Don't Let Debt Delay Your Financial Future

brought to you by the every dollar app start budgeting for free today normal is broke and common sense is weird so we're here to help you transform your life from the ramsey network and the fairwinds credit union studio this is the ramsey show i'm dave ramsey jade washall number one best-selling author ramsey personality is my co-host today the phone number here well we're here every day monday through friday from one to four central time you can call in and be part of the show anytime you got a question the number is triple eight eight two five five two two five triple eight eight two five five two two five mark's in charleston south carolina hey mark what's up hey can you guys hear me okay yes sir perfect all right so i'm 24 years old i moved back to my hometown and i moved back to my hometown and i moved back to my hometown here post school uh and for a move for my career and basically the situation uh did not go as planned uh like many things i'm finding out now especially financially so moved down here with my younger brother and my fiancee and my parents decided to offer to put a down payment on a house for us so we didn't have to rent well just over a year later my brother moved to a different job and now it's me and my fiancee and we can't afford the monthly bills with what we're making currently she's in her master's program and i have just over sixty thousand dollars in student loan debt so i've come to terms with the idea of potentially selling it um it's kind of getting dicey with my family not wanting to do that because we are co-signed on the house and i just came upon you guys in the baby steps a couple months ago so i'm learning real fast that uh that's not the way to go so just wanted to get your guys opinion on that are you worried that if you are your parents worried that if you sell the house they won't make back what they put in it that you would actually lose money yes ma'am yeah to the tune of how much so they put about 50 000 down we still owe 330 on the house and i've reached out to a couple realtors through your guys's website um they haven't come and looked at it yet but we're competing with a lot of just standard new homes going up in the area so uh on top of how the market is in general it's going to be tough to sell from what they're saying okay well um so everyone in the story made a mistake right going into this deal and so it's not like um you did it on purpose your brother didn't intend to leave you hanging your parents didn't intend to trap you into something that causes you to be broke um and you didn't intend for your parents to lose some of the money that they put in correct um but um mom and dad i'm just sorry i mean you you signed us up for and we all did it together as grown-up people a bad deal and when you do that you get to pay stupid tax when you do something stupid and i paid a lot of stupid tax in my life and so i think that you know it's not like you know unless your parents are going to start writing checks to cover where your brother left then they don't get a vote anymore it's unfair for them to ask you to continue to pay something that you can't pay and by the way you didn't sign up to pay the whole thing right but you got had it dumped in your lap is it did i understand that correct that's correct yeah i mean this is first time home buying process so obviously i've learned a lot through this um and again through what you guys preach on the show i mean yeah there's there's like six things y'all did wrong but i mean in the first time it's not just first time home buying it's mom and dad put down money mom and dad are on the note brother was on the note everything it's like a freaking commune man i mean y'all created a mess and so you know what you need to do is that you have to do these deals as complete standalone period if mom and dad want to help a young family get started and give them some money no strings attached for a down payment that's fine but that's not what happened here right and so they thought they were doing a good thing they didn't do this with malice i'm not accusing them of that but they did a really stupid thing to their own children and now they're going to pay a price so i and i don't know how to make them okay with that except that they take responsibility for their stupid thing they did um you know in my life i have gotten screwed by con men almost never but i've gotten screwed over by some enthusiastic ignoramuses a lot and that's what your parents are when do uh just to see if there's any light at the end of this tunnel when do you get married uh so it'll be september in september once she finishes her master's program this coming may um her income will go up significantly but again it's getting to that period and you know there's no saying when exactly that exam is going to be so there's just a lot of unknown what she's studying behavioral analysis okay what she expect to earn in that field right once she passes her board certification it'll be over six weeks okay and is would that be enough once you guys combined your income would that be enough for this payment to be a fair part of your take-home yeah yeah so right now the mortgage is 2300 per month um that's not including any utilities or anything like that so um once she starts making that income that would absolutely be doable again trying to tackle the student loans as well we're on board with yeah that's the hard you shouldn't have bought a house while you had student loans either that's the other one but you didn't know all that you weren't listening to us at the time but that's one of the six things y'all did wrong i'll be honest with you i don't like the even though that you could guys could probably float that mortgage when she starts working i don't like the plan because now you'd have to refinance somebody'd have to take their name off the mortgage i think the best route is sell it to sell it okay and the parents are gonna have to yeah pay the stupid tax to dave's point if there is they're not gonna get all their money back out but that's how life works there's been mention of trying to rent it i've voiced an opinion of not wanting to do that is that a fair statement i broke people shouldn't have rental property and that wasn't the purpose of it to begin with that's a default right yeah because when they don't pay one month you're back into i'm screwed again right and guess what renters don't always pay i know it's magical but they don't right so yeah yeah it's yeah mom and dad if you want to refinance it and put it all in your name and you then you can do with it whatever you want to do with it it's your house at that point i'll take my name off of it but we need to be free of this trap that we have all gotten me into you by the way your other son took off yeah i mean let's keep that in mind you know i mean that that this is this conversation i mean but even that from the beginning was a bad plan the idea that two brothers were going to live together for how long is before until one of them gets married and then we've got a problem that's what i mean it's like a commune it's just a you know no that's not going to work so um yeah but this is when people get desperate to own a property and they're not ready to buy a property then we get all this in and out of it and then we get all this in and out of it and then we get all this in entanglement yeah and just slow down real estate is not a good purchase when you're broke do i need to say that again say it again it's not a good purchase when you're broke it's an excellent purchase to own a home as a key part of your long-term wealth building but when you own a home that owns you you've screwed up and moms and dads you're not doing your kids grown kids whatever that means a favor and you're really not doing them a favor when you handcuff them to you handcuff them to each other and handcuff them to something that doesn't work doesn't play out doesn't have a good five-year strategy even because as you said two brothers one of them is going to get another job in another city and the other one's going to get married hello this is what's happening this is like how life works gosh man i'm so sorry you're learning all this the hard way but you'll get out of it and it'll be okay but i i feel i feel i would uh cut bait i wouldn't continue to fish you if you or your parents are on medicare listen up just because a medicare plan worked this year doesn't mean it's the right one for next year premiums networks prescription coverage all of it can change even if your health hasn't so if you just roll over your plan you might get stuck overpaying or not getting the coverage you need but sorting through medicare plans is a mess there are more than 24 000 of them that's why i recommend chapter their advisors are going to be all of those plans to find the exact one that makes sense for you your health your doctors your budget and using their services costs nothing in fact chapter saves ramsey fans an average of eleven hundred dollars a year which is why they're the only medicare advisors i recommend look medicare annual enrollment is happening right now don't assume this year's plan still works review it with chapter before the window closes on december 7th just go to the link in the description below and subscribe to the channel so you don't miss out on any of the next episodes to askchapter.org. askchapter.org slash Ramsey, askchapter.org slash Ramsey, or click the link in the description. Well, this week, one of the things that continues to be top of mind with all of you is real estate. And I've had my real estate license since I was 18 years old in 1978, and it has been top of mind almost ever since then. People just are concerned about buying a house. They want to own a home, the great American dream. Brian Buffini, born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, immigrated to San Diego in 1986. He has become one of the nation's top realtors, and then he founded Buffini & Company that coaches more real estate agents across America than any other organization right now. Brian and I have become good friends over the years, and so we get him to come on here every so often to make sure that we keep our perspective. We've got to keep our perspective correct on all of this real estate stuff going on. Welcome back, my friend. It's great to see you, Dave and Jay. It's great to be on with you guys. It's great to have you, sir. Thanks for hanging out with us again. So you were with us back in September. We're talking about the Road to Housing Act. We're talking about the possibility of an executive order on capital gains. Didn't happen, I guess. Increase of under 30-year-olds living at home. What are you seeing out there right now, fresh in the real estate market? Bad news, good news. Well, so actually, the bad news is all the misinformation. So if you are looking to buy or sell a home, you go online and you're going to see the doom scrollers. And all you're going to see is the market's fallen, the sky has fallen, prices, more sellers than buyers, and you're going to hear all this stuff. So here's the truth for all your folks, Dave. 40% of every home in the United States is owned free and clear. Another 42%, 50% equity. Another 15% are current on their mortgage. So this might be as profound as an Irishman gets. You can't foreclose on a house where they don't have a loan. Would you agree with that one? We've done detailed research. We've found this to be true, yeah. So here's the thing. Maybe your work is getting close to completion here, Dave. 83% of all homeowners in the United States are either free and clear or 50% equity and above. That means it is impossible for this doom scrolling. The market's going to capitulate. I'm going to wait to buy for the crash. And now once the crash comes, I'm going to enter the market. The market's going to stay flat. There's going to be very little price change. The rates you have are the rates you have. The market you have is the market you have. If it's time to go buy a house, it's time to go buy a house. Yeah, that's a good word. Because the point is that when I have a house up for sale, actually, I've got one of my rental houses is empty. I put it up for sale right now. It's paid for. It's a small percentage of my world. The chances of me taking a beating on the price on that are really close to zero. I'm not what you would call a motivated seller by the doom scrollers. I'm just going to sit there until someone pays me for it, or I'll just put another renter in it, one of the two. Because rents are up, right? Aren't rents going up? Right. Yeah. So, you know, these guys, people are not going to, people that don't. No, they've kind of stayed. Stabilized. And one of the things we've seen people leave in. So the, yeah, if I'm not forced to sell, if I'm not in uncomfortable financial pinch, there's no reason for me to quote slash prices. And yet I'm with you. We pull up internet. My producer sent me an article last week and said, you know, prices being slashed. And I'm like, I read down into the article and read the actual statistics. And that was just simply not true. But by their own admission, they're not going to sell. They're not going to sell. They're not going inside the article, but they didn't mind putting that up there as clickbait and scaring the hell out of everybody that the world's coming to an end. Yep. So I'll. Market's stable. Prices are stable. I have a question for you, and maybe there's some hope that you can offer. And I'll say this from my age bracket. I'm 42. And so a lot of people are getting hung up on the stats that came out recently. They came out this month and they're saying, okay, the median age of a first-time home buyer. Yeah. It's causing people some alarm because, I mean, you go back to the 1980s, it was 29 was the median age. You go to 2024, 38 was the median age. And now they're saying 40 is the median age of a first-time home buyer. And so a lot of our audience, they're so scared that they're going to be behind. I'm falling behind. I'm behind the curve. I mean, what do you have to say to that? I mean, we're crockpot people over here, so we understand that it can take time. But what do you have to say to those folks? You know, keep hope alive. Keep working hard. Keep saving your money because opportunity knocks to those who are prepared. And so I'm in this situation where I'm saving my money. I