Fired from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the car rental studios. It's the Dave Ramsey Show where debt is dumb. Cash is king and the payday loan market has taken the place of the BMW. As the status of choice, I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, my co-host on the air today, Rachel Crooge, Ramsey personality and number one bestselling author, also my daughter open phones, a triple eight eight two five five two two five. Jake is with us from Michigan to start off this hour.

Hey, Jake, how can we help you?

Hey, Dave and Rachel, thanks for taking my call today. Sure. What's up? He just had a quick question for you a few years ago, I made some dumb mistakes with credit cards and about a year ago this was before I found you guys on your team. I had signed up with a debt relief company where they consolidated all my debt and I pay them now and then. They have been settling some of the accounts. But the issue I'm having now is my my brother introduced me to you and your team, and he's been all over me about getting a hold of these people because they're telling me that they're going to have a debt paid off in five years.

And it seems like I might be able to do it a little bit quicker. I just don't know how to leave or how to, I guess, figure out. I guess I'm just afraid to leave in case I can't pay it off quicker.

Yeah, well, let's understand that they're not paying the debt right now. Right. You know that you didn't consolidate your debt, you just quit paying it. Right. That's all you've done, and they're collecting a check from you, and then every so often as they pile up some of those checks, they use that money to settle one of these debts that have gone bad because you're in default on all of them.

All right, you've completely trashed your credit. Pretty much, yeah, that's what those did. So how many different accounts and what's the total? I want to say that there was about 12 accounts in total that I enrolled into the program and the total amount of debt was around sixty thousand dollars. What is it now? Well, they've settled about, I want to say, five of the accounts. And so I'm about forty five. They've settled about fifteen thousand of it.

OK, so you owe about forty five thousand dollars on seven accounts. Right. OK, and what's your household income. My income's about 55 a year. OK. All right, so why in the world would you take five years to pay off 45000 dollars? Yeah, you know, that's that and that's what I think about every day. Yeah. Now, since I started listening to you, I would be dead free in two years. Yeah, not five or sooner.

And especially since you're settling, there's outstanding balances, 45, and if you settle for less because they're in default, then that, of course shortens up the time frame. So, yeah, I'm taking this taking control of the situation back, whatever money you paid them in, fees you've lost. But, you know, if you've got any balance over there with them, if they've got any money in your, quote, savings account, unquote, have them send that back to you and send you to all the detail they can on everything and cancel the service.

And then you're just going to have seven different arguments. Until you get seven different deaths, settle. OK. All right, they can they can sue you today. Right, and and just because you pull it out from under this doesn't keep doesn't make them more likely or less likely to sue you. So then you just make a list of the smallest one and you call them and say, you know, we owe you 7000 dollars and we can offer you three thousand dollars in cash.

That's what I got saved up. If you don't want that, I'm calling the next one on the list, which you want to do it or not. And you get it in writing and you never give them electronic access to your checking account and you settle them one at a time and work your way down through it. This is why we call the debt settlement people and the real debt consolidation loans that can solve these problems because you're paying people to do something, the work that you can really do.

And with debt consolidation, it's so hard because it feels like, again, back to that math thing. But it's true. It's like, OK, well, this makes sense. It feels like, OK, it's just one big debt versus all these other debts. And again, the psychological aspect of it, people fall into so, so quickly and they get sold this bill of goods.

Well, it feels easier, but it's really harder because it's not as efficient and takes longer. Right. And so and it's not really that consolidation. It's really debt settlement. And what they do, the very first thing they do is they try your credit by putting all your accounts into default and they keep the first several payments into their pocket as their fee before you start building up any money over there to settle the accounts with. And so you could you could have just stopped paying your credit cards by yourself.

If you were going to use this plan, it wouldn't be in the plan I would use. But you can do that now. A real debt consolidation loan is where you get a new loan and the balances are rolled into that new loan. And so now you do have literally one loan instead of 12. And that is that's consolidation.

When you consolidate something, it's a bringing together. It's not a I moved it over there and didn't pay it. And so, folks, when people are saying with these debt settlement companies, you see them on the cable TV all the time when they're saying, you know, that, you know, this is debt consolidation, it's a lie.

It's not that consolidation, you're not consolidating anything, consolidating the very definition of the word means to put together, and so don't do that, don't do that.

Open phones at eight eight two five five two to five. Thank you for joining us, America. Andrew is next and he's in Colorado. Hi, Andrew.

