Increase Your Income, Expand Your Options

Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. Normal is broke. 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, your host. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author, host of The Dr. John Deloney Show, is my co-host today. Open phones here at 888-825-5225. Ryan is in Wake Forest, North Carolina. Hey, Ryan, what's up? Hi, Dave. How are you doing today? Better than I deserve. What's up? I'm in. Well, I'm calling because I'm a single mom of two, and I also take care of my mom. And my question today is about. How do I manage paying off debt while I'm still incurring medical expenses from both her and I also have a daughter who was hospitalized, and she's got ongoing medical care that's needed as well. Okay. So you have health insurance, I assume. I have health insurance, but we have. Yes. And we've come. We've maxed out the deductible, and we're getting close to. We're getting close to maxing out the out-of-pocket expenses as well, too. But even that, the deductible is high, because we have a high deductible insurance plan. Mm-hmm. Okay. And so what do you make a year? Well, in total, $160,000. Okay. And how high is your deductible? It's $5,000. And what's your max out-of-pocket? Another $4,000. Okay. Okay. So $9,000. Okay. So it does not break you if you make $160,000. I'm confused. It doesn't break me, but I'm also. I've got other expenses that I'm trying to pay off as well. Okay. There's not. You don't pay off. I mean, if you have medical bills that are ongoing that exceed the $9,000, what would they be? That exceed the $9,000? It would be. Well, so for my daughter, she's. I don't want to say too much, but she's got medical expenses that are going to be ongoing for the unforeseeable future. So she's got a chronic issue of some kind. Yes. Okay. But above the $9,000, do you come out-of-pocket for that situation? I'm sure, because it's all fairly new. Okay. Well, it shouldn't be. I mean. So there's some things that they cover and some things that they don't. Unless you're trying to get a treatment that your insurance company doesn't cover, the $9,000 should be the end of it. Now, okay, so you keep. I'm a little bit confused with the way you're using the words on pay off your bills. You pay your monthly bills. You pay your electricity. You pay your water. You pay. You buy food. I'm sorry. Yeah. You buy food. Yeah, sorry. I should have said debt. Okay. And then how much debt do you have? So I've got $20,000 in a car and $3,000 on a credit card. Mm-hmm. And then $190 mortgage. Okay. Good. Good. None of that's out of line. And part of that is. Yeah, and part of that is an H-E loan. So about 55 of that $190 is the H-E loan. You mean like a second. Like an H-O. Home equity loan? Home equity, yeah. Home equity. Okay. Mm-hmm. Okay. All right. And so you've got two house payments, a car payment, and some credit cards, and you've got some ongoing medical bills with your daughter's chronic issues, and you make $160. Right. Okay. And then there's my mother's. Okay. And what are you having to pay for her? Personal. So nurse. So she's got several comorbidities, and so we're trying to pay a nurse to help take care of her. And does she have income coming in to this situation? She's got Social Security, but it's not a lot. Like $1,200, $1,500, what? Yeah, somewhere around there. Okay. And what's the nurse cost? About $25 to. 25 and up an hour. Okay. But I mean, in a month, what are you spending on a nurse? So we haven't. We just kind of use them part-time for now, but I don't need to. Okay. And what are you spending on a nurse in a month? So about $1,000. And your mom brings in $1,200? Mm-hmm. Okay. So we covered that. But it will go up. Yeah. Yeah. Well, but I mean, for now, that's covered. In the last two months, you're trying to figure out. Why you weren't paying your bills, able to pay your bills, and pay extra on your debt. And that's what I'm trying to figure out by asking all these questions, where it's going. Okay? Because I still haven't found where it's going. So it sounds like that you are a warrior princess working very hard, and you've got the emotional drain of your mom not doing well and your child with a chronic illness. And because you're not running with a full gas tank, it's hard for you to not let all this just become chaotic. And so the bills in an emotional bucket, the bills, have become chaos instead of. If you didn't have all this other stuff you were carrying, you're obviously a bright woman. You would just sit down and make a list of this and start paying it, because the math tells me that this is doable. But I think what's happening is you're just overwhelmed. Does that sound right? That's true. That's true. I am overwhelmed. Okay. But it's more than that. It's that I feel like. Because I was in baby step number four, and now I feel like I'm probably back to baby step number two, because of the debt that keeps incurring. No, you went and bought a car and put yourself in baby step two. Well, no, I had to buy a car. And you pulled out your credit card, and you used it. Yeah, because. And you kept it, too. I had to buy one, because there were a lot of other expenses that had, you know, unforeseeable expenses that came up. You got a lot of have-tos in your life, though. Well, I mean, it was the HVAC system that went out. And the car, I had another car, but it had over 250,000 miles on it, and I had just spent 3,000 to get it fixed, and now it needs another 3,000. But you made the decision to put yourself back in this mess. You're giving me all the reasons, but you still did it. Don't hear ownership as a character judgment or some sort of moral failure. It's owning. I took step A, B, and C. The world happened to me, and I chose this path, not this path. And it hurts. And it hurts. Yeah. And sometimes you find yourself at a crossroads where any path you take is going to hurt. But in that case, and that's most of us, right? When that happens, I'm going to take the path that's going to hurt, but it's going to get me to where I want to be. Yeah. So you've got to get back on a budget. Yeah. Hardcore. Beans and rice, rice and beans. And no more rationalization of pulling out the credit card, or I had to have a car, it's 250,000. I don't give a crap. You don't go in debt again. Period. Period. Because then you. You end up strapped again back here. So nothing you have today can't be cleared up. The $20,000 car can be cleared up. The $3,000 credit card can be cleared up. And you can get back on the road, but you're going to have to get above the chaos and make these monkeys all dance, because you're in the middle of a circus. And so there's just monkeys running around everywhere, and you're going to have to teach them how to get in a line and how to dance. And that's called a budget, and you crack the whip on the money monster and make it behave. Money is a fabulous slave. It's a horrible master. And it's mastering you right now. It's adding to this anxiety of being overwhelmed. You feel overwhelmed with money, with your child, with your mom. And so this is an area you actually can control. The line that I was trained with that was really helpful for me when I entered into chaotic situations are facts are your friends. When everything feels like it's dumping on your head, what are the facts here? How much am I spending on nursing? How much am I spending on food? How much am I spending on this car? And what can I do to get out of this mess following the facts path here? Because the emotions are big, and that's right for them to be big. The path out here is what's the next right move? 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So it's okay to notice when you're paying more than you should, but you shouldn't keep doing that. Stop overpaying for your phone service. Go to BoostMobile.com. Ramsey and make the switch today. That's BoostMobile.com slash Ramsey. $25 Forever requires customers to remain active on Boost Mobile Unlimited plan. Danny's in Columbus, Ohio. Hey, Danny, what's up? Hi there. It's nice to talk to you again. So my question was, I'm in baby step number two. I am actually recently engaged, and I'm super excited about that. And we're planning a wedding for May of 2027. And I was wondering how you would help or how you would balance trying to pay off debt and finance a wedding as well as a honeymoon without going into further debt. Good, good. That's a good first goal. Congratulations. Thank you. What do you make and what does she make? Yeah, so I am a full-time pastor. And a part-time lifeguard. And I make roughly about $45,000 a year. What does she make? Yeah, so she's a welder. She's new in her career. She's currently making about $18 an hour. And she's looking to join the union. And if she's able to do that, she'll be able to make roughly $25 to $30 an hour starting out. Okay. And has she just started the welding career? Because that's very low. Yeah, so she just graduated from trade school. And she's currently working full-time for a local organization. Yeah. Well, she's being dramatically underpaid. Oh, okay. Like half of what she should be paid in welding right now. There's a shortage of welders that know how to actually lay a bead down. And so I don't know who got her this job. But they screwed her over. So, I mean, she can make this at Target stacking boxes without any education. I just paid some welders to do some work at my house, brother. And it was way, way more than what she's getting paid. I'm smiling now. I can't believe that. Yeah, so anyway, that's thing one. Now, how much debt do you have? Well, I've been on baby step number two for a couple of years. I have no consumer debt right now. The only thing I have. Is federal student loans. That's consumer debt. I was an idiot. How much is your student loan debt? I was an idiot. And I took out a lot. And I currently got it down to about $90,000. Okay. And how much debt does she have? Absolutely zero. She's been a follower of the Dave Ramsey plan since she was 16. Okay. All right. And so what are you two planning to spend on the wedding? What's your budget that you came up with that you're going to spend on the wedding? Well, we wanted to keep it small. And so we're looking at somewhere between $3,000 to $4,000 for the wedding. And then we wanted to take a two-week vacation to somewhere either in Texas or maybe Mackinac Island or something. And so we're looking at probably about $2,000 to $3,000 to do that. Okay. So you need $6,000 by May. Give or take. Yes, sir. Okay. That's $500 a month for a year. Yes, sir. So $600 a month. $600 a month in your monthly budget, or $300 in your budget, $300 in her budget, goes into the wedding account. And then you work on your debt. Yes, sir. Unfortunately, that would be almost everything I'm chunking at my debt right now. Okay. So you need a better extra job. Your extra job doesn't do well. Or, and I don't want to give a controversial statement here, but you might not be able to get a job. You might not be able to do this ministry job of $45,000 because of previous decisions you made in your life to go six figures into student loan debt. A lot of ministers, as a matter of fact, somewhere around 80% of pastors today are bivocational, meaning they have a full-time job in addition to being a preacher. Yes, sir. And I do work full-time as a pastor. And I work about 20, 25 hours as a lifeguard and some instructor for my local YMCA. Yeah. I find both of those to be really impactful for our community. They're not impactful enough on the $90,000. Yeah. And you're going to burn yourself out. You're not going to be there for your community in five years because you're going to be completely cooked. Yeah. You need to go make some money so that you can remain in the work of the Lord. Because, you know, your lifeguard thing is semi-volunteer. I mean, you're not making any money there. And so you really, I mean, you do what you want to do, but you called us. And when you do that, you're always going to get paid. You're always going to get our opinion because we're like an expert on our opinion. So, you know, I think you have an income problem. And you've got a slight outgo problem if you only got $300 a month out of $45,000. So you need to get on a detailed budget and you need to be putting some money aside to the wedding. But you have a $6,000 goal by May and the two of you sit down and go, okay, maybe she's putting in four, you're putting in two. I don't care. But both of you have some career adjusting to do. Neither one of you are living up to your potential income producing right now. And income and money is not everything, but it does give you options. And you don't have any options. You're handcuffed. I'm all about somebody deciding, you know what? I don't want to do this thing anymore. I want to go make a quarter of my quote unquote market value, whatever that is. And I want to just be here for my community. I love that idea. But if you've dug yourself a $90,000, $120,000 hole. You gave up that option. You gave up that option until you dig that, you fill that hole back up. So the fastest way. To fill that hole back up and get back even on even ground is to go work a whole bunch of jobs and even do jobs that you might not think have impact, which I would argue with you on a different phone call. I think everybody who interacts with other people has an opportunity to impact people in a positive way, whether you're at fast food restaurant