonald's and sat in the car and said, go in there and turn your application in. I had to go ask for the application. This is going to freak out some young people. I had to go ask for it. They hand it to you. And then I go sit in the corner. My dad gave me a pen. I filled it out, had to walk back up and interrupt the manager who's busy trying to fill a, you to fill a large fry order. And you're standing over there, but it's those kinds of things that, yes, it was terrifying for me. And I'm an outgoing extroverted guy, but still. I mean, when you're four years old,

that's hard. It's true. I was young, but you know, the idea is, is that you have got, let me tell you, let me just say this. The most underrated underused question in the idea is is that you have got let me tell you let me just say this the most underrated underused question in the world is would you help me and here's what i found about successful people most anybody will just about everybody does successful people who have been helped by the way uh they they want they say this come on in the water's nice sure i'll have plenty of room for every you have got to ask which means you've got to be okay here and no success is not a fixed pie there's a lot of room for all of us come on in i'll help it's your classic story of the turtle yeah turtle on a fence post one thing you know if

you see a turtle on a fence post two things you know one is it's a curious sight and two is the boy didn't get there by himself and it's so rich are you a turtle on a fence post most successful people feel like they're a turtle on a fence post they know they didn't get there by himself. And it's so rich. Are you a turtle on a fence post? Most successful people feel like they're a turtle on a fence post. They know they didn't get there by themselves. Yep. And so they're willing to help. They're willing to do that. So it's, yeah, and if I can't help, I'll send you to somebody that can.

That's right. Or I will help you by giving you an instant no on an email. That's right. I'll just say no. And I just feel like there's some people out there who are watching and listening today, you need to hear this. I'm going to share this. Years ago, I had the opportunity to interview Soledad O'Brien.

She was at CNN at the time, and I was asking her about her journey starting from scratch in media. And she said something, a producer pulled me aside one day. She goes, I was in a heap. I had asked for a role in Anchor. They told me no. And she was just devastated. And she said the producer pulled her aside and said, listen, you need to start turning no's

into not yet or not here and stop looking at it as finality. And the word no, when we don't even get crickets back. You remember when we were kids, we'd write the little note, do you like me? Yes, no, or maybe. What's weird about that is the maybe was more excruciating for me than the yes or no because at least I knew where I stood right I can move on and so we we treat no's in the form of no reply to a to a uh a job application we treat no's in the form of I interviewed I thought I did well but I got beat out and we treat that as this final period end of statement and I can tell you dave knows my story um i heard no from ramsey leaders three years before i actually came here and and it wasn't a no it was a not yet turned out i didn't know that at the time i thought we weren't in a position to handle a thoroughbred like you well i don't know took a little while no i think you had to find it took a little while

to get ready we had to get a really good saddle and bridle. So, yeah. But you get that. We got to start. Well, no is not final. That's exactly. It's true, though. We didn't hire him for a while.

It's not now, right? Yeah, that's exactly right. It's just, it's a matter. Well, or not here. Not here. So what do we do? Somewhere else. We keep moving.

Somewhere else. Keep moving. The guy that turned down the book Financial Peace. One of my best friends. Yeah. Sold 3.2 million moving. Somewhere else. Keep moving. The guy that turned down the book Financial Peace. One of my best friends. Yeah. Sold 3.2 million copies now. Oops. He's still in publishing and I'm still an author.

But that deal never happened. This is The Ramsey Show. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. This is the season for Halloween. It's October. We're wearing costumes and we're wearing masks. If you haven't started planning your costume yet, get on it. And while you're thinking about it, I want you to be honest. A lot of us hide ourselves. We hide our true selves

behind costumes and masks all the time. We do this at work. We do this around our friends. We do this around our families. We even do this when we look at ourselves in the mirror. I know because I've been there multiple times in my life and it's the worst. If you feel like you're stuck hiding behind masks and costumes all the time, if you find yourself hiding from your true self, I want you to consider talking with a therapist.

Therapy is a place where you can be honest, where you can talk to somebody else and reflect and learn and you can accept all the parts of yourself over time and start living an authentic life. Masks and costumes should be for Halloween parties, not for our emotions and our true selves. And if you're considering therapy, try calling my friends at BetterHelp. BetterHelp is 100% online therapy. You can talk with your therapist anywhere, so it's convenient for you and your schedule. Just fill out a short online survey, and you'll be matched with a licensed therapist.

Plus, you can switch therapist at any time for no additional cost. Take off the costumes and take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash Deloney to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp.com slash Deloney to get 10% off your first month. That's better. H E L P.com slash Deloney. Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality is my cohost. All right. One last thing on that.

And then I'm going to move on because, one of our team members working in the lobby mentioned this to me at the break. Um, you know, I'm saying that we've got a couple of generations now that have grown up with a magic wand in their hand and they have learned to be think Facebook friends are real friends, which is a lie, um, or break up over text and that there's a stunted growth

associated with a digital level of communication versus a personal level, a relational level of communication. That is, I'm not making that statement, and to her point, she corrected me, and I appreciate her doing that. To her point, it's not a generation-wide malady, but it is not a, and so there's plenty of millennials that know how to do relationships. That's not my point, other than digital, right? There's plenty of Gen Xs or Gen Zs that know how to do relationals.

But you guys have learned how to make almost that your default mechanism. And if you don't watch, you'll fall into that is my point. Because our generation, we didn't have that. I mean, our phones were connected to the wall. It's so true. And so you had to kind of go around the corner to talk to your girlfriend and your sister-in-law here at the dinner table. You know what I mean?

How long a cord could you get on this thing? And so it was a different type, a different situation with communication. And we didn't fall prey to, we didn't have the option of doing something stupid that goes viral and stays on your digital tattoo the rest of your life. So we didn't have that disadvantage either. So, but we didn't have the advantage of any question you ever want answered in the world is at your fingertips. And 30 seconds later, you can have the answer hypothetically correct, depending on whether Google likes your algorithm search or not. But anyway, conceptually, it's a wonderful piece of technology. It is.

And all millennials and all Zs are not stunted. I want to make sure I'm not. Because I was not saying that, but I'm saying you can fall into that if you're in those categories. So be careful. All right. Helen is in Vancouver. Hi, Helen. Welcome to The Ramsey Show.

Hi, Dave. Thank you for having me. Sure. What's up? So I want to know, do I have a moral obligation to financially support my sibling who is likely over $250,000 in debt? No. You don't have a moral obligation to support your siblings, period.

Under any circumstances. It's I understand not, but I have very limited family and I'm actually worried for her health. That's sweet and you love her, but that's different than a moral obligation. I love my sister and you love her but that's different than a moral obligation i love my sister and i want to help her is different than a moral obligation

okay so let's phrase it that way is there a way i can help her oh yeah protects me uh sure sure uh but you unless you want to give her 250 000 pay it off, then you've got to coach her and be her cheerleader to give her some instruction and some encouragement to work her way through this. You're her biggest fan. You're her biggest cheerleader. She'll never work her way through. Yes, she will. She's almost 60. Her net income is $50,000.

Well, change her income. How do you? What's her $250,000 in debt for? Living large. What's it owed on? Pardon me? What does she owe the money on? The primary is a line of credit that I think that she's put onto her mortgage and then her mortgage. Okay. She doesn't even know that. She didn't think that she's put onto her mortgage and then her mortgage. Okay. She doesn't even know. She didn't think that she can actually afford her mortgage when it comes to it. Okay, so how much is her mortgage?

What's her mortgage balance? I would say probably, the grand sum I know is like $250 plus. Okay, and what's the house worth? I think it's all lumped together. What's the house worth? House is probably worth $600. Sell it. Boom, she's out of debt. That's what I think, but. No, she's out of debt that's what i think but no she's out

of debt she doesn't need help she just needs somebody to go if you want to be out of debt i can tell you how to do it sell your house and you got you got what 350 000 bucks left over you you can survive in vancouver equity in equity in it. I don't even know that. Yeah. Pardon me. Well, you're dealing with a bunch of unknowns and a vague set of worries and a whiny sister when she won't deal with her issues. Her issues are she's spending like she's in Congress. Yeah, and Helen, twice on this call.

And she's living for today, not worrying about tomorrow. Yeah, you can't help. You can't make somebody grow up. That's up to them. Helen, I've, twice on this call. And she's living for today, not worrying about tomorrow. Yeah, you can't help, you can't make somebody grow up. That's up to them. Helen, I've heard twice on this call, you begin to make excuses for her. And I think there's a bit of guilt. I think you started this call with a sense of guilt. There is guilt because I'm financially secure. Well, wait a second.