How are you doing? Well, Rachel, thanks for having me on. Sure. What's up? So I have a question about baby steps for right now, I'm a teacher and 29 years old and I've been with my district for about five years and we have a pension program. And in addition to that pension program, I have a four or three days that I'm going to be rolling over to Iraq as soon as possible. So the pension automatically takes out about eight point seventy five percent of my paycheck.

So I add on top of that another seven percent into my additional four or three. Now, I recently got an email saying that the pension percentage is going to go up to about 10 percent. And then I think in the future, up to 12 research on Colorado. And it looks like Colorado is in the top five underfunded states with my pension. So with everything going on with covid and things like that, I'm trying to consider, OK, now that I'm going to be rolling over things into my Roth, should I increase that percentage?

Because right now I'm doing seven percent and should I be worried? And how much should I put in addition to that pension in case things kind of take a turn? I don't know what happens with that.

So, yeah, the problem is the pension goes sideways, you get nothing and you haven't saved anything over on the other side. That's what you're considering. So you're exactly right. You need to beef up your investing that you control into your Roth IRA. And then anything else where you have control of the investments, you are still the owner of the investments. You're not the owner on a pension. And, you know, how long have you been at this job?

Five years is them.

And these increases in pension withholding are mandatory, I think, just with the current state of the pension program and everything. Wow.

That would make me reconsider a job. If they're taking 12 percent of my pay and putting into something this week in my fall apart. And they're increasing that. That would make me reconsider my job. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. At Takeover's, we believe a great pair of cowboy boots should be comfortable right out of the box so you can stand with confidence no matter what the day throws at you. We believe in the enduring quality of handmade boots, and we believe that your hard earned dollars should go far.

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Today's question comes from Jordan and California. She visits Dave Ramsey dot com to ask. I am wondering what the better option is when I'm baby step two or three buying something cheap.

And that's going to need to be replaced quickly or making room in the budget for a higher quality item that will last a long time in baby step two, two or three.

You won't be buying anything. That's what I was thinking. But if you're like none of the above, if your car, though, has to be replaced, like it dies on you and you're like, OK, I need a new car. You go cheap, cheap, cheap, making sure it's reliable and you're not having to go to the mechanic every other day.

Now there's like three thousand dollars cheap yet you want to like thirty thousand cheap, right. Well, just some people get confused about what that means. That's all relative. All relative. Yeah.

You get a freakin whoopty when you're in baby step two or three and you don't upgrade anything.

You only do emergency spending. She only spending.

You do because it's an emergency to get out of debt. You are in Gazal intensity mode.

Exactly right. So. Here's the thing. You can wander into debt. Most people do, it's normal in our culture to be in debt. Everyone teaches you to be in debt. All the people that want you to buy crap from them allow you to be in debt.

Everybody is talking about being in debt and everybody's broke.

The only people that talk about getting out of that are those people that are wealthy and that's how they got wealthy. I mean, you talk to wealthy people, this is what you're going to find out. And so what is required here you are, you are going against the entire set of cultural influences, not only in your life, but in all of our lives. And so the idea to get out of debt and stay out of debt requires tremendous emotional energy.

You got to and you can't just kind of go, well, I can't think I do have myself been cheaper. I mean, I know you have to get fired up and wired up. I mean, because you're going against everybody, everybody's going to think you're crazy. Except wealthy people, I mean, and so you have to exert this extreme amount of energy to break through all these barriers in your psyche. That's right.

Well, you said earlier you can wander your way and like most people do, but you can't wander your way out. Like there has to be a level of intensity. There has to be a level of like you're going against the grain and it's going to feel uncomfortable. Changes hard. It's not always fun. But as you start making that progress and you start saying things like, oh, yeah, yeah, I got no, we're not buying anything like nothing.

All our extra money is going towards this debt. Not only do you get out of debt faster and you advance in so many ways, financially and emotionally, spiritually, all of that, because you just have no payments, you don't owe anyone anything. But on top of that, something changes within you. That level of sacrifice really does. It's this iron sharpening iron and the and the process of it all refined you. And I think what ends up happening is you start to realize, OK, all this stuff that probably put me in debt in the first place, wow.

It really doesn't matter. Like when I sacrifice stuff and I start selling things off, like suddenly even your your value system starts to change in our in our culture, in your life that goes against the culture.

The point of Garcelle intensity as gazelles running from a cheetah for his life. You have to run for your life. You cannot just act like this is an academic. Intellectual exercise, you're carving new grooves in your brain, and the only way you do that is with when people look at you and go, you're so extreme, then you're right on track because those are stupid broke people that are saying that.

