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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the car rental studios, it's the Dave Ramsey Show where Ned is dumb, Cash is king and a paid off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of the choice. I am Dave Ramsey, your host. Dr. John Boloney Ramsey personality best selling author, is my co-host today. Open phones eight eight two five five two two five. That's triple eight eight two five five two to five.

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Mike is starting us off this hour in Buffalo, New York. Hey, Mike, welcome to The Dave Ramsey Show.

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Hi, Dave. Hi, John. Thank you very much. Thank you. How can we help? So my parents got divorced about 15 years ago. Since then, my mom has been paying for a whole life policy insurance plan on my father. She's done paying for it. She's offered to kind of transfer it to me. It's one hundred thousand dollar policy. There's fifty five hundred dollars cash value at this moment. And I believe the annual premiums, about three thousand dollars.

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I'm not sure what to do.

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Why would you do this?

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My wife and I were talking about it. And if we he's 74 years old. So I realize it's kind of like shorting a stock and talking about the life of my father. But if we only were to quote unquote invest five or ten or fifteen thousand dollars into it to get a hundred in the end. Seems like it might be an OK idea. Won't be if he lives 20 years. That's true. How's his health if we're just going to get cold?

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In short, your dad here. He's he's 74 and he's had diabetes for about 30 years and he's had a double bypass heart surgery. We're not that close.

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Yeah, I hope so. I love my father, but I you know, they're not that close. And you were you would become the beneficiary.

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I'm currently the beneficiary. Oh, you currently are. Yeah, but she's my mother has decided to start paying. And so she's offering for me to continue being my wife or just take the cash value now and and do something with it. OK. Well, you know, the thing about personal finance is it involves more than just mathematical analysis, we have to consider emotions and relationships and conscience and morality and behavior. All of those things enter into a wise answer to your question.

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Mathematically, I think you might come out. Yeah, but do you really want to do that?

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I don't I don't want to do that. Yeah.

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I mean, we're joking around a little bit of being a little bit sarcastic about it. You shorten your dad or whatever, that kind of thing. But I mean, it's just not you know, I don't I don't I don't when I'm 75 years old and I'm on my deathbed, I don't want to I don't want that going to cross my mind that I did that.

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I don't think you're doing anything morally wrong.

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It's just weird. Would you agree? Yeah, I think that's why we're having yeah, a little bit of it feels for Weeder about it, it feels weird. You know why it feels weird? Because it's weird. And Mike, what you're going to start doing in your how long you've been married? Eight years. OK, so you're still in a young marriage. You're going to start doing you and your wife are going to start counting this hundred thousand dollars, you're going to start leaning into this hundred thousand dollars.

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Well, we can get this kind of house or we can not deal with this. Oh, yeah. You're going to start making life decisions as though this is a sure thing. And what happens is it's going to further press on that relationship with your dad.

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And I get that it like Dave said, I get that the math may work out. You may make some money on this deal.

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And he said he didn't have much of a relationship with him, but it's just the same.

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I just don't want to I don't I just I, I wouldn't do it. And it has nothing to do with the math. I wouldn't either. And I'm the same way I just did. I think you might win the math argument, but I, I don't think at the end of the day, I don't think at the end of your life you're going to be proud.

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Now, if my dad came to me and said, I've had this. No, still no, no.

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I just don't want to short my dad. No, I, I just generally it's just straight up what we're doing here and it's just whether you like him or whether you don't.

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Right. I mean, maybe even spoken to him in 30 years. I don't know. But it doesn't matter. I don't that's not the it's just it's. I'm not I'm not going to touch on shorter stranger. No, I wouldn't do it. That's what I'm saying. But again, I might if my dad came to me and said, hey, I've been working on this deal, I got a scheme for us, but me and my dad are he's a homicide detective.

