Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the rental car studio, this is the Dave Ramsey Show, where America hangs out to have a conversation about your life and your money. I'm Dr. John Dulaney and I'm here with the smartest man on the Ramsey personality squad. That's a good friend, Mr. Anthony O'Neill. It is not. We are taking your calls on life and money. Give us a call at eight, eight to five. Five to five.

That's eight eight two five five two two five. And I want to go ahead and correct myself. It is not the dollar rental car studio. It is the dollar car rental studio. I'm getting it, James. I'm getting it.

I'm brings friends a dollar rental car rental. You guys are awesome luck. All right, let's go straight to the phones. Let's go to Lee in Lincoln, Nebraska. Lee, how are we doing?

Standing pretty good. Outstanding. How can anything I help? How to handle finances when your spouse has a mental illness. Hmm. So tell me what's going on. Well, we're already pretty far down the road when we sell our house after one kid is gone. I went back to work full time and I thought after the house sale that he'd kind of figure out that he's been living beyond his means. But that's not the case. And he hasn't filed taxes for two years.

And so finally this year, I felt married, but separately just to protect myself. But I know he's got a credit card balance and he's going to have his tax issues come up. And I'm wondering, is there some way to protect what did I saved? What type of mental illnesses struggle with bipolar two? OK. Is he medicated to take care of us? Does he take care of himself with the doctor? He does I can't say that it seems like it's all good because a lot of sleeping involved.

Yeah.

Are you are you done with this relationship? Oh, no. So you're fully in? I am, yeah.

OK, so what are you doing to help unify this this marriage? And what I mean by that is right now it sounds like you are taking steps to begin protecting yourself, to begin building walls around yourself. And that's why I asked you if the relationship's over. Or are you guys working together to make sure he's getting the right medical care? If what if the care he's under now isn't working? What steps are you taking to support your going together and getting the medical care he needs, making sure he's got boundaries in his life that are going to protect the entire family?

Well, you know, I can suggest things for him to talk about at his doctor's appointments, but I don't he has not given me medical permission to speak to the doctor. OK, so, yes, it's about as far as I can go.

Yeah, it is. And at the end of the day, working with somebody, being in love with somebody, being connected and being a a spouse of somebody with bipolar who won't take care of themselves or is unable to take care of themselves and doesn't continue to take care of their medication and won't go back. It's say it's a for lack of a better term. That's a nightmare. That's a very challenging situation. You'll have little kids, too.

And we have a teenager who's a couple years away from college and a 10 year old.

OK, and how are they doing? We're doing OK. I don't think the 10 year old really understands, you know, it just seems like Dad's tired a lot. My teenager understands.

OK, so do you have a group of people in your life that you can count on that will help you be accountable, help you come up with budget plans, help you come up with relational plans?

Well, the budget side of things like I personally am OK after I filed for taxes, but before that I split up what was left of our savings, which wasn't a lot. And I just told them I couldn't I couldn't manage not knowing where his spending would take place. And so I gave him half and I kept half. And I just submit to him kind of our monthly expenses that are either our shared or kids. And he has been faithful to pay half of that.

And that way, if he's making personal purchases, it's not affecting. You know what I'm what I'm trying to save and do. And so I use every dollar and I've got my little I'm on baby three and I'm halfway there. So, Lee, you are taking baby steps out of the relationship. Yeah, yeah, and I know I know you're doing it to protect yourself and I know you love yourself and your kids. And I'm not saying what you're doing is wrong.

I'm just telling you, I want you to as a as a neutral guy out here, I'm telling you, you're taking steps out of this relationship.

Well well, I think I respectfully disagree with you. Because. Why? Because I think she said, you know, she said, I'm still in it. And I hear it in her voice that she still loves her husband.

Right. Yeah, yeah, so I think I think. And I'm trying to say the words correctly and respectfully, since you're saying that you still want to be there, which I am rooting for you and I am so happy that you still want to be there, you have to start making decisions for the both of you, not just for yourself, because if something happens to him, it's going to impact your family. And so what I'm saying is what you got to do is maybe you have to step up to the plate and tell your husband, hey, moving forward, I'm going to deal with our finances.