I think I don't think I could do it. You're daring. That's your dadgum right.

You couldn't because I'm a winner and you're a loser. I mean, these things have to go through your head. It broke. People are making fun of your financial plan. You're right on track. But if they're not making fun of you, you're not doing it right because you need to go to scorched earth because you're setting your whole psyche, your relationships to stuff your relationship with your spouse. Everything's in a whole new zone and you're basically taking an emotional bulldozer and digging a ditch in your life.

And this is not like I think I'll have a little ditch here. Now you're digging a hole.

You're getting out of this mess, you're changing. And you you cannot help but do this stuff. And so you can't go on vacation when you're in baby step two. That's freaking lame. So you can't be going out to eat when you're in baby step two. That's freaking limo. You're getting out of debt like your hair's on fire. Like your children's lives depend on it because they do. You're changing your family tree and you don't do that without this this thing happening inside of you.

And that's when people change their lives.

When they finally say, I've had it, the level of intensity is so, so crucial in the process now.

And it's going to lead you to deeper sacrifice and that frees up the math. Goofing around with the intensity will lead you to water down crucified levels of sacrifice, which screws up the math, and you stay in debt longer and you have a higher probability of never making it out because you run out of steam like going back in. Yeah. And you just give up and you go, I'm going to go be normal. Screw it. Yeah, screw it.

I'm I'll be broke like everybody else and look like I'm not. And I'm just going to go buy crap. I can't afford money. I don't have to impress people I don't even like. And I'm going to go back to those old ways. And you just got to you know, you have to reach a point that you go, no.

No, and so picking on Jordan a little bit. The point is, when you're in that mindset, you don't even ask the question that you asked Jordan.

It wouldn't have even come up unless it's an emergency expenditure, like a car went kaput. Like you talked about Rachel. Yep. Yep. You know, ask a question of what level of vacation can I go on? You don't deserve a vacation. You're freaking broken in debt.

Don't tell me you're entitled to squat. You're not. When I was broke and Rachel's a baby and the electricity gets cut off, I can't come in and go, you know, I work so hard. I think we go on a vacation now.

We turn the dadgum lights back on. We have a baby in the house. You can't you know, you're whining is unbelievable. And it happens inside of all of our heads.

It happened with us. I mean, we you know, we've been fighting against bankruptcy for two and a half years. We hit bottom. We're bankrupt. We got zero. It would have been real easy to justify what we've been through this horrible time. And we just really need to rest. And, you know, you can't do that.

What an option. Because we freakin been on the street.

And I wonder what the the level of even from 30 years ago to now, 35 years ago to now, the amount of comfort we have in our lives today from the accessibility of just information, getting what we want when we want it, you know, Amazon and I think it'll be at your doorstep even that like there's a level of comfort.

We live our spoiled rotten. Yeah, you could pick up a little square thing, but that stuff shows up on your doorstep to be uncomfortable right now.

And life is very scary and uncomfortable, but you have to be uncomfortable in this process. If you continue to just be comfortable, you're not going to get the progress. But that comfortability is sweeps all of us.

It's it's in all of us.

We're we're spoiled rotten. We really I mean, when you can pick up that little square thing and touch three buttons and stuff shows up on your front porch and you can touch three buttons to get the answer to any one button and get the answer to almost any question came and have a good argument anymore, you know, because the answer is right there, you know. And so, you know, you know, when's early voting in which right there.

Just Googling I we were laughing today, Anthony. I like all the questions people ask us here on the radio. They don't need to ask. They could just Google, Google, you know. And so, you know, if the dirty little secret of the Dave Ramsey Show, there's nothing here that you didn't already know or you could just watch one of our nine million hours of YouTube.

Right. For free. So, you know, that kind of stuff. And the dirty little secret is that that it's all right there. We're spoiled rotten, though. Yeah. And it makes us feel like we're entitled to pleasure. We're entitled to luxury. Yeah. And we are not. When you're broke, you're not entitled. Your brain may say it's entitled, but your brain's being a baby child. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. There's almost always a rise and break ins this time of year, it's why simply say home security is having a huge holiday sale.

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Roxanna's in Tampa.

Hey, Roxanne, how are you?

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my call. I am about a month into Ramsey, plus I'm loving it. Good. And I have called today because I also, as you advised me to do, I got rid of my very expensive car and I bought a six thousand dollar beautiful car. Nice for you.