or a delivery person or whatever. But you gave up that right when you dug up those holes. I mean, when you dug yourself that big hole, you got to fill that sucker up. And that means you got to go get one job, two jobs. You may have to step away from your church for a season and go make a whole bunch of money doing something that you quote. Unquote, don't feel called to do, but I got to clean up this mess so that I'm here in the long haul to be here for my family, for my community, for whatever I believe my faith is calling me to and all that kind of stuff. Yep. That's exactly how it works. So again, we support pastors. We work with churches all across America and we have for 30 years. And so we've got a huge heart for people that want to serve in that way and in that role. But you don't just because it's there. You don't get it. You get a pass on the math. That's it. Yeah, you got you have to address the math. And so in order to be able to stay in that kind of a role. And that's what we're looking for. Jessica's in Springfield, Missouri. Hi, Jessica. How are you? Hi, how are you? You're breaking up. Can you speak directly into your phone? Yes. Is this better? Yes, ma'am. Much better. Yeah. All right. My question is whether it's a debate between me and my husband. And yes, we'll solve it. We'll solve it. Fantastic. So the question is whether or not he's being spoiled or if I'm being miserly. And it's related to cars. Okay. Both of you probably. But anyway, yeah. Both of us probably. So we have three aging cars and they're all doing fine right now. But we imagine that his commuter vehicle will be the first that needs to be replaced maybe in a year or so. The question is. The question is that he has bought several new cars in his lifetime and that's what he would like to do again. And I disagree. I've never bought a new car and I don't see any reason to. Okay. I suppose we are in baby step seven. We're free and clear. What's your net worth? Probably about five and a half thousand. We're not millionaires. Five and a half thousand? I'm sorry. Five hundred. Five hundred thousand. You're a half a millionaire. Okay. Half a millionaire. Yeah. We have the money to purchase a new vehicle, brand new, if we wanted to. I just don't really see the reason. So he says that after COVID happened that depreciation on cars isn't what it used to be. He's wrong. Comically wrong. Mathematically, arithmetic says he's wrong. Okay. And you can study it. Put 35 seconds on Google and you'll figure this out. I mean, it doesn't take it, you know, jump around and look. Look at a new car that was issued in a 23 model and see what the MSRP on it was. Manufacturer suggested retail price and then see what that 23 is selling for today. And it is not up. It's down and it's down dramatically. And sorry, but the Fauci pandemic didn't help with that. And so. I would agree. Yeah. You win. And we tell people. We tell people not to buy brand new cars because they go down so fast in value until you have at least a million dollars in net worth because they go down so fast in value. And we don't. We want you to build wealth, not screw it up. So you win, you win and you win. So you win, you win. Here's something that keeps a lot of parents up at night. Kids are growing up with more access to information than ever before in history. But most of the content is calculated to keep them distracted, make them mad, and keep them scrolling. Not help them think for themselves. Worldwatch exists to be the antidote to the algorithms. Worldwatch is a video news service built specifically for preteens and teens. They're daily 10-minute videos that explain what's happening in the world through a factual Christian worldview. No outrage, no noise, just clear reporting you can watch together and that your kids can actually understand so they can come to the dinner table engaged and curious instead of worked up or zoned out. And I love that Worldwatch doesn't talk at kids. It gives families something to talk about. Because when my kids are older, I want them to be able to think for themselves and separate news from reality. And right now you can try Worldwatch free for 30 days. Click the link in the description or go to worldwatch.news.ramsey and use promo code RAMSEY to get started. The Ramsey offer includes your first full month free on top of the standard 7-day trial. That's worldwatch.news.ramsey. Here's what's weird. I went to a thing when I was 22 years old and the guy put up compound interest on the table, on the board rather. And he showed us the way compound interest works. $100 a month. And I heard this 44 years ago. Okay. $100 a month invested from age 25 to age 65 in a decent growth stock mutual fund at market rates of return is $1,176,000. See, I think you should not be allowed to get out of high school until you know that equation. Because it would stop all the stupid socialism stuff. Because you went, all I need is $100 a month and I can live with, be a millionaire, you know, from age 25 to age 65. Age 22 to age 62. Age 20 to age 60. I don't care which 40 years you want to pick it out. You can wait until 40 and do it at 80 if you want, but I wouldn't recommend it. See, anyone can become a millionaire. It's not that complicated. George and I are doing an in-depth nerd dive. I don't know exactly what an in-depth nerd dive means, but look that one up. We've listened to you talk. We know what it means. At Investing Essentials. This is the third time I've ever done this event. And it's our two-night. It's our virtual event next week. It's the only place I unpack my entire playbook on investing, why I do what I do, why I don't do what I don't do, including exact formulas and details on how I pick real estate, how I decide whether I'm going to keep it or not. All new content. We're also going into some wealth planning, a little bit of estate planning, looking at that. God, in case you're having trouble sleeping, come watch this event. It will put you right out. Yeah. Tuesday and Wednesday evening. Join us from the comfort of your own recliner. I'm kidding. Tickets start at $199. Get yours at RamseySolutions.com slash events or click the link if you're listening on podcast or YouTube. There's, God, John, there's like 700,000 people have signed up for this thing. That's crazy. It's crazy. It's going to be like a lot of people sleeping. But, yeah. Now, we're going to go into the details. We're going to give, it's just, I mean, we've taken the material we did last year and sadly, we've added a bunch to it. So, it's actually not going to be $2. It's going to be two nights of two hours. Brace yourself. It'll be longer than two hours because we're just not going to be able to cover everything we wrote. We want to do it all, so we're going to do it. There we go. Hey, it's going to be a lot. If you want a lot, you can get it next Tuesday and Wednesday. The Investing Essentials two-night virtual event with George and me. Well, let me say this. I think this is important for a big reason that we don't talk about here in the building. I'm not embarrassed to say this. This is just truth. I knew you when I joined this team. I knew you had this show, and I knew you had this message, and I knew you've been consistent with your message. I don't know how nice way to say this. I didn't know you were as smart as you are. Or maybe a better way to say that is I didn't realize the level of intentionality with which you made decisions. And even in the last five or six years, the way all of our interactions are chopped up and edited and put on clips, and then people respond to clips or whatever. I can imagine there is millions of people who see you and hear you say a few things, and this is an opportunity for them to really understand why you do what you do. Not only why you teach people, but it's why you do this in your own house. And that, to me, makes this thing worth its weight in gold. Way, way underpriced, if you ask me. Well, thank you. That's very nice. It's funny, but it's nice. Cecilia's in Orlando. Hey, Cecilia, what's up? Hi. How's it going today? Better than we deserve. How can we help? Lovely. So I'm about to get married. Yay! Yay, and I just got myself out of debt. Good. And I'm going to marry into a lot of debt. Good. My husband is a spendthrift. Mm-hmm. And so I'm trying to figure out, I know once we get married, I'm going to help him with getting out. We've already started the Ramsey program for him. Oh, wow. Good. Yeah, and it's going pretty good. But once we get him out of debt, he's going to keep spending cash only. But how do I go about saving money and not putting it all towards his spendthrift ways? How old are you guys? 51 and 52. Very cool. Very cool. Well, congratulations. I think you're going to have a great marriage. Oh, we will. We've been together a long time. Acquisites attract in good marriages. Spenders attract savers, and that's a good thing because spenders need a saver. That way, they don't have to retire and eat dog food, right? True. And savers need a spender in their life, so they have a life. Very true. He's the fun guy. You're not. He is. I'm not. I like my books. And he's. And he's there to help you have fun. So I'm the spender at my house, oddly enough, and even though I teach this stuff, my wife is the natural saver. And so her natural tendency, if there's any kind of emotion involved in it, is to draw back and save. In my case, I'm an abundance guy. She's a scarcity gal. And so I always figure I can get more money. So I'm going to go do it. But we need each other to create wisdom in the middle, and wisdom is that we need to spend money on having a good life that we both are in agreement on. That's wisdom. We need to save and invest to create a quality future for us and our kids and our dogs and our cats. That's wisdom. And we need to be generous, and we need to be doing all of these things together. So you're going to have to. Your job, when you guys are sitting and looking at the budget, is to allow some fun to be in the budget, and also make sure your savings is in. His job is to allow some savings to be in the budget, and make sure that his fun is in the budget. Because, listen, Cecilia. And then when it's all written down, you just go do it, and there's no guilt. Because if that's not the case, what you're telling me is a far more concerning thing. And that is, you sat down with this man that's about to be your husband, and you said, I'm uncomfortable with how you recklessly spend money. And he looked at his future wife and said, I don't care what you think. I don't care what you feel. I'm going to do what I want to do. And he didn't say that. He said, okay, let's get on a plan. Is that fair? No, we're on the plan. We have weekly budget meetings now. He just literally handed it all over. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You are not his mother. You're his wife. No, but we. Right. And we do have our budget meetings, and he does have input, and I adjust accordingly. But right now, we're paying off his debt. Good. Awesome. So there's not a lot of wiggle. Great. You don't need to wiggle. You can pay off the debt. I completely agree. But I don't want him. I'm going to emotionally turn this over. The two of you, like two 51-freaking-year-old grown-ups, are making grown-up decisions together because it's good for our future. He's saying, I agree with Cecilia. I need to clean this up. And so the two of us are going to work on that together. That's an adult decision. Mommy, take my bills and pay them for me is not what we want in a husband. Oh, no, no. We don't play that game. And Cecilia, if y'all have been together for a while. And he sat down and said, I want to marry you, and I'm going to change the way I'm doing things. I'm going to take this Dave Ramsey course. I'm going to follow these baby step things. I'm going to do a weekly budget meeting. He loves you. But you showing up every meeting and going, well, he's just going to go spend it. Like, generally speaking, a husband will rise to their wife's level of belief in them. You get what I'm saying? Fair. Yes. And if he's putting the work in, however close. clumsy and awkward it is he's never done this in half a century you you seeing him do the next right thing, however uncomfortable it is or whatever, and you believing in him, man, that goes a long, long way. So I'll just fast forward. I mean, 28 years old, almost 40 years ago, we lost everything because of my stupidity, borrowing too much money and flipping houses. And the bank called our notes and we lost everything, went bankrupt. So, but that's not the same Dave today that's on the microphone. And Sharon will tell you, thank God I'm not still married to the same guy I married originally. He has grown. And so I'm, while my tendency is to spend the spending that we do at the Ramsey house is very much within the wisdom guidelines. And even if it might make her a little bit uncomfortable sometimes, and it makes me happy then, but still it's nowhere near where it was. It's intentional. I can still have my tendency, but do it with maturity. 