But you didn't cause her to be insecure. What are you guilty of? I hear you, but i'm in the helping field that's kind of where i come so am i it's like it's been every day of my life helping would it be a good investment for me to buy the property and rent it to no okay the last thing you need to do is get involved in this woman's finances. She's an absolute out-of-control car wreck. Yep.

You need to stand back and just watch the car wreck and say, darling, if you will turn left, you will not wreck the car. Stop turning right and pushing on the gas. Slow your butt down, turn left, sell the house, and get your act together. But she doesn't want to get her act together. You want her to grow up more than she wants to grow up probably true yeah well i think it's a step a lot i think it's lower deeper i think you want to protect her from the car wreck you see it coming and you feel like it's your obligation yeah of course right because that's what's all over you you You have guilt all over you.

It's your responsibility to stop the car wreck because you know it's coming, and I get that, but I don't think you can. But people you love, all you can do is say, Hey, what I've learned is that when I do this, I get pain, and when I do this, I get joy. And so I'm going to recommend the joy actions and behaviors, not the pain actions and behaviors. And I love you, and I wish you'd do that,

but I can't make you do it, and I can't do it for you. And so you're not in the helping business, I hope, very deeply, because you have the language of an enabler, and you don't want to start doing that. Well, I haven't given her money. Good. You know. Good good but you're about to if if at all no i said if i would give you money it wouldn't be a gift it'd be a loan and don't do that what do you want to be a creditor to this woman for yeah she's not dependable it's like throwing a rock to somebody who's drowning. Don't loan her any money.

Again, you're trying to help something that can't be helped. Yeah, if she wants to make positive steps in a right direction and you can do things to encourage her and cheer her on, even if you matched some of her debt reduction and you said, hey, if you pay off $10,000 worth of debt, I'll put in $ in ten thousand dollars towards it but if you just start loaning her money or giving her money and she keeps on the same behavior pattern that money went down a rat hole yeah so you're not really helping you're just enabling when you do that you're giving a drunk a drink that's what i'm trying to avoid yeah just so don't don't get involved unless she's unless you can assist her moving in a positive direction that she has chosen to move in she might have chosen because

you talked to her about it because you love her you confronted her uh all those kinds of things but you have no moral obligation no obligation of love to give a drunk a drink as a matter of fact there's quite the contrary you know your love obligates you to not give a drunk a drink as a matter of fact there's quite the contrary you know your love obligates you to not give a drunk a drink i mean i've got i've got a friend who's been dry 12 years the last thing i'm doing is taking him to a bar absolutely i love him i'm not taking him there and so even if he wanted to go i wouldn't take him there and he doesn't want to go so i'm not going to put him in a position where he's going to be in trouble so helen you gotta just uh if you want to sit down talk to her and say i'll help you if you start doing some things

that are positive i'm scared for you i love you i think you're getting ready to crash and i'm really worried about you uh but you can't you can't make other people stop doing stupid stuff. If you could, this show would have been over 30 years ago. But instead, it grows in popularity every year. It's true. We're like the Krispy Kreme store. We just keep making the donuts. Same recipe.

Hot lights on. Hot now. Same question, same advice. It's just rolling off the track there. Whole other generation here doing the same stuff. And they got more sophisticated tools for their stupid. That's great. Oh, Helen, you're a sweet lady.

You're kind. Be kind to her, but you're not responsible for her. 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. Ken Coleman, Ramsey Personalities, my co-host today. The phone number is 888-825-5225. Thank you for joining us, America. Chrissy is in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Hi, Chrissy. Welcome to The Ramsey Show. Hi. Thanks for having me. This is exciting. It's an honor to have you. How can we help? I have a car loan that I have been trying to get out of since I've got the car because I was negative from the previous car and just tracked it on to the new car. So I'm trying to get, and I'm on baby step two, and so I've got my savings from step one, and my goal is to pay this off as my only debt.

I'm 35, and I make $43 a year. So my question is, should I pay the principal down because my payment's $613 a month? So can I pay the principal and then sell it to a private seller and give it time? But again, I'm trying not to put as much miles on it so it can sell, like, with less miles because I feel like that would be better. So what do you owe on the car? Like $29,000. Okay. Have you looked up what its value is today? I looked it up on the Kelley Blue Book.

For a private seller, it would be like $24,000 to like $25,000. Okay, so you're $4,000 or $5,000 in the whole, right? Yes, sir. Okay, so you're $4,000 or $5,000 in the hole, right? Yes, sir. Okay. Are you single? Yes, sir. What is your income? It's like per year or like...

Yes, per year. Per year, it's like $43,000, and I just started making that. Okay. Because I just got a raise. Okay. You're right. This is a car that needs to be sold. I agree with you.

Who's the loan with on the car? Who do you owe the money to? It's through Southwest, through like the Toyota. It's a Toyota RAV. That's what I have. Yeah. What's your interest rate? What is it?

It wasn't bad. I know it was under, it's around interest rate? It wasn't bad. I know it was under, it's around like I think six, six point something. That's very good. Okay. All right. Is your credit good? Yes, sir. Okay.

I would hop to your local bank or your local credit union and talk to the manager in person about getting about a ten thousand dollar loan for a five thousand dollar car and five thousand dollars extra to pay off the balance of this one to get this one sold okay i'd rather you be ten thousand dollars in debt than thirty thousand dollars in debt exactly yes sir and i have learned that through through watching y'all's videos and stuff um uh definitely watching more than i probably should but i've learned a lot as it's a good addiction if you're going to have an addiction we're a good one yes sir yes and i had kind of wrote that in my notes and i've kind of been like contemplating because i want to make a good

decision going into my next decision and I travel for work so I need a vehicle that's going to be a great the a to b but also like I need to make sure I'm not on the side of the road and in a mess amen I agree and I think you can probably do that for 10 grand well no it's going to be a five thousand dollar car you might not do that for five thousand yeah okay yeah so um and i didn't know would it be better to um to sell to a uh person like a anybody you whoever will give you the most money but usually a dealer won't give you as much money as a private chance as a private okay private's always going to be more than a dealer because the dealer's buying

it at wholesale to resell it to a private individual that makes it they want to make a profit and so that's their idea but um the other option of course is do some things to increase your income sounds like you've gotten a new job that makes more that's great but also if there's some side hustles and you could raise your income up you know if you get the thing paid down really rapidly you may want to work your way through it. I think it's too much car for your current income, but I also understand you're on the road. And so, and whatever you're driving,

if you're putting a bunch of miles on it, you're destroying the value of whatever you're driving. So you're right. The sooner you get this fixed, the less the car is going to go down in value. Every day you keep it, you're running up some pretty serious miles. So good question.

Matt's in Raleigh, North Carolina. Hi, Matt. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi. Thanks for taking my call. Sure, Matt. What's up? I just had my moment where I realized that things are really bad and they need to change.

And I'm trying to figure out a way out of the hole that my wife and I have put ourselves in. And I'm wondering if I should sell the house to help dig us out of that hole. Wow. So what happened? Tell me about it. So things were looking really good. We had our first house we bought when we were young, about 22 or 23, and basically flipped that while we lived in it

and sold that for a nice profit, and we moved up to a new house. Right around then, we had our first kid. We have two now. They are one and three. And we were just stupid and young. We had never planned for anything. So how much debt have you got, man?

About $295,000. On what? $110,000 of that is student loan debt that should be forgiven by the government in three years. No, it's not. That's absolutely bogus. Okay, now then, what else have you got? student loan debt that should be forgiven by the government in three years. No, it's not. That's absolutely bogus. Okay. Now then, what else have you got?

We have about $30,000 on cars, $55,000 on a truck that is about to go away, and $100,000 on a HELOC. Yes. Okay. And what else other than the truck? $100,000 on a HELOC. Okay. And what's your household income? We bring home around $6,000 to $7,000 a month. $67,000 a year?

I'm sorry, $6,000 to $7,000 is what we bring home every month. Oh, per month. I got you. Okay, I'm hearing you now. All right. All right, so you're making $90,000 a year, okay, or $100,000 a year if you're bringing that home. Okay. If you're selling the truck, I think I can see my way through this, can't you?