keep improving my situation. Don't make the dumb mistakes that set me back. Don't buy the new car and finance it for seven years. Keep myself in a position. And what will happen is there will be opportunities in this market. There'll be times when the rates are going to dip and it's going to be a fluctuating interest rate. Well, if the rates go down a single percentage, it's going to be a fluctuating interest rate. And so I'm in a situation where if the rates go down a single percentage point, it makes five million people more qualified to buy a home in America today. And so we're going to have dipping rates. We're going to have dipping oil prices based on world events and things like that. And America, for whatever reason, likes divided government. So we're going to have a period now where kind of nothing happens. And so but the markets tend to like that. So my my stay is like the Boy Scouts, right? Be prepared. That's right. And so that's it. And so whatever anyone else's statistic is, and how old it is doesn't matter. The real thing is how much money can you save? How debt free can you get and keep prepared? And when the deal comes, the rates drop or an opportunity comes up with the property, you're ready to strike. Yeah, if you work harder than most, you make more than most. You save more than most. You don't make the mistakes of most. Then you're not the statistics of most. That's good. Right. And so you just don't be like everybody else. Don't be mediocre. But I never planned in my life to be a statistic. Unless I was the success statistic, right? So don't plan to be a loser. Don't plan to be falling into this. And, you know, we can analyze why. Well, people are getting married later. And it's not double incomes. That's true. People are writing out huge amounts of student loan debt, which is affecting their ability to buy a house. They're writing out the largest car debt in history, which is affecting their ability to buy a house. They're writing the largest. And so when you say oh, median house, the median age of a house buyer is now over 40. It makes it sound like the housing market caused that. No, the housing market is the symptom of that. It's not the problem. The problem is the mess these people are in and have gotten themselves in. And, you know, the car companies have screwed them. Congress has screwed them with student loans. Credit card companies continue to screw them. And we just continue to sign up for this bull crap. And people are so far in debt. And then they don't get married. And then as we talked about last time on here, now single ladies for the first time ever are buying more homes than single men, right? Yep. By a factor of two to one. 21% of the market was single women last year. And so I just think this, Dave, you know, you think about it, that the real wages have gone up three and a half percent this year and prices went up nine tenths of one percent. The projection for next year is real wages are going up almost four and a half and prices are going to stay flat or might come down one percent. One percent, not 20 percent. And so over the next two to three years, real wages are going to go up about double digits and prices are going to stay flat. So what's happening is you're going to have 10 percent more affordability within the next three years. So keep saving, keep grinding, keep making sure you don't do the long term debt stuff. And you can be in a situation when those rates dip to be able to get yourself a house. Well, or if you can get it now and you hate the rate, well, date the rate, marry the house, refinance. Yes, sir. Refinance when they dip. Go ahead and get your foot in the door on the housing, because housing is very few times that you can find in history. You can chart it and chart it and chart it. That housing goes down in value almost never. And it is officially flat right now. It's about as flat as I've ever seen it in 40 years. What do you think? I think the next three years are going to look identical to this. That's what I think. I think the rates are going to be hovering around the sevens. And I think the price appreciation is going to be about zero to one percent. And so you're going to have your income goes a chance to go up. And look, Dave, you and I are where we are today because we bought real estate. And when we bought real estate, man, we thought our arms and legs were going to fall off and we eat spaghetti, you know, five nights a week. But it ended up being the cornerstone of our economic portfolio. So you said date the rate, marry the house. Is it also fair to say you don't need to love the house? Just get into something that you see what I'm saying? Get into something. It's not my forever house. It's not your only forever house is freaking heaven. There's no forever house. There's a house on every corner and you're going to see another one next week. You like better. That's right. You don't have to love the house. Yeah. Get your foot in the door, baby. Lower your expectations. Brian Buffini, thanks for hanging out with us, brother. Great to see you, bud. Great to see you. Thank you. If your business is making seven figures or more, you should be proud of that. But that growth probably brought a mess with it. Systems that don't talk to each other. It's impossible to track down your numbers because they're scattered everywhere. That's a visibility problem, and NetSuite has solved that problem for more than 44,000 businesses like yours. NetSuite brings financials, inventory, CRM, and more into one place. And their AI tool, NetSuite Next, builds AI into everything, automating busy work like forecasting demand and chasing down overdue accounts. It's not complicated to use. You just ask it questions like you're talking to a person. And you're not starting from scratch because NetSuite is built on leading practices from thousands of businesses, preloaded and ready-to-use. That's NetSuite Next for free at NetSuite.com slash Ramsey. That's NetSuite.com slash Ramsey. Or click the link in the description. Guys, I've run into something I'm just plain stinking excited about. Doesn't happen very often anymore, but I ran into something new. I learned something new, and I'm excited about it. So everything we teach you is to teach you to live like no one else so that later you can live and give like no one else. And the only thing that's better than giving is giving and it doesn't cost you anything. Sign me up. I mean, what if I could just designate and give money away and it didn't cost me? Now, that's just straight-up weird and cool. So what I want to tell you about is an awesome way to do that and help a kid in the process. Brand-new law that's passed takes effect January 1 called the Education Freedom Tax Credit, the EFTC, Federal Tax Credit. Here's how it works. You can contribute beginning in January, this is so stinking cool, to a qualified organization that gives kids scholarships. Scholarships for a better education, public school, private school, charter school, even home school. You can designate the school. You can't designate the kid. And you can give $1,700 for individuals or $3,400 married filing jointly. So if you're married, you can donate $3,400 and then take a tax credit. Now, stop, boys and girls. Remember, we teach you here the difference between a tax credit and a tax deduction. Huge, huge, huge. Tax credit, you almost never get. There's very few of them. But a tax credit is you take your tax bill and you take this off your tax bill. That's like a refund. A full refund. Yeah. So, like, if I give this company, if I give ACE, who is the ACE Scholarships, educationfreedom.org, if I give them $3,400 to give to a kid for scholarships, married filing jointly with my wife, Sharon, that means I can take $3,400 off my tax bill. Translation, Trump paid for it. Congress paid for it. The IRS paid for it. It didn't cost me a dime. ACE Scholarships is going to start showing you how to do this at the first of the year. You're going to hear us start talking about it more and more and more. This is so cool. So you can give away $3,400 and then take $3,400 off your tax bill, netting you zero cost. Love that. This is stinking cool. Yeah, that's a no-brainer. No-brainer. That's what we call it. But you got to do it through ACE. You know, that's what we recommend. Well, we recommend that. There's going to be several. There's going to be several organizations doing this. ACE is one we've checked out. Because as soon as I learned about this, I told my guys, you know, go find these organizations that are doing this and find us a good one. Yeah. And find out if what I think I learned is right. Am I getting scammed? Yeah. But it's real. Starting January 1, the Education Freedom Tax Credit, you can use it by contributing to ACE Scholarships. And ACE has been doing this for years and getting the tax credit at the state level. They've already done $445 million worth. But I got to tell you, that's peanuts compared to what it'll be next year. It'll be billions once people catch on to this. That you can not give the government and instead, which just makes me happy just when I say that. Are you more excited about the kids' side or the government giving? Oh, and then I also get to help some starving children. No, I'm kidding. But just the fact that I don't give the government money makes me smile, okay? But the fact that it goes to kids and pays for education. Fabulous. And it costs me zero to do this. This is kind of, this is very cool. So you got to check this out. Don't miss out on your chance. I want you to give like no one else. Learn about this starting right now. The tax credit begins January 1. So if you do it before January 1, it's not going to get the tax credit. So it's 27, 2027, okay? So you do it in January. You take it off your 2027 taxes off the tax bill. It's not a deduction. So if you give $10,000, if you give $3,400 to a ministry, you get a tax deduction. That does not save you $3,400. It reduces your income that's taxable by $3,400, which will save you maybe $1,000 in taxes. So you give away $3,400, you take the charitable tax deduction, and you save $1,000. That's the difference in a donation or a tax credit and a tax deduction. A tax deduction saves you about a quarter on the dollar. A tax credit saves you 100 cents on the dollar. A hundred cents goes out. A hundred cents comes off. Oh, it's awesome. This is so stinking cool. And I can't think of anything better than to say, I'm going to disrupt the education market with the government's money effectively. I just don't have to send the money to the government. I'm just so happy. I'm so happy. I don't have to send them any money. Not as much anyway. Oh, man. If they would do this for $34,000, I'd do it. Any amount they put on this, I would do it. Oh, 100%. Because you get it back that year. Yes. I mean, it just comes right back to you. This is kind of a no-brainer. Ace Scholarships. So I want you guys to begin to learn about this and get ready to do your donations next year through Ace. Again, it's not going to cost you net-net anything. You put out $3,400, married, filing jointly, $1,700 as a single. You're going to take that much off your tax bill in the year 2027. Ace will allow you to designate which school, but not which student. You can't say a student. So you can't use this to pipe your own student through. Okay, that won't work. But you can run it over to a school that you appreciate their values or you appreciate their money. You can appreciate what they're doing and help them build up their enrollment. That's great. Right? That kind of thing. And even homeschool. You can even designate it to that. But not just to your homeschooler. You can't loop it back like that. So obviously, that's not what the intent is. So they've been doing this for more than 25 years. We've checked them out. We've vetted them. They're now officially Ramsey Trusted. If you want to use the government's money to send a kid to school, in high school or elementary school or whatever, that kind of stuff, this is stinking cool. So the Education Freedom Tax. Act is what this is called. Let me do it again. I did that wrong. Where'd it go? Where'd it go? Where'd it go? Okay. Education Freedom Tax Credit Act. Okay. And you can learn about it at educationfreedom.org. That's your website. Educationfreedom.org. This is important. You know, last time I was this excited is when they came out with a new thing called a Roth IRA. Wow. Senator William Roth passed a new version that allowed it to grow tax-free. That's a big deal. And I went bananas on the air. Well, clearly it's a breakthrough. Now, honestly, the Roth IRA is a bigger deal than this is. Yes. For you personally, because you can have millions of dollars tax-free with a Roth IRA. But keep the government's hands off of it. Let me direct the money I earn to something I care about. Get it away from you people that are social engineering with my tax dollars. You're pissing me off all the time. It's got to stop. This is a way you can direct $3,400. You're married, filing jointly, $1,700 to something as an individual, to some organization, a school, a homeschool situation, private charter, where you choose the values that you want to place your money on. The government doesn't choose your values. Because the last time I checked, I don't like theirs. Any of theirs. Right, left, I don't like any of you up there. You just all piss me off all the time. So I'd rather not send you money at all ever again if I could get away with it. It's not very. It's not very patriotic. Paying taxes is not patriotism. That's bullcrap. So get this lined up. Learn about this. This is pretty incredible. Educationfreedom.org, and you can begin to learn about this. So a couple of times you've seen tax credits, Jade, like when the government was trying to incentivize an area of the marketplace. We lost the tax credits, and it's really done huge damage to the solar panel world. Oh, that's right. Yeah. To get a tax credit, and that went away two years ago. That's right. And now being in the solar panel business is really tough sledding. Uh-huh. Because that was being incentivized, and you didn't get a tax deduction. You got a tax credit. You got the credit. So you felt like you were getting the money back. Exactly. I actually bought an air conditioning system that met some certain guidelines for a house. Yeah. And I got a small, much smaller than this, little tax credit. Yes. And