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That's Mama Bear. Mamabearlegalforms.com for 25% off with the promo code Ramsey. Luke is in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Hey Luke, what's up? Hello, what's up? How can we help you? I was just wondering, my soon-to-be wife is starting college, or she just started college, and she has enough for first semester's tuition. And I was just wondering if after that we should take out student loans to cover it until she gets her job after school, or if we should just pay it off and just live pretty tight for the next three years. I just turned 20. She just turned 18. And what's she studying in college? Medical imaging. So she wants to be a rad tech. So she'll be making pretty good money coming out. So a two-year program and she'll be making 50? No, it's a four-year program, I think. Really? For medical imaging? Yeah. Well, she was doing extra stuff. There's more classes she can take to make more starting off. Maybe. Maybe. She's 18. Where did we get this information about this career? Her second cousin does it for a living. Okay. You know how scary that sounds when you say it? Yeah, when you just said that. I puckered up pretty good, Luke. Okay. I want you and her to go to the hospital and talk to the hospital administrator and find out what they're paying. Okay. And does it require a four-year degree? That's the first thing. Okay? Because if we're going to study, the purpose of studying, the primary purpose of studying, especially when we're broke people, is to create an opportunity in the marketplace that we can make more money. Otherwise, you could just go take a job at Target, right? Right. And so if we're going to make $18 an hour after going for four years, then we don't need to go get that degree. Right. That's a dumb degree. Okay? Or if you get a degree in left-handed puppetry or some kind of bullcrap degree, you know, you're going to end up being a barista. So, you know, so you need to really study what this is before you invest four years of your time and life into it, much less four years of money. And so that's thing one. Thing two is I think you're fairly new to this whole Ramsey thing and someone told you to call here some friend or relative and they tricked you. Because we're really kind of known, Luke, for telling people to never take out a student loan for anything. Right. And you asked that question with great honesty and it tells me that you probably have not listened to this show a lot. I'm a pretty new listener. Yeah. It was just like currently I don't have the money, but I'd be like, I'd be able to save up. No, you asked me if you should borrow a student loan. That tells me that you don't know much about what we do. Because 100% of the time we yell at people. For taking a student loan. Okay. No. Under no circumstances do you take out a student loan. Yes. You investigate what is required for her to go into this field of study if she really wants this career or if she just thought it was a way to make money because her cousin said to, which scares the crap out of me. But yeah, I really wanted to pick out what she wants to be in life. And then what education does it take to do that? Right. So we do not borrow money. We do not borrow money on student loans. The statistics are horrendous. 100% of the people that take out a student loan have a student loan. Only 57% of the people that start college finish. Okay. That's not even half. That's how bad colleges are. I agree. I decided to skip college and go straight into the workforce because I didn't believe them. Yeah. Well, and Luke, what we don't want to have happen, we don't want you to be in the situation where two years into this. You're in the situation where you have a four-year degree, y'all have racked up $30,000 in student loans, and then she comes home with what should be the greatest news of your life. I'm pregnant. And now she's going to decide to stop going to school or she can't do this imaging program because she's pregnant. And so she's got to do something else. That student loan payment is still due. And so that's what happens in real life. Yeah. So I was 18. I was 19. I was 20. I was 21. Dude, we had crazy roommates. I lived in some of the wildest living. I still took out student loans like a goofball. But, like, yes, y'all are scratching and clawing. Y'all are eating bologna sandwiches and rice and beans. Yes, y'all are just going to scratch and claw. And, by the way, y'all could end up with a pretty amazing marriage together figuring out ways to solve these problems without borrowing money because y'all are in this thing together. So it could be a cool thing three or four years down the road. Let's verify that this is the proper path to get where you want to go. Let's verify that it is where we want to go. And then let's figure out the least expensive way to do it and pay cash for it. Those are the three things we would tell you to do coming out of this. I'm also going to send her a copy of Ken Cullen's book, Finding the Work You're Wired to Do, because I want her to spend some time thinking about who she is because we want to decide if we stay on this track or not. So, John, a thousand years ago when I was a kid, there was the grandfather of the maybe the great grandfather of the motivational psychologist. There was a guy named Earl Nightingale, and Earl famously says, and with his deep baritone voice, Americans spend more time picking out a suit of clothes than they do their career. How'd you get that job? My buddy went over there and got it. My cousin did it. That's not how you pick your career. Okay? You look in the mirror and say, well, I don't know. You say, what did God design here? How am I designed? What is it I'm supposed to do? And then with my natural giftings and talents, what kind of sharpening can I do called education and tools added in my belt called education to help me do what it is that I'm put together? And when I was knit in my mother's womb, according to Isaiah, what was I put when God was knitting me together with a DNA RNA? Double helix and a knitting needle. What was he making? And what am I supposed to do? You need to think about that more than you think about the purse you pick out or the suit you pick out. No one buys a suit anymore, but the hat you buy, whatever it is, the stuff we spend time on. I fret over what I'm going to buy with this stupid thing. And then we just go take a job because your cousin had it. And that might not be the case with her. But when he said that, it just went down my spine. Yeah. Or you're asking. even bigger question that I always press on college students especially college graduates kind of life do you want to have yeah and does this job instead of i want to build a life around this job is this job in service to the person you want to become like the life you want to hold and if you want to help people in this particular job man you can do a lot of good for a lot of folks in a lot of different ways but man sometimes you find yourself i have to get a job because i got to go make money right now and yeah or my dad was a doctor my grandpa was a doctor so i got to be a doctor you know what you are a miserable doctor man i sat with a lot of those students sobbing miserable i don't want to be here yeah you know i don't listen if if you're my dentist and you're a dentist because your mommy wanted you to be a dentist i don't want to be your patient no yeah i think that's gonna hurt you you know i mean think about it guys you suck at stuff that you do for other people rather than the way you were designed right and so um you know what is it that you've got natural giftings in and let's lean into that and let's polish it and let's hone the craft uh to to fit you know by adding education to the mix i believe in education but randomly i'm going to be a lawyer because lawyers make money not all of them some of them are really pretty broke and i i've i spent several years studying attorneys who got everything they wanted and they were pretty miserable because they thought what they wanted was this number or this love this name on their building or whatever and what what what are you looking for in your life what's what's gonna be the score of your life right so that's a lot for that's a lot more than just what answering luke's question but it just kind of made me think about that that deep baritone voice saying americans spend more time picking out a suit of clothes than they do what their future career is going to be well and here's where luke finds himself man if y'all are young was to say 18 and 19 years old getting married what y'all need right now is some money and if one of you knows i want to go into the medical field i'm gonna do this thing like you said go sit down with some people who do that job for a living and ask how that world works not just get some salary advice from a second cousin yeah here's what's weird they might hire you over there as an assistant to the assistant tech and pay your tuition that's exactly right hey guys it's rachel cruz if you're working the baby steps every major expense deserves a second look and health care is one of the biggest expenses in most families budgets and that is why i recommend that you check out christian health care ministries chm isn't insurance it's a health cost sharing ministry that means members help pay one another's medical bills and they've been serving christians since 1981 chm programs start at just 115 a month and here's why that matters if you are paying more than you need to for health care that money could be going toward paying off debt building your emergency fund or reaching your next financial goal and your monthly cost isn't based on your medical history or where you live y'all a lot of families find chm gives them more room in the budget that's why so many members say they're better with chm and right now new members can receive a 50 credit towards their first month of membership go to ch ministries.org budget and use promo code ramsey that's ch ministries.org budget and promo code ramsey welcome back to the ramsey show in the fair winds credit union studio anthony is in canada hi anthony how are you hey dave how's it going better than i deserve what's up uh i am just uh asking if i should stay at this one job that i don't really like too much and the job and the pay is not that great or if i should go back to kind of what i was doing beforehand and i was making better pay but i i have been working in that industry for like uh two years now and every so often i'd get into a job and they'd just be pretty much hiring for when they're slow and then they lay off like not even six months later but i like that industry what is the industry uh electrical i was doing like electrical apprentice well i mean the electric there's not a um i mean that company might get slow but the call for electricians does not ebb and flow that much yeah it sounds like you've bought yourself into a corner brother either or and i would love for you to consider 30 other options 27 of which may be dumb but just yeah just to free yourself from it's not boring job not making much money but stable and risky job where i love the job and it pays well but then they just might lay off at a moment's notice like those are two not great options there's there's 300 other options right yeah let's get a job that pays more and is stable and you like yeah that's the option i want yeah i've definitely tried to and just since i've been in that in electrical industry for however long it's primarily only electrical businesses that would hire me i i this is why i took the other job this job i'm currently doing is to get something else on my resume but uh okay how old are you i'm 21 i'm not that old yet so when did you get all of this experience when you were 13 no it's just been like the past like two three years kind of thing yeah sort of yeah i've been to like maybe like five different electrical businesses and they just have been pretty much all the same yeah it wasn't that they saw someone with a limited resume it's that they saw a 21 year old yeah and this is what then he can do electricity like electrical work and so we'll hire him to do electrical work that's all it is it's not you're over complicating this um and you're discounting the fact that you're being looked at as a youth yeah yeah for sure and that that changes the way they pocket this or bucket this when an employer is looking at you in this situation so i think we would start fresh and i'm going to send you a copy of colman's book finding the work you're wired to do and i want you to never worked in your life and you were brand new and you just said your dad just said okay you got to go and be free my son and you said okay what am i going to do with my life what do you want to be when you grow up huh what do you want to be when you grow up anthony you know so i want you to answer that question kind of and start fresh as if you didn't have all this other stuff weighing you down because it's probably going to take you to one of those other 300 options that john's talking about and then you discover what henry cloud causes your calls your desired future that might be completely different than anything we're talking about as a matter of fact i think you should be and then you say okay what must be true for me to be one of those kinds of people making that kind of money oh wait a minute i'm gonna have to take a two-year certification program oh i'm gonna have to go to trade school oh i'm gonna get a four-year degree oh i gotta go to graduate work i don't know whatever it is to be one of those then go do those things to be one of those and at 21 your chief focus is becoming the most excellent electrician possible and there's no finding out that happens here like like dave said it's it's it stinks it's a bummer