I think so, but I'm just trying to kind of, I wanted to hear your opinion on it. I'll tell you the thing that's bothering me the most is there's no fight in your voice. You sound defeated. I'm a little nervous. Oh, okay. That's fair. I have a lot of nervous okay that's fair a lot of fight that's fair yeah i've been working about um 16 hours a day um okay that's fair seven days a week for about a year but okay i realized this

a few weeks ago i've been i've been really grinding yeah okay well you may need a little rest to start with but um that explains it i I wasn't being critical. I just want to make sure that you've got enough gas in your tank because the math I'm seeing with the sale of the truck, you can push through this. You can scratch your way through it, but you do have to stop all of the negative habits of overspending that you've been doing. Hang on. We'll send you through Financial Peace University as our gift, and hopefully we can help you get on Peace University as our gift, and hopefully we can help you get on the right track here. It sounds like you're heading the right way. These days, it's not if your identity gets stolen, it's when. And the only ID theft protection plan

I have ever recommended is from Zander Insurance. It helps real people with real life situations. Like the call we got on the show recently where a woman's abusive ex opened a credit card in her name and racked up over $8,000 in debt. Then the bank sued her even though the charges weren't hers. What a mess. With Zander's help, she was able to get the entire nightmare cleared up and now her family is officially debt-free. Listen, Zander's Identity Theft Protection is the best option out there. They have all the cyber tools and monitoring services you need. They cover all types of ID theft and they even include up to $2 million in stolen funds protection. In the end though, you need an ally, someone on your side to take over the work

and fix the problem. That's what zander is all about go to zander.com to learn more call 800-356-4282 ken coleman ramsey personality is my co-host today i'm dave ramsey your host thank you for joining us america one of the things that uh we have not done very much of and i regret that in the last 35 years on this show is to follow up on does somebody actually take our advice i mean we pretty much tell you what to do and you just go off into your world and the listener never knows what happens to you and neither do we most of the time you know unless there's something there but occasionally we get to follow up so uh marcus called in um and had not filed his taxes and asked ken and i our advice a few months ago and uh we you know here's an edited version of

his call uh so you guys get the gist of when he called the first time. I'll just be quick and to the point. 2020, 2021, I was working a mortgage company. They closed their doors in 2022. I was making quite a bit. Now I'm a teacher. Didn't file my taxes for 2020 and 2021. Probably 80% of that was obviously commissioned.

So I did, I know I need to file those now, obviously, and I'm going to owe quite a bit. I was just going to see if I could maybe get some advice on how to go about doing that. Not paying taxes is not a criminal act. Not filing taxes is a criminal act. That's the danger that you're in. I'm more concerned about that

than I am the payment plan. If you were doing mortgage origination in 2020, you made some bank. Yes, sir. Yeah. Like what'd you make that year? Probably $250,000. And you paid zero taxes? Yes, sir. I want you to get it done now.

I don't want them to come find you. Okay? I want you to get it done now. I don't want them to come find you, okay? I want you to go to them, like, immediately. No later than the middle of January. These documents need to be filed, okay? You've got the cancer diagnosis. You just don't know what the treatment is yet. Yeah, so he's probably got a $50,000-plus tax bill and needs to get filed

and doesn't have the money to pay it, and that's where we left him. But you have to go get filed immediately. That was the advice. So you guys heard the call. So Marcus contacted us and said he wanted to follow up. So let's talk to him. Hey, Marcus in Oklahoma City. How are you doing these days, brother?

Dave, I'm doing a lot better. I'm doing a lot better i'm doing a lot better from that last call and i appreciate the help and advice sure tell me what happened uh i got online i got hooked up with a dave rams the endorsed tax professional who basically said kind of what you said sounds like you you know you've done dumb and you've got a long road ahead of you but uh i'm here to help um send me an affidavit to basically sign everything stating that if the IRS contacts you, we're going to be able to talk on your behalf. He got everything down.

They called me. It was a lot. It was still bad, but it was worse than, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. And I think really at the end of the day, just knowing that number, knowing the monster that we have to attack is a lot better than just the unknown, I guess, so to speak. So you've gotten a filing done. Took your advice, got the filing done as soon as possible.

I think it was maybe mid to late January once it was all said and done. Okay. And now you've got a huge bill with a payment plan. Well, yeah, I had about $60,000, $70,000 I put towards it. Oh. Yeah, which dropped it down to about $20,000. Oh, that's not bad at all. I thought you were in a deeper mess than that. That's awesome.

I mean, it's horrible that that money's gone, but I'm glad you had it. Somehow I didn't remember you having a pile of money money or maybe i didn't know that from the call i don't know but um i'm glad you had that pile of money so you had a 90 000 tax bill is what you're saying yes sir that's correct ouch and you know it's just something about every every phone call i know as dumb as it sounds every phone call you get when you're in that predicament you're thinking oh my gosh i wonder if that's the irs calling me you know asking me or why why haven't you filed where you know anything else where are you so we can come get you yeah right the monster's in the closet yeah yeah yeah getting it filed getting that number and getting that at least that it still hurts, but just the unknown,

not knowing when you may get that call or that certified letter or whatever the case may be is a lot scarier than what that number was. So true. Well done. Well done. You were brave. That took some courage, and the moral of the story is the known is not as scary as the unknown. A hundred times over.

Yeah, so maybe that'll inspire some other people to take care of something. Because sometimes when you've got something just off in the background from your past and it's hovering out there and you're just waiting on it, you know, the shoe to drop, so to speak, that is a lot scarier than just dealing with it. And you go, oh, that's all. I mean, $20,000, we'll just dealing with it you go oh that's all i mean 20 000 bucks we'll get through this that's all that's left i mean 90 000 bucks but i'm really glad you had the 70 save from those good income years to throw at it so yeah that's good so are you married uh no sir okay so you're single all. In a sense, that makes it scarier because it's just you. Right.

And it's like, oh, I mean, who's going to feed the cat if they come get me? Yeah, just knowing that. Go ahead, Marcus. Just like I said, just the unknown, just the phone calls and thinking, you know, sometimes, you know, it'll say USA or US or something on your phone. And it just, it sounds stupid. But just thinking. No, it's not stupid.

I wonder if that's them. No, it doesn't sound stupid at all. When you see headlines like they're arming IRS agents and hiring 80,000 more, I mean, that's called a real nightmare. Here's my quick question. Obviously, you went into the tax pro to solve the current issue. Did you walk away with, speaking of things that you know, did you learn some things? You have some better strategies going forward? Because I feel like you're a guy that's going to have more windfalls and more success.

I'm just curious how much of that you've talked with your tax pro about. Yeah, I mean, I told him, I said, I'm not sure. You know, I said, that number's a lot less than I expected. I said, you will be my CPA for life. You know, and he just, he really kind of talked me through it. You know, he followed up with what was needed. Here's some other deductions we can take, you know. So he really worked with me.

And I think Dave said, you know, don't do this alone. Don't try this alone. You've got to get a tax guy. You've got to get somebody to help you out. And just deductions that I wouldn't know about, you know things that he he got up and was able to do for me and and then like i said i think the first step was when he sent me that affidavit and said you know sign this if the irs tries to contact you or anything like that you know we're gonna we're gonna speak on your behalf yeah that's a great feeling it's a great feeling it's like if you're

the little guy at school and the football player says i'll take up for you here's my number i'm not kidding you i was getting ready to say i was like i feel like it happened to me once or twice hey colman i got it just don't go out on the playground all right stay in the classroom i love it marcus congratulations that took a lot of courage i'm glad you did that and thanks for uh allowing us the honor of the follow-up call it's good for folks to hear it and it's inspiring when people take uh you know take the bull by the horns take responsibility and run straight at the problem and that's the shortest route to solving the problem all run straight at it that's exactly right so uh you know if you're facing something out there like that guys i mean yeah the tax pros are there if you want a tax pro to do your taxes

or to help you with a tax problem uh the the guys and gals that we've approved across the nation that are Ramsey Trusted at ramseysolutions.com, you just click on the Ramsey Trusted thing, and there's tax pros everywhere. They'll help you. So there's people like that in a lot of different industries where insurance and real estate agents and so on, and we've got the SmartVestor pros over in the investment side, all of that, and we put this network there's almost 8 000 of these different folks available that we have vetted in these different areas and so you can check it out that way but here's the thing jim collins told me this that wrote the book good to great he the research he did on his last book he was telling me this in the green room when we were speaking together one time not long ago and he said ambivalence not knowing is more scary than bad news exactly right it's

like i've got a friend with a cancer diagnosis and from the time they gave the diagnosis until they gave the detail and the treatment plan the not knowing was scarier than the actual bad news of what the treatment plan and the actual prognosis was. Yeah. Once you know what the demon looks like, once you know the size of the dragon, then you know the size of the weapon needed. That's right. And even if it's an uphill battle, even if it's a battle, you don't know if you're going to win or not, but at least, you know, the knowing how tough it is and doing the tough thing is easier than the not knowing. So, and that's what he just outlined. That's right. So, uh, fear of the unknown is a bigger fear than fear of tough stuff. That's what I'm saying. So step

into it, people step into it. I don't know how much debt I've got. I'm afraid to look that's scarier than knowing how much. Get in there and figure it out. This is The Ramsey Show. Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. You jump in and we'll talk about your life and your money. Ian is with us in Tacoma.