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He talks about. That's just wrong. No, I'm talking about what your dad did that I stole wrong. OK. Yeah. You can't short your old man even if you don't like. And in fact, I would say especially if you don't like him more than you, once you start leaning into spending that money, that's hard to come back from.

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Yeah, you can do it if you want. But you called us and I asked. And again, the answer here is based on the.

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Whatever scarring that this event does to your conscience, that's causing you to ask the question and this will leave a scar and I don't want that scar in your spirit, it.

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That's what I'm trying to avoid. Dalton is with us in Waco, Texas. Hey, Dalton, how are you?

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I'm pretty sure that sells better than I deserve. How can we know? So I've got a pretty interesting situation here. My wife and I were doing we did a financial piece and we were doing pretty well. We paid off a little over 30 grand in a year. Good.

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And now my my career situation, my career. But my job has changed. And instead of working a consistent schedule, basically what I do is I go where where I'm needed, different nursing homes. So essentially, I don't have a steady, consistent income, you know. You know, I might make a thousand one week. I might make another. So the issue we're trying to figure out is how to go about getting our budget back on track.

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How did your overall income go up or down? It's hard to say because this is a brand new thing. I've only been doing this for a couple of weeks. What do you think? I think it has the potential to either stay the same or go down, because I'm also going back to school, so my days are limited.

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Why are you going back to school if you've got financial problems?

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Well, I was furthering my nursing is what I was doing.

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Yeah, but you weren't doing that before when you were paying off debt. Now you added a variable to the situation after you lost the stability of your income. Why? Well, frankly, I've been a lion for over seven years now, and I I'm really chasing, trying to push to get the bachelors for nursing to go into a hospital and be great.

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Don't you do that after you get out of debt. Well, that's a good thought, too.

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Yeah, nothing changed here except you decide to go back to school at the exact time your income became unstable. Bad choice. So I probably put off the school a little bit and let's get this mess cleaned up first. As far as how to handle the irregular income, just run your what you think your low average is going to be and then make a list of things you want to do with money when you come in with more money than you thought.

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And so if you think it's going to be an average of about a thousand, run your run your budget on five hundred or seven hundred. And then when more comes in, have a list of things that it automatically goes to that are your next priorities. It's an irregular income planning sheet if you want to do it analog in the back of your Total Money Makeover book. At Takeover's, we believe a great pair of cowboy boots won't just make you look taller.

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They'll give you the confidence boost that'll make you feel taller to attack us. We make traditional cowboy boots for men and women that look great and feel great so you can walk into a big meeting or out on the town with comfort and confidence. And because we sell directly to you with no middleman to mark things up, you're going to get great quality at a great value. Find your PEMRA takeover's dotcom, slash Ramsey and walk taller. If you want to get some quick advice on life and money, but only have a few minutes, we're excited to tell you about our latest podcast called The Ramsey Call of the Day, that I'll give you the life changing content that you get here.

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But in under 10 minutes, I'll be I'll be on it. Along with Ramsey network personalities, Ken Coleman, Rachel Crooge, Chris Hogan, Christy Wright, Anthony O'Neal and my co-host today, Dr. John Deloney. The Ramsey call of the day could be anything from an inspirational story of knocking out that to tips on how to deal with loss of income or how to make decisions in this crazy world. Subscribe to Ramsey Call of the Day on Spotify Apple podcast or the Ramsey Network app, or listen on your smart speaker by saying Play Ramsey Call of the Day.

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It's a matter of fact, if you're a smart speaker, heard me say that it probably just start doing it. There you go. That's how that works. Blond's dotcom is our Question of the day. They have a 100 percent satisfaction guarantee. That means even if you measure, you pick the wrong color, they will remake your window blinds for free, free samples, free shipping with a new promos. They run all the time. Always use the promo code, Ramsey, and you can get a good deal.