whatever but man go become the best freaking electrician in your part of in your province there and you will you will be hired like the people will want you on their squad exactly show up early leave late work while you're there take weekend jobs i have a family take a bath and smile and they'll never get rid of you i mean it's that simple and take saturday and sunday jobs at people's homes um and changing plugs out and changing light fixtures out and putting in ceiling fans like become excellent at the craft and the adjacent craftsman and dude i'm telling you as a guy that's spent a lot of money electricians recently bro they're the demand is their first-hand knowledge of welders electricians you're you're a real wealth of knowledge helping me on with some home projects but man they are the work they're doing is second to none and they are very proud of it yeah they're as they should be they like it so hang on we'll pick up the phone and we'll see you next time pick up and send you a copy of that book i'm finding the work you're wired to do good one dave but it is the title good sullivan is in las vegas hey sullivan what's up better than i deserve how can i help uh so i'm kind of in a pickle a little bit um so my rent went from like 1750 up to like 1950 um your wife debating whether to stay here move out we're trying to pay off and get as much as you can we have like twenty thousand or twenty thousand debt um so we're kind of just looking around see if it's better for us to stay or to move into something like cheaper um so that's kind of what we're at right now cool was it just the two of you uh it's me my wife and my two daughters and my sister-in-law oh not just the two of you yeah so you gotta have a place that has a lot of bedrooms huh yeah it's really for like a three bedroom but vegas can be pretty expensive what's the uh what's the sister-in-law how's this play into this uh well she lived in california and so she came out to vegas to stay to live with us to go to college and so my wife and her are both going to csn out here in las vegas now is she paying rent uh no we're just trying to help her she's 19 so um she's nice you're broke okay yeah are you in a position to help her no he's broke um because you're getting ready to go rent a house you wouldn't have rented because you have a sister-in-law tagging along um if you do it's just you and the two kids you might do something completely different so that that enters into this equation so solomon rent is patience patience while you get out of debt and save up money to buy a house the less you pay for your patients the faster you get out of debt and save up money to buy a house and so i'm going to take the cheapest possible rent i can because it's for a period of time it's not my way of doing life it's living like no one else so that later i can buy a house living like no one else so later i can live like no one else and give like no one else so you get out of debt save your emergency funds save your down payment because you have a low rent and then you talk about buying a house and as you do that your credit will clean up because you don't have any debt and uh and you'll be more and more eligible for that while you're cleaning all this mess up but you're gonna have to lean in hard on all that and you don't look at renting as a way of life then we look at as a temporary stop we're camping here till we get our more permanent home that we actually own and um sharon and i often called it camping although there was no literal camping involved we're going to camp here for a little while no as a way of telling our brain this is temporary just a little bit of time and then we'll get out of debt and we'll Just for a season. Notifying my body it's not going to be here long. It's going to be somewhere else. I'm just camping. We're going to camp out here a while. To become a web developer, you signed up to build a business you're proud of. And Shopify gets that. With Shopify, you can design and launch a professional storefront fast without the headaches. Everything you need to start selling is built in. And when your customers are ready to buy, Shopify's purple shop pay button is one of the best converting checkouts in the world. Which means fewer abandoned carts. And more sales. And when questions come up, because they always do, Sidekick, Shopify's built-in AI assistant, is there to help you keep moving. All you need is the idea. Shopify handles the rest. Start your free trial at Shopify.com slash Ramsey. That's Shopify.com slash Ramsey. Shopify.com slash Ramsey. And we'll see you next time. We are looking to build a home on five acres that my dad gifted to us. So for reference, we make about $150,000 gross per year. We have $110,000 in savings right now. Our only debt is $25,000 in student loans. But the house we want to build is around $400,000 to $450,000. But following the 25% rule, it probably looks like we'd only be able to afford something around the $300,000 range. So we're just looking for some guidance. Well, you've already got that. We told you $300,000, didn't we? Yeah. We're both 28. Okay. If you put today, if you take $25,000 of that $150,000 you have and pay off, your student loans, and then you put $100,000 down on a $400,000 house, that brings you to $300,000, doesn't it? Yes. But I'm saying like, I think I'd have to get the loan amount down to closer to like $200,000 for that to work. Y'all make a combined $150,000? Yes. Gross, yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, there's a concept, there's a concept that you can do whatever you want to do. You're grownups and you're allowed to do that, but you're calling and asking our advice and the guidelines that we have that we show people how not to be house poor so that they can have margin in their budget to invest and to be generous and to buy the next car for cash and to pay cash at Christmas and not have the house own them. And so, I mean, what if you told me that the house, you wanted was $700,000, but you can afford $200,000. No way. You would just say, you would use the words that no one uses in America. We can't afford it. And so, you've got to decide what you can afford. Now, there's a couple of other options. I mean, no one says that in the first year of marriage that you should build a home. As a matter of fact, I would probably tell you, having built several homes, that it's not good for your marriage to build a home. To build a home in the first year of marriage. This is the opportunity to fight like you have never fought in your life. And so, you know, and it's a brand new tender relationship, marriage and you're, you know, it's a, you know, building a home is a lot. It's a lot of details, a lot of decisions and a lot of compromises between the two of you of what color something's going to be or what the thing is going to be. And, I mean, sometimes one of the spouses just says they're not going to be involved. The other one does it, but that's not healthy either. You both are going to live there. You both should speak into what the house is. Okay. And you both should have a vote. And then by the time you do that, it's going to be strenuous relationally. I wouldn't tell people not to build a house in the first year of marriage relationally. So having said all of that and given that little speech might be okay to just go run an apartment on the other side of town. Is this land adjacent to your family? Yeah, we have a family farm, so we're just kind of getting a chunk of that. So be good for your wife to not be next door to her mother-in-law in the first year of marriage. Yeah, I get that. Marcus, what's your take home every month? Uh, it kind of varies because my work's a little seasonal, but I pick up some part time work in the winter time, so I don't know. It probably varies between eight, the 10 depending. I make more in the summer, so. Okay. And does your wife work? Your fiance? Yes. Getting ready to be one. And that 150 is the total of the two of you. Yes. Yeah. And the total take home pay from the two of you would be about what? Not a hundred percent sure to be honest. Okay. Well, that would be a number you would need to have the discussion we're having. Yeah, because I feel like you're underselling a bit. I feel like you've like to get that 25% mark. Um, I think you're close. I just did some napkin math here on the computer. I think you're closer than you think. Yeah, but I also agree. It's also okay to wait a year. I also agree with Dave relationally tell your dad like, man, thank you for this five acres. We want to spend one year just figuring it out ourselves. Cabin in the woods. And we're going to save a little bit more money so we can put more down. And there are any of you people now I'm serious, man. That's it'd be great for you. And then when you come over there, your marriage is more knit and more. Matured. And when you come over there next door to her mother in law, then she can handle it a little better. And, um, I know your mother's great, but she doesn't know that yet. So, um, may take a while. And you're going to have family members that say, oh, you're going to throw away money and we're giving you a vote. Yeah. It's a good season to learn, like who gets to speak into what you do next. And that's awesome. I'm taking a year off. If I'm you pay off student loan today, stack cash for a year, rent a cheap apartment, you'll build a different house. By the way to a hundred percent, you'll know each other better after a year and you'll build a better house together. Spend a year tour. in houses to see what you like you like this kitchen you like that bathroom yeah clip you know build a build a pinterest board with all the ideas you like and all that kind of stuff and take pieces of a house and uh you know the the last house we built it was three different houses that we found pieces of and we bolted them together with an architect and made it look right well and even sharon explaining parts of the house and the way this new house y'all built like it was a learned experience from another house exactly but it was like we built a different house because of that other we had lived together in in another in another situation so exactly yeah you'll build a different home um you'll be more happy with yeah you'll do you'll do it you'll be some yeah wait a year wait a year and pay off student loan that's my advice oh the trick is well you do it now that's where it comes down i know we're against polymarket but we should have a polymarket like you would they one of those oh we're against betting a gambling site but if there was a are they going to do it or not that'd be fun yeah we could just take a like an informal poll with no money on it there we go okay yeah we don't have to do go fund me with it will they do it or will they not will they do it thumbs up thumbs down john in madison wisconsin hey john how are you hi i'm good how are you doing better than i deserve how can i help um so i have a question regarding starting a 401k so i have about fifty thousand dollars in debt thirty thousand of those are um student loans and about twenty thousand dollars on a car and following the baby steps i know i'm supposed to start paying down my debt but at 30 years old i'm kind of just getting a little bit oh you're so old you're gonna die broke you're gonna die poor you're so old john you're a thousand years old that is kind of what my how are you how are you getting around a walker have you got a wheelchair dude you are so stinking young don't whine about being old you're not panicking at 30 years old you need to get your butt out of debt and follow the baby steps you're not old okay so just you're not old on the 401k temporarily but i want you to pay down yeah but i want you to get after it man i mean we won't keep us dead around for four years like it's a pet it's just what'd you say it was 50 grand 50 grand 60 grand what do you make um me and my wife's combined income is about 175 per year so pay it off in a year one year dude okay so what's five thousand dollars a month in your budget um our margin is about four to five thousand per month done well cut something else out i want to be six thousand then be done in 10 months just be done with it then this is not a whole 31 years old when you start your 401k but just trying to do six things at once is how people do nothing and by the way you'll have five thousand dollars a month to invest to do whatever you want to with once you get rid of this stupid debt changes your life man attack it like it's a disease because it is you this show is sponsored by better help hey it's deloney listen better help just released their annual state of stigma report it's full of tons of data about why so many people avoid getting help for their mental and emotional health challenges here is one data point that really stood out to me more than three out of four americans reported anxiety or depression symptoms in the previous two weeks if that's you and you're carrying stress anxiety or depression or symptoms of these things just talking to someone can help you more than you realize i recommend better help better help is an online therapy platform that matches you with one of their 30 000 plus licensed therapists based on your goals and preferences it's easy it's super convenient and you can message your therapist and schedule sessions right in the platform and if the first therapist you're matched with isn't the right fit you can switch therapists