Hi, Ian. Welcome to The Ramsey Show. Hey, thank you guys for taking my call. Sure. What's up? Hey, so I have a question regarding my career. So a while back, about a month and a half ago, I kind of asked myself the age old question of

if I could wake up and do any job in the world, what would I be doing? And I came across the answer of being a pilot because for a while, for a while, I've been interested in planes and aviation. And I've been to a bunch of aviation museums across the country. And it's just been something I've been interested in a long time, before a long time. And after doing research on the career, it's a lot. Training's expensive. A lot of time and money. It's a lot. Training's expensive.

Job security is iffy depending on when you enter the market and when you finish your training. So it's a lot. And I have a very stable career right now. I make decent money for what I do. So I'm kind of stuck in a head versus heart situation. No, I don't think you're stuck. I think you're scared.

And I would be scared at this kind of staring at this giant mountain of time and money that is the the transition you're going to have to make but um i i would say that the stable job is it's your platform it's everything and whatever you choose to do if we choose to go the pilot route um you're not choosing between these things and there is no head and heart wrestling match um i know what you're talking about and I use that analogy a lot, but the only thing that's happening is your heart knows it wants to be in the air and your head's going, this is absolutely excruciatingly hard. And some days the brain's

telling you it's impossible. And so what we have to do is get the head aligned with the heart. And so the heart says, this is what we want to do. And then we go, okay, how would we go about getting there? And here's the question for you, Ian, since you went with the metaphorical question. If you're willing to do what it takes, are you willing to wait as long as it takes? Absolutely. All right. Now we got an answer. And I want to just get real personal for a second. I was 33 years of age when I got to a conclusion that I was supposed to go into broadcasting, but I had no degree in it and zero experience. And everybody I talked to in Atlanta told me I was too old.

And truthfully, I was. 33 is ancient to get into broadcasting. But my wife and I sat down on one very specific night, and I looked at her. I needed to know if she was willing to go all in with me on this because I told her I thought it was going to be five to seven years before I caught a major break. It ended up being seven years when Dave asked me to join him, and it was two and a half more years of pay and due, so about nine years. So if you're willing to wait and it may be five seven nine years depending on your financial situation if you're willing to wait as long as it takes then i would go for it and that means you're going to be stable in a day job the entire time

because we must stay stable and then we build we build we build we build get your hours you get your licenses you put the hours in there because you got to get the fly errors in the hours in the air that's right under your belt there's no exception to that uh the only way to get around that and short circuit it is um join the air force that's right or the air national guard where they will train you and pay you. That's right. And it's a full-time gig. And when you finish your service time, you come out a pilot and you're ready to go. That's if you get approved. Now you could make that route, but otherwise you're going to be a weekend warrior at the airstrip and everybody over there is going to know you. And you may even be doing some light instructing or something as you go along to keep your costs down on your time in the air.

How many years based on your financial situation have you mapped this out how long it's going to take you to save up the money because you know we don't want you to go into debt just in order to get a big old plane what's it going to look like yeah i've thought about that i actually ran the numbers a bit ago and in theory i should be able to cash flow flight school by the summer of 2026, assuming I'm working full-time while going through flight school. Great. Man, that's two years to get started. What's it look like, the full timeline on the other side of that when you're ready to get hired? So it's, so from what I've heard, it's generally 18 to 24 months to go from zero hours to a commercial flight instructor, which is the most common way to build hours. And then after you get commercial flight instructor, it takes around another two, three years, depending

on how many flight hours you get. It depends a lot on region, weather, stuff like that, students, how big the school you work for is. Yeah, but it's very dope. So from zero hours to air transport pilot license minimums, generally it's three to six years. Okay, so let's split the difference, right? So let's say four and a half, and that's starting at 2026. So by 2030-ish, we're ready to roll. Yeah, in a best-case scenario, yeah. I know, but I'm just letting you get your head wrapped around that

because that is – we're talking about a four to seven year play and you got to be signed up for that but on the other side of that i want to challenge one of your your suppositions uh the airline industry is in dire need of talent and so you you keep your nose clean you do a good job you become extremely likable really work the relationship game this entire time. You're going to be in demand. You married? No, I'm young. That's one of the advantages. How old are you?

I'm 20. Oh, I love this. 27, he's doing it. Why don't you go the Air Force route? It'd be faster. It's true. I actually have a medical condition that prevents me from flying for the military okay i have amblyopia in my right eye so lazy eye so it is uncorrectable to 2020 okay but you can fly

commercially with that condition yeah yeah yeah it's just military they've got heavy requirements i have i i would have to go through the f like as some medical process or the faa so yes i can but that's the process i wouldn't be able to jump immediately into training with the medical license i need yeah that's right okay all right oh gosh yeah he's a sharp young man who's here's the other thing i want you to give yourself permission along the way for you to decide, oh, it's not a career, it's a hobby. That's a good point. And maybe I've got a different career in front of me.

And that's okay, too. You could go. I mean, the number of guys that I know, and I'm in my 60s, that are pilots that do it just because they enjoy flying. They are not doing it for a career, but they've gone and gotten their pilot's license because they enjoyed the intellectual stimulation and the thrill of flying and having the airplane at their control.

There's a bunch of them, a bunch of good friends that do that. I've avoided it because I know how I am. I'll get sucked in and I won't do nothing else. I see you in one of those stock planes. Yeah, I wouldn't be doing anything else i'm all or i'm it's so i'm not it's i'm not a good personality for that that's why i did not try to learn to play golf until i was almost 60 because i knew it would get sucked in and i did i just want to see you in one of those old school planes with the leather

hat and a little snoopy hat yeah snoopy and the red bear the chin strap flapping in the wind yeah i've actually got a picture of me doing that in a biplane, but I wasn't flying it. I was a pilot. Yeah, but I like that. I mean, I was a passenger. All right, I need to see the picture. Now, we do know that you like to jump out of planes. I have done that.

That's kind of a thing for you. Are you done with that? Have you gotten that out of your system? No, I'll do it again. I mean, it's fun. I'm not doing it every weekend. Right, yeah. Yeah, that was a fun thing. I started doing that when I was 60. You're a recreational skyd yeah. Yeah, that was a fun thing.

I started doing that when I was 60. You're a recreational skydiver. Yeah, that's it. You and George Herbert Walker Bush. There you go. There you go. Our 41st president got into it. Well, yeah, I think that was just military training, if I recall.

Good job, Ian. Very cool. Sharp young man who's really laid it out. And, you know know most people want to microwave everything he's willing to crockpot it sounds like it that's what it takes that's a big deal right there that ability to delay pleasure to win that's it is a uh that's called maturity regardless of the number of years you've been on the planet this is the ramsey Show. Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today.

Thank you for joining us. Today's question of the day is from Adam in Florida. I'm a new listener and I've got a burning question. Is there any way to leverage debt and stay aligned with your methods? No. We tell people not to borrow money. I mean, you don't have to listen't listen to show about 30 seconds to figure that one out dude uh it seems to me as a wt employee that the only way to attain outsized

financial freedom would be to reach c-level suite corporate america oh brother or become wildly successful salespeople salesperson oh brother i recognize that there is much more to life than acquiring wealth but if there was ever a time to take a shot at entrepreneurship through acquisition or buying short-term long-term rental properties that'd be now you sound like a tiktok ad dude um i would also prefer to be my own boss rather than an officer of a large company okay so you don't want to work for a large company and but but here's the thing you have created a world in your mind that says that the only way to become wealthy is go borrow a bunch of money and buy real estate. Other than do things that you don't want to do, which is be a C-suite or whatever. The truth is that C-suiters don't become that wealthy that often anyway.