the air conditioner salesman said, well, you get a tax credit. And I went, yeah. at $4, but it was like 500 bucks or something. because 500 bucks i don't send the government yeah i like it you could get uh in florida you could buy a generator and i think there is a tax credit for that at one point i'll bet okay that makes sense yeah with hurricanes okay yeah so there's stuff like that that's come and gone over the years that were actual tax credits most things though in the giving world are tax deductions that's what makes this substantially different so two or three things i want you to note here number one the difference between a tax credit and a tax deduction number two you get to direct your money to a value system that you believe in a school that is a home school situation that's doing things the way you believe and it costs you net net zero yeah educationfreedom.org ace scholarships if you're frugal like me you're looking for every extra dollar you can squeeze out of your budget but when was the last time you looked at the bills you made and you were like oh my god i'm going to have to pay for it and i'm going to have to pay for it and i'm going to have to pay for it and i'm going to have to pay for it and i'm going to have to pay for it and i'm going to have to pay if you're frugal like me you're looking for every extra dollar you can squeeze out of your budget but when was the last time you looked at the bills you made and you were like oh my god you have on auto pay like your phone plan you might be paying 100 bucks or more every month and for what regulatory cost recovery charges telco recovery fees what even are those and the good news is there's hope you could be paying just 25 bucks a month if you switch to boost mobile that's right with boost mobile you get unlimited wireless for 25 a month to help you save money for other more important things and that 25 price is locked in forever no hidden fees no surprise network information notification costs nope not happening with boost mobile plus with boost mobile you get to keep your phone and your number with no long-term contracts guys switching to boost mobile is the smart move because it's one of the best ways to get more out of your budget so go to boostmobile.com slash ramsey and make the switch today that's boostmobile.com slash ramsey or click the link in the description 25 forever requires customers to remain active on boost mobile unlimited plan brian is in grand rapids hey brian how are you hey dave i am doing well um so i just recently became debt free um good but but my i don't have anything in savings and nothing towards retirement i'm 59 years old um everything is paid for i'm just curious where should i start putting my money um in order to start saving for my retirement i'm just curious where should i start putting my money for retirement and how much of my yearly income should i put into um into a savings you say everything's paid for your house is paid off house is paid off all our bills are paid off we're 100 percent debt free uh me and my wife we ate ramen noodles we drove beaters with heaters um you know i did side hustles anything i could to make a buck and once we made the buck we put it right towards our debt so what's your household income 100 20 000 a year between both and you have zero savings for retirement i have zero savings and i'm 59 years old your wife has zero savings too that's correct we took all of our disposable income and do it in our credit card debt and our mortgage i like it i'm glad you're there i'm just making sure i know exactly what we're talking about uh making sure we have our terms defined the same way so okay good you're ready to start investing so you could save like what um let's see make ten thousand dollars a month minus taxes and uh so you know uh you save two thousand dollars a month easy right yeah fifteen percent is fifteen hundred a month i'm sorry yeah i think we could if we kept eating our ramen noodles and bar s hot dogs we could probably save you know fifteen hundred to two thousand a month all right let's just put two thousand a month in here for a second and see what that does um i'm gonna stick it into our little calculator here i'm curious about this and so if we've got um let's see let's call it six years and we're going to save two thousand a month and we're going to save two and let's just see what that does okay okay if you did that for six years you'd have two hundred thousand bucks okay in a good growth stock mutual fund okay and i just did that on the ramsey calculator and it's on youtube and everybody saw me do it okay so you can pull it up and look at it um if you obviously take that out a little bit further and you said okay we did that for ten years because the difference starts to change real fast then yeah that becomes four hundred thousand so at sixty nine you could have four hundred grand if you save two thousand dollars a month i'm a little curious though don't you feel like brian with no debt in the world don't you feel like fifteen hundred off a hundred and twenty thousand dollar income is a little bit low to be you should have way way more margin than that right you're bringing home what eight thousand bucks a month between the two of us yeah so yeah we could probably you know stick in i would say safely maybe twenty five hundred to be safe i mean we the only thing we have is our taxes we live in a rural community so those are next to nothing um you know other than lights and and and gas for heat um you know car insurance and those things we have you know we we have enough no debt whatsoever yeah i i i don't know if you have an every dollar budget before you leave we'll make sure to give you one i suspect that there's probably three or four thousand dollars that you could be investing yeah i think when you start messing with it because and and get that calculator out that i'm using right here and and look at it on the website because and play with different entries i'm doing that at a ten percent rate of return if you change the rate of return into what the s&p has done this year and what the s&p is average which would be more like twelve percent you'd see a different number as well and so by the way twenty five hundred for ten years is over a half million dollars you got five hundred grand and your house is your house is probably worth what today uh about two hundred okay and so you it would probably be worth in ten years of your life yeah i think that's a good number and so you'd be a millionaire at sixty nine years old if you did that and so you're going to be okay but you're going to have to continue to focus and to concentrate but you still have enough runway to get off the ground okay good good so get with a smart investor where do i get with a smart investor pro yeah get with a smart investor pro at ramsey solutions.com find one that you like sit down with them and tell them what you're facing and they can even help you with this calculating stuff and just put it down in the description box and they can help you down okay if you did this and we made this on it here's what it would be in this many years and you just put it in there and you run a couple of different scenarios out and what those scenarios do when i'm doing them for you and what i'm doing them for me is they give me hope because right now you call up and you say i'm 59 i have zero money that scares the crud out of me and oh but but but wait if i do twenty five hundred for ten years i got a half million dollars oh okay i'm not as scared anymore right that's called hope right and so sit down and run some scenarios with the smart investor pro and they can also show you how to get your roth iras going and how to maximize some of your retirement stuff to you know to keep the government's hands off of this so that it'll even grow more efficiently yeah and if anybody's interested in that calculator we'll drop the link to that in the show notes yeah and sign him up christian for free every dollar okay and get him going on that so that we can every dollar is the budgeting app but it walks you through the baby steps and helps you do make you know based on where you are right now it'll tell you what to do and you'll be able to do a lot of things and you'll be able to do a lot of things well yeah and the way it is now when you first start out it's going to ask you what your goals are so in his case he's going to say my goal is to invest as much as possible and it's going to help him find the margin to do that and make sure that that's the sole focus of all the margin to accomplish that goal and so it's not just a budget it's really helping you accomplish really whatever your money goal is yeah i mean it'll point out stuff it'll go like oh look you got a three thousand dollar tax refund last year you need to you need to have two hundred fifty dollars more a month coming in and you can put that into your retirement funding right oh and just lower your tax refund you don't need a tax refund that's a loan to the government tax are an interest-free loan of the government then they give it back to you santa claus does not live in washington dc every dollar will tell you all of that it'll say okay this is what david jade would tell you and it's going to tell you all that while you're doing it perfect melanie is in milwaukee hi melanie how are you hi guys i have a two-part question regarding charitable contributions the first part has to do with from which sources of income should i be tithing um specific i've got a list of five here five or so um disability insurance payments tuition scholarships and inheritance gain on sale of home and student debt relief what debt relief question has student debt relief like if my daughter gets a job and her employer agrees to pay off fifteen thousand dollars of her student loan okay and then the second part of my question has to do with the timing because you know there's mention that we're supposed to give of our first fruits so how do i reconcile that with tax planning and loading up charitable contributions every other year okay it's a really good question okay so for those listening let's just make sure we're clarifying the tithe is an old testament uh uh instruction THAT BLEEDS OVER INTO THE NEW TESTAMENT, MOST EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS AND MOST most folks, particularly Orthodox in the Jewish world, believe in giving a tenth of our income to our local house of worship, okay? And that is the definition of the tithe. The tithe is defined in Isaiah as to give a tenth of your income on your net increase, okay? And so it's not, for instance, if you run a small business, it's not your gross revenues, it would be your net profits. Some people say net increase after taxes, some people say net increase before taxes, and you can argue about that. I tithe before tax, okay? Just to give you an example. Now, having said all of that and laid that in, I also, and what we teach at Ramsey, we're all in agreement on this, is that first and foremost, when it comes to generosity, God wants to teach us to be givers, and he's not standing over us with a baseball bat trying to see if we do it wrong, okay? And so. So give yourself a lot of grace. You're the person that asks this question. If you have the generosity button in your heart that causes you to ask this question, whatever you do is going to make God smile, because that's his whole goal, is just to get you giving. It's not to catch you doing something wrong in some little nuance of giving or not giving, okay? And so I tithe on big numbers, and I give way more than a tithe in general, in general generosity as well. In case I'm wrong, then I've got it kind of covered. But I'm not worried about God being mad at me or me violating some Old Testament rule or something, okay? I tithe on what I pay taxes on each year. So if I have unrecognized, unrealized gains, like a piece of real estate goes up in value, unless I sell that, I do not tithe on it. I tithe on what actually hits our checking account, before taxes. That's what I tithe on. But you can do it on anything you want to do it on in there, but because you've got the right spirit and the right heart. Absolutely. If you have an aging parent who's been diagnosed with a chronic illness, you know how overwhelming navigating the medical system can be. Coordinating with doctors and insurance and trying to understand systems that were built to confuse you, all while still running a household, working a job, and raising your own kids, it all feels impossible. Helping people in this situation is why solace exists. Solace pairs you with a health advocate who steps in and takes on the logistics, the appointments, the insurance questions, the medical billing questions, the frustration of what does any of this even mean, so you can focus on being present for your family. And solace is covered by Medicare and insurance nationwide, making it accessible for people everywhere. Look, your only role in this season should be just being a son or a daughter, not a healthcare expert. If you've been carrying the weight of a chronically ill parent and you need help navigating the medical system, check out solace. See, if you qualify by going to solacehealth.com slash Ramsey. That's solacehealth.com slash Ramsey, or click the link in the description. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fairwinds Credit Union Studio. Jade Walshaw, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author, is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us, America. We're so glad you're here. Open phones if you want to call us anytime, Monday through Friday from 1 to 4 central time. We're here. The call is free. Some say the advice is worth what you pay for it, but you ought to try it. The phone number is 888-825-5225, 888-825-5225. Oddly enough, it's been that same phone number for 35 years. It never changed? Never changed. Holy moly. How wild is that? That's wild. Well, once I got off of local radio and started doing syndicated radio, anyway. It's toll-free. Crazy. Toll-free. That's something you don't hear much anymore. Toll-free. There we go. Mary is in Minneapolis. Hi, Mary. How are you? I'm good. Thank you for taking my call. Sure. What's up? My question is related to my parents. Is it reasonable to take away my parents' debit cards and put them on a prepaid. Prepaid debit that we put funds onto weekly? And how do I convince them that this might be a good idea? I can give you. Why are we doing. Wait a minute. Why are we doing this? Well, let me tell you. My parents are almost 80. They live on Social Security and an annuity. Their annuity has about $30,000 left, and it's going to draw down to zero in about two years based on their current spending. They have a mortgage and $12,000 in credit card debt. And they've always had spending issues. And lately, they've been clicking on a lot of Facebook ads, and they'll put their card out there, and then they get hacked and scammed. And they've actually changed their credit card number or their debit card number 16 times in the last two years. Had to get new account numbers. And they have agreed to let us try to get some control over this and to monitor their accounts, not only for the fraud, but also to help them on a budget. Wow, that's nice. That is good. Yeah. We were happy. I think one of them's more on board than the other. So you don't think. But they know they want to stay in their house. Oh, go ahead. Sorry. You don't think that just creating the budget that they would stick to the budget. You think, no, I got to load this card, and when the funds are done, they're done. Well, the scammers. The scammers are part of it, but they've been through your program, and it didn't stick. So it's two-part, two-fold. And they're making short decisions, short-sighted decisions. Okay. So what do they need the debit card for mechanically? What's the tactical thing they're going to be doing with it? Day-to-day expenses, right? Groceries. The bills and things could be paid out of their second checking account. So it would be for them to still feel like they have some control, like we're not just like, oh, you don't have any cash, but to say, hey, you can go to the store. So their allowance for day-to-day expenses would be on a prepaid debit. Right. Okay. Is that overstepping? As a child, all my siblings and I are all in. My dad's pretty much in. I'm not sure about my mom. I think she's going to take some convincing. Because if you had a separate account, like you said, if you just said, this is the bill account, and I'm monitoring that, this is the money that they spend from, you're worried that if they just had a normal debit card, number one, scammers could get to it because they're giving out the information left and right. And number two, you think they'd spend until overdraft? I do. And it seems day-to-day that if they saw an ad, they'd be like, hey, what about this? And I'm always like, no, it's a scam. Don't click it. You know, even after we've had conversation after conversation, the habits haven't been changing. Are they open to that idea? What if we just monitor? I don't think you're overstepping to the extent that they will allow it. I mean, if they bow up, then you don't have a choice. But, you know, 100% of your motivation is for their good. It's not, you're not benefiting. So you're not overstepping. You know, and honestly, what you've described, they're so freaking out of control. They need something to give them some boundaries. And a prepaid debit would be nice. It'd be an easy way to do it. You know, if you put the exact same amount in a checking account and had a regular debit card, as long as it did not have overdraft protection, the card would be denied if there was no money in the account. Right. Right. It'll come back not approved. And I imagine, I imagine that would not be their favorite thing to happen, like at the grocery store. But if it was online, I feel like it would save them in those situations. So what size scam, what size dollar amount is the average scam you're getting hit with? So the more recent one was three charges of 150 bucks each. And it was something they clicked on, put their information in, and then it double charged and then triple charged. Of course it did. Oh, boy. Yeah. Okay. And that was just a week. You know, the problem is if you had a $450 on a prepaid debit, it would clean it out too. Right. It doesn't fix that. So the other way to do it is I just monitor it frequently. So I see it day to day. But then once the number's out there, they're going to have to change again, which is really frustrating for them. Yeah. Yeah. Prepaid debit is also frustrating because you're going to, that's a new card every month. Right. Oh, I didn't realize that. I guess you could recharge the card probably. But if the number goes bad, you're going to have to get another card anyway. Yeah. So it's kind of the same thing. More than anything, we just got to get them off of Facebook. Yeah. Just unplug their Facebook account. Yeah, truly. This is like, this is horrible. Yeah. It's frustrating. We see this happening a lot. That's why I'm kind of aggravated with you on it. So we hear this kind of stuff all the time. And the people, of course, they're preyed on are, you know, the elderly. That's who gets preyed on on this stuff. Because other people are, you know, if you're, if you're a 20 something, you don't get scammed much because you think everything's a scam. And when you're 80-something, you don't think anything's a scam. So it's kind of weird. So when you tell them, I mean, I know they're getting up there in age, but when you tell them, hey, don't buy anything on Facebook ever, they just don't understand that or they don't agree? Yeah, they just don't understand. Because every time she sends, it's mainly one at my mom, you know, she'll say, hey, have you seen this? And it's, you know, magic vitamins that cure diabetes. And I'm like, yeah, it's a scam, Mom. Don't click on it. It's a scam. Well, PayPal said I owe them money. You know, it's a scam. It's a scam. And every time, it's like it doesn't stick. And I think she's trying to do the right thing. Yes. We've got to get her off the grid. She's got an every scam algorithm, and they're double-feeding her on everything. For sure. You know what I would do? I'd break the back of that algorithm, for one thing, cancel the Facebook account and open another one. A fresh account and completely different new numbers and names. And make the scam algorithm start over. And just search for Dave Ramsey. Good idea. Yeah, well, you won't find me there. You will find my Facebook team there that manages this. So good luck with that. But you see what I'm saying? I would break the back of it. Because what's happened is the pipes in her Facebook account are clogged with sewage. Yeah, I didn't think of that. That's a good idea. That's also what's going on. That'll help. But the bottom line is there's not any way to keep somebody from doing something when they're hell-bent on being stupid. So your mom is just going to have to really, it's just continuing to talk to her. I probably would try the prepaid debit or try just a separate account for their weekly or monthly allowance and keep the balance low so it at least keeps the amount low. But you're going to have to end up changing numbers. Periodically. Anyway, if she keeps in this level of naivete, it's unfortunate. Hey guys, it's Rachel Cruz. When you get married or have kids, your money decisions aren't just about you anymore. And that's why Winston and I have termed life insurance through Zander Insurance. Because when you love your family, you make a plan to protect them. None of us likes to think about if something were to happen to us. But your income helps keep the lights on, pay the mortgage, and put food on the table. And having the right life insurance means that when you pass away, your family will not be dealing with financial stress during one of the hardest, hardest times of their lives. At Ramsey, we recommend term life protection that's 10 to 12 times your income with a 15 to 20-year term. And Zander makes it easy to help you find the coverage that you need. Zander is an independent broker who works for you, shopping the top companies to find the most competitive prices on the coverage you need. You can get an instant quote online in just minutes. So go to Zander.com or call 800-355-7000. 856-4282 to get your term life insurance quote today. Dr. John Deloney's new book, Building the Marriage You Want, is available right now for pre-order. Nobody gets married planning to become roommates, but life gets full, kids, work, packed schedules. One day you look up and realize that's exactly what's happened. That's what Zander does. That's why John wrote Building the Marriage You Want. He explains why marriage can feel so hard, why yours still matters, why marriage still matters, and what you can do to make it great. Giving couples practical tools to reconnect and build a stronger marriage. It's one of my favorite books he's done. I really like this thing. Of course, I've read it. I wrote the foreword, and of course, we're publishing it, so I read it. But it comes out in January, and you can pre-order right now for $24.99 and lock in $100 in free bonus items. Including the enhanced audio book, the early access to the e-book delivered two weeks early, instant access to the exclusive video, Dr. John Deloney on connected communication. You're going to love this. Get your copy right now, RamseySolutions.com slash store, or click the link in the show notes. All right, Mona is in Rochester, Minnesota. Hey, Mona, what's up? I recently purchased a 2010 Toyota Venza. It has 113,000 miles on it. It's mint condition. What type of engine? Not what type, but I'm just not sure what coverage I should put on it because of the age of it. What did you pay for it? What was it? $69.50. Okay. All right, and what is your net worth? I'm sorry? Not much. I couldn't even tell you. Okay. All right. So if the car got totaled, the loss of $7,000 would be large for you. Yes. Then you should have full coverage. You should have collision and liability. And anyone listening, the best buy in the insurance world is liability insurance of all kinds. And in your case, you know, you carry a 500 minimum, a 500, 250. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Do not buy 150, 75, that kind of thing. Go ahead and get a liability. It doesn't cost that much for the liability part. And that's the thing that really gets people in trouble in a big wreck. But you need to be able to replace the car if it goes bad. And then the only question is how large a deductible you want to carry. Mm-hmm. And what I would do is just go to RamseySolutions.com and click on our Ramsey Trusted. They can price out a policy for you from several different insurances. They can price out a policy for you from several different insurance companies and several different levels of deductible. Let's talk about that for a minute. Okay. The lowest deductible is 250. $250. Okay. So if you total the car, they would reduce the amount of the value of the car by $250. You pay 250, they pay the rest of it. Mm-hmm. Okay. Mm-hmm. If you raise it to 500, how much does that save you on your insurance premiums? And that's the question I would want to know in this case. Okay. It's probably a lot. Okay. I could easily do that. Yeah. And it's probably worth it. But what you're doing, the way you want to look at it is this. Okay. Let's say that it saves you $25 a month. Okay. Mm-hmm. But you're taking, instead of taking $250 worth of risk, you're taking $500 worth of risk. So that's a $250 extra risk. Do you understand what I'm saying? Yes. Okay. You divide that into the savings of $25, and that's 10 months you break even. If it's $25 a month savings, you would do that for sure. Okay. Yes. If it's $2.50, it takes you 10 years to break even without a wreck. No, I'm not doing that. I'll take the $250 instead of the $500. Mm-hmm. So you want the extra risk to pay you back in reduced premiums pretty quickly. Right. Okay. And that's the only thing I'm, the only question I've got about the insurance is which of those two you'll do. I don't think a $1,000 deductible on a $7,000 car makes any sense. Okay. If you're going to do that, you may want to just self-insure it. And I don't think you need to self-insure it. I think you need collision. Yeah. She doesn't have any money. Yeah. And so, Jade, Sharon and I were broke. I was driving that car that a guy loaned me that was probably worth $1,000. It was probably worth $200. Is this the Bondo one? Yeah, the Bondo buggy, we called it, because the predominant color on it was Bondo. But it ran, and I could go to work. It just had the police followed me, you know. And so, you know, what are you doing in this neighborhood with that car? And so, I got a $1,000 car. Yeah. And for some silly reason, I saved up and paid $1,000 for a car. For some silly reason, I put collision on the thing. Oh. Okay. I do not know why. Maybe you didn't understand it. No, I just, I was just habit, I guess. I probably should have self-insured through a $1,000 car, right? But we were broke. Sure. We were as broke as she is, right? And we're broke as she is. I left that car parked in a parking lot and rented a car from Enterprise to drive to Atlanta, because it wouldn't go to Atlanta. Yeah, sure. When we came back, the car looked like a bomb had gone off. Vandalism. Somebody beat. Somebody beat. Every window, every tire. Slit the tires, cut the seats out of it, destroyed the car, and totaled the car. Oh, my gosh. Okay. They gave me $1,200 for the $1,000 car. I'm like, I need to do this again. Yeah. Wow. So, when you're broke, carrying collision can really be a real smart idea. Yeah, for you, it was. Thing looked like somebody dropped a bomb on it. The radio was the only thing worth $1,000. not even the car. - That's crazy. - Yeah, it was classic. It might be a redneck if the radio increases the value of your car. But, yeah. Oh, man. But that's her situation. Yeah, for sure. For sure. $7,000 if she loses that car is a big hit. It's a big deal. She doesn't have the money to replace it. So that's why you buy insurance. By and large, insurance you don't make money on. But insurance transfers risk you can't afford to take. So that's the biggest question you have to ask. So can you afford to take the risk? So, for instance, if you have $2 million in a mutual fund and zero debt and a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old and the husband dies in a car wreck and he's the main breadwinner, you can afford to take the risk without life insurance. But if you have no money in savings and a mortgage and you have a student loan debt and two little kids, you need life insurance because you transfer the risk you cannot afford to take. Absolutely. And