at any time for no extra cost don't let stigma stand in the way of support visit betterhelp.com slash ramsay and get 10 off that's better help help.com slash ramsay our question of the day is brought to you by why refi missed private student loan payments can leave you feeling like your financial goals are on hold why refi helps borrowers explore low fixed rate refinancing options that fit your budget so you can move forward with an actual plan visit why refi.com slash ramsay might not be in all states dave i feel like this question is directly aimed at me and so i just want to call out that it hurts already this is a personal affront to john deloney to deloney today's question comes from diana in washington dc since my husband and i've gotten married we've justified certain purchases by saying quote it's an investment for example 2000 worth of high quality business suits that would last for many years as we started listening to the ramsay show we can begin to suspect that we aren't using the term it's an investment in the right way is it ever appropriate to refer to a purchase as a quote-unquote investment even if we don't expect it to generate an income or profit if not how should we be thinking about purchases like these to decide if they're right for us it's never an investment it's wise consumption oh good line or it's unwise consumption one of the two but i really think my guitars and my hunting gear and my gym those are investments yeah i mean the thing is this uh there's a couple things that when i first start teaching this stuff people start throwing all these sayings at me and they're all pretty good stuff like you know rich people ask how much poor people ask how much down how much a month okay wise people buy an expensive item rich people do that will last 20 years and poor people ask how much down how much a month poor people unwise people buy a cheap item that feels good right now and last 20 minutes and so it's kind of like we're teaching the kid they're buying a toy and you're going that toy is going to break by the end of the week or you can buy this item this toy and it's going to last it's built it's a good you know it's a tonka truck right it's going to last generationally i got tonka trucks at three generations now so you know that kind of stuff so you know what what is a wise purchase and and so you know i'm not going to be able to buy a tonka truck but i'm going to you know you buy a quality thing so an example would be i would suggest you buy a a two-year-old high quality automobile instead of a brand new dodge neon right which is going to be crap by friday because it was crap when you bought it on monday and so you know i mean that but that's the difference in a wealthy mentality and a poor mentality i'm gonna i just want something shiny and new even if it's cheap in quality and won't last in her case she's talking about that that's what diana's talking about is a quality business a quality suit it's going to last you it's a timeless cut and material it's not a high fashion item that's going to be a fad item but that you can wear that forever um i wear on media and oftentimes on stage i'll wear a black blazer okay and i don't own a tie anymore i got out of those that i paid a lot of money for and i think they're approaching 10 years old now um and they you know they're hanging in the closet here they're hanging in the closet the house and so on you know backstage at the event center so if i need one i got the exact same cut custom made high quality item you know and so it travels well because it's not going to wad up and you know it's a you know so it's a good that's but that's not an investment because i can't turn around and sell it at a profit and that's the definition of an investment yes it goes up in the investment's going to pay you money out and or go up in value and you can resell it and clothing definitely doesn't qualify just ask the people at the consignment sale and so yeah that that but but you can call it a wise consumption and uh it's a good it's an interesting question and i what i do love about her question is is that words do matter yes they give your brain signals because if you call it an investment rather than wise consumption it gives you permission to double down and so i think that's a good question and i think that's a good question and i think that's a good question because i've used the phrase oh this is really an investment yeah over and over in my life and it's just been a bad justification for i really want this thing and i want to get the nicest version of this thing yeah and so if i call it investment for whatever reason it makes it okay instead of having the courage to say you know what i just want this and i've saved up for it and me wanting this is enough yeah and i don't need all this other baggage to it to to justify for myself exactly i i want a nice thing i i think i quit using one of the things that i've done is one of the times i learned to not use this as i was 26 years old i was making a lot of money in the real estate business and before i went broke and i bought a jaguar which i grew up in a neighborhood where they couldn't spell jaguar so um much less even knew what one was so it was a very impressive to me that i had a jaguar i thought it was you know ba right so i roll up at my grandpa's house and my grandpa ramsey was a scotsman he was a classic grandpa i mean pull the crooked nails out of the board straighten them out and put them in a coffee can grandpa you know this grandpa right he never he never threw away anything everything was a child of the great depression worked 38 years for alcoa aluminum saved every dollar he ever had never invested any of it just saved it and just stacked cash and he comes out he was a sweet man he came out and i'm there in my little double-breasted suit and i think i'm a really cool 26 year old and he said what is that i said it's a jaguar grandpa he said wow it's a fine looking automobile he said what that cost and i think at the time he was a little bit older he was a little bit older he was a little bit older it was like 35 000 bucks or something which today would be 150 000 bucks right and i said 35 000 he goes oh my god i've never spent that on a car he said that is a fine car i said well grandpa it's it is it's a great car it's it's a great investment and he said really that's amazing he said so in 10 years will that car be worth and i said and he said well honey my investments go up but that's it's the same thing right it's that same mentality now that car if i had paid cash for it and wasn't leveraged to my eyeballs are getting ready to go broke in real estate business trying to appear to be something i'm not which is the case in that situation totally shallow as i could be right um i mean classic classic putting on the pose um but if i if i had paid cash for the car and i had the wealth i still should not have used the phrase it's an investment right it's consumption that i can afford and then i want wise consumption and i like it and that's an okay answer um at least then i wasn't trying to defend it as if it was going up in value which is what he called me on but that that's the thing if it's not going up in value and you can't turn around and resell it or you don't propose it's going to go up in value then you're not it's not an investment so we bought a boat and it's an investment in our family no it's consumption for your family it's not an investment boats do not go up in value none of them two best days of your life the day you buy a boat the day you sell it right that's the old saying now i don't know that because i've never sold my boat no i've sold them got a better one but yeah so i'm still a boat guy i'm not against boats but the point being don't well we're investing in our children by taking them to disney no you're consuming an experience and your value is that you want to spend money on experiences rather than other things okay that's fine just own it quit acting like it's something it's not right and that's what she's calling out wisely here yeah i like that that's a good discussion words matter out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks so you know make sure your heart's aligned on this okay we're consuming this money we can afford it it's a wise consumption it's a reasonable purchase given our situation uh but we're not going to call it something it's not which is a good thing an investment oh that's so good and i'll even say this the the baggage that i brought to it man it took me a while to unpack this i'll probably unpack this the rest of my life is that all underlying i'm not worth that or guys like me don't play guitars like that i haven't earned that i've i'll never like that's people who buy that so you're acting like it's going to go up in value because that makes it okay because it's not worth you're not worth doing it for you that's it and for me taking powerful taking ownership of i want this my wife and i have agreed on it and it's okay if i get it it's okay yeah and um and it checks it's a part of our life rhythm right that's good i like that but that's that was for me getting over like i'm not worth two two thousand dollar suit like i'm not that guy i'll never be that guy but if it's an investment i can do that right yeah well and it it keeps you from uh buying stuff to impress other people that's that to me is the most important thing is that i'm not gonna be that guy i'm not gonna be that guy i'm not gonna be that guy i'm not gonna hey i want to talk to you for a second about love and not love like in titanic or something i mean responsible love the kind of love that moves you to take care of the people closest to you and one of the most important ways to show that kind of love is by having term life insurance if you have anyone depending on you a spouse kids anyone you need term life insurance term life insurance gives your family real protection if the 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Text QUIZ to 33789, and we'll help you figure out which option, whether an attorney or mama bear is your best option. Jennifer is in Charlotte, North Carolina. Hi, Jennifer. How are you? Hey, I'm good. How are you guys? What's up? Well, I was wanting to know if I should go back to school. Well, if I should go to school. I've never been to college, and the job that I've been in, although I've risen through the ranks position-wise, I can't go any further without a four-year degree. What do you do? I work in the cafeteria. I'm a trainer for them. And so I've been a worker. I've been a system manager, a manager. What is it that you can't do because you don't have a four-year degree? Is it just corporate policy? It is. And yeah, it is definitely required. I've tried every avenue I can think of, and I can't be in a supervisory role and or how long have you worked there? I've been a specialist. I've worked there for almost 20 years. Okay. And so if you get a four-year degree in what, nutrition or what? Honestly, it could probably be in anything. Just to check the corporate box. And then your income today is what? $65,000. $65,000 a year is what you make? Yeah. How old are you? 50. Okay. And what would you make four years from now if you got a degree in any old thing? Well, a person of my work experience, other than college and caliber, they make around $75,000 to $85,000. Doing the exact same job? Doing not what I do, but doing what I would want to be able to do. Which is what? Be a supervisor or maybe a. Over the cafeteria. A training specialist. Well, it would be over several cafeterias, like 18. And my thought process is that even if it takes me five or six years, if I. Being 50, that would still give me an additional five, six years to. Okay. What I do like is the idea of improving yourself. Putting some tools in your belt for you to be worth more and earn more. i like that i don't like that you're doing it for an artificial ceiling that shouldn't be there and so that makes me want to quit and go work for someone else um instead yeah i mean because this is stupid that you have to have a four-year degree in left-handed puppetry so you can go run 18 cafeterias and you know how to run a cafeteria off the back of your hand without thinking about it and these morons in corporate america have decided that a four-year degree somehow makes you a genius some four-year somebody with a four-year degree came up with this policy that's how much of a genius they are so um uh so i don't like that part of the discussion at all but i love the idea of continuing personal growth continued personal growth is the best investment human beings can make going to events going to seminars reading books studying getting another certification another degree uh constant state of learning in a culture where the rate of change is so rapid that it's blinding is necessary to win and to grow and to be better and so i like all of that and so i would tell you to go to school and study something i don't mind that a bit i also think you probably need to look at working somewhere else john what are you thinking yeah i'm i'm i'm i'm thinking one at what a what a costly corporate mistake to not put somebody of your experience caliber leadership ability into the next right position that will improve everything for the company their bottom line their employee retention their insider knowledge all of it simply for this one box it's just corporations deciding we're going to outsource we're