So that's a misnomer. A high percentage of small business owners build wealth if they survive in business. The number of people that borrow money to buy real estate and 10 years later are not bankrupt is almost zero. So I'll give you an example, Adam. When I was in my 20s, I did this. You obviously have not heard the story. So I got a degree in real estate. I grew up in a real estate household. I got my real estate license when I turned 18 years old. Three weeks later, I sold my first house to another guy as an agent a week and a half after I got my license. So I've been doing this a long time. It's in my blood. I really know real estate. I started buying real estate from nothing, went deeply into debt, buying everything I could buy, everybody that would loan me money,

because I was doing this stuff back then before there was cable TV or TikTok to tell you how to do it. And I was doing all the things that they're showing people to do now. And I bought and bought and bought and bought and bought. And by the time I was 26, I had $4 million worth of real estate that I owed $3 million on starting from nothing. I was a millionaire. And in 1983, I made $250,000. That's $20,000 a month in 1983 doing real estate.

So I was successful. Except I'd borrowed a lot of money. And my largest lender that owed a million two of that three million two got sold to another bank, and they called our notes because they looked over and said, there's a 26-year-old child that owes us a million two, and this scares the crap out of us for good reason, and we want him to bring us our money now. Let me tell you what you call real estate that owes us a million two, and this scares the crap out of us for good reason, and we want him to bring us our money now. Let me tell you what you call real estate that you sell fast. Cheap.

That's what you call it. There's one way to sell real estate fast, low price. So I start giving away my real estate to meet these note calls. Our second largest lender got word that I was in trouble. Within 24 months after all of that, I was bankrupt. I lost everything I owned. I was sued. I was foreclosed on. Our marriage was hanging on by a thread, and with a brand new baby and a toddler, I was bankrupt and got the opportunity to start over. So a man with an experience is not at the mercy of an idiot on TikTok with an opinion. I've been there, done that. I got all your t-shirts.

So don't do this, Adam. Don't do this. Not because I had a bad experience, but because what I learned in that during that time was I joined the Nashville Real Estate Investors Club. As a matter of fact, I was an officer in the Nashville Real Estate Investors Club. It was formed by a nothing down guy named Robert Allen, who wrote the book called Nothing Down. If Robert Allen was in the business today, he'd be big on TikTok.

Nothing Down, the book called Nothing Down. And he formed these clubs all over America, people buying nothing down real estate by the way he went bankrupt interesting the guys that were in that club that were buying real estate on debt which was almost all of them some of them more debt than others some of them less debt 10 years after i was bankrupt you know how many of them were still doing real estate? Two. The rest of them had gone broke. The two that didn't had sold off the vast majority of their property to get the debt paid off and clear a handful of properties. So this idea that you're going to build wealth with highly leveraged real estate

is absolute hogwash. It simply does not work 10 years later. You can't find somebody that's been doing these flips with heavy debt that survived 10 years. You can't find a 10-year-old one. They don't make it because it's such high risk. there's so many mistakes you can make and i'm a freaking expert at this i mean i was really really good dude i was a millionaire by the time i was 26 starting from nothing i was good at it i was a pro so you know now you know you're you're the the the the things you are asserting in this are absolutely false in this question. So how do you become wealthy?

Our millionaire statistics, the largest study of millionaires ever done in North America, say it takes an average of 17 and a half years. You fully fund your 401k with a match and good growth stock mutual funds, and you pay off your house, and you stay completely out of debt on everything if you want to buy some real estate you do it after you get your house paid off and you pay cash for your first rental and then you'll have a lot of cash flow because you don't have any stupid payments and then you pay cash for your next rental and then you pay cash for your next rental which by the way is what i started doing when i turned 28 after i was bankrupt and now i'm worth several hundred million dollars, and most of it's in real estate.

And I haven't borrowed a dime since I was 27 years old ever again. I don't borrow money. It is not a proven plan to wealth. As a matter of fact, it's a proven plan to not become wealthy. Yeah, and I missed something. Well, I want to address this last sentence. I would also prefer to be my own boss. We have a young man here. I don't know if he's young or not. Sounds like it, but you don't know if you want to be your own boss or not. We have 70% of Americans in recent polling said they wanted to work for themselves, but only 6% of Americans do.

There's a massive gap there, and the reason is because what we think we want to do in the form of working for ourselves, actually, we don't want. Because when you've got a gap, Dave, between 70% wanting to be self-employed and 6% are, it's not all it's cracked up to be when they actually look into it. It's really hard. I'll tell you what, when you work for yourself, your boss is a jerk yeah and more demanding that you think you had a demanding boss before wait till it's all on you pal and so i just want to point this out you to death yeah i love the entrepreneurial spirit we see of this young generation there's a difference between wanting it and wanting to do what it takes to get it and i think this is a young man who doesn't know what

he wants i would say i wanted to validate what he wants to get it, and I think this is a young man who doesn't know what he wants, I would say I wanted to validate what he wants. I know what he wants. He wants the shortest possible path to wealth. That's it. That's all in here. Well, we all want freedom. Welcome to the human race, right?

That's why John Locke and Cicero and Epictetus and Thomas Jefferson all created this phrase, the pursuit of happiness. But here's the deal. I've sat here in this studio and watched thousands of people talk about attaining outsized financial freedom the words he used here and they did it the way you described outsized financial freedom in 2024 is the is the baby steps millionaires that we talk about and that we have helped do it that's outsized because most americans are up to their eyeballs in debt and

are going to retire broke there's only 15 million millionaires in america that shows you the percentages right there that's outsized don't you think dave so if you have a million dollar net worth what you own minus what you owe you are outsized that's right and it's the first step to having 10 million um so uh never has there been a c-sweeter on that stage that i'm aware of maybe there has yeah we get them occasionally but but it's very rare but the number but the the correlation between i have to be in the c-suite in order to be one of the 10 167 people that we interviewed that are millionaires there's almost no correlation none none whatsoever now, you know, I will tell you that the fourth largest category of career is business executive. That's right.

Which would include C-Sweeter. Sure. But these people are steady investors. They're not impatient. But Adam, your question screams of immaturity. It screams of, I want it now and I want it easy. Please, honey, I did it. Don't do it. Don't do what I did. It's painful. That's why I do the show,

so I can keep guys like you from becoming guys like me because what I did was really stupid and it really hurt everybody I loved. Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, this is The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, host of The Ken Coleman Show, and number one bestselling author of the book, Paycheck to Purpose, is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us.

The phone number is 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Sarah starts this hour in Baltimore. Hi, Sarah. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi. How are you? Better than I deserve.

What's up? So my best friend had recommended that I give the show a call. Going through kind of a hard time. I lost both of my parents. My dad passed in November, and my mom most recently at the end of January. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. I'm so sorry. How old were they?

Um, so my dad was 70 and my mom was 62. So unrelated events, I take it. Um, I guess unrelated. Um, my dad was very unexpected, but my mom didn't do well once my dad had passed. Yeah, broken heart. Wow. They were married forever, I bet. Yeah, over 40 years. So it was a long time for them. I'm so sorry. How old are you? I'm 34.

Okay. How can we help, darling? So I'm trying to give a call in because I've been trying to find some advice on how to protect myself um financially during this time they didn't have life insurance they didn't leave a will and all they had left was their our family home um however I had found out after their passing by going through their phone record um that my mom was in a bankruptcy. Um, so now that she's passed, um, I believe that the bank will go for her house. Um, I'm trying to figure out what my best option is to protect myself. Um, but also protect the equity in the house.

You personally are not at risk at all. Okay. People do not inherit their parents' debt. Right. So the only thing that's at risk here is the house, and what's the best and wisest thing you can do on that? Let's talk about that for a minute. But no one's coming after Sarah. You understand that? Okay. and what's the best and wisest thing you can do on that. Let's talk about that for a minute.

But no one's coming after Sarah. You understand that? Okay. Okay. You're completely clear. So this is more of a horribly tragic, sad thing. So your mom had filed a bankruptcy. What will happen there, and you can check with an attorney to verify this, is the creditor, which is the bank, will file for a dismissal of the bankruptcy because the person has passed away. That will be granted.

Then the bankruptcy protection that prevents foreclosure will be removed, allowing them to foreclose to take the house. That's what's going to happen. It will take a while, so we don't need to panic. This is going to be a long, drawn-out affair if you want to fool with it. Now, what's the home worth? So the home worth is between $330,000 and $450,000. That's a pretty broad range. Right. What do you really think it's actually worth? I think it's probably only worth around $350,000 because it's not in the basket. Let's use that as our number for discussion right now. What is owed against the house?