she can't afford to take the risk on that. So that's a good little insurance lesson right there. I like it. Jackson's in Syracuse, New York. Hi, Jackson. What's up? Hi. I appreciate it. Sure. How can we help? So me and my wife would like to eventually be able to afford to buy a home, but right now it just seems like an impossible reality. I'm trying to see if that's true. Why does it feel like it's an impossible reality? I'm a student pastor in New York. I'm a full-time student pastor, and my wife's a stay-at-home mom. We have two little ones, a three-and-a-half-year-old and a one-and-a-half-year-old. What do you make? I make $4,200 after taxes. So I'm grateful for that. It just doesn't seem like after all of our expenses, I have around maybe $200 legal room that we're able to save to put away. I mean, with $200 a month, it's going to take a long time, but you've made a couple of valuations. You've made a values choice in your career. She's made a values choice in staying at home, and both of those combined have made a values choice for your income, right? Because it's at $4,200. So there's a couple of levers that you can pull here. Number one, she can do some form of work. Number two, it says Syracuse, New York. I don't know if that's an expensive area. Maybe there is a less expensive area that we can get to. It's not expensive. And then you're a student pastor. I wonder if that's more. It's kind of a part-time thing, and you pick up another job because a lot of pastors have a secondary job that they do. We work with tens of thousands of churches and have for 25 years. The data that we have says 88% of pastors are bivocational. Only 12% are full-time. They have another job because they can't afford to live on. Student pastor, choir director can't afford to live most of the time, so they've got another job. It's not that unusual. It's not that unusual at all. But good news is Syracuse is very affordable. The medium house price you just pulled it up for us, Kelly pulled it up for us, $181,000. Oh, fabulous. It's a very affordable market. Okay. That's good news. You pull those two levers, and in no time you're going to be able to save up that down payment. 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ramsey that's helix h-e-l-i-x sleep.com slash ramsey with helix better sleep starts right now vivian is in austin texas hi vivian how are you thank you so much sure how can we help oh i am i am trying to get out of debt um i am a single mom i'm and i have um a couple of bills you know like um i recently got into a mortgage um i am grateful that my mortgage payment is actually way lower than what i used to pay in rent but of course um the electricity bill is higher in the house than what it is in my what it used to be in my apartment so i'm trying to get out of debt and i'm trying to get out of debt and i'm trying to so the electricity bill kind of covers for what it used to be um and then i have um a car payment a personal loan and a credit card that i'm trying to pay off um and it seems kind of hard to pay it off any sooner than what it's calculated to be paid because um a lot of my money goes back to my children um either into their clothes either into the food um i just finished buying all the clothes that they needed and i'm still kind of paying on some of that through after pay because that's my best friend when it comes to clothes their clothes is just not cheap are you thrifting all at once i'm sorry are you thrifting am i what are you thrift going to thrift stores i i haven't tried thrift stores i don't usually have the patience for them that's the one reason i don't know the ramsey kids grew up and experienced clothing just because i'm thinking you're you're having a hard time making ends meet the last thing and i mean last thing on the list is buy now pay later clothing for for kids how many kids do you have i have um and my biggest and most expensive one is my autism child um i recently took on a payment for him to have medicaid through the state of texas because um he doesn't i know don't qualify for the regular low low income medicaid that the state offers so i have to pay a fee now in order for him to be covered and i couldn't afford to have them without the medicaid sure coverage tell me again how many kids you have i have two um my youngest one is six which is my autism child and what is your income um fifty thousand a year and how much is this house payment um 1075 and how much is the car payment 351 okay do you do um um i am a call center rep for a credit union in the area so i take all the calls that come into the bank and i'm currently trying to switch roles as well but um but even then um my biggest thing is i love this job this job has actually has helped me so much when it comes to income are you getting any child support no the dad does not help me in any way shape or form we have an open child support case that has been um declared i i don't know what's the proper term but basically where they give up on finding him so they kind of like close out the case i guess and i have to keep reopening it and reopening it because he just can't be located child support can't locate him okay so you've got the kids you've got how much do you owe on this car um 600 i barely got it out last year i'm sorry say again 19 600 19 600 okay we got it you have a car you have a car that you cannot afford i had no choice you have a car that you can't afford you can't change that with what you want or what you need or how you feel mathematically you can't afford this car mathematically you can't afford to buy the clothing that you have to put on after after pay you have to stop doing these things and using the fact that things are tight as a reason to say i'm just going to keep kicking the can down the road kicking the can down the road you're going the wrong direction further into debt and every one of these conversations including even buying this house house is not out of control it's doable it's a little bit high to suit me but um but you said the the electricity bill is really high so um there's only a couple of levers you can pull the income lever what can we do to get our income up and that's a different career path a better career path it's been good so far but you need more and short-term income and you've got the challenge of taking care of an autistic child and working a side gig side hustle that's tough and so uh but if you could do that to clear some of these debts because if you didn't have any payments but a house payment all of a sudden your budget starts to loosen up and then you've got to fix this thing in your brain that says things are tight and you've got to fix this thing in your brain that says things are tight so I have to do this no you don't no you don't There's no have to, the only thing you have to do is buy food, lights and water. That's it. And I wasn't kidding. The Ramsey kids grew up on consignment sale clothing. My wife would load up all the clothing, take it to the consignment sale, take the credit, walk across the aisle and go down through there and buy stuff. And none of them are in counseling because of it. They live through it. Um, so we, cause we were too broke to pay attention. We didn't have any money and we didn't have the choice. We were bankrupt people. And so that's that, you know, Rachel Cruz, when she was two was wearing consignment sale clothing. Yeah. And so you're going to have to do some stuff like that to get your income up. And, uh, I'm going to start figuring out a way to get out of this car and get you into an inexpensive car and get the car paid off. Then get these credit cards cleaned up. Uh, but income goes up, outgo goes down and you start to have room. Yeah. I think my first thing, order of business, would be the car I'd be going on Kelly blue book to find out if I can do a private sale. Hopefully you can break. Even if you can't, all my margin would go towards getting right side up on that car and saving up for something in cash. Three, three to $5,000 would be my first cash car. If I were you, my second order of business would, I'd be reaching out to family, friends, community in my area. And I'd be telling them, here's my situation. I need to be able to work some extra hours. Can you help me with childcare? Do you know anybody who can help me with childcare so that you can work some extra hours? Uh, if not, I'd be looking into some call center jobs that let me to work overnight from home. That'd be, that'd be what I do. Uh, and they're out there. I know that they are stuff. Those are out there for sure. Yeah. You could pick the, put the kids to bed and do three hours of work at night. I know that's hard, but being broke and stuck is harder. That's right. And anything that can get me out of the broken stuck is what I'm going to do. And it'll last forever. If you don't do something to stop that train. And so doing a short-term sacrifice for a long-term gain worth it every time. Yeah. Anything I can do here to earn money, but your priorities are food, basic clothing, certainly nothing that you need to pay payments on utilities, lights and water and your house payment. And, um, if you got those basic necessities of life, then you're being a good mom. You're doing your job. And then other than that, we're scratching and clawing to try out of this hole and get back up on top of this thing. So it sounds like you're pushing on a lot of the different. Lever's Vivian. Uh, I just want to encourage you. You're probably doing better than you think you're doing. We're just trying to give you some little tweaks that you can do. I didn't hear anything in here except that car. That's just, uh, it's just crazy. There's nothing in here. Horrible. You're just a single mom and you've been fighting it. And so you're a warrior princess, keep fighting it, but you need up, you need up what, what will return the, the, uh, the shininess to your voice. Again, the energy to your voice is when you see that, when I do these three things or these four things, it's going to take me where I want to go. Yes. Instead of like just to survive when you're doing all that. And it's just to survive, just to tread water that there's no hope in that. And your voice starts to lose its shininess. Yeah. And I can, I can say as somebody who's had to enact major change in my life, those first few movements, they almost feel like, how can I do this? You know, to, to, to private sale a car. That's something you've never done before. That, that feels like it takes a lot of energy, but I guarantee when you actually do it, you're going to get a lot of energy from it and go, Oh gosh, I can actually affect this thing. I can start actually start to make change in this situation. $350 a month in your budget is a big deal. Goes a long way. Yeah. A long way. And then we can start to attack some of these other things and $500 a month, a thousand dollars a month from the side gig. Yes. Injected into this budget. Now we've got a $1,500 swing, which is, we're starting to talk about a 25 or 40% swing in your income. Net, net, net. And you can start to move some of these things around. And so you can see your way out of this instead of feeling so stuck. Hope in the math really matters. So keep pushing towards that. And do me a favor. We don't endorse them, but there's a place called arise.com, A-R-I-S-E.com. You can go on there. There's remote work. You can choose the remote work, see what it's going to pay you ahead of time. All you need is a headset and a computer. And that's a great place to start. I used to do that to fill the gap when Sam and I were getting out of debt. If you're waiting for rates to drop before you buy a home, here's what nobody tells you. When rates fall, every buyer who's been sitting on the sidelines, makes their move at the same time you do. That means more competition, higher prices, bidding wars, all that. That's why I tell people to talk to Churchill Mortgage before they do anything else. Churchill gives you a strategy so you're not at the mercy of the market. They can show you what you can afford, not just what the bank will approve. And with their certified homebuyer program, your financing is completely secured before you shop, which means when rates drop and everyone rushes in, you're already ahead of the crowd. You're not scrambling for pre-approval while the house goes to someone else. My husband and I bought both of our homes with Churchill and having a real strategy, not just a rate we were waiting for, made us ready when it really mattered. So start your search with Churchill. Click the link in the description or go to ChurchillMortgage.com slash RamseyOffer for an exclusive Ramsey audience offer. ChurchillMortgage.com slash RamseyOffer. Janelle is in Austin, Texas. Hi, Janelle. How are you? I'm good. How are you doing? Better than I deserve. What's up? Hi. So I just have some questions and I think I honestly just need like a father figure to talk to. Can you hear me? Sure. So my husband and I, we just started doing your plan and right now we have, I think I want to say like 40,000 in debt. He usually handles all of it, but I, so I'm a stay at home mom. I do have a little job. I help out with my church twice a week with their daycare that they have. And so like maybe a month, I'm probably getting 500. But I have a problem. I'm gotten on a firm and I have like maybe $200 in debt. And so basically what my question is, is how do I stop and help my husband? Okay. That's a really good question. I like it. So it's the one that we all face is how do we face the person in our mirror? Because 80% personal finance is 80% behavior. It's only 20% head knowledge. So the problem with my money is the guy in my mirror. If I can get him to behave, he can be skinny and rich, which is basically your question, right? And he, but he's got a problem with donuts. I mean, there's that, you know, so, I mean, uh, so, you know, you've got a, uh, it sounds like, how old are you guys? So I'm 25 and he's 26 and we do have a two-year-old. Cool. And what does he, how much does he make? I think I want to say at least 80,000 a year. Okay. All right. So you don't, you, you have enough money. You're not starving to death. No. Um, I mean, you're not rich, but you're not starving to death. So the language that you're using sounds like, um, I think I don't have enough money. I don't have enough money. I don't have I think I make 500. I think he makes 80. How can I help my