going to use a metric to outsource value and we're going to outsource value and we're going to outsource value and we're going to outsource value and we're going to use a metric called degree or not degree um as as a hard stop as i mean you know we have we have some policies around ramsey that that we say that we start the policy with almost never okay we almost never hire relatives of current team members because if you fire one you lose the other one usually so we just almost never do it but we have occasionally right when when common sense super when common sense superimposed and stepped on top of a policy then we put the policy down and i've worked in in university settings which are the epicenter of this right you got to have a degree to breathe at a university campus and i get it um i've had two different universities and two different employees that i would put as some of the best employees i've ever worked with had no degree but they were so skilled and i gave them a path to to eventually if they wanted to but i went and fought on their behalf right and i'm not going to lie to you i'm not going to lie to you i'm not going to lie to you and so i'm frustrated there on the other side of it for you i grew up in a home where in dave's what dave said is really wise so in what he said is very specific my mom took her first community college class at the age of 41 and it was simply i want to get some training and some education so that i can go make some more money and she found a whole new world and so she graduated with her phd at 63 and got tenured as you know at 57 got tenured as a professor at 63 that was not even on her radar not even her planet and here is this woman from texas that spent in her mid-70s was teaching over at oxford um overseas it gave her a whole new world but the pursuit and dave was right here was she wanted to grow herself and she wanted to keep learning and keep um getting better driven by an artificial corporate stupid policy that's it that's right initially i want to get some training so i can get a job at a community college and that led to another thing like another thing but it was all based on i want to continue to grow she spent time in corporations she kept learning new things and so if you do take this track which i like dave support make sure you study something that you're super interested in make sure you get there get through it quickly too and you find the least expensive option for you and you pay cash and you pay cash for it and if this job goes away you've got a tool set that your horizons your toolkit everything's been expanded so that you can go do other things besides just this one thing because they set you up for this yeah and by the way your tool set may have been expanded but you can go do other things you can go do other things but you can go do other things but you can go do other things but you can go tell you to leave that's exactly right you might find out oh my gosh i have the skill set to go do the same thing at a warehouse instead of a cafeteria then i don't have to work for stupid people and i can make quarter million dollars doing that right because you've got such amazing experience you've got experience working with parents working with administrators working with legislatures working with vendors you've got so much experience that you may not even realize how marketable you are um that yeah that's great but dave i just get frustrated by those hard stops you know what i mean i'm not sure if you're right or wrong but i'm not sure if you're right or wrong yeah so i mean i can understand the concept but i think an almost never in front of it and then she's the exception would be more much less corporate stupidity it's just it's just it's just this corporate idea of you just box yourself into a corner yeah unnecessarily right well i mean and this is why small businesses employ 57 percent of americans because small businesses use common sense i need a person who can do this job yeah yeah if you work for a family business they actually most the time have some brains you know at least look at something through a reasonable lens you know you might not agree with it but they at least are you know it's not a blind and is the reasonable lens can you do this job well yeah with excellence yeah i i don't know what anyone's degree is in this place except yours because you talk about them all the time you you if you're shopping online and these days everybody does data brokers are out there right now buying and selling your personal information your phone number your home address your email without your knowledge or consent and that puts you at risk for spam calls scam texts and fraud combined with ai those scams are getting more sophisticated every day and that's why i'm so excited to be here today and trying to get it under control yourself is basically impossible unless you have delete me delete me goes to hundreds of these creepy data broker sites find your info and removes it and you never have to lift a finger plus they keep monitoring for it and removing it if and when it pops up again you don't have to remove your own info every time it pops up like some unwinnable game of whack-a-mole i personally use and love delete me and my scammy texts and spammy calls have gone way down trust delete me to smack down data brokers and protect your personal info so the game is safe and sound and you don't have to worry about it again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again can finally stop go to join delete me dot com slash ramsey and you'll get 20 off an annual plan that's join j-o-i-n delete me dot com slash ramsey or click the link in the description welcome back to the ramsey show in the fair winds credit union studio manny is in atlanta georgia hi manny how are you good how are you better than i deserve what's up hey so i got uh a rental property that's worth uh six hundred thousand well it's estimated between 575 and 600 i owe 340 on it and i have 30 000 in personal debt and 20 000 in business debt um i'm coming up on a bonus next year that i should be able to wipe out all the debt i'm trying to this you know but i'm feeling a little pressure and i'm not sure if i should sell that rental to pay off the debt what do you own just kind of hold it out what do you owe on your home uh my home i owe uh 200 okay just under one hundred thousand dollars ninety nine i think okay cool so you have a business debt but you get a bonus sounds like you're an employee how do you have both i have a business i purchased last year um and i also have a full-time job oh okay so your business that you bought has got the thirty thousand dollars and it's a side hustle the i have thirty thousand in personal debt and i have a full-time job and i have a full-time job and i have a full-time job and i have twenty thousand oh twenty thousand okay so what kind of business debt what do you owe them business debt on who do you owe a credit card okay it's not business debt it's personal you allocated it in your mind to business but the bank doesn't know it's business it's in your name yeah you have twenty thousand dollars in credit card debt because you used a credit card to buy a business okay all right and then thirty thousand dollars worth of other personal debt in addition no such thing as business debt on something like this because banks don't loan money to businesses your size they loan money to people that do things like businesses your size which is fine okay so anyway minor detail now so so two hundred and two hundred fifty thousand dollars gets you out of debt a hundred percent and you make what a year again i make sixty a year but then i get paid a bonus based on the revenue that the business that i work for does another fifty It's based on the revenue, so like this year the bonus is projected to be $100,000, and I get paid it first quarter of the year and third quarter. Wow. And so next year, I would get paid about $50,000 in January, and then the other $50,000 in July. Okay. All right. So the premise that we're using to answer your question overall, you've asked a very nuanced, tactical question, but the principle is that what we have found in 35 years of doing this is, and proven it, by the way, is the fastest method to build wealth is to not have debt because your most powerful wealth-building tool is your income, and when you give it to a stupid bank, it keeps you from building wealth. And so what I'm always going to lead you towards is being debt-free as soon as possible. The $50,000 in miscellaneous debt. The $200,000 mortgage. And the rental. And so I love rental properties, and you're making money, and you're making good money, and you're making it in kind of a weird way, which is fun because it makes you live on the 60 and then gives you $100,000 to do something else with it, it sounds like. Are you married? Yes. What does she make? Well, she works in the business. Okay. What's the business make a year? Well, um. We just bought it, so this is our second year. Well, you didn't pay money for a business that doesn't make money, did you? Well. Oh, you did. We did, yes. We did. It does make money, but we've just invested it back into the business. Okay, so what is the profit on the business a year? Last year, the business made. Um. It was just under $60,000. Okay, that you paid taxes on? Yes. Okay. Okay. And so, good. Thank goodness. What'd you buy it for? $200,000. Okay. But you paid cash for all of it but $20,000? No. So, I'm sorry. I messed up on that. So, I. I have it seller-financed. Oh, so there's more debt. Okay. How much do you owe the seller? Right now, it's about $60,000 that's left. Okay. All right. Yes. Sell the rental property and pay off the $60,000 and pay off the $50,000 and pay off your home mortgage and then you're 100% debt-free and you're making $250,000 a year. Pretty soon. And you're able to cash and invest and invest and invest and buy another rental property later on for cash if you want. But I'm going to use this rental property to clean up this mess right now. Okay. Because here. Think about this for a minute. How would. What business decisions would you make that are different and how would you walk and talk inside your office with your employer if you had no mortgage, no credit card, no debt, no seller financing? Zero debt. Zero debt in your life. Can you breathe that level of peace into your lungs? Oh, it's so really good. Yeah. That's worth trading a rental property for. Okay. So you wouldn't wait and. Because I could pay off. I know. I heard you. You can't pay it off. You just kept stacking debt in the conversation. For a minute, your bonus was going to handle it. But then after we finished the conversation, your bonus doesn't even come close anymore. How much do you cash flow on this rental property? $1,100. Yeah. So put it this way. You're paying more than $1,100 in payments. Yes. And you're going to clear all your debts off. And if you get this $100,000 bonus and it all comes through as you think it's going to, that's eight years, what, nine years of cash flow on this property. Yeah. You just accelerated that. Exactly. Right? So pocket that. Be happy. Put that $100,000 towards the life you and your wife want to live and investments. I mean, you'll have no payments. You'll do whatever you want with the $100,000. Go become a multimillionaire now with no debt payments and a great income and a good business and a good job. And by the way, you can do this two ways emotionally. You can think you're, quote unquote, losing this rental house. Or you can think, thank God I have this thing that can clear up all of these goofy decisions I've made up until now and let me do a hard reset. And we've learned our lesson. We're never going to borrow money again. We're going to do it again. We're going to have $100,000 cash in the bank on top of what we already, my salary. We were able to just do a control delete. That's an amazing place to be. Be really grateful that you're in this position. Yeah. Go sell that house. It's wonderful. Yeah. It's exactly what I would do. And if you want to own real estate, just start stacking some of your bonuses in just, you know, in a high yield savings and look over there and go, oh, there's $400,000 over there. Let's go buy a rental house. If you want to do that, that's okay. But that's three. Here's out. We'll be right back. You ever feel like you make good money and still have nothing to show for it? You run into target for one thing and somehow walk out $87 later with toothpaste and emotional support candles. Just me. Okay. Well, that's the problem. Most people don't pay attention to how they spend their money. So it does whatever it wants. And that's why we created every dollar. It's a budgeting app that helps you create a simple plan. And for your money, every dollar is simple, it's clear, and it helps track where your money's actually going. Plus you get daily lessons to do's and reminders along the way. It's like having a money coach in your pocket. Your money's been freelancing long enough. It's time to give every dollar a full-time job. Go download every dollar for free on the app store or Google play. Click on the link in the description to download the app store or Google play, and you'll be notified of every dollar you spend on your money. Are you sick and tired of working so hard and having nothing to show for it? Well, that's kind of normal, but normal is broke. You don't want to be normal. You do