They have two mortgages, one for $168,000 and one for $33,000. Okay, so we've got $200,000 owed with $150,000 worth of equity. Are you the sole heir? I am not. I have a sibling. However, my sibling will be signing over rights so that I handle the affairs. Okay. All right.

Well, I mean, without, just let me cut to the affairs. Okay. All right. Well, I mean, without just let me cut to the chase, you've got a good option here long before they get it to foreclosure. Where is the home? What state? In New Jersey. Okay. All right. You can check New Jersey law,

but I suspect it will take them three to six months to foreclose once they've gotten relief from the bankruptcy court which is probably going to take them three months you might have a year but you definitely got probably i'll give you a 98 chance you got six months okay that's a long time agreed right okay do they have did your mom and dad have other debt um he had a he was a cab driver in the city so he was paying off a medallion um is the medallion an asset that you can sell that's what i'm working with right now just figure out if i can sell it but they had depreciated in value greatly because of covid and because of uber and lyft so they're not so what is owed on the medallion another 168 000 okay so here the principle is this when you pass away what you own

assets has to stand good for what you owe if there's not enough if you don't own enough to pay everything you owe then someone doesn't get paid but the debt does not go to sarah okay all right so what i think i just heard is you have a two hundred thousand dollar equity maybe you're going to have some legal fees if you want to go through all this stuff okay and out of that two hundred thousand the medallion has to be paid off if it can't be sold. And so it sounds like there's nothing here unless the medallion has value. Basically, my question, like, do I fight for this or do I leave it? No.

Right. I'd toss them the keys. Unless the medallion has $100 thousand dollar value and you can sell it i don't know i don't have any idea i've never done that before okay so you got to do a little work on the medallion but if the medallion whatever the medallion is worth is about what you're going to end up putting in your pocket okay if you sell so if you sold the house for 350 and you paid off the medallion and it was worth zero and you paid off the mortgages, you got nothing. So it's not worth the trouble.

Does that make sense? It makes sense. Okay. Yeah, because the other advice I was given was to claim a bankruptcy for myself. No! By a lawyer. You're not in debt. Whoever told you that, stay away from them.

They're not smart. And it sounded absurd to me to change myself and make my life harder. It's also not right. No. Right. So now, but I really want, I think the hope in the story as far as actually getting something out of this estate is if the medallion has some value. Hey, Ken, hit the thing, while we're talking here.

Ken's going to look it up. Just Google it. Can you sell a medallion? I don't even, Ken, hit the thing, Zephyrs. While we're talking here, Ken's going to look it up. Just Google it. Can you sell a medallion? I don't even know. I mean, I know what they are. I've talked to cab drivers enough in New York City, and over the years, you know, 30 years ago. I don't even know what it is.

That's why I was, what is it? It's like a little badge that goes on the cab that gives them the right to be a cab driver. It's a license to be a cab driver. It says it's transferable by law and can be resold it can be i know but do they have any value yeah you got to talk to a broker is what it's saying here okay so google's no help well here it is 137 000 low point 79 000 high point 137 if you can get 100 out of it kiddo you may have something here so whatever

you can get out of that medallion is probably what you're going to clear by the time you sell the house and the medallion ken coleman ramsey personalities my co-host today ken i am really excited about this total money makeover weekend that all the personalities you me and the rest of them are going to be doing may 10th and 11th and one weekend you're going to get a crash course on everything we teach about money all new content deloney coleman will be speaking of course rachel and jade and george and me uh everybody will be there eddie will be our uh our master of ceremonies of course and um it's going to start on Friday afternoon, Friday evening. As a matter of fact, if you come a little bit early Friday afternoon,

you can watch us do the show live here on the glass. We do it every day from 1 to 4. And then we'll have things at the event center that night. I'll be speaking and some other things. And then all day Saturday. It's May 10th and 11th. We're going to give you everything you need to get your crap together and get moving on this money stuff. And you're going to see the whole thing. When you see

it all in one place like that, in one short-term setting, it becomes like a retreat for money, like a mountaintop experience. We're all excited about it. We've all been talking about it. We've got some fun stuff planned. Jade and I are going to do something fun and i i get to be kind of the she's got the expert thing we've done a lot of fun stuff on the show i don't know if you've heard about it's doing very well where jade will come in and go through a little grocery budget thing and i get to be the straight stooge just eating the food and it's really quite fun i get to eat on the air and sample is the generic product better than the it's really oh yeah i heard about that it's right and uh you keep picking the generic products what i heard it's true your your taste is cheap that's what i am no tastemaker let's make that very clear

that has been obvious uh but uh we're all excited we're doing all money talks and they're gonna do a lot of q and a's A lot of Q&A. The event center holds about 2,500 folks. So fun. And it's almost sold out. It's not quite. We've got a handful of platinum tickets left, which, of course, are down front and backstage experiences and all that kind of stuff. And then in addition to that, you know, some general admissions.

So early bird pricing ends tomorrow, and tickets are going up $100 a piece. That's a big deal. Yeah. So if you want to save 100 bucks a piece two of you coming that's 200 bucks five of you coming that's 500 bucks yeah if you're planning on joining us get your tickets like today by midnight okay because they're going up and this is going to be a lot of fun it's may 10th and 11th you're going to learn a lot. It's very interactive, a lot of experiences going on, and you're going to get the greatest hits from Ramsey. I mean, we're going to show you the stuff that we love to teach and that we love to inspire with because it's transforming information.

It's God's and Grandma's ways of handling money and doing life. So RamseySolutions.com slash events, the Total Money Makeover weekend, May 10th and 11th. Please get your tickets immediately because they're going to be gone. This is a big event. I am excited about this. We haven't got to do anything like this in a long, long time, and I'm really pumped.

It's going to be a lot of fun. Kion is with us in Atlanta. Hi, Kion. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi there. Yeah, thanks for taking Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi there. Yeah, thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up?

So for some context, I'm 21 years old, about to be 22. I'm a student at Georgia Tech. I'm going to graduate this May in a couple months with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. Good for you. Awesome. Great school, great degree. Well done. I appreciate it. The kicker is that that's going to come with about $80,000 of student loan debt. Okay. You graduate

this May, did you say? Yes, yes. You already got your job lined up? Yeah, so I had an internship last summer at Texas Instruments. I'll be returning for another internship this summer, and from there likely getting a full-time offer. Why are you doing an internship after graduation? Well, so I have an internship lined up right now because my plan was to go to grad school and get a master's degree, but after thinking about it for a while and seeing how much more debt I'd have to go into,

I'm starting to think that that might not be a smart idea. Well, you can always do an adult MBA later. That's not a big deal. And if you're not going to do that, then you need to change that internship into like a job. Yeah. Because you should be making six figures, shouldn't you? Absolutely, yeah. I think in a city with a lower cost of living

i'd be looking at maybe 100k and then in somewhere in california with a higher cost of living probably 130 140 starting yeah with their taxes you won't even net out on that you're better off to take the 100 yeah and stay in you know be in texas or georgia or whatever yeah what are your possibilities to join with tex Instruments as an actual employee with the relationship you already have? Well, I think it's a strong, strong chance that I'd get a full-time offer if I asked for one. I performed pretty well during my last internship and built good relationships. Okay, so you got $80,000.

You're used to making nothing, and you're going to be making $100,000. So you're going to pay that off really, really fast. Agreed? Yeah, I agree. Absolutely. Now, my question is, my parents are not great with money. They're in a boatload of debt themselves. My grandma's not great with money, and she is, I think, or 77 and she still works full time. Actually she puts in overtime almost every week. And, uh, she's a chauffeur driver in, uh, in, uh, California. So, um, I'm kind of worried about the rest of my family that they're in a much deeper hole than I'll be, and they don't have really the income to support themselves. So I'm just worried about how anything that might happen to them will affect my goals,

my financial goals, if I need to help them out or anything. Wow. You are an honorable, kind young man, Kion, and I would urge you to not take responsibility for your grandmother or your parents. They're grown people. Yeah. I think it's good to love them, and if they need a little bit of help and you've got a little bit of money, that's fine.

And later on, if you're extremely wealthy and you want to give them a lot of help, that'll be your choice. It'll be something you choose to do. But it should not be top of mind for you right now of how you're going to take care of these grown people who have misbehaved. Sure, yeah. I mean, my mom and dad, they came to this country when they were in their 20s. They're from Iran.