So and it's paid off, which I love. So my next question, though, is I have a lot of student loans and I'm a public educator, so I have the public service loan forgiveness, which is a program where if you pay for 10 years, you get the rest of your loans forgiven. Now you don't. It was a scam. Have you not? Have you not read the articles? 95000 people have applied for it after their ten years of service.

Eighteen people have had their loans forgiven, everyone else was denied. Oh, wow. No, it's not, they didn't do it. I scammed you. So there are some there are some loan forgiveness programs that are real. That one is not has not worked out.

And I would not wait 10 years and hope that the government keeps its word because they haven't.

OK, I would just get the loans for that was my question. My question was, do I wait wait it out or do I put it into my debt snowball.

So debt snowball and get rid of it. How much debt have you got? It's about two hundred thousand dollars. Wow, man. Oh, my goodness. What grade do you teach? I'm in a K eight school. I'm an assistant principal, OK? OK, good. And are you single or married? Single. And what do you what's your what's your income? My income's about 63. How long have you been an assistant principal for about 12 years.

OK. Oh, it's going to take you a while. I hope it doesn't take you 10 years, but that's that is a small shovel and a big hole. And so you might you may be starting a tutoring business on the side to get some income coming in and try to double your income over a period of time here so that you can attack this at a faster rate. But the your return on investment, 200000 invested to get a 63000 job was horrible.

It was a horrible return for you. I'm sorry for that. I'm glad that you're there and I'm glad you're an assistant principal. And I'm glad that people like you are serving. I'm very sorry that you're that foreign debt to get into that, to get that kind of an income.

I mean, so. My goodness. Yeah, it's going to take you a little while, kiddo, but I would not be waiting on the government to do it.

I'm going to just start chipping away at it and figuring out what I can do to get my income up and attack it as fast as you can. That's distressing.

Well, it's so hard when these I mean, you get these numbers like that and sadly, they're they're more common than not these days. I mean, like that upwards of six figures people. It's the reality.

And so that it just takes I mean, you take a lot of 250000 dollars and then you're an M.D., you're going 150, 200 a year and just oh oh, so it goes off.

You guys have not listened to the eight episode series called Borrowed Future that a podcast that the AMC Networks did. You guys need to go listen to it and.

So you understand how bad the student loan program is? You know, we the people, it is destroyed people's lives and we the people are doing this to ourselves.

And you and I are guaranteeing these loans because we're taxpayers.

And so and we're putting people like her in bondage, allowing her to do that to herself and oh, I'm so sorry. What a horrible I'm so sad. Yeah, and this is why the student loan program has to be stopped.

It's not working. It has to be stopped. It's out of control. It's an epic failure.

And so it's just. I mean, she she's going to be scratching and clawing for a while. It's just heartbreaking. All right.

Yolanda is with us in San Diego. Hey, Yolanda, how are you? I'm fine, fine, I'm very nervous, but thank you for taking my call. How can we help? This is a state related question. Just some background. I'm in baby step two and I've been going really hard at my debt. But prior to me joining your program and prior my brother actually before he passed away a year ago, he had always every time I saw him while he was ill, was telling me about this land, acres of land that we had in Louisiana.

And he was like, you can't let this land go to waste. You have to take care of this land. He had learned that my grandfather's land, who had oil being drilled on it, of which oil royalties could be collected. It's also classified as Timberland, and I think it looks like it's over 40 acres. And so he passed away and it has been put heavy on my heart to go ahead and delve into this situation. So I've done some research.

I found out that the land is and my grandfather's name, who passed away back in 1982. And since then, my father passed away in 2011. And then my brother, like I said, he passed away in 2019.

Are you the only survivor buyer or were there cousins and nephews?

And I so from my research, I do have one surviving brother. My other two brothers passed away. They also had children and my grandfather only had two two sons. My dad and I guess my uncle, I have no relation, had no relations with them. And so right now what I did was I really did not know how to handle this. I reached out to an estate attorney in Louisiana who says that I need to have a land succession performed or done and he's going to charge me thirty five hundred dollars.

And I think there is like four hundred dollars off of court fees and what the land is worth.

That's the thing. I have no idea what the land is worth. And 4500 dollars.

Well, it's they are drilling oil on this land, so he's getting the royalty checks.

Well, that's what I asked attorney. So the attorney says that in the state of Louisiana, that is the oil royalty checks are uncollected over a 10 year period. That money goes to the state. That will be true. No, I believe that no one has ever collected any of the oil royalties for this land.