This is your budget that you have to spend money on. And because of. Unfortunately, Bay, I love you and I want to make sure that, you know, we we not I protect the family. We're going to just these funds are going to stay over here. I'm going to manage this until we can make sure that you're in a healthier place to help manage the money. Because if he does get audited and if he does get something from the IRS that's going to impact you and your kids, if someone does come after him for collection call, that's going to impact you and your kids.

So with that being said, I think you all need to have every dollar budget. I think you all need to file taxes. If he refused to file taxes, I could be wrong here because I'm not married. So you speak into this, please. I mean, I'm a married couple speaking to this, but I'm pretty sure you can still talk to the doctor about your husband. You can't go wrong with that one. That's why I'm single.

And then as well, we got to figure out how you all both can file taxes.

So as a couple. Yes, but in what she's saying is she's choosing to take to to protect her finances there.

Lea, you gave me something that was encouraging. You said that when he is responsible for his stuff, he's he takes care of it. He pays me for the bills, the half of the bills that I, you know, I take care of managing those things and then I just let him know what has happened. But I don't think I'm I'm not allowed into his finances. I don't have access to what is now his bank account, his credit card account.

I don't know truly what he makes, although he's told me a ballpark that I know that he's got credit card debt.

You don't know what is. He's got no, I know the ballpark.

He took a new job. But I think because he either doesn't want to live the way I do or is now so far into, you know, a lot of habit to the span many years that he and, you know, I'm sure, John, you know, that and I kind of heard this in earlier calls. You have to be careful as a wife how you approach your husband. And there's lots of bad mistakes I've made. So we kind of can't talk about finances.

So what I'm going to tell him, I'm going to tell you, like, you've got to, OK? You have to if you're now you're going to have to get with a professional. You're going to have to get with a marriage counselor. You're going to have to get with somebody who will speak truth into both of your lives. And I want to fully tell you, I get it. I've walked alongside folks with bipolar and it's tough, tough, tough, especially when they won't take their medication.

But I've also worked a lot, walked alongside folks with bipolar who who are able to make decisions in their life that are positive and beneficial. And they have the ability to choose to get well. And it sounds like you all are living two separate lives. You are living lives as roommates. And it sounds like you want to love this man and you want to stay committed to him. And what I want to tell you is, unless you start working real hard to join back together and I know that's hard, this relationship is going to continue to fracture.

So find somebody you can walk alongside and come together. OK, we'll be thinking about you. 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. So we only sell direct to, you know, retail markups, no middlemen to deal with, just amazingly handsome cowboy boots for men and women.

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This is the Dave Ramsey Show, I'm John Dulaney, my good friend, co-host Anthony O'Neal taking your calls on life and money at eight eight two five five two two five eight eight, 25, 52, 25. Let's go to Cesar in Chicago, Illinois. Cesar, how are we doing this afternoon?

Hey, how are you doing, guys? All right. How can we help? OK, I'm going to try to be a little bit of I'm sorry, a little nervous. I want to try to be brief. And somehow I'm in a mess and I don't know what to do next. I called Dave about a month ago. I had a name for my name, Life Without Another Staff, with the IRS that's being taken care of right now.

But I want to help. But my issue is that right now I'm seven months behind on my mortgage. And on top of that, I got forty five thousand dollars on that. Now, I don't know what to do after this issue with the IRS. So how do I tackle all of this?

What happened, Matt? Why are you behind seven months?

So you're to call it. I took a lot of paper in my company because I was I was still I wasn't given the option of pretty much. No, I mean, they still kept me in the company for I mean, inaudible, which was that was not a pay cut. So on top of that, I want a rental property and you know, when to stop paying the rent. So I took another step. So, you know, just I kind of freaked out and I was giving off a chance for parents program to delay my mortgage payments.

So I took that opportunity just to try to figure out what going on in the meantime. So now it's seven months now. And I'm I'm a little bit back on my feet, you know, and my wife, you know, kind of got a little intense. I picked up a part time. She picked up another part time, so whatever, and come back to roughly around eighty six thousand eighty six a year. Yes. OK, how much is your.