I was the first of my family that was born here. So they kind of came in and come to the credit card craze, and they have a lot of credit card debt. And my mom has student loan debt from the 80s. So it's kind of a mess over there. Yeah, I mean, George Campbell's parents are immigrants. He's first generation. George is a millionaire.

To my knowledge, he does not support them but they embraced all the american ridiculous debt just like your mom and dad did keon and he's talked about that and they've talked about that and um so i'm not i'm not throwing them under the bus or him under the bus but george doesn't take them to raise either they're grown-ups and oh by the way i've got a good friend who's iranian that came about the time your parents did he's now a billionaire because he made different choices because he is one driven son of a gun i'll tell you that because you you face uh you face some of that kind of oppression and then you see american freedom uh you you you feel like you're set free this guy goes so you have options you know it's. This guy goes. So you have options, you know.

They're not doomed to these choices just because they're first-generation immigrants. Agreed? Yeah, I think so. I mean, when I think about my future, I get really excited. Yeah. I agree. Like, the student loan debt is not insurmountable. I have a good shot at it. Oh, I think you cleaned it up in probably 18 months.

But here's the thing, Keon. If you feel this pressure from them or if it's self-imposed, it doesn't matter, and that excitement about your future is going to turn into resentment for the very people that you love and care about, this is not your problem to fix. Can you help? Can you assist in multiple ways that doesn't limit you or hurt you financially, sure. Share your heart with them. So what I love for you to do is to be debt-free in 18 months and in another 18 months have $50,000 or $60,000 set aside, have a decent car, start to build your life, and in another five years you're probably going to be close to being a millionaire

because your income is going to go up and you are going to be very key and responsible. The number one category of career that becomes a millionaire in our studies is engineer. I'm excited for your future. And so you have, and I know Georgia Tech and I know the quality of the education you've gotten. So you are going to do well if you'll keep your nose clean and lean in. And so I'm really excited for your future. And I want you to be in a place where you can love them well, but I don't want you to carry them on your back the rest of your life.

That is not a moral or an ethical obligation of your part. So be kind and loving and compassionate and generous when you can be, but it's not your first and foremost. It's not your number one. Well, thank you, guys. A couple months ago, we landed number one on the Apple podcast charts, and a few minutes ago, apparently, we're number five right now. That's another great milestone.

And that's out of, I think, two million podcasts or so. Good grief. In the world. And so we were number one for a little while. We've been number 10, 12, 14, 15, hovering in there for several years. And then we jumped up in the top 10. And a few minutes ago, we're number five again. So very nice.

Thank you, guys. So if you guys want to help us out there, we would appreciate it. We can use your help. Here's how you can help us subscribe to the show and so if you're an apple podcaster just hit subscribe or a youtuber hit subscribe or uh i don't care i mean spotify whatever it is subscribe for it share the show if the platform that you're on has a share function just use the share or clip the link and send it to somebody or something along those lines or you can just tell somebody i don't care whatever it is but share us that makes a big difference it's you guys are our number one marketing arm because we don't have a football stadium named after us we didn't pay 300 million like so far or something

like that but um i mean that that we we're just out here doing it, you know. So you can leave us a nice review with five stars. And if you've got something nice to say, say it. If you don't, don't say nothing. That's what Mama said. So number three. Oh, we need a tote board in here. While Dave's talking about it, I'm over here doing the, all right, I'm doing the Jerry Lewis telephone.

Let's see where we're at. Okay, so in the last few moments as I was talking. So I'm really good at this because I just moved single-handedly. You keep talking about it. That's not true because it's a podcast and they can't possibly know I'm saying it yet. Well, we're going to see the bump after they hear it. You know what we need? We need one of those number one foam fingers.

Ramsey Show number one. Every time we hit it, we'll just come. Well, we could get one that just says five. It's like a foam glove that'd be okay i'm good with that i don't have to be number one i mean the npr death of a thousand people murder thing or whatever is always number one right yeah it's hard to beat those yeah it's hard to beat that true crime people love your crime the bloody true crime we can do some crime on here i could just you know we could we could do some credit card crime oh yeah cut stuff up blow some firearms and just turn this into people want violence dave let's let's give them what the people want ar that would get there we go that

get the clicks that would get clicks i could accidentally shoot the tv right here and that'd be irresponsible use of firearms no folks we he's I think we're doing okay without that, though. So maybe we don't need to resort to violence. I agree. We don't need cheap tricks. And we don't need to upset the gun people either. The anti-gun people. Oh, I was going to say.

We are gun people. Because the gun people would love to see you shoot more things. Yeah, that's true. They love to see anybody shoot anything for any reason. It's a sickness. We could have a recurring YouTube segment called Dave Shoots things oh god it's just something could be can you imagine the hate mail oh can you even imagine as long as they were inanimate objects well now see we just blew we just now we went from number three down to seven just like that i'm sorry america we're still loving you

and we're gonna thank you guys for sharing and subscribing and leaving five-star reviews. We appreciate you. Thank you very much. Nilo's with us in Las Vegas. Hi, Nilo. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hey, how are you guys doing? Better than we deserve.

We're goofballs. What's up? So I'm almost close to paying off my debt. I got a couple of thousand, like four and a half thousand. Good for you. So I don't have any hard day. I don't have a car payment. I don't have a house.

It's just loans and stuff I need to pay off. So right now in Las Vegas, the housing is ridiculous. I want to buy a house. That's my goal. As soon as I get off debt, I want to plan for my future. So the way the market is just so bad right now. So I was trying to talk to my girlfriend. I think it's a good idea for us just to invest into a trailer home.

Like now, not an old RV on wheels you pull with a pickup, but like a good stationary mobile home. You know, I've been looking in the market. There's something like $20,000, $30,000. So if you buy a $20,000 mobile home in five years, what do you think that's worth? I know it's going to depreciate. So why is that an investment?

Investments are supposed to go up, Nilo. Right. I guess it's not an investment. So if you turn $20,000 into $10,000, how does that help you get a house? Well, because I was thinking if I could pay it off quick enough, I'll be able to live there long enough so I can save a good chunk down payment to get my like forever home. Yeah. You know, run that math out for us.

If I pay it off quick enough, I'll be able to save money. So you would be adding debt and you're almost done. You're going to turn $20,000 into 10,000 so that you can have a little bit of time with no payments. That's not working, dude. Mathematically. Okay. that you can have a little bit of time with no payments. That's not working, dude, mathematically. Okay. So I appreciate your thought pattern, but, yeah, it's, you know,

and what I love is your motivation. I want to be in the game. That's what you're saying. And I love that about you. What's your income? What are you doing? I'm a union carpenter. I make $42 an hour. Woo.

Come on. So last year, but I mean, it's off and on. You know, sometimes I'll work a good solid eight months, and then I'll have like two months off. Last year I did about $70,000. Hey, Nilo, listen to me. If you're making $70,000, why aren't you saving money? Yeah.

Well, I've been trying to pay off debt. Oh, that's true. You got the $4,500. How much debt have you paid off and how long i paid off about 15 my main debt was i bought a 15 and how long how long did it take you to pay off 15 it took me about a year and a half almost a year why you make 70 right what are you doing you're not being not being smart smart with my money well you're also not working uh you're not working 12 months you're working eight months can i just tell you something

i want to challenge you nilo listen to me yeah construction is uh off and on you know listen hold on a second i want to challenge you okay so you need more money right now yes or no yes yes you do you need more money more money to get out of debt more money to get an emergency fund more money to save for a house now listen to me there is a shortage of carpenters in the united states so if you can't get some work related to being a carpenter and you're a good one you're making really good money if you can't get that in vegas which i'm challenging you on that oh he can't he just can't get union work i get it but my point is, what else can you do outside of union work? If they're not working you, you can work outside the union, can't you? Yes, he can. I have a non-union company. My rate goes down

significantly. I get paid only 23 over there. Oh, darn. Every time they're short of work. That's better than zero four months a year. Yeah, and not to mention, let's just talk about my father-in-law is 72 years of age, and he is busier than he's ever been in his life in a neighborhood here in Williamson County doing reno stuff. There's all kinds of money in Vegas. You should be making huge money 12 months a year. That's my challenge to you. How old are you again?

I'm 24. Okay, cool. Well, listen, you have the ability. The good news is you have a desire and an ambition. That's good news. The good news is you've already been working to get out of debt. That's the good news. The other good news is you ain't afraid of hard work, and you know how to make some money.