There may not be. But if they're drilling oil there, they might be and they might not be this this sounds like swampland in Florida to me. I just I just I don't I don't think you I think this is a pipe dream, kiddo. I'm not spending 3500 bucks on an attorney until I get a lot more information. I want to know what the royalty checks are, where they've been going. I want the line of succession. How many brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles, aunts and people are going to be splitting into this money?

You could easily spend 3500 dollars and get a net when you're done of a thousand bucks after the property is sold, because that oil that's out there, they're pumping natural gas out of there and they're not getting any dadgum oil at all. I mean, this is all this is all rumor and legend.

It's so funny. I'm the opposite. I'm like, did you hit a jackpot? I mean, how do you not know, though? How do you not know that there's just no oil royalties?

If it was a big pile of money, somebody would have already been jacked up about it. It wouldn't have been going to the teller. Somebody who's her brother would have been all over there camping out on the place. I get in there and dig around if you want kids don't don't don't drop a bunch of money on this until you get some more information. This is The Dave Ramsey Show. Ramsey personality, Rachel Krooks, number one best selling author and my daughter, joins me today as my co-host here on the air.

This is The Dave Ramsey Show. Sarah is with us in Concord, New Hampshire. Hi, Sarah. How are you? Hi. Good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up?

I have my husband and I are being subsects, and I'm kind of just like about establishing some kind of balance, moving forward with paying off our house and recently refinanced to an eight year mortgage. And we I'm wondering about, though, so our emergency fund is like twenty five thousand dollars. And I think it's probably a little overkill. Both of our jobs are super stable. And we had some suggest to us pulling out some of that money to top off a Roth IRA account.

And I think that you're probably going to get the phone had idea. But I guess I'm just wondering about about doing that, something like that. I mean, we're saving four thousand dollars a month, pretty much. So we could probably just Cash-Flow that for what is right up for. Don't a memorized or in front of 60 percent of your retirement, where are you going with 50 percent? We're doing more than that. OK, you know what?

Stop, you're not supposed to be doing 15 percent and the rest of it will go to the mortgage. Your house. Yeah. And so if you also say I'm going to adjust my emergency fund down because I think it's too too beefed up, then you would just throw it at the mortgage.

OK, so make sense.

And you need to make your adjustments on your retirement accounts down to 15 percent. Let's get the mortgage paid off.

Sarah, what's the what's the pressure of the Roth? Is that you feeling that?

Is that a financial adviser is pressuring you? Advise. As I said, yeah. A financial adviser. Yeah. We have like four hundred thousand dollars in our retirement savings right now. So I think we're doing like I'm 31 and he's 35. Like, I think we're doing pretty well. Yeah. And you're doing quite a bit.

So you're getting. So what's happening there, I think, is you're getting conflicting advice. So it's confusing to you. You're going to a financial adviser and they're saying, no, no, no, no matter what, you max out the Roth, you max out the Roth. Well, yeah, that's 50 percent of your income. You do. But you only we just talked about this day before the show, even on an Instagram live, about why 15 percent, because a financial advisor is going to say, you know, max out that Roth.

But the baby, the financial adviser, I'll tell you, some of them are going to you never pay off your house.

But yeah, but all the data, all the data on the millionaires that we studied, which are actual millionaires, not at financial advisors, shows that the shortest distance between where you are and becoming a millionaire, meaning building wealth, is to get the house paid off. Meanwhile, putting some money into the nest egg. So if you're 400 doubles every seven years. OK, and we have. We got four times or five times it's going to double.

So the first time it if you don't add anything to it, the first time it doubles is 800. The next time it doubles is one point six. The next time it doubles is three point two. So that tells me you're going to be worth just on that 400 somewhere at your age, somewhere in the neighborhood of ten million dollars. Well.

So I don't know why you need to worry about maxing out your wrath today when the primary goal should be knocking out the debt, you may need a new financial adviser because his financial adviser doesn't make a commission when you pay off your mortgage, but he makes a commission when he gives you a Roth IRA. So and when we refinanced our house or we're in the process of, I guess I should say, our our credit union is actually doing it for only one hundred and fifty bucks to refinance from a 15 to an eight year.

And they the interest rate is pretty low. It's two point twenty five. Yeah, good. We cut it doesn't mean they want to keep it. Right, exactly, I mean, we have a million dog, but a small. Doesn't mean like, you know, I mean, get rid of it, you know, get rid of it as soon as I can. Yeah, because we could probably pay it off in much fewer years than six years.

Well, we could do it in four or five years if they wanted.

And then you're done and then you go and you max out everything from anything you got available to you, because that's baby step seven at that point. So you guys are doing awesome.