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All right. Today's question comes from Roger in Kentucky. Roger writes, My wife and I have been married ten years and we have three children. I work as a federal law enforcement officer, and my wife is a teacher assistant. We make about one hundred and ten thousand dollars combined and we own two houses. Which one is a rental property? The issue I have is my wife keeps failing her final year in college and it's getting too expensive to keep letting her return.

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She's been attending college over the past eight years.

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I want to move from my career progression, but she doesn't want to leave. I could take a promotion in another state and make a hundred thousand dollars on my own. What should I do? I really wish my wife would find another job. I've explained to her if she was making more money, I could ease up on overtime and be home more full day. There's a lot here. Here's what I'll just call out immediately. If you've been in college for eight years and you continue to fail your last year, your last semester, it's not because you're not smart enough.

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It's not because there isn't the academic support and help and assistance for you. There's something else at play here, whether somebody is choosing or they are not intentionally but sabotaging themselves or this is the last shred of control to wife in this relationship has. But there's something bigger going on here than just simply I can't get past that last semester in college.

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Now, of course, depending on what you make it through three years of college, they're going to help you flunking out. Right. You have the intellectual gray matter to make it through the last year.

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You are correct. So I'm calling B.S.. That's right.

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And so what I this sounds harsh when I say it this way, but if you choose not to get the assistance, the tutoring, the support, I put it this way. Colleges have an incentive to help you graduate because that helps them with their rankings. That helps them with a number of internal metrics.

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Failing eight years in a row is their last semester is not good for their rep. It reflects bad on the college. Right. So if you are choosing to not do the things you need to do to pass.

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Yeah. Like go to class, do the homework, take the test, study for the test, that kind of stuff, then you are choosing to fail.

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Yeah. Either intentionally or subconsciously for to not get all psychobabble. So there's something else going on here, Roger, that sounds like you and your wife are not on the same page. And this is the last shred of control she has in this house.

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You are you think about tanking this deal that that's her holding on to what?

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Probably not intentionally, because he he because he wants you to go to work and big time and instead of just being an assistant and make some money and she's afraid of doing that.

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So the way to avoid that sabotage, not that directly, but it might be up with the kids late. I got to get up super early. I don't feel good. Little Timmy was sick today, so I couldn't go to class. I wasn't able to go to tutoring for this exam. I had to miss this exam. So you create this ecosystem where you were unintentionally not intentional. Right. And you are not successful with your final goal. And he wants to move.

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He wants her to make more money. He wants her to get another job. And I don't hear a lot about what does she want to do? What role does she see herself? What does she envision herself playing in this family? And it sounds like Roger and his wife are not together.

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They're not unified in this area for sure.

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Right. So what's the recommendation? What what do they do?

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The recommendation is Roger has some very clear goals for his wife. I'm going to recommend that. Roger, back out of the here's what you should be doing and here's what we could be doing.

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If he needs to sit down and ask his wife, what do you want to do? Do you want to be a stay at home mom?

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What's your perfect world look like in five years? There you go. And how do I help us get there?

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How do we get there together? Yeah.

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And. He might want to move, he might want to she doesn't want to leave. Well, he needs to take that into consideration. They need to have a unified conversation here because they're running two separate lives. They're roommates here.

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Huh? So you think the probability is he wants her to fail secretly because it keeps him in? It keeps his narrative going where he gets to move and take the other job. Well, it makes him the victim, right? And he gets to but he gets to throw out the maybe he creates the ecosystem where she can't win subconsciously or consciously, I don't know. So that this thing so it melts down and she has to give up and where we got to move and take my other job now, it could.

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And what you get is couples who get in this self reinforcing dance. I'm the victim. I'm the victim. I'm the winner. I'm the strong one. I'm the one keeping the house together. I'm the one keeping the money together. And then you get smart rolls up. Nobody wants to be in these situations. And that's when somebody's got to use your language. Someone's got to throw the flag, stop the dance, turn the music off, get away and say, what are we doing?

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Where are we going? I love you. Want to see you successful. And I feel like you're sabotaging my desire to come home.