I think you can dial this in and make a whole lot more. I believe you guys, if you're really careful, could double your income. Yes. But you're going to have to really focus on it to get there. And then you've got to quit partying. You are drinking a lot. You're drinking all weekend, man. I mean, you're going every happy hour.

Maybe you're hitting the blackjack table. Somewhere the money's going, because there is no excuse for the kind of money you're making and you got nothing yeah it's party time stay out of the mg yeah you're gonna have to work on some stuff here man and you do that all of a sudden the money's just gonna like start showing up because you're gonna quit blowing it all yes but i mean you're running around with a wrong crowd you're running around with broke people on the weekend and they're helping you join them. So I could be wrong, but I've been there myself, so I might know something. It's how you lose your hair.

I'll just tell you ahead of time. That's what happened. That's what happened. Who knew? Yeah, so anyway, yeah, there's a correlation between the quality of your personal habits in your life and your ability to build wealth. That's right. So you do those things. So you and your girlfriend clean up your act and start focusing on your goals and your goal, your career goals and your

income goals. And then you're going to be able to build up a down payment in 24 months and buy a house without the girlfriend, unless she's your wife, by the way, never buy a house. That's right. Without the girlfriend, unless she's your wife, by the way. Never buy a house with somebody you're not married to. And please don't buy a trailer that goes down in value. Get control of the guy in your mirror, buddy. And you do that, you're going to win. You got a lot of potential. You're a good man. Hold on. We're going to put you through Financial Peace University, our class on how to handle money. We're going to show you how to do this. And you call us back someday and tell us how you're winning because I jumped on your case. You know, this is the Ramsey show. Our scripture of the day, 1 Timothy 2, 1 and 2. I urge then first of all that petitions,

prayers, intercession, and thanksgiving be made for all people for kings and for all those in authority that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness our friend art laffer says it's not true that congress spends money like a drunken sailor drunken sailors spend their own money congress spends ours i saw him on tv the other night, and I was just so happy. Art is just a treasure. He's a gem, isn't he? Let's face it.

Taxes are confusing, and if you buy what some tax services out there say, you can never really get a grasp on taxes because you're dumb. Well, you're not dumb, and you can do that. You can take care of your taxes. If you've got a complicated return, go to ramseysolutions.com slash taxpros and connect with one of our tax professionals that we've vetted and have worked with and endorsed, they're Ramsey Trusted all over America. And if you've got an easy return, then you can get the Ramsey Tax software,

and it's very easy to use. People are jumping to it all the time from those other people because we're not trying to sell you credit cards and everything else. We're just going to show you how to do your taxes. And not a bunch of hidden fees and not a bunch of gotchas. It's a very simple process to use the Ramsey tax software. So you can do that or you can go to one of the pros depending on your situation. Check it all out at Ramseysolutions.com. Mari is with us in Tampa. Hi Mari, welcome to the Ramsey

Show. Hi, how are you? Thanks for having me. Sure, how can I help? So my husband and I have been married 22 years. We've got six awesome children. Lord's really blessed us. We have always kind of lived pretty frugally. He was a teacher for most of our married life, and I stayed home with our kids to homeschool them. So the last four years, though, things have changed. He started having back problems. He wasn't able to do the work he had been doing up until then. And then we got a cancer diagnosis in 2021. So he's been fighting that. We've been going through various treatments. Four years ago when he had his back surgery, my job kind of took off.

My part-time, I was doing gig work, shopping for people. And when pandemic hit, it just blew up. And so I took advantage of that. He stayed home with the kids to homeschool them. And last year, though, we had to put the kids in school because treatments were pretty rigorous, and I was trying to support us by working as much as I could. So we have a little bit saved. We've got probably about $21,000 in savings.

I do have a car note that we took out. Normally we buy used, but I really needed something more gas-friendly because I drive for, you know, sometimes up to 100 miles a day with my job. So realistically, you know, getting 20 miles a gallon versus the 60. So where are you at that point? Well, we've got 14,000, just under 14,000 that we owe on it okay um so we're wondering do we take that we're trying to just prepare for worst case scenario we're really praying that he pulls through but um he really can't can't work at all with the pain medication he's on and um so I'm trying to figure out. I'm so sorry.

You guys are sure you guys have been through hell. We yeah, it's been so sorry. How old are your babies? So I have 18 to four and we currently have my two nieces living with us while their dad gets his life together. So that has been a help. How's the how's the 18 year old? She's amazing. Her and her dad are really close, and she has really stepped up to help with anything we need. So I think I hear you saying he's not doing well. He's not doing well in the capacity that there's lots of treatments

going on. They're all clinical trials because traditional. His is so rare. He actually has a doctor in Pennsylvania calling him like every month. So short of God stepping in, you're telling me that he's going to be in heaven soon. Yes, yes. And praise God we know where he's going. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry to be blunt, but I was trying to make sure I knew where you are so I can try to help you.

Because you guys have just been brutalized by this whole thing. I'm so sorry. It's okay. I mean, we have a lot of hope. And, you know, we have a great church family. They've stepped in. My family is amazing. Well, you've got incredible character and faith. He's working on it yeah and you do too and and you know you're you know everything

you've described you guys have reacted to uh everything that's been dealt to you uh perfectly as perfectly as you could in a horrible situation it's's just a tragedy. I'm so sorry. So the shopping thing is the income from that is a blessing. And so how are you doing? What's your income these days? So this last year was pretty low. I hit right at 50. The year before, when I was really going at it, working mindlessly, I made more like 80.

So the potential is there. And it's, again, just directly the time that I put into it. Well, you're up through something to eat babies, so this is not a bad thing. Yes. And the flexibility, like I said, if my husband's having a really hard day or has to go to the emergency room, I don't have to work and I don't have anyone counting on me to do anything. And again, we're set up with family and church and it has been a blessing, but I, my, my fear is, um, you know, moving forward, how do I, how do I continue? We have a mortgage and, and it's not a, you know, large one. We have the money to pay off the car, but basically at this point, you know, I'm just

now wrapping my head around your podcast the last couple of weeks, which is why I called in. So we've right now we've got our four walls covered. Um, here's what we're going to do. Okay. Number one, number one, we're going to put our arms around you and walk with you. Okay. So we've got financial coaches that have been trained by us in every city in America. They're independent from us, but they've been trained by us. And we will furnish you guys a financial coach at no charge. We're going to walk with you. Okay. Oh wow.

And I'm going to put you guys through financial peace university and get you on the every dollar budget app right now as our gift as well doesn't cost you a thing okay then our strategy is going to be uh continue doing what you're doing uh we don't need to pay off a bunch of debt we need to stay in survival mode and continue to fight cancer. If the end result of this is that your husband's in heaven, then we change strategies after we grieve that and grieve this whole thing. And the strategy at that point will change to how can we prosper going forward and what's our new life look like and that's going to then we're going to start taking some of that money and paying off the debt then we're going to take some of that money and build your emergency fund and we'll start

working the baby steps that we talk about here but right now you got six mouths to feed and nine, ten counting two adults. And, you know, I'm not worried about your stinking car payment when your husband's in the final stages of fighting something and he's down to experimental treatments. Does that make sense? I want you to just fight right now. You guys, I want to do everything we can to keep gas in your tank because emotionally you've got to be wrung out yeah it's been it's been sustained by the lord but it

is hard yeah um yeah it's just every day he does hold you up but it's uh but it's still the whole process is just um wrenching so and uh so what you got now is you got some more people that love you and are in your corner and we know something about this subject so we can help you with this subject and we will okay okay thank you and you call me back you call me back anytime anytime you've got a question you call me back right here on the air and i'll talk to you okay regardless of what's going on you call me back and we'll also have the coach in your corner and we'll guys put you through everything so hold on christian's gonna pick up and we're gonna take care of you because that's what we do here that puts us our the ramsey show in the books

we'll be back with you before you know it in the meantime remember there's ultimately only one way to financial peace and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus. Hey, folks, Dave Ramsey here. You know, budgeting doesn't have to be boring. You just need a budgeting app that's made with you in mind, and that's EveryDollar. The EveryDollar app has helped millions of people work the baby steps and take the stress out of planning and managing their money. Start budgeting with EveryDollar for free right now.

Just go to RamseySolutions.com slash EveryDollar and download the app today. That's RamseySolutions.com slash EveryDollar.