I just really know and you're questioning I can hear you questioning because you're you're confused and you're like, oh, I'm getting this advice. But Dave saying so it's it is so just the clear path and that's the way to hopefully this call.

Answer my question for one more question. At this stage of at this point where we're kind of we're paying off our house and we're not like Gizelle intense anymore in terms of, you know, you're not supposed to know. Right. How do we balance having fun and cash flowing like toys are like trips or experiences or things that we want to do and rewarding ourselves for being successful to the point that we're at, but also maintain like moving forward and paying off our house?

Yeah, we go from so we go from Gizelle. Intensity just to simple intentionality and intentionality says after I do my 15 percent towards my retirement, no more and after and then I look and I say there's only three things I can do with money at this point past that.

And that's pay off my mortgage. Give money away and enjoy money. And all three need to be in your budget, enjoying can be a purchase of a toy enjoying can be going on a trip. Both are enjoying, but those are lifestyle choices to a nicer car is not a necessity. It's a cool thing and you should do it. But it's a toy, as you said.

And so both of those are just lifestyle. And so what you just do is you look at your budget and say, you know, we've got this number of dollars.

How many of those dollars are we going to put to us? I mean, others and the house.

Yes. Sarah Yeah. So I would say that you and your husband need to decide, OK, our our our end goal. Right. The finish line is paying off that house. Like, that's the last big thing. How quickly do we want to do it? And you guys need to agree together. We want we could do the same for if you do the math. Yeah, we could. Or we could do it in five. We could do whatever it is.

We could do it in five and go on more trips right.

Back it out and you guys decide and then whatever money is left that's not going towards the house is what you guys can use, that percentage of it to enjoy and to give. And then I would still recommend upping a little bit of your giving during this process. And that was a great callout. But having the end in mind and then backing out, because when it's like there's that ambiguity of like, yeah, we want to pay off our house soon, but I don't know when he gets in the numbers in the budget, I totally get how it gets foggy.

And you're like, I don't know if this is OK or not. Well, is it OK with your goal? But that's what you guys need. That's that's your answer.

Yeah. I mean, I would not suggest that you have no fun and no lifestyle increase and pay off the mortgage in four years. I would rather you pay it off in six years and have some of each.

So, you know, if that's the number or maybe you paid off in three years with no fun and four is a little bit of fun and, you know, run some numbers.

Right. And you guys actually run some numbers. OK, yes. That feels like too much fun.

I'd rather I'd rather do the other one, you know, like Scott that was on the debt free stage, paid off his house. And I could just assume Scott's not here on the microphone. But I would think Scott's like, you know what? I'll sacrifice one for two years to get my house paid off. You could just tell that was him, right? Like, and he did it. And that's great. So it's your choice. But you and your husband, 98000 in one year.

Yes. Right. So you and your husband together need to agree with that goal as if it's short. Lots of sacrifice. Agree if it's like, hey, we're going to spend another year or two, agree on that. But that's the key. Put actual numbers to it. So it's real simple. Take your balance on your mortgage and divide it by six. Balance on your mortgage, divided by five. Balance on your mortgage, divided by four.

Those are your numbers. And then you say how much? And here's how much I've got to work with divided by twelve with each.

How much. Usually it's used, it's used up. I've got this much disposable income after my fifteen percent going into retirement. No more need to back that back down. And you say all right that gives us X for toys, Y for toys, z for toys based on the, for the five or six and then it'll be right there in front of a year ago. That one. I feel good about that one and you'll probably both agree to it instantly.

But you're right.

The ambiguity where you don't have if you put numbers in front of you on it, the numbers will talk to you and they'll tell you because you are you know, right now you've kind of got well, I don't know about the feeling.

I feel like I should do the and it's hard for me to transfer from Gizelle intensity, simple intentionality. And I don't, you know, but put the numbers down you go.

Oh, well, that's the one. So that's the one. And you go, I can buy a car, a nice car for that. I can go on a nice trip for that and still pay off the house and that number of years, you know, and so it'll be right there in front of you. And it's not going to end up being don't pay the house off early at all. And it's not going to end up being on the other end where you have no fun.

You don't want to do either one of those.

And so I'd rather you get it done because sound like you got a substantial income or are they going get it done? But let's just lay it out when the numbers will say, oh, that's the one. Oh, and by the way, when you get a raise, all of it goes to the house. After that, if you've already set your lifestyle budget not up being at with the. Yeah, that's a good point, too, with a income increase.

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