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And this is thick enough in this language. They probably need to sit down with a good marriage counselor 100 percent, OK, and have somebody just have some might call. Time out and go. You're in crazy cycle here. Stop the crazy. Just stop dancing and just put it. All of the church calls it in love and respect. He calls it the crazy cycle that when someone doesn't get love, then they don't give respect or they don't get respect.

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They don't give love and they don't give love. They don't get respect. And male female in and around. And so begins the washing machine and cycle day.

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People will live in that dance for a decade because they don't want to have one heart stop the music conversation.

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They just continue and continue around you.

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If you stop the music in my my bitchier. That's exactly right. Musical chairs right now. So somebody stop. Metaphors are getting thick here, but yeah. OK, wow. That's very interesting. There's a lot between the lines there. A lot. Atlanta is on the line. Nick is calling. Hi Nick. Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show.

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Hi. How are you doing sir. Better than I deserve. What's up in your world?

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So long story short, I'm twenty seven years old. I'm a teacher, full time teacher. Mary, I'm engaged to be married this coming July with my fiance. Say yes. Thank you. Yes. You were blessed through bluster. Sure. We recently got home together and I guess I have kind of a two part question I just wanted to get your opinion on. If we are on a on the on the right path, doing things the right way financially.

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And then also any tips that you might have for a successful marriage in terms of combining finances, because you talked about before in the show, I want to talk to people that have in the game and it doesn't turn out not a quick fix, but the long term. So right now, just, you know, we're on baby step two. The only debt that we really have is is my student loan. She doesn't have any student loan. My student loan is about twenty five hundred dollars.

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I what will be your household income when you do get married in July. Ninety thousand dollars. Excellent. OK, good.

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Are you have you guys talked about stuff like the baby steps. You're obviously acquainted with them. Is she. Yeah, I talked about it with her, I listened to you pretty much every day, and she definitely knows who you are. I'm more, more, more knowledgeable about what your message is and what your steps are than she is. But she understands the philosophy. And, you know, I'm trying to get her on the same page as that as well.

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Well, I think the conversation starts with just something like the people who win with money and win with relationships.

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I'm reading about this, honey, are in agreement on their plan. And so let's look at this plan together and see if we can both be in agreement and enthusiastic about this plan. If not, we need to make up our own that we're both in agreement and enthusiastic about money is not the only way to get there. I believe with the data that we have that it's the shortest path to wealth. But but if you choose to go a different way, that's up to you.

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It's more important that you're in agreement and yet you follow me. That's what's more important. And then secondly, if you want to it the most efficient way, I would say ours is, but you can make that decision as adults. OK, let's get into agreement. So this is the time of year when everyone starts setting goals, going to the gym, quitting smoking, losing weight. Good for you. But what's equally important is making sure your family is taken care of by having term life insurance.

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Look, I've heard all the excuses, and I'm telling you, it's not expensive. It's not complicated. And you need to do this right now.

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So stop whatever you're doing and go to Zanders website right now and get your family protected. It's an absolute necessity.

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In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt free stage, somebody is with us. Tom's with us. Hey, Tom, how are you? Better than I deserve. Sir, how are you? Welcome. Where do you live? Sir Streator, Illinois. Welcome to Nashville and all the way here to do a debt free scream. Yes, sir. How much have you paid off, Tom? Forty eight thousand five hundred dollars for 23 months. 48 five in twenty three months.

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Making what kind of revenue?

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Income roughly from range started at fifty thousand and currently up to sixty seven thousand. What do you do for a living? I work for a trucking company as a manager of operations.

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Cool. OK, so in two years basically you paid off 25 grand a year roughly. Man, you've been on beans and rice.

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You've been getting after it. Yes, sir. Well done. Very well done. What kind of debt was the forty eight. Five.

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The vast majority of it was student loan debt. OK, I was a student loan debt, a little bit of credit card debt and the remainder of a car loan that I had.