husband? This language all says that it's not the two of you working together. It's more like he's trying to do it all. And you're the problem. That's the language you feel. That's how you feel. Yes. There is one more thing too. So before we started, uh, we recently started like, um, doing our research about you and, uh, following everything. So before we started though, we did have, uh, we like to do a trip, maybe like a cruise. That's, we just started doing like cruises last year. And so this year or technically next year, we wanted to like save up for another thing. So basically all the money I'm making from my job, we're going to go to Rome. So basically all the money I'm making is like, we're paying that Rome trip off. Cause we've already done that. So that was before we started. Are you in debt? Yeah. Did you agree together? That the focus is to pay off debt? What's the focus? Is your focus to pay off debt or to go to Rome? So listen, so the whole, like we want to pay off debt and everything, but the Rome trip was before we like decided. Yeah, but you don't have to go. It's not a law. Is it like a wedding or something? Rome will still be there. No, that's what I'm saying. Like, should we cut that off real quick? You should not go to Rome. Yeah. Okay. That's what, okay. But here's more than anything. The two of you need to sit down as two adults. And together say X is our goal. And therefore we together are going to walk together and do everything. we can to hit that goal together and then okay honey and and so you need to understand exactly how much money's coming into this house and exactly how much money's going out for food yes and exactly how much money's going out and you're part of the decision for that and you're part of the decision for something else but just because you wanted to go to rome before you woke up and realized you were broken in debt doesn't mean you get to go right that's exactly what i needed to hear because i was like if he says that then we're done we're not doing it but more importantly more importantly rome the rome trip is a symptom of you guys not working together i want you guys to sit down tonight and i want you to say i need your help honey and you need my help honey and together we're going to be two grown-ups making this decision together we're now partners equal partners in this thing called our family yeah and you there's another part of that that is is really important in any case in any marriage working together on the finances is is extremely important but specifically if you are a stay-at-home mom which means i've opted out of the normal workforce and i'm working at home even more reason to be so clued in on what's going on with the money what's going on with the finances i know what's going on with everything because it's easy to kind of just do the homer simpson and you fade into the bushes and you don't know what's going on and what i hate dave is the calls that we get when a single mom who's been or a stay-at-home mom who's been at home doesn't know the state of the finances and something blows up with the marriage and she's like i didn't know i had no idea i opted out i didn't have access to this i didn't have access i gave away my stake and having a say in this and now i i don't know what's going on that's exactly right or worse he passes away yes and she's even worse yes has no idea so you need to both be clued in and you're not clued in right now and the rome trip is just a tiny tiny part of that this is not about the rome trip this is about the two of you being together making the decisions together because here's the thing janelle if you said okay here's our every dollar budget it includes this much for clothing this much for food then a firm doesn't enter into this pay later doesn't enter into this because we only have the amount to pay now and we don't buy something we can't pay now because the affirm is just sloppiness because there's no system no plan and you're not working together it's not because you're a weak horrible person right it's just it's just disorganization you're not a weak horrible person you're just disorganized and you're not working together and you're not clued in and so you're like well i just kind of want this so i'll just affirm it and boom you know you get screwed by those people and that's the those things are running up and 250 on a firm is not going to kill you get that knocked out but never touch that button again the rest of your life and when you start working on a budget together then the budget informs what you're allowed to buy yeah and it's a spending plan yes it's as rachel says it's permission to spend but not beyond that that's it that's the amount you two decide together this is what we're going to spend and then something pops up and you go well it's not in the budget that means it's not in the budget because you're not in congress they're the only people that can spend forever and not and get away with it so far you know but everybody else has a limit and how much you can spend so you know you're not in congress you must stick to the limit that the two of you together decide but the power comes when you decide together say this is how much we decided we're going to spend on this category which allows us to get this debt paid off allows us to get out of debt have an emergency fund allows us to save for a future trip yes to rome after we do all of those smart things rome's not a dumb thing to do it's not all it should be the reward for doing the the adult thing first yeah it's like george says you gotta eat your broccoli first baby step four and beyond yeah you know and you save up and pay cash for it but you don't save up and pay cash for rome while you have a stinking student loan yeah that's right no that's that's like borrowing on a student loan to go to rome no we don't do that or while we got credit card debt or whatever the other debt is that kind of stuff so yeah but the big takeaway for you janelle is the two of you together develop a plan on what we are agreeing we are going to spend on each of these things and we're going to spend on each of these things and we're going to so that we can hit the goals that we are both think are important yes and then instantly what comes from that is the discipline to stick to it because you're holding each other accountable yeah and you put some stakes around it for crying out loud you know i think that helps you get in gear too if it's just kind of hey i heard this thing that a guy said on the radio and it's just kind of this arbitrary thing do you want to do it well after we go to rome you don't have that intensity but if you can put some real stakes around it and say if we don't do this then xyz happens well now you start to realize this is pretty important and then if you put positive stakes around it if we do this thing then xyz then now it starts to feel motivating so you kind of have to do some of the mental work on this to make sure that it's worth it for you that you want to do it and that you're invested and it's not just kind of a yep whenever we feel like it will get started kind of deal one of the things that teaches you something you take okay our car payment is 500 bucks okay well 500 bucks invested from age 25 to age 65 is six million dollars positive stakes hope you love the car you know stinking six million dollar car that's that's straight up stupid yeah you know you look at that you say to yourself i'm not stupid i'm not doing that that's right welcome back to the ramsey show in the fair winds credit union studio i'm dave ramsey your host jade ramsey personality number one best-selling author is my co-host if you want to participate in this show we're here monday through friday from one to four central time answering your questions all you do is dial the number triple eight eight two five five two two five triple eight eight two five five two two five miranda's in atlanta georgia hi miranda how are you good sir how are you better than we deserve how can we help so i just kind of want to get a better hold of my family's finances um and we also need a new car so that's kind of where i'm coming from okay cool i just need to know how to buy a new car and what to do and how much to pay for it around everything that we get paid and stuff like that yeah so uh how much debt do you have um so all together we on credit cards and a loan from the bank on the first house we bought it's six thousand seven hundred and sixty six dollars okay and then you would be debt free except your home yes two we have two houses and we have two homes oh okay all right uh you'd be debt free except the two homes okay yeah and uh your household income is what um monthly we make ten thousand one hundred dollars okay that's take home yes okay cool and how much do you have in savings um all together right now we have five thousand four hundred and ninety okay and that's not counting the rents right that's not counting the retirement right no i have not looked at my retirement fund in a while okay are you putting money into retirement every month yes yes i am sir we both are okay cool all right i believe it's fourteen percent of our paychecks okay get pulled into it good okay what happened to warrant a new car do you have two vehicles now and one of them is just super old or what's informing that choice we have three vehicles um we just bought one another craft box for a thousand dollars okay um my my vehicle broke um completely gone they said it needs an engine replacement we're just going to sell it on facebook marketplace so we do have two vehicles but i am currently pregnant with our second um i should be giving birth in the next two weeks so i'm being honest with you um so we're going to need another car that fits for people and then the other two cars that we have they're just not really good they're really old cars what are they so they're on their last legs well then them being old doesn't mean they're on their last legs tell us tell us about the cars what's wrong with them well um they have electrical issues so one car keeps dying dude i don't even know what's wrong with the car for being honest it stops driving and then it will start back up so it's an on and off car all right the good news is you make ten thousand dollars a month to take home so what we teach folks to do is follow a process we call the baby steps all right and uh baby step one is to save a thousand dollars you've done more than that okay baby step two is to pay off all debt except your home as quickly as possible um by the time you sell the car on facebook marketplace that has the bad motor and you take the rest of your savings above $1,000. thousand dollars you can almost pay off all of your debt you get real close yes in one month you should be debt free okay then i want you to raise your one thousand dollar account up to three to six months of expenses let's call that twenty thousand dollars so i want you putting everything you can into an account until you get an emergency fund and then you save up and move up in car okay but you don't move up in car when you don't have an emergency fund unless but but you could drive that thousand dollar because all we're asking about here really is about three months about three months from now you would be able to start saving for a car all right and again we're stopping temporarily your retirement savings so your take-home pay is now much larger than ten thousand it's more like twelve thousand all right and so we're going to really really lean in finish off the debt build an emergency fund and then move up in car with cash as we go the rental house the other house why do you have two houses so we are in the military um we bought a house in texas in el paso and then a year later we got orders to georgia so okay why have you not sold that house um honestly i really couldn't tell you um my husband and my father my husband and my father think it's a great thing they're both wrong you're broke you're driving a thousand dollar piece of crap and you have a rental property in el paso and if it's got some equity that doesn't make any sense sell that house and get rid of the problem and if it puts any money in your pocket that speeds the whole process up of getting you into some decent cars because you guys should be driving ten thousand dollar cars a piece each of you have a ten thousand dollar car that's a reliable good solid car and you're not because you've been spending your money on crap el paso because your father thought it was a good idea bullcrap he's not getting any money he doesn't get a vote okay yeah dump that house as fast as you can get because you're either feeding it or it's going to give you some equity or both and so it's a straight up net process that you don't need to be in the rental business in el paso texas when you're somewhere else in the military driving a thousand dollar car and get rid of a baby in two months for real it's not it's not it's out of balance it's the wrong way to approach being in the rental business and by the way if you're if you know you're going to be in the military long term i wouldn't be buying houses everywhere that you're you end up with rental properties dotted all over the united states and that's a bad way to build a rental portfolio good point good point uh ben is in salem oregon hi ben how are you hello dave thanks for having me on your show sure how can we help um i'm wondering at what point is it safe for me to quit my job and start farming on my own so to give you a little bit of context i worked uh straight out of high school into well first i went to college for a semester i don't know i was too much of a dreamer for that life went and got a job on a farm uh worked there for a few months and then took a different job at an agricultural services company so now i do custom applications of all sorts of growers uh it was roughly there's a bigger pay raise for me but it's not something that i'm super interested in doing long term with the company long term i would love to okay before farming is a business with a big heart and sometimes people have such big hearts they forget to do math it's a business so can you make it with more money farming than you make now um i'm nervous to make that step no i asked can you make more money farming if everything goes the way it's supposed to go you know the business then you make now yes or no hypothetically yes okay then begin to make the move gradually