Yes. I mean, what's your mortgage payment are twenty two hundred. OK. All right. So your 16 grand in the hole and your mortgage payments on top of it. OK. Yes.

And as a part of this this program delay, do they expect a lump sum repayment or do they just bump it to where they're just going to add seven months to the back end of your mortgage? Professor forbearance.

This is the thing. So my six months expires. So I was given the option to delay it to another six months. So I did just to be safe. But, you know, they are I have several options where they go ahead and start making payments on this to try to apply for the first payment to the general if I qualify. To figure out, you know, how to pay the small payments. So I'm just a little I'm just a little bit worried because of the tax issue with the IRS.

Hasn't been resolved yet. A day of advice that I should tackle that first before anything else. Stop everything that I'm doing, baby steps. And I know it's it's it's gotten a little bit more complicated with the taxes. It's costing me a lot more money than I anticipated. And I don't know how much is owed. Yeah. Once I get that final number, I don't know where I'm going to go. If I'm going to take all the taxes that might not affect my mortgage.

And David's right. I'm having a.

So so Dave is right now, Dave said don't attack the baby steps. No, but he was saying was not do not make mortgage payments. OK, I know. Yeah. So I want to make sure that that's very clear, just even for our callers. And so I agree the IRS situation is big. I need you to take care of that. Here's the problem that I'm having. If you're making about seventy two hundred dollars a month gross, this means that you bring home about maybe five fifty fifty five hundred dollars a month net, correct.

That's correct, yeah, with the twenty hundred dollar mortgage, you near 40 to 45 percent with with your mortgage and that's a lot.

So to me, you're you're a little over your head as far as in your income, I would suggest looking at possibly selling the house and maybe downsizing, maybe to rent something for a little while, giving your wife some time to get back on your feet and to get a bigger down payment down and get into a house that's 25 percent of your net pay. Check this out. Not not not your income or your rental properties. Not not your income or extra things.

No. What do you know you have coming in and go from there? Because right now, with seven months behind and you're deferring it again. Yeah. You can look at deferring it until the end of your loan, but you're still going to have it. Twenty two hundred dollar mortgage payment and you're only bringing home about 55, 54 hundred dollars.

And so you're really you're really riding a tough line. So I'm looking at, OK, how can me and my wife reset. And there's nothing wrong with downsizing. There's nothing wrong with realizing, all right, we need to downsize a little bit, get back on our feet. We can attack the taxes because that's that's priority right now. We don't need any garnishments on our income. We don't need anything like that right now that would add more stress.

So I would look into that on seeing what can you do to sell the home to get out of that. Now, the rental property, that's another conversation. Are the renters back?

I actually live in the rental property. Oh, so what? So I bought this property four years ago, so I wanted to buy water. I want to do something. I'm pretty handy. I wanted to tackle a project. I went over my head. My money was gone in no time. So it's a it's a three it's a three year sentence. So I'm living the one regret I had. Well, it is not nine hundred dollars per unit that's coming in.

Yeah. So last year I decided to renovate one of the units and I go to the house, so that's income coming in. So I still have one and it's still being rented out, which is roughly ten thousand a year. So that's the one that is tough for, you know, the beginning of the march when the pandemic starts. And are they just recently started playing it cool.

And will you be able to get the other unit rented out within the next 30 to 60 days?

That's my best guess. I'm stuck here because that unit right now, it's symbionts. I mean, it's there's nothing in there. I mean, I guess I have to put about twenty to thirty thousand dollars to target if I go. Yeah. Yeah. And put my income up because there's no I mean one has got a lot, a lot in the area that is like thirteen hundred dollars per unit.

So right now it sounds like Caesar is, you're just living above your means right now and you're hoping that someone else will come in there and live off of it. Athena, we recommend this. Why we suggest doing a cash when you're doing investments now this is your priority. But even if it was your main home, for example. Right. And you want to rent out the other two, you need to be able to handle this all on your own with no issues.