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Yeah. So how long ago were you in school?

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I graduated in May of 2012.

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OK, so Sallie Mae had her own spare bedroom at your place. She just was hanging out for almost a freakin decade.

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Just about, yeah, just about. What was the wake up call? What happened twenty three months ago?

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Well, actually, Mike, anything kind of starts before that.

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I originally graduated college with about seventy five thousand dollars of student loan debt and I didn't quite get a degree and left handed puppetry, but it really pretty much wasn't much better than that.

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Do you want to share music merchandising? The miners use like technology and modern marketing. OK. Wow. OK. So and I immediately got out of school selling cars.

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OK, so I wasn't quite what I wanted to play music and on there or something like that. Right.

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But I just automatically as I was graduating I knew that this debt that I had for my student loan debt just was not I just was never comfortable with it as me. The time and paperwork and like there's something in my gut that's telling me I shouldn't I shouldn't be doing this. So when I finally graduated college, I saw this massive, you know, 75 grand and said, nope, this is getting out of my life. I don't want this anymore.

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This is going to ruin it. I need it. Stop. So I got to work, got to work and started, you know, paying things off, paying things off. And I was about as sharp as a sword started to go through it and I became bought as a butter knife. By the end, I had gotten to about about the forty five mark and just quit. And just about I was, I was pretty close to it.

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And yeah. Then here I am, got Gazal Antonsen area. How'd you meet.

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How'd you decide to do that. I mean took twenty three months ago something clicked. It did. And change and I actually discovered you owe me. So I was on my way home from Duluth, Minnesota and stopped at the gas station. And as I'm walking to the bathroom I see this face on my left and I turn kind of jumped a little bit and it was a picture of you actually it was the audio book of the Dave Ramsey Show. Oh, I told him I might go overseas.

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Now, what am I doing in a gas station? You're going to say gas station bathroom? Oh, no, not quite. OK, so I looked surprised it wasn't that expensive. I was like, oh, you know what? I've been filling this down. You know, why not? Let me give it a shot. The rest of the six hour drive home, listen to the Total Money Makeover audio book. And it was amazing because everything you were talking about was stuff I had already believed in.

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I just didn't really know how to vocalize. And the other part I related to it was so I was like, wow, this guy sounds exactly like my dad, but with a Southern accent.

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All right. I guess I can work with this. So listen to it. Prayed about it. Stock went down the YouTube rabbit hole of debt free screams and prayed about it and decided to go for it.

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That was May of twenty eighteen. Use the book and the YouTube stuff to get you going. Yes, sir. Very cool. Very cool.

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Wow. Proud of you. Manser And obviously your dad and mom are proud of you. They came down to cheer you on. They did scream. They did very nice.

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They they were my biggest critics turned into my biggest supporters because I actually got the Dave Ramsey Show podcast put on my dad's smartphone and he actually enjoyed it. And my mom and dad enjoyed it so much that they were actually here for their entree leadership events back in November. Yeah, yeah.

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I met your dad at the time. Yeah. Wow. Very cool. Very cool.

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So they were critical of you starting this process originally and you converted them? Sort of, yeah.

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All right. I thought you said I sounded like your dad, but with a southern accent you sounded like it but just did wrong order is he didn't like my order, OK? I had to him out on that.

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Good. So it was pretty much, you know, hammering me about investing for retirement. But I was like, no, I need to pay off this debt. OK, all right.

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Very cool. Well done. Thank you. And now they now they're cheering you on and here to cheer on your debt free scream, I sort of feel now that you did this, I can't even believe it.

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I can. But it's it honestly feels like the weight of the world's been taken off my shoulders. I mean, I just remember just being just just being down at work and just feeling like I've got a ball and chain. Right. Around my neck, just and it's dragging me through and just wearing me down, and I almost feel as light as a feather. I mean, it's it literally is an emotional pick me up. I love it.