not have to live that way. Our every dollar budgeting app helps you find extra money every month and build you a personalized Ramsey plan to beat debt, bill wealth, follow the baby steps. In just 15 minutes, when you first start doing a budget, you're going to be able to get a You're going to find thousands of dollars. You're going to feel like you got to raise hidden margin. Don't live normal when you can live like no one else. Start every dollar for free in the app store or Google play. Kayla is in Des Moines. Hi, Kayla. How are you? Good. How are you? What's up? So I'm calling because I was in baby step seven. My husband and I were in baby step seven. We were 27 years old. We had a paid off mortgage, no debt. And in the last 10 years, we have just backslid. And I really don't have a good excuse for it other than it was just keeping up with the Joneses. And currently, we're living in a house where our monthly income is where our mortgage is about 33% of our monthly income. And we just feel so overwhelmed at the moment. Every month at the end of the month for financially that I was just wondering if you think I should sell my house and downsize to something cheaper. Wow. I hear the pain of regret in your voice. Feels dirty, doesn't it? Yeah. It really just feels like we had it all figured out and now we're just normal. Oh, you just got you just got lazy. You got you got relaxed and then went back to being like everybody else. That's I'm so sorry. How old are you? That's a horrible feeling. Yeah. So I'm 37. And in the last three years, we have bought and sold three separate houses and that's really where my apprehension comes in from selling my house. Why? Just just, I guess, just lifestyle creeps just wanting bigger and better all the time. You moved up every time? Yes. Yes. Kayla, I want to tell me if I'm wrong. I want to push on this a little bit. There is an unsettledness in your marriage. Fair? Financially. Definitely. And maybe it's just financially, but there's a there's something that y'all are chasing that over here, we're going to finally feel a certain way and then we need to go over here and this will make us whole and this will bring us like there's a there's something that. A disconnection between you and your spouse that is, y'all are chasing with these other things. You're looking for love in all the wrong places. Yeah. Am I off my rocker? I have a pretty happy marriage. Okay. I mean, I do feel like we're chasing something, and it's more just trying to keep up with the junkies. I'll be happy when. I really don't have a better excuse. I'll be happy when. I'll be happy when. Well, and you can have a happy marriage that's not a united one. You can have one. Discontented. Yeah, one or both of you can be peacekeepers, and y'all can find yourselves sitting six inches away from each other on the couch, but y'all are 6,000 miles from each other. Y'all are on different planets. And y'all can say, no, we're happy. We don't yell. We don't scream. We like each other. But that's different than being we are unified building a thing together, and building this thing has costs, and it has wins associated with it, right? But all I have to say is, yeah, I'll let Dave answer the question. It just sounds like, I agree. It sounds like there's disconnection. Contentment has been driving this, and contentment is a spiritual decision. Godliness with contentment is great gain, to be able to just sit and breathe and call where I am okay, and we're not going to die from where we are. We're going to work to be better. We're going to be ambitious, but we can also be content. We're being ambitious for a thing. Yeah, the difference is that we're not chasing happiness in a wrong location. Like, it'll all be. It'll be okay when. I'll be happy if I got this. I'll be happy if I did that. I'll be happy if I had a better car. I'll be happy if the kids were in that school district. I'll be happy if we had a white kitchen, you know, or whatever, which might have been said at my house a few years ago. So, but yeah. And what you found at every new house y'all bought, y'all went with you, right? So, I want you to get under the hood on this. You and your husband sit down and start talking about it. Okay, what were we chasing that caused us to make these decisions? And I don't want to make a new decision using that same chase. That's exactly right. I want to make a new decision based on math. And does it take us towards our new goal? Because, yes, because you've run towards a different house, a quote-unquote upgrading house for the last three years. You're still going to be running. You might be running a different direction, but you're still just running from something. Instead of saying, hey, I love that, the diagnosis of our problem. If we just say, what have we been chasing? And. Who do we want to be? How do we want our, wherever we live, a one-bedroom apartment or a really fancy house? How do I want this house to feel? And, man, begin to reverse engineer the action steps we're going to take so that we can get to this warmth and joy and laughter. What do we want our life to feel like? It's a really heartfelt, authentic question. It's a great question. I like your question. I love it. I appreciate you being vulnerable about it and letting us jump on this problem with you. Yeah. So, this is what drives a lot. A lot of stuff. I mean, sometimes I'm asked, you know, what's the most powerful financial principle? Contentment. Because when you're content, you don't go in debt to buy something you can't afford. When you're content, you can live on less than you make. When you're content, you can be generous. When you're content, you can invest and save because you don't have to consume all of it. Who was Warren Buffett's right-hand man? Charlie. Yeah. Man, he has some great one-liners. One-liners about, like. My watch costs 30 bucks and it tells the same time your watch does, right? Like, just some. If you can learn to settle in here and just drop your shoulders, man, you kind of, you become so free you can do whatever you want because you're not subject to the whims of other people's approval. It's strange, though. I mean, and part of contentment is I don't care what anybody thinks. Yeah. Which we always find that statement among millionaires. I became, I got out of debt and I became wealthy when I quit caring what others think. Why do you drive a Toyota and you're worth $4 million? I don't care. Why do you. I'm not taking a poll. Yeah. Why do you wear those shoes? At a stoplight from people I don't even know. Because I don't care. Yeah. Yeah. But it's, Dave, I think people hear this as, for lack of better terms, oppressive speech. This is the most empowering thing you could tell somebody is unhook yourself from all of these phantom judgments that you think are being cast your way and get in the driver's seat of your own life. Become the chief agent in where you and your spouse want to go. Man, you become. You can just do anything. Yeah. And it's pretty extraordinary. We had a relative when we got hardcore after the bankruptcy, we got hardcore and we still are. We never quit. Yeah. We don't borrow money for anything ever. And we don't care what you think. Period. Now, I'll try to convince you for your sake if you're asking me a question. That's what I do here on the air. But in terms of do. I need your approval to become as wealthy as we have become by not borrowing money. No, I don't need your approval. Not at all. And then we had a relative that's like, yeah, I'm worried about y'all. I think a bankruptcy damaged you. I think you need counseling. And I'm like, for sure, but not for the reasons you think. And so we took her on a cruise a few years later. Well, just to say thanks for her advice. That was full of crap. But yeah. Shit. I think you've joined a cult. Is that church you're going to a cult? Church lady, right? Yeah. Thank you, Dana Carvey. But if you find yourself running, and you're running from thing to thing to thing. That's so good, Kayla. Thank you. You got us off on this. Yeah. The most helpful thing you can do sometimes is just stop running. Why? Stop running. What am I running? Why am I in this race? Yeah. They call it the rat race. Yeah. Man. I was telling you. I was telling you off air. They don't call it the thoroughbred race. They call it rats. I read a powerful book by Ty Wynn. He's a professor at the University of Utah called The Score. But he asked this really important question in the book. Is this the game I want to be playing? That's it. And man, that question is, I asked myself that 10 times a day. I'm going to take my marbles and go home. Thank you very much. Somebody cuts me off in traffic, and I feel that, is this the game I want to play? No. Right? To like all of it. Is this the hill you really want to die on? Is this it? No, man. That's so good. That's good. I want joy. I want my house. That's what I want. All right, let's cut to the chase. It's easy to get discouraged about crazy house prices and interest rates. But when you have the right real estate agent to help you buy and sell the right way, you'll have confidence to make smart decisions. Ramsey Trusted Agents aren't just experts who guide you through buying or selling. They're people you can trust to have your back from the first call to closing day. Find a Ramsey Trusted Agent near you at RamseySolutions.com slash agent. That's RamseySolutions.com slash agent. For more information, visit RamseySolutions.com or call 1-800-325-4255 or 1-800-325-4255. Mark is in Buffalo, New York. Hey, Mark, how are you? I'm great, Dave. Thanks for taking my phone call. Sure. What's up? Well, I'm trying to convince my wife that for the next couple of years, I'm hoping to retire in the next four to five years, I'm going to be a real estate agent. I'm going to be a real estate agent. I'm going to invest in the markets instead of memories. I know that sounds kind of odd. She would rather spend the money, I don't want to say now, but rather spend it on the kids and grandkids making memories than leaving a legacy. Well, you should do both. I'm trying to convince her that. That's never going to happen. This is really an angry discussion. Our discussion is mostly centered on she likes to take her entire family on cruises. Probably about 1.2 or 3. Okay. And what's your household income? About 190. And what does she spend on a cruise when she takes the whole family? About 30, 35. Okay. That doesn't keep you from investing? Well, I guess in a way it doesn't. We definitely, we max out our 401. It keeps you from it more than you're investing. Well, I'd like to put more in because I would love to leave my kids and grandkids something. I don't want to say substantial because I know that we've got a lot of kids and grandkids. You're a millionaire. Yeah. What'd your parents leave you? Thank God I have both my parents still. Okay. What will they leave you? $10 million? No. Okay. No. And you're going to be okay? Your kids are going to be okay? So I should just let her have her enjoyment? No. No, I think you ought to both be, you ought to be investing and you ought to let her have her enjoyment and you have the money to do both, sir. Okay. Have you ever been successful in convincing? No. Okay. Because even the way you asked that question, it suggests y'all are sitting on opposite side of the table, you versus your wife. and it's it's not an argument argument it's mostly i really want to retire uh i've owned a restaurant for almost 40 years now my feet legs and hips and back are shot okay and when i finally do retire that 190 000 is not going to be coming in agreed so agreed um but hold on she wants me to work until i'm about 65 66 67 and i don't want that have have you had that conversation i'm in pain yes i want to enjoy the rest of my life with with you with the grandkids and we don't have enough save to do that right now well you guys are old enough to remember 2008 and a small part of this maybe a major part is that um i had a lot of hubris when i was young and uh put our business almost into almost a million dollars in debt to the state the feds purveyors insurance etc etc etc so she has this idea that money is fleeting and to enjoy it while you have it and um since 2008 we paid off our house we paid off our mortgage we have about a half a million in our uh 401 so we've climbed out of that hole by doing the ramsey thing before we know before we knew there was ramsey yeah good for you um well done we sold everything we lived on so you're how old today did you say 58 okay all right so i think you sit down and start having some very granular conversations and say okay my back hurts my hips hurt i'm not doing this till i'm 67 i can't and and so what's going to happen is is that if we to the extent we spend all of the investment money um we're going to end up in a much reduced lifestyle from the time i retire on and so this um so we can do some things we can do the occasional cruise for everybody we can still do a thirty thousand dollar thing that's that's not undoable but we can't do three of them because the other two things that are that size i need to go on investing so that we're doing both things well and i need your i need you to join me emotionally in doing both of these things having fun with the money and investing it instead of me feeling like i'm dragging you kicking in some of the money and i'm not doing that i'm not doing that i'm not doing that i'm not kicking and screaming