And it sounds like you're banking on someone else. So you're in a tough situation. You know, for me, you know, I'm looking at selling a unit, missing out on making some money so I can get back on my feet, get a fully funded emergency fund up, get out of this IRS issue, and then I'll go back and going ahead and look into some possible things to do in the future. I'm or you can look at deferring it.

If you get it deferred, you're just going to be living paycheck to paycheck man for for a long time. And that's not what I want you to do.

It sounds to me, Anthony, like our friend Caesar's broke. And until he has that realization, yeah, he's going to try to continue to duct tape together a current lifestyle, the current place, the current this him making seventy one hundred dollars.

He's not broke. But what he is doing, he's doing way over his. Yes, exactly. He's not really creating a cushion and margin in his life to live a comfortable financial peaceful life. And so we see this all the time. We see people get, you know, their mortgage or their rent payments right around in between forty to up. Sometimes I've seen up to about 55 percent of their take home pay. And then when something happens like covid, when something happens, like in an unexpected emergency, they're stressed.

And so what I want for him is like, hey, I don't want you to lose your dream, but I do want you to understand that sometimes you got to step back right when you have a rubber band and you want to sling that thing over there for, you know, yea, so but you got to pull that rubber band back so we can go a lot further. If I just hold the rubber band right here and let it go, it's going to drop straight down.

That's right. And that's what's happening to him right now. I feel as if he needs to pull himself back a little bit. So that way when he pulls himself back any less himself, he's going to go further than where. He is to launches. That's right. Exactly. Well, Anthony, you're wise, I'm not wise. I just work with Dave. You're wise. You're wise, Cesar. You got what you paid for on that one.

It's a good man. Anthony O'Neill, this has been the Dave Ramsey Show. This is the Dave Ramsey Show, and I'm John Boloney with my good friend Anthony O'Neal. The blind dotcoms, 100 percent satisfaction guaranteed means. Even if you miss, measure or pick the wrong color, they'll remake your blinds for free. You get free samples, free shipping. And with the new promos they run every month, you'll save even more. Use promo code Ramsey to get the best deal.

Rules and restrictions apply. Today's question comes from Lannett in Minnesota. My 31 year old stepson moved in with us last November. He worked as an internal auditor in the past. He's not been able to find a job. He's had a few interviews, but no offers. And I'm frustrated because he doesn't do much around here. But we provide three meals and a lower level of the house for him. His dad has been helping him out with living expenses.

I think he is too comfortable here and there's no reason to find work and leave. What do you recommend we do that we do so we can go back to being empty nesters, take him out, kick him out. Here's a cool thing you can do be parents, make adult decisions. Lannett, you know the answer. You've made life too comfortable. As our friend Dr. Henry Cloud says, your son has no problems. He's got free rent.

He's got free food. He's got a warm, safe place to stay with his mommy and his daddy. And he's got no reason to go look for work.

None, not one little bit. So you can kick him out. You can give him rules, you can make him pay rent. You can say, I'm not going to feed you anymore. You can do any number of things that are about setting boundaries and deciding we want to be empty nesters. Our kids are grown. They're in their 30s, and it's time for us to return to our bliss of empty nest thing. So it's a decision.

Lynnette, John, you mean you spending too much time and you being too guy 31 years old, give him 31 days, find a job and you have to go buy you put the pressure on this grown man and let him know you have 31 days because you're thirty. So we won't give you extra day. One day per year, one day per year. Get a job. He can he can start driving for Uber today. He can start delivering pizza today.

So there's no excuse to why this grown man cannot have a job and do something to go towards his life.

So if you really want to be empty nesters, do what my daddy did when I was 19, not 31, not 25 when I was 19.

You are out by. And that grew me up fast. And I knew exactly what what I had to do, become a young man.

Here's thing. When there's no cell phone calls, we spent too much time. This question, it's the easy answer. Oftentimes we see too many.

Boys, I call them grown boys in a grown man's body. Because and the parents are teaching them it's OK to have a boy mindset and to act like a child in a grown man's body or grown woman's body. And so if you want to make sure that your son is forget about you being empty nesters knows you're is your son.