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Changes everything. Changes everything.

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So with Dr. John sitting here with a Ph.D. in higher education, I'm curious, how did you select and what advice would you have for someone looking at a nuanced degree?

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Because that's a very, very specific, nuanced degree. Music merchandising, sir, which 12 years ago included CDs. Correct. And they actually sold CDs in stores at that time. And so merchandising music today would be all digital, obviously are virtually I mean, almost all digital and virtually it's not a good word to use now.

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But the anyway, how did you select that degree? What was it that was going on in your head? And what advice would you have for someone that had an interest in something like that?

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Because you obviously, if you had to do over, wouldn't do it. Yeah, exactly. That way. But no one is. Slow down.

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Slow down.

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I was one of I was a hothead when I was younger, admittedly, and I just kind of rushed into things, not really thinking of all the consequences. I did I did what my heart told me to do and not what my brain told me I probably should be doing. And really where you need to do is kind of do a kind of a combination of both. There has to be some common sense along with along with doing what your heart tells you.

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So no one is slow down. Number two is surround yourself with people who have have gone through it on Holby. Can give you advice to do it at free.

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Yeah, because, I mean, I was brought up in the generation of this is just what you do. You take out student loans. Sure.

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You go but just. Yeah. And don't go to private school. Don't go to private school. OK, all right. Cool. Well that's that's good information then. So well done.

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Thank you sir. Well done. Now you've been through Total Money Makeover. You've been down the YouTube wormhole. What advice do you have for someone listening? This is their first time to see a debt free scream or to hear a story like this. What should they do if they want to get out of debt?

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You can do it. I am a bright, but I will immediately. I am not the smartest person in the world you can do this. What turned me on was when Dave had his moment where he told the camera and he said, you you in the audience. Yes, you you can do this. Believe in yourself. You can do this. It's going to take work. It's going to be hard. At the end of the day. It is so, so worth it.

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Yeah. I mean, you you are on beans and rice for twenty four years. I mean you didn't have a life for twenty three months and. But you're free now. I am free now. You do anything you want to, any regulations. Very, very well done.

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All right Tom. Well done sir. Forty eight thousand five hundred dollars paid off in twenty three months, making fifty to sixty seven counted down. Lazzara debt free scream three, two, one. Oh good. Well done, sir. Well done. Wow, so I never thought I mean, we've talked so much about student loan crisis, we've talked so much about higher ed stuff over the years.

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But I never thought about the movie, make fun of left handed puppetry or, you know, beby stacking underwater or whatever and all these things you come up with.

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Right. These crazy degrees that nobody has a use for.

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But I never really thought about the idea that a general degree, like just a marketing degree versus a marketing degree for certain thing.

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Right. Had so much more application.

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It's just a broader brush. Right. And if most colleges you can take a couple of cognitive courses, they call them that, you get those specifics that you love and you can still go out and do a wide range of whatever that is in the field. Right. Without them degree being so nuanced. So. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Dr. John Deloney Ramsey personality is my co-host today here on the air, open phones, a triple eight eight two five five two two five.

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Jamie is with us.

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Jamie is in Sarasota, Florida. Hi, Jamie.

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How are you doing? Well, Dave, how are you and John doing? Great. How can we help guys? And to go straight to the point. I'm thirty eight married. Have a child one on the way. Yeah, baby. I know. Thank you, baby. Step six we owe on our mortgage thirteen thousand. We have about twenty seven thousand in savings so we're going to pay that bad boy pretty soon. Like today. In the next year.

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Like in the next few hours. Yeah.

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Ray, congrats.

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Oh yes. So I have a two part question with that background. Number one, first and foremost, this is not a forever home. In fact, we're probably going to be here probably another two, I'm assuming two, three years tops before my job moves me again. And I'm wondering, first and foremost, should I invest into this home, say, like gutters and fences and all that? And my second part to this question is that now that the home is going to be paid off now.