that way but we don't want to move to farming just because it sounds glorious and too many people do that that's a bad idea with business it's a business business and it needs to make money it's not a hobby okay the pressure to spend more just because it's the holidays is so real the it's not a hobby it's not a hobby it's not a hobby it's not a hobby it's not a hobby not that any of that is bad but none of it has to be a reason to overspend that's why my husband and i use every dollar my favorite budget app it's how we make a focus plan for our money so any spending we do is on purpose every dollar helps you track every single dollar that you have coming in and going out plus the app shows you where there's margin hiding that's extra money that could be put towards your family or your friends or your friends or your friends or family's biggest goals so take the pressure off this holiday season with a plan from every dollar and it's free to get started download the every dollar app in the app store or google play our question of the day is brought to you by ask ramsey your free ai money tool that provides personalized money answers based only on ramsey input ramsey principles so if you want a question answered like jade and i would answer it just go to ask ramsey it's free at ramsey solutions dot com slash ask ramsey all right today's question comes from philip in new jersey he says my only debt is a mortgage on a business location which is held jointly with my partners i'm debt averse and proposed paying it off but my partners refuse to do this unfortunately this isn't an isolated disagreement how do i navigate a situation where i fundamentally disagree with my partner's unwillingness to pay off shared business debt when it feels like a recurring pattern rather than one rather than a one-off disagreement well philip i look at this and i see one of two things either happened number one you changed which maybe when you originally went into business maybe you were for debt because you guys bought this business location on debt and then maybe over time you changed and decided i like this ramsey way of life i don't like debt anymore and now you're kind of the one who's going to have to change or you just went into debt with the wrong people you went into business with the wrong people from the very beginning and if that's the case and it sounds like maybe it is because you said this is one of many disagreements it's not isolated then it may be time to look at if this is still the right business partnership for you and do you need to continue this way i don't know that this is the only disagreement i don't know how big the other disagreements are that you mentioned yeah so philip our data says this we've coached over ten thousand small businesses in america unless it's a law firm or a medical practice i find almost zero small business partnerships that make it over ten years so we always say the only ship that won't sail is a partnership and this one won't sail okay this is and this is the reason you get into stuff like this all the time or one of the partners has some kind of a personal issue or something pop up and so my guess is that you probably uh i'm afraid you'd be like most you don't have good partnership agreements that dictate how the partnership is dissolved and if you don't then it gets really messy to dissolve the partnership because it's just a negotiation and if the negotiation fails it's a judge deciding from a civil lawsuit to dissolve the partnership that kind of thing so i mean there's two possible things you can do here one is you can say i'm unwilling to be to go into debt ever again and i'm unwilling to stay in this debt and so we're going to never borrow again as a partnership and we're going to work to get this out or i'm out yeah because we don't know how many partners there are there's four other guys who are saying hey dude you're the odd one out and so i'm out you know if you guys won't agree to that i'm not staying because it's it's taking my joy away and i'm going to get out and so we got to figure out how to buy me out how to price my shares and y'all buy me out and we'll figure that out and get me off this loan because i'm not going to stay on the loan either so you're going to refinance the building get my name off of it and you're going to buy me out or we're going to agree to not borrow anymore because i'm done with this and we're going to agree to a systematic pay down and get rid of this mortgage either one's fine with me but i'm not going to this is i this is not a way i'm going to live my life i can't see 10 more years of this crap uh you guys don't think it's a problem i think it's a problem and i'm not i'm not doing it anymore i can't tell you what you're going to do but i'm not going to sign another thing so if you guys borrow money it's not going to have my signature on it ever again i'm out i'm not doing any more borrowing period that's a statement that's not a negotiation then you guys can decide how we want to react from this point forward does it change how you approach it though um let's pretend they've been doing this a couple years if at the very beginning he was all in on getting this you know i mean i guess it just changes how how brusque you're going to be sure but um You know, you just say, guys, I've come to the realization. I didn't used to feel this way, but I used to feel like you do. But I've come to the realization that debt does not work for me. And I'm not going forward with that. And so, I mean, a bizarre example, a metaphor even, would be someone who's had an alcohol problem and comes to the realization they're not going to drink anymore. And they have to tell their drinking buddies. I can hang out with you. But I'm not drinking. And if the only way that you're going to agree to hang out with me is I have to drink. And I've got an alcohol problem, and I can't do that anymore. And so, even if you didn't start that way, it's going to end. Yes. And that's a bit of a bizarre metaphor, but it's still a metaphor that works. Hannah is in Denver. Hi, Hannah. How are you? I'm good. How are you? What's up? So, I'm 27, been married for seven years, and we have two small boys that I get to stay home with. But my husband and I are just very much in love. I'm very much worried for my parents' finances as it's turning into just a really big mess for them as they continually support my adult siblings financially. And we're just concerned about the long-term impact that it's having on my parents and, again, on my siblings. Okay. How many siblings are they supporting? My older brother, who's 32, and my younger sister, who's 24. Why? I couldn't tell you why, but I think their hearts are at stake. They want to give my siblings a better life than they did. So, I think from a place of love, for sure, but definitely not rational. But not you? If I asked for help, I'm sure that they would give it, but it has never felt like the right thing for me to ask. Nor do I need it. So, explain the problems. So, my parents themselves own two houses, and one of the houses that they have a mortgage on, they come under. They have had different renters in the house. So, different seasons, they've come under in that mortgage, and they have two houses that they're paying for. I mean, two cars that they're paying for, and they are in credit card debt. And then my older brother, he owns a home with a co-signer, but he recently quit his job and is no longer able to pay for the mortgage and is affecting his co-signer's credit, his credit. And then, again, my parents are stepping in and paying for his mortgage. And my younger sister was living with my parents. But then she moved out after an argument, and she moved in with my brother, where she is paying rent. But my parents are the ones paying her rent for her and her husband. Okay, and this affects you because? I just, again, I worry about how my parents are able to, honestly, retire or keep themselves afloat. Or that my siblings wouldn't be able to keep themselves afloat without my parents. Or even maybe one of my parents. Yeah, and it's a bit aggravating to just watch your whole family melt down and be stupid. Yeah, and I think we love them, and we want the best for them. Yeah, agreed. It's hard to watch people you love be stupid. It really is. Yeah. And hurt themselves. So, well, I think the first thing is, is you just need to release it and say it's not your problem, is you're not in control. Yeah. Breathe that in. That's good. It's not your problem. You're not in control of this. Now, pretend like it's not. It's not your family. That it's just some people you know. Yeah. Then what would we do? Well, we'd probably sit down over a cup of coffee and to the people that are the enablers and say, you know, here's how enabling works. This is your mom and dad, by the way. They're called enablers. These are freaking codependent human beings. Okay? Yeah. So, here's how codependence works. Enablers are always nice people. And they always think they're helping. And the irony is, is that they're not. They're actually doing harm. Right. And mom and dad, you're actually harming my brother and sister, your children. You're bringing harm to them. You think you're helping, but you're hurting them. Because you're supporting their stupidity and therefore encouraging it. Their lack of productivity and therefore encouraging it. Because if he didn't have a fallback, your brother would get a freaking job. Yeah. Okay? And he would get up off his little butt and be a man and take care of business. Instead, his mommy is taking care of him. And he's freaking 32 years old. It's disgusting. Yeah. Yeah. So, I'm going to tell mom, you're not helping. You're hurting. You stole his manhood. And if you disagree with my sister and she moves out because she disagrees, don't give her money. That's kind of dumb. That's dumb. You know? And if you have a conversation with some friends that way, and you say enablers are harmful people, they're not nice at the end, they think they're nice, but they're not, and they keep enabling, there's nothing you can do about it. I wash my hands of this. I shake the dirt off my sandals, and I go to the next village. I shake the dirt off my sandals. Find what you need at RamseySolutions.com slash insurance. Well, once you're out of debt, except the house, you have your emergency fund of three to six months of expenses. Now you're starting to invest for retirement. We call that baby step four, and you do four, five, and six at the same time. Four is investing for retirement. Five is kids' college. Six is pay off the house early. Seven, of course, is the house is paid off, and now we're very wealthy, and we just get to really enjoy life. Things are great. So when you're in baby steps four, five, and six, that's when you go from intensity to intense to intentional. That's when you upgrade a car, when you buy a better couch, when you go on vacation, and when you can go out to eat again. Because while you're doing the other stuff, you need to stay home and eat. Peanut butter and jelly, beans and rice, whatever you want to call it, right? So once you're on the baby step four and beyond, though, you ought to start celebrating and enjoying it. That's why we're doing the Ramsey Cruise, and we call it the Live Like No One Else Cruise. Because if you live like no one else, later you can live and give like no one else. Our next one is on Holland America, a high-end, very nice ship. It's March 14th through the 21st. It's all the Ramsey personalities and me and Sharon. And we're going to be doing all new wealth. We're going to be doing all new wealth building techniques and teachings on the cruise. We're going to break down what to do at Baby Step 7 and beyond, some estate planning stuff, some how to not ruin my kids when I build some wealth stuff. We're going to do tapings of our favorite Ramsey shows, including Smart Money Happy Hour, including we're going to do some entree leadership stuff while we're on there. It's all us and all you. No one else is on the ship. It's just Ramsey, the whole thing. And you're going to have a blast. The world's largest debt-free scream is going to be fun. For a limited time, third and fourth passengers will sail free. Hey. Hey. There you go. Plus, you can unlock a free cabin upgrade with the code SAILWITHDAVE. And that's S-A-I-L, not L-E. SAILWITHDAVE. Okay. We'd love to have you. We've got a few cabins left. It's going to sell out, but it hasn't quite sold out yet. March 14th through the 21st. Coming up pretty fast here. So for details or to book your cabin, go to RamseySolutions.com. Richard is in Boston. Hey, Richard, what's up? How are you today? How can I help? So over the last six months, excluding my car, I have built up $68,000 worth of debt. Most of it was due to a manic episode that I had. I'm trying to figure out if I should file for bankruptcy or not at this point. No. Okay. Because the debt is not the problem. It's the symptom of the manic episode. Agreed? Agreed. Okay. So have you gotten some help for your bipolar? Yes, I have. Over the last, like, two months, I've been more stable and I've been doing a lot better. But at this point, I currently have basically no income. Did you get off your meds? No, I'm currently on my meds. But when you went manic, did you get off your meds? I was not doing it. I was diagnosed prior. Oh, really? Okay. So we learned something new. Interesting. Okay. Yes. Okay. So the cause of the debt has been dealt with as best we can so far, right? Correct. That's good. That's good news. That is very good. Congratulations. I got to tell you, the mountain you climbed there is a big mountain. Yeah, it was definitely a lot. Yeah, we've worked over the years with a lot of folks facing bipolar. That's why I zoned in on it so quick. Because 100%. of people that stay bipolar and don't get their meds balanced wants to have financial trouble. Correct. And because of manic depressive, you go back through these stages and you do what you did. Okay. So what kind of debt is this? Um, so most of it is credit card debt. I had taken out a $25,000 loan to pay off, um, credit card debt prior. And then I built up all of the credit card debt again, because my loan payment was so large. Yeah. Okay. So 68,000 in largely credit card debt. Did you said something about a car? How much do you owe in the car? Oh, 12,000 on my car. Okay. That's not too bad. All right. So is that included