You're hurting your child. Yeah, it's your son. You just kick them out. Goodbye. Bye bye. My son is not staying in my house past 25. I'm staying that right now. He graduate from college. He got one year to come home after that.

Goodbye. He's got one year gallingly. One year. If you graduate at 20, you got to 21. Goodbye. I love it. Let's go to Lydia in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Lydia, how are we doing?

Oh, hi. How are you guys? I'm doing great. I'm so excited to talk to the both of you. Thank you so much for everything you do.

You betcha. How can we help today?

OK, so last month my husband and I just got out of that debt free. Fourteen thousand dollars in seven months. So excited. So basically, I am working to be a professional actor and I'm so excited that like the computer on today and he's thing today, I am calling to get your advice on following my passion. This is something that makes me happy. And basically I'm doing everything on my own. And I even started like writing and producing my own short films.

I'm dealing with a lot of like Seares, you know, the Tovan here. And I'm not getting a lot of acting opportunities. And I'm looking for an agent and like I'm I'm basically ready to link up and move, like if I get signed on with an agent. But I'm just like Gillings. A lot of fear and anxiety about like. Will I ever get another job, you know, or will and have to, like, keep producing my own films and that's like, you know, can be like a financial task in itself.

And so. So. So how can we help you, Lydia?

Well, I really I guess I'm really just like looking for like some encouragement and advice, like in regards to like. You know, keeping keep in, moving forward, and I know I know, Dr. John, you talk a lot about people pursuing their passions, but I'm really just looking for language. Yes.

So if you're looking for a country, if you're looking for cure, Anthony, I'm going to tell you, go get him. We hope it works out well for you. Yeah, that's us encouraging. So a couple of things you mentioned here. Number one, going for your passion is good. So is paying rent. So is eating.

Right. Right. Knowing the difference between working towards a career, being passionate about art and wanting to be famous, those are all different things. If you love acting and you love filmmaking and you love writing, then keep making your own shorts. Keep making your own films. Keep sending them out to everyone in the world. You are you are creating art in a snapshot in history when you can put it up on the Internet and have people from all over the world see it at the push of a button that's never been done before in the history of the world.

If you want to be famous and you want to make it quote unquote the big time, which is never what people think it is, then you're in four seasons of rejection. You're in seasons of hard, hard, hard work that nobody sees. You're in seasons of writing your own scripts over and over that. And they're going to stack up in piles, news scripts, short scripts, feature scripts that no one will ever read because you're practicing. You're going to take every acting gig you can.

You're going to do a scene reads with your husband at your house trying to improve your craft. And you have to recognize you're in the middle of a pandemic.

And the entire industry just shut down overnight for a while. And so it's all of that all at once.

And so you're going to have to really ask yourself, why do you want to act? Why do you want to create art? Why do you want to create film? Do you have a voice? Do you have something you want to say? Do you want to bring joy and humor to the world or scary movies? What is the thing that you want to do? And then you're going to have to look for every single opportunity to do it.

What's your YouTube channel? So my watch intuitively and calm, OK, but watch a YouTube channel insulin's create. OK, so YouTube me telling the story and then it's a no.

OK, so you have one. So I just want to make sure you have one, because I think like what he was saying in today's day and time is, you know, if you really want to be an actor, you got to build your own fan base on YouTube because your actors, not your actors, but your agents want to see if you have your own fan base. So I would highly suggest that you have a job, you pursue your job while you're building your fan base and you're and seeing what your fan base is saying.

So I don't know if you have a job right now, but that's why I asked a question. You know, do you have a YouTube? Do you have an Instagram? Are you utilizing social media to see if people actually like what you're doing? And while you're doing this, you're working for an actual job and you're working with writers.

You are having folks that you zoom with once a week to review each other's scripts. You're doing scene reviews, you are doing anything and everything to grow your craft, grow your craft and to get better and better at this.

Yeah. And then when you have the opportunity to sit down with an agent and those those interviews are sometimes rare, they're sometimes quick. You're able to say, like Anthony said, here's this. Here's this. Here's this. Here's all my graphs. Here's all my shorts. Here's all of the crowd I've already established on my own. You really want me in your films? Absolutely. And now you're off to the races and you really want to be a conversation.