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Mm hmm. OK, well, now what is your max out?

[00:31:16]

All retirement and you begin to save outside of that towards your next purchase. And I've been doing the show coming up on 30 years. It's only in about the last five years that I've heard the phrase forever home because most people know there's no such thing.

[00:31:32]

You will never have a forever home. You're only forever home is heaven, because no matter where you move, you're going to move again.

[00:31:39]

You're not going to say your life changes, your phase of life changes and everything else. So anyway, it's it's just not a house you're going to stay in and you're going to move in the next two to three years. That's awesome. That's cool. So what what repairs or enhancements do you do to it?

[00:31:53]

Once there are two types, ones that are small enough that you can live up the enjoyment. In other words, whatever you spend, if you spend, you've got two little babies and you spend a couple of thousand bucks on a fence in the backyard and it helps, you know, that your little baby's playing in the backyard, are safe and not running wild out in the neighborhood or something, then that's probably worth that, even if the fence doesn't add value to the house, OK.

[00:32:20]

So that's one type of thing you would do, you know, it's a small enough investment that when you move, you just burn that money and it was just for the good of the three years of enjoyment, OK?

[00:32:30]

The second that type of thing you would do is you would talk to and help one of our real estate endorsed local providers and just say, OK, I'm thinking of spending this on the kitchen.

[00:32:42]

I think I spent seven thousand dollars on a kitchen in a house that's worth X. Do you think I'll get my money back? I don't think so. Well, you might. I mean, some things you might.

[00:32:52]

I don't know. How about your kitchen is OK, but, you know, does it increase the value dollar for dollar or more than you're spending?

[00:33:02]

Does it mean if you spend seven thousand increases the value of the home ten?

[00:33:04]

That's probably a good thing. Right. So you would do those kinds of things that increase the value equal to the thing you want to do or more especially if it's more you would do some stuff like that. So Gutta sounds like normal repairs that should have already been done. We've been here in the House for about two plus years, so, yeah, that was probably going to be my next project. Yeah, I mean, it's the roof is leaking.

[00:33:34]

You got to do that regardless, because it's just a repair has to be done. Yeah, right. I mean, we bought the house brand new, so we weren't.

[00:33:43]

What does it mean, gutters after three years, if it was brand new?

[00:33:46]

Well, that's really what I'm asking is, is it even worth investing in?

[00:33:50]

Now, why does it not have gutters? Oh, he just then covered gutters. It's a I mean, I don't put anybody on blast here, but it's a home.

[00:34:02]

The type of home you bought at the price range about just the standard model didn't have gutters. OK, so then the question, of course, you ask yourself is you get a bit on gutters and you ask yourself about increasing the value of the home by that, or am I going to get enjoyment of that much either one? The good news is going on a basic guttering system or something like that, a continuous flow. They bring the trucks out.

[00:34:23]

It's a pretty cool thing they do. And it's it's not very expensive. So it's not it's not a super high item. But my guess is you've got a neighborhood that some have Guterson. So it's not like Disvalue in the house and it's just causing damage or something else.

[00:34:39]

So you just got to look at all that and just kind of go, OK, is this a repair that should be done anyway or am I doing something that's not done in the neighborhood? An example, an extreme example would be if there are no swimming pools in your neighborhood and you put in a swimming pool, you're going to lose 80 percent of the money you spend on that.

[00:34:55]

It is not going to increase the value of the home, but about 20 percent of the cost. And so most of that you've got to do a lot of swimming in three years to come up, you know, to make to make that make sense. Right.

[00:35:06]

You can't be out there every day, so otherwise it just doesn't make sense. But that's that's the thing you look at is am I increasing the value more or at least as much as I am spending. Jak's in Atlanta. Hi, Jake. How are you? Good. How are you doing? Great, man. What's up?