in the 68 or plus 68? That's plus 68. So it's $80,426 as well. Gotcha. Okay. What were you doing for a living before? Uh, I worked in corrections. Okay. So what, what is your next goal for your career? Cause you're not planning to stay unemployed. So I'm starting a new job on the 16th. Yay. Doing what? Good. Uh, basically the same thing, but with kids at a youth detention center. Okay. And what will you be paid? Uh, 27 an hour. So basically the same as what I was making. What, what, what do you take home a month? Uh, my take home last month was 2157. Are you working 40 hours? That's not 40 hours at $27. No, I was placed out of work. So prior to that, uh, I mean, you're, when you're making $27, that's going to be, uh, what? $60,000 a year, right? Roughly. Yeah. Uh, 56. Yeah. Okay. Pretty close. But you'll be able to get up to those hours? Yes. Okay. A hundred percent. Okay. Can you pick up extra hours? Uh, yes, but I'm not sure how many per week. Okay. And if not, you can pick up a side hustle. Sure. Okay. And it's just you, right? No family, no kids, no. Correct. Okay. Good. Okay. Well, so here's what we're going to do. We're going to take care of food, shelter. What's your apartment? How much is it? Uh, I, I do currently live with family. I'm paying about $500 a month. Great. Okay. So 500 bucks covers that. And does that cover utilities as well? Yes. So you have food and shelter, you have utilities, you have a car payment, and you have car gas. And other than that, you work, right? And you pay off debt. Okay. So the car is under control because we're going to pay minimum payments on it. And then we're going to list these credit cards, smallest to largest, pay minimum payments on everything, but the little one and attack the little one with a vengeance. If you can't get to all of them, let them go. Just don't pay them. Understood. Because if you file bankruptcy, that's just not paying them, right? Correct. So it's going to mess up your credit. Well, guess what? Filing bankruptcy messes up your credit. I would rather you just not pay them and go settle with them later than file bankruptcy. Cause I think you can work through this pretty quick. Yeah. If you can find $3,000 to put towards this debt with you working 40 hours a week, plus overtime, picking up a side hustle, you can get out of this in 22 months. Understood. That's not bankrupt. Isn't that cool? No, definitely. And here's, here's the thing that'll go with that. You can talk to your therapist about this and check me out. Okay. I'm not a therapist. Dr. John Deloney is not here today, but again, we've worked with folks in your situation. One of the things we found is when you're pushing through a, a mental challenge like this, an emotional challenge like this, you get great strength and dignity from working a system that cleans up the mess. It's going to reinforce your healing. Absolutely. Rather than just, I'm going to put that behind me. And try to fresh start without it because the pressure is too much. Now you'll get strength. You'll get calluses, emotional calluses from pushing your way through this. That'll help you deal with your bipolar diagnosis. Again, I'm not a therapist. You ask your therapist if I'm right, but I'm right. And so, um, you know, cause we've seen this all the time. Cause, cause what you're doing is you're, you're learning to trust yourself and there's dignity in that. I've got power. I've got power over life. Power over things. I am not powerless. I am empowered. And that's, that's the callus that you start to build. That's just really important. Yeah. The more right choices you make, the more you trust yourself to make right choices. Let me say one more time, Richard, that I'm really proud of you. The fact that you saw what this is, you saw what it did, you, the language you're using and how you're addressing it, uh, your mental health approach to a mental struggle is very good. You've climbed a really, really high level of success. You've climbed a really, really high good mountain. You're not giving me any warning signals in your, in your language and how you're doing this. I didn't hear victim. I didn't hear anything. You didn't, you didn't, it's didn't this, you happened to this and you took control of it. All of that bodes well for your future in every area of your life, including your money. I'm proud of it. You keep fighting it, man. You keep pushing it. That's a big deal. That's a struggle that some people spend a decade trying to do what he did in a short period of time. Very, very difficult. I talk to couples all the time who want to be more intentional about their marriage, but they don't know where to start. That's why I created the marriage kit to give couples a roadmap for working toward a better marriage all year. You'll start the year by getting on the same page with an annual planning retreat. Then I'll walk with you every month as you make it happen together. We only have a very limited supply. So order yours now for 84 99 at Ramsey solutions.com slash store. Our scripture of the day, Matthew seven, two, in the same way you judge others, you will be judged. And with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Jordan Peterson says, compare yourself to who you were yesterday. Not who someone else is today. Ooh, good. Are you growing? Kendall is in West Virginia. Hi, Kendall. What's up? Hi, I was just wondering what I should do next with my money. Should I put it in a Roth IRA, a 401k or work to pay off my car? Oh, I like that question. I like that you're thinking about investing. But I agree. I would start with the car first. Are you a longtime listener or did you just find the Ramsey show? Um, so I've been listening for a little while. Um, I know about the baby steps. My only thing with my car is it is a private loan. So there's no interest or anything on that. Um, I own 19,000 on it. Um, but there's no interest earned. But how would you feel about that 19,000 if suddenly you lost your job? Yeah, I don't know. I think suddenly you'd feel it. All of a sudden it ain't so private. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. So yeah, uh, since you're looking for, the best, the next best place to spend your money, I would walk through the baby steps. The first thing that I would do is I would save $1,000. Do you have any money saved? Yeah, I have two months of my income saved. Ah, how much is that? Um, about 7,000, around 7,000. Okay, I love that for you. So what I would do, and this is gonna hurt you because obviously your mind works different than the way we teach. I would drop that down to $1,000 and then I would take the other 6,000 and I would throw it on this debt. And how quickly from there do you think you could pay off $3,000? 13,000. 13,000, I'm sorry. Um, I was doing a calculation a couple days ago, uh, to set my car to be paid off in two years. Um, but- What do you make? I put all of my money into that. I make about $29 an hour. Okay, so you're making about 80 a year. 75 a year, I'm sorry. And, um, you could pay off $13,000 really quickly. Okay. So you're making about 80 a year. You could pay off $13,000 really, really fast if it was your only goal. Okay. Like three months, four months. That is the only debt that I have. Three or four months. Well, what he's saying is it's gotta be your number one goal. No other goals. Because you just graduated, so you might be thinking, I'm gonna spend my money here, there, and other places. And we're saying, hey, what if you just said, this is the sole focus of my margin. If you don't have any other debt, you should have several thousand going towards this every single month. Why can't it be done in six months? Three months, four months. Okay. And then you don't have a car payment. Then you build your emergency fund back up to three to six months of expenses, which will be easy to do because even though it's a 0% interest, what's your payment? I pay about 500 a month. Yeah. So all of a sudden we got an extra 500 bucks a month, four months from now, five months from now, when this is gone for the rest of your life, instead of for three or four freaking years, you keep screwing around with this thing. And by the way, knock it out. You're the, test, you're the test subject, Kendall, for the math that we give all the time, which is if you invest $500 every single month for the next 40 years, you're going to be, that's your million dollars right there. That's millions and millions and millions of dollars in your situation. So, yeah, you want to clear that, get your emergency fund in place, and then start your long-term investing at 15% of your income. Walk those baby steps. They work. They work every time people work them. Lauren's in Chicago. Hi, Lauren. How are you? I'm good. Hi, David, Jade. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? So, my husband and I just welcomed our first baby in July, and I went back to work at the beginning of October. During our recent budget meetings, I've expressed my want to be a stay-at-home mom at some point with our daughter and hopefully more children at some point. He seems uneasy about the thought of going down to a one-income household and wants to achieve financial success. So, I'm going to talk to him. I'm going to talk to him. I'm going to talk about financial goals before we could even consider it, one of it being paying off our mortgage. Before we had our daughter, we paid off our mortgage on our first home. So, we're not strangers to meeting big financial goals. We're debt-free with a fully-funded emergency fund. So, I just want to figure out how we can come together to make a plan to put him at ease and live comfortably with me staying home. So, if you were to stop working, let's just pretend today you stopped working, what percentage of your mortgage, what percentage of your take-home would your mortgage be? Our mortgage is pretty low. So, what do you make? I make $70 a year. What's he make? Around $110. Okay. All right. And so, instead of paying off your mortgage, your current mortgage balance is what? $109. Okay. And if you keep working, you can pay it off in two years. If you don't keep working, you're going to pay it off in four or five years. Okay. So, you're going to pay it off in four or five years. Right? Yeah, exactly. Yep. He's wrong. Now, how to make him feel at ease? He already should be at ease. This guy's a super nerd. Yes. He's a wonderful husband because you're always going to be provided for. You're never going to be in financial danger with this guy. He is a great find, but he needs to understand that the reason we do all of these things is so that we can have the life that we want to have. So, you can stay at home. And the life you want to have, and really he wants to have, is for you to be there with the babies because it's what you want. He wants to do that for you, but his super nerdness is where his uneasiness is coming from, not from the situation. The situation is very good. Would you trade two years of mortgage for you to be at home? Absolutely. Oh, yeah. And that's all we're talking about here. Because he's not really talking about you working 10 or 15 years. Right? Mm-hmm. And he's making 110. And how long have y'all been married? Six years. And what did he make when you first got married? Probably 80 to 85. Yeah. So, if he stays on that growth track in his career, you guys are going to be very. Very, very wealthy without your income. And I'll also give you a suspicion. When the kids are in school, you may go back and do something else because you might get bored. I don't know. I mean, it's possible, right? Yeah. My wife didn't. My wife stayed at home for the last 43 years from the time our oldest was born. She never went back to work. And it's what we wanted to do. It's what she wanted to do. We were in agreement. There was no disagreement. And honestly, it's probably one of the reasons that we've been so stinking successful is I didn't have to worry about drama at home. Because any drama at home, Ms. Sharon handled it, I'll just tell you, before I got home. Wait till your daddy got home, doesn't come out of her mouth. It was already done before I got there. So, you know, but that's a beautiful thing. There's economic value to what she's taught. One hundred percent. Maybe greater than 70 grand. Listen, because if you have to hire somebody to do the work of a stay-at-home mom, you're paying. I don't even want to talk about it. You're paying. Yeah. So I think your husband is a great man. And I would just, as the old grandpa in the group, I would encourage him to enjoy his children through his wife being at home and pay off the mortgage two years slower than he would like. I think that's a win for everybody in this picture. You can't lose sight of why you're doing all of this. If you lose sight, it takes, it sucks the joy and the reasoning right out of it. And don't miss the fact that I hate Dave Ramsey is the one that just said that. Okay. That's a big deal. Yeah. If you play this call for the super nerd, he might fall out of his chair. You can play it for him because I'm a fan of his. I like him. I think he's a great guy. I think he just, his uneasiness is not well-founded. I agree with that. That's all it is. And it's just, it comes from his nature. And the way he's approaching this, which is also going to be a plus. It's going to help them. Yes. It's going to be a plus. So it comes out ahead. Very cool. Very cool. You know, the number of times, Jay, we run into somebody over the years that say, you know, if I didn't have this van payment, I could afford to be at home. And we go, well, sell the van. Oh, I hadn't thought of that. I mean, it's just, some of this stuff is fairly, when you decide, what is the priority, owning a van or being at home? Right. Right. You know, I mean, you know, in her case, it's not that simple, but, but what's the priority? Two years or four years? It's not that big of a deal. I mean, or whether three years or six years, whatever the actual number turns out to be, but it's going to be right around those numbers. It's going to be really close. And so it's a good trade. It's a good trade. Good. One on one side of the scale on the other side of the scale. What are we going to do here? That puts us out of the Ramsey show in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember there's ultimately only one way to financial peace and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus. I'll see you next time.