And I ask that because my brother in law does that. And he has already two offers with my siblings, not my siblings, with my nieces and nephews, because he built a YouTube and a social media world.

There you go. Love it. Go get it. Lydia, you got our full support. We hope it goes well for you. Grind it out and grind it out and keep working on your craft. Absolutely. Good for you. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. If you're like me, Drivetime has become podcast time, and if you listen to a podcast, too, you're going to love this. The brand new Ramsey network app is like a podcast player with all of our shows in one place.

This is how you get better in every area of your life. We're talking about the Dave Ramsey Show, The Chris Hogan Show, Rachel Cruze, Ken Coleman, Christy Wright, Entre Leadership and the Borrowed Future podcast.

My new show, all of it all in one place you can browse by topic, save your favorite clips and share them with your friends. Get better in every area of your life, from your money to your career to your business. Never again should you struggle to find the education and empowerment you need to improve your life. Download our Ramsey Network app today in the App Store. Just search for Ramsey network. All right. Let's go to Michael in Kansas City, Missouri.

Michael, how are we doing?

Oh, I'm doing all right. How are you? Outstanding. How can we help you today?

Well, the thing is, is I've been dancing like warehouse job, warehouse job. I'm 27 years old with no marketable skills for a career, and I've got thirteen thousand in debt. And I don't know where to start with anything. Hold on.

Hold on. Michael, you have no marketable skills. Who who told you?

Have I myself really?

Why would you tell yourself that? Well, you know, I look around and see, you know, all my all my friends and family doing pretty well for themselves. And, you know, I've just kind of stuck and don't know where to go.

What do you want to do? I really don't know that's the problem, it's a me problem. Hmm. What brings you joy, Michael, when you look at the picture, you've the imaginary picture you've painted for yourself.

What's that look like? Well, yes, the one thing that really brings enjoy is vehicles. OK, tell me about it.

I guess when I was like 14 or 15 out of my dad and I were still in a car together. Hmm. You get restored ever since. Yeah, we did. It was 87 Suzuki Samurai. Hmm. Good memories with your old man. Yes. Are you good at working on cars? I'm embarrassing about it, Anthony. I'm terrible at it. Yeah, me too. That's why I pay people to do it. That's exactly right. That's why people like you are important in guys like me and Anthony's life.

Michael.

So what's stopping you from. Getting online there in Kansas City, Missouri, finding a place where you can take some classes on how to work on cars and get your hands dirty.

Nothing. Never really thought about it that way. Hmm, Michael, do you ever sit back and just ask yourself, like, where am I going? Because I see that you pay attention to your peers and your family members around you, but are you paying attention to yourself? Do you look at yourself in the mirror? Do you wake up and talk to yourself? I think right now the reason why you feeling overwhelmed is because you're not making yourself a priority and you're not making yourself really sit down and focus on your life, because at 27 years old, you're still young, but you're still young enough to understand.

OK, here are my strips. Here are my weaknesses. Here's what I can do. You are marketable, but you're only marketable based upon what you believe in yourself. So I believe you don't even believe in your own self and your own capabilities. And so I think what you need to do to get started is really sit down to just think about your life, where you're going identify what are your strengths, what do you really like doing, not just what you're passionate about, but what are you good at doing?

If are you good with your hands? Are you good with with reading? Are you good with talking? Are you good with thinking through problems like what are your strengths, match that with your passions and then what. I want you and want you to write down this website right now. I'm going to have you stay on the line when John and I get done with you. I'm a Have Kelly give you a copy of Kinko's is the proximity principle because he really helps you understand how to plan and really get the job that you need and get into the career field that you really, really want.

And he walks you through the whole process of your passion. You need your skills, all that type of good stuff that I think right now for you and where you are in life will be a great, great, great fit. But let me tell you this much. You're going to always feel this way if you do not sit down and really think about, OK, where am I going in life? You have to start and be honest with you on the show today and be vulnerable.