[00:35:23]

My wife and I are here. We have just a couple of questions about next steps. So we've been following your plan for several years. Led us to being debt free in twenty nineteen. Way to go. Was thank you. Which is good timing considering 20/20 happened right after that. Yeah. So currently where we stand, I'm in the film industry. My wife is a marketing director for a real estate company. So our income fluctuates from time to time.

[00:35:57]

You know, there's years that are really, really good, the years that are decent, you know, the bills paid. And we have a little bit of extra savings.

[00:36:06]

She's probably having a great year. And you're not.

[00:36:10]

Yeah, yeah. Basically all that. I was on unemployment, so that kind of threw obviously a big wrench in our our plans because we were looking to buy a home come February of last year. We actually found out we were pregnant. So we have a brand new daughter. All right. I was born in October and we are stuck in a one bedroom loft right now. So the space is very tight. But we have done definitely the best we possibly can considering where we're at.

[00:36:45]

And we'd like to buy a house. We'd like to, you know, get into the steps of like a possible five twenty nine, you know, investing, you know, doing everything that we can do to maximize where we're at right now. And we kind of don't know what to tackle first. I'm back at work.

[00:37:06]

OK, so you are debt free 100 percent because you're renting. You have an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses. We do we have about 10K, you know, good, OK. And are you putting money into retirement yet? No, because we put that on hold so we could pay off all the debt.

[00:37:25]

OK, and now are you going to keep it on hold to save up for a down payment on a house if you do? OK, that's one of our plans.

[00:37:31]

We were thinking about that. But I you know, I'm 35. She's thirty two, so.

[00:37:37]

Well, you're not going to say for ten years. With that, you're going to say for 10 years or so, for 10 months, correct? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:37:46]

That's what I mean. You're not going to stay out of retirement long if you do. But if you want to go out and start retirement and save for a house, that's fine. Or sometimes people pause on retirement just a little bit and do what we call baby step three, be in safer house. So four is 15 percent of your income into retirement, five years kids college of six years pay off the house that you haven't yet bought. Correct.

[00:38:05]

And that's the baby steps. And if you'll just walk them that way, you're going to get to everything. You're going to have a baby. Your baby is going to have a college fund. You're going to get there. You're going to be putting money into retirement. You're going to get there and you can either do all of that and then save more slowly for a home or you can save faster for home and put everything on hold temporarily and do it, baby.

[00:38:29]

Step three B and that'll get you there. So it's here's what I hear. Here's what I hear. His voice. Dave, I know that we're supposed to do this in order, but we want a house right now. Can we go ahead and just put one percent down and do it? No. And you may have to go to a two bedroom apartment for another year. Right. And it's nobody wants that. It's not really fun.

[00:38:51]

But you got if you can't live where you are. That's right. You're gonna have to go rent something for another year while you save up your down payment.

[00:38:56]

And it's moving twice and all that. Yeah, that's OK. It's better in the long run. Oh definitely. Definitely.

[00:39:01]

Definitely. Oh, I'm sorry I missed that. Good catch. All right. That puts us out that remember show on the books. Thanks to James Childs, our producer, Kelly Daniel, our associate producer and phone screener. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, and we'll be back. I have a friend or family member that needs a daily dose of Ramsay advice in their life, let them know about the Ramsey Call of the Day podcast. It's a quick hit of advice about life and money in under ten minutes.

[00:39:47]

Check out the Ramsey Call of the Day podcast wherever you listen to podcast. Money isn't the only thing we talk about around here, get life changing advice on your career from my good friend and career expert Ken Coleman. Oh, my Ken Coleman show. According to a recent Gallup poll, nearly 70 percent of Americans are disengaged at work. If you dread going into work every Monday morning and you're just trying to make it to the weekend. The Ken Coleman show is for you.

[00:40:18]

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[00:40:44]

Hey, it's James, producer of The Dave Ramsey Show. This episode is over, but check the episode notes for links to products and services you've heard about during this episode. Thanks for listening.