and you're like a kid on the cereal aisle throwing a fit that you want sugary cereal right now and i don't you know so i want us to be joined uh and the healing from 2008 from the mistakes is in our rearview mirror and we're joined together and we're walking into a cool new future that's a two or three million dollar net worth in our early 60s and we're and while we're doing that we're going to do some fun things too but i'm nervous about that so i'm going to do some fun things too but i'm going to do some fun things too but i'm going to do some fun things so my tendency is to run honey over onto the saving only side and your tendency is to run over to the other side both are actually correct and we need to be doing both but we need to be unified in doing both and it man couldn't have said it better and the thing i'll add is mark you need a finish line because you're going to chase the word substantial you're going to chase the word legacy and if you don't give yourself a i want every grandkid to get twenty five thousand dollars i want every grandkid to get twenty five thousand dollars i want every grandkid to get twenty five thousand dollars i want my four kids to each get if you don't give yourself sums in that that by the way that finish line can move right let's say you sell your restaurant and you get eight times what you thought that can move but man you're going to be chasing a never an ever moving finish line called substantial and called legacy if you don't put some concrete ideas around that if you're if your grandkids and kids have got no sense it doesn't matter if you leave my million or ten million it'll be gone in four months so and you probably don't think any less of your parents either you don't because you're going to leave you a ton of money from them yeah and so and i don't you know so i i you know leaving changing your family tree is a good goal it's a good goal unless it drives you to do um like like you're incomplete if you don't do it somehow there you go and uh so that that that's what we want to avoid brian is with us brian is in joplin missouri hey brian what's up yes sir i'm a heavy equipment mechanic and i was i was needing help on this decision to run my business full-time or to keep working for my current employer what's your what's your business i'm a mobile heavy equipment mechanic how much are you making doing that about four thousand a month that's just in the evenings after 5 30 to about 10 or 11 o'clock at night and then on the weekends good for you and what do you make on your day job about fifty five hundred a weekly thirty five and a half a hour doing it sixty hours a week so you're making twenty thousand dollars a month at your day job no sir it's just uh fifty five hundred dollars monthly monthly not weekly you said weekly okay and so you got one that's doing fifty five hundred a month and one that's doing four thousand a month right yes sir and i get it's hard to juggle the two at the moment can you cut your hours back on your heavy equipment day job that's what i currently did the 40 hours a week and i'm it's still hard to balance them i hear you can you cut can you cut it more i can see i can ask him and see yeah i would ask my employer to let me uh have fridays off yes sir that's what i'm currently doing now and i i've got established customers and i'm seems i know i could double it if i ended up doing it but we hope you can double it because you're getting ready to cut your pay in half when you quit yes sir so what i like to do in these situations i want you to do this okay but i i i want to always say i want to pull the boat really close to the dock so i'm not taking a leap of faith and right now you're taking a leap of faith like you're going to cut five thousand five hundred dollars if you quit today out of your a month and you got to make that up and you're only making four now and if you don't make it up then you're gonna you're gonna feel that water when you hit it so i i'd like to say we're making six or seven on the business and we've cut the hours down on the day job that gets the boat closer to the dock and then you just step into the boat you don't have to jump and hope you hit it and so that's what i'm going to do i want to get your i know you're tired and you're a hard-working dude and i love what you're doing i want you to go do this i want you to go in business for yourself i'm going to send you a copy of building a business you love our book and i want you to read it our big investing essentials event is next tuesday and wednesday don't miss your chance to be there investing isn't difficult but it's not something you can learn in a 60 second tiktok video so at this two-night virtual event george camel and i will walk you through my playbook for investing and wealth planning we'll simplify everything from maximizing your 401k to reducing taxes and setting up wills and real estate and much more join us next week on september 1st and 2nd tickets start at 100 bucks get yours now at ramsey solutions.com slash events or by clicking the link in the show notes our scripture of the day first corinthians 10 13 no temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind and god is faithful he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear but when you are tempted he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it ronald reagan said status quo you know is latin for the mess we're in that is fantastic that's great i love it oliver's in connecticut hey oliver what's up in your world hey dave thanks for taking my call i love your show i love your show i love your show i love your show well thank you sir yes uh my question i'm 46 single no kids no debt um i haven't had any kind of full time work in about a year and a half uh i do have some pretty good savings and i'd like to know your opinion if you think i may be able to to retire at this point today uh yeah i mean yes yes not have to work again what are you gonna do the rest of your life well you know it's funny i actually interviewed for a part-time minimum wage job today because it has been kind of boring i i tried to get some jobs i haven't had luck because they say you don't have the education or grad school or experience so it what are you gonna do with the rest of your life oliver i would like to have a wife and a child and so that's part of the question is and that requires As far as not working? Well. Yeah, I mean, it may be a possibility. Again, I can tell you my financials, and maybe you can tell me your opinion. My opinion is you shouldn't quit work at 46 regardless of your financials. You should be doing something for the good of mankind and yourself. You don't have to work a slave job. You don't have to work 40 hours or 80 hours a week or something, but you ought to be doing something. Okay, so what is your net worth? What do you have saved? I have $2.7 million in a brokerage, $1 million of that's in a Roth. Those are, like you suggest, mutual funds and ETFs that average about 10% to 11%. I have a three-family house I own, which is cash flow about $300 a month. That's $30,000 in HSA, $40,000 high-yield savings account. Where'd you get all that? I ran a tennis business. For about 15 years. And sold it? No, I was leasing space out of an indoor tennis club, and they sold the club. I was trying to buy the club, and the owner was going to sell it to me, and then at the last minute, he said he sold it to a golf buddy. The golf buddy came in, and he said, I have new plans for the place, and you're not part of them. Okay, so you lost your lease, and you just closed the business, but the money came from. You're making a lot of money in the tennis business. Yeah, I set it up as an S-Corp. I had 1099 workers. But, I mean, you made a profit, a lot of money, and you stacked it. That's where the money came from. That's what I'm trying to ascertain. Yeah, I live a simple life. Okay, so what does it take you to live on a year if you wanted to not work anymore? What do you need to live on? Well, right now, it's about $85,000 a year. But I rent, and I would like to buy a house. Yeah. Well, your non-Roth investments should be generating more than $85,000 a year. Mm-hmm. And so, yeah, you could quit today. But, like I said earlier, aside from the finances, I don't think you need to quit today. And you are a proven entrepreneur. You ran a very lucrative business. You developed the business model. Obviously, I love for tennis. That you parlayed into whatever sources of revenue there and, you know, and stacked $3 million. Way to go. And you're only 46. So, you know, do you not remember how alive you felt when you were fighting those battles growing that business? It felt, it did feel good. And I haven't been able to come up with any other entrepreneurial ideas. And before that business, part of working so hard was, I had eight or nine jobs that were just terrible. Most of them being commission-only, dollar-for-dollar sales jobs. Okay, so don't do that. You don't have to. You got $85,000 coming off that brokerage account. So we're not stressed about where we're going to go or what we're going to do. But if you want a wife and kid, I think you're a lot more attractive if you're actually out there doing something. And most women don't want to marry a couch potato, even if they're independently wealthy. Yeah. And the research is pretty clear that when you quit to do nothing, your body gets the message and it will start to send the signals, we're done here. Our work is done here. And you'll see your health fall off a cliff. Your emotional, mental health will fall off a cliff. Your body just starts shutting it down. So I would go and do, you know, if Ramsey closed today, I'm 66, not 46. I would go and open a business. Because it's fun. Because I enjoy business. I enjoy running a business. I enjoy the challenge. I enjoy the building of something that's profitable that the marketplace likes and gives you money for. And I'll say this. Happy customer. You are the most singularly focused business person I've ever been around who's got an obsession with helping the front line customer. Right? Like, I know you like building a business, but I think you like helping people a lot. Yeah. Yeah. But that's a good thing. A good business does that. If you're running car repair, you better like helping people. Yeah. If you're a doctor, a medical doctor, you should like helping people. Feel better. Yeah. So, Oliver, like, what about your, did you like the tennis business? Because, man, go open a tennis business. Or did you like the teaching part? Or do you like seeing the light bulb come on in young kids and teenagers and taking pretty good athletes and making them, helping them become excellent? Like, what about that? Did you love, you could do that anywhere. Yeah, exactly. All over the place. But find a thing. Going and interviewing for a job and them saying you don't have a degree after you made $3 million is kind of funny. Yeah, it's absurd. The guy telling you that's making, used to be your employee. Yeah, he used to hire you to give, teach his kid how to play tennis, right? Yeah. And so, no, that's not, that does not steal my hope and make me want to quit. Quite to the contrary. It gives me a real reason to go start a business and kick his butt. All right. Joey's in Grand Rapids. Hey, Joey, what's up? Hey, so I am a recovering gambling addict. Today's 31 days from not gambling. Good for you. Congratulations, dude. Thank you. Way to go. What were you gambling on? Stupid apps like MGM, like on the slot machines and stuff. It's a losing game. Yeah, it is. It's a house wins. Okay, good for you. Proud of you, Joey. How can we help? Thank you. Yeah, so I started budgeting in June of this year from watching you guys' show and I've accumulated some debt from gambling. I've already paid off. I started with $28,000 in debt. I got it down to $23,911. Way to go. But I'm trying to figure out how to prioritize it. List your debts smallest to largest. Yeah. Regardless of what kind of debt or what the interest rate is. Yeah, absolutely. Credit cards, $10,115. On one card? Person. No, it's four separate cards. List them individually. Okay. Smallest to largest. Smallest to largest and pay minimum payments on everything but the little one and attack the little one with a vengeance. Hey, we want to be part of your healing. I'm excited for your journey. We're going to send you a copy of the Total Money Makeover which will show you exactly how to do all of this stuff, Joey. Way to go, man. I'm proud of you. We're also going to sign you up for every dollar of the advanced version of our budgeting app to also help you to continue this healing process. We want to be there for you and give you everything you need. Anything you can do. Hey, you young guys out there, you need to take Joey's cue. Fastest thing that's destroying men, young men in their 20s, is sports betting. I mean, DraftKings is not a blessing to your life. I'll just tell you. It's screwing up more of you guys than anything else we're running into. So Joey's just the tip of the iceberg. Make sure you do this stuff. Hey, guys, that's how it's done. It's common sense for your dollars and cents. And, you know, Grandma's advice still works, even if it's filtered through a John Deloney or a Dave Ramsey. It's just the one lesson you make, man. Works 100% of the time. There it is. 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. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