I would be very vulnerable. I have to even stop looking at the other personalities, because when I look at other person, I was on the way. I should be doing that or other people. I need to be doing this. I have to start focusing more on me. And you have to do that to cut off your family members for a little bit, cut off it for a little bit, cut off looking to other people for a little bit and just focus on yourself.

And then you start feeling excited. You start having clarity about where you're going. When you start reading this book from Kinko Me, you were like, yo, OK, this is me. And if you can focus on you for the next 90 days, I promise you you won't feel overwhelmed. You will know where you need to start and you will see your future turning around.

Do you hear that, Michael? Yeah, I'm here. Did you hear what Anthony just said? Yeah, I've got to run down. That's good advice. Outstanding really thought about before.

And here's here's one more thing I want you to do. I want you to get an index card, and I want you to for the next 90 days, we're going to be a 90 day challenge and you know where to find us. Our phone is Triple 8255. I want you to call us back in 90 days. I want you to get that index card. And I want you to create, just for Michael, a morning routine that you will stick to for three months, because it's going to start with this idea that Michael is worth investing.

Yeah. And it's going to start with I'm going to go for a walk in the morning. I'm going to have a gratitude journal. I'm going to take a few minutes and just say I'm grateful for these two or three or four things.

Yeah. And then it's going to say, I'm worth the following and here's what I'm doing to invest in myself, and that might be going to classes, that might mean meeting with a mentor. That might mean reading Ken's book. Again, that might mean any number of things, but it starts with you investing a little bit in yourself every day and it starts with you talking better to yourself about yourself.

You know, the greatest enemy to our success is our distractions and his our excuses. Hmm. And I think some of our distractions comes from our loved ones, our peers, social media. We see everyone else winning. We see everyone else succeeding in certain areas that we want to succeed in. And so it makes us discount who we are as individuals.

And then it's our excuse, our excuse to cut off those distractions and really hone down into who am I, where am I going. The reason why you're still in debt is because you're trying to maintain the lifestyle that you see other people distractions doing. And that's just something that I have to remind myself every single day, seeing other personalities out there in the world who are winning in spaces. I you know, Anthony, focus on you, focus on your calling, focus on what you are passionate about doing and just focus there.

Don't don't worry about them. Don't worry about John or worry about Chris Hogan. Don't worry about this person. I worry about that person. Focus on you. And you really do that. It just feels so refreshing to do that. But this in these days and times, man, we we want to blend in with the Joneses. You know, we want to we want to see what they're doing and. Oh, I need to be doing it.

No, you need to be where you are. They could be on stage at number ten. But if you're still no one appreciates their number one, because if you get to see their number ten, you don't know what they did to get up there. You don't know the hurdles. You don't know how many toes. They broke knees. They broke backs. They broke to get up there. And you don't you don't know. Right. So appreciate where you are.

Learn where you are and prove where you are swimming. You do get to level ten when you do get that success, when you do become debt free, you can handle that season at year end and continue to grow.

That's right. I, I can't tell you how often I get distracted. And you know this, Anthony. Better the most. I've been pretty open with you. I didn't have social media before you did. I didn't have any I didn't know any of this stuff.

And it is unbelievable how much the comparison game lodges itself in your soul does when you live in it, right? Yeah.

And every day, my biggest my biggest distraction is comparison. Yeah, it is. And our friend Rachel and Christy, they're always telling us guys comparisons. The thief ajoy man, it will steal it out from under you. They've got this. They've got this. She's got that.

And I'm telling you right now, you've got to get focused on where you want to be, what you want to do, who you're going to help serve. And then you've got to get a group of people that will walk alongside you, turn the blinders off.

When we compare ourselves to other people, we tell God who created us my belief that we do not appreciate him making us. And that's the last thing I want to do.

That wraps up another hour of TDRS with John Deloney and my good friend Anthony O'Neal. We'll see you soon. This has been the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, if you've got questions about retirement investing or becoming an everyday millionaire, go bigger and broader with my man Chris Hogan on the Chris Hogan Show.

I am excited to be able to talk to you all week in and week out. We're going to focus on your calls and it's going to focus on building wealth investing and how to become an everyday millionaire. Subscribe to the Chris Hogan Show wherever you listen to podcast.

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.