Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the car rental studios. It's the Dave Ramsey Show work that is done. Cash is king. The paid off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. Thank you for joining us. America open phones at Tripoli, eight two five five two two five. That's Tripoli eight two five five two two five.

Stephen is starting off this hour in Orlando. Hi, Stephen. How are you?

I'm doing good around. The holidays are better than I deserve. What's up? I got to tell you, it's an honor and I'm almost certain to be talking to you. So bear with me. No trouble. It turns out that covid stress tested my capacity and to my surprise, I was skinny dipping. I've got a call right now that please don't scare me. Twenty six percent. That's before I even care to know you. I don't know if you're radio or you as a person.

And of course, I went through what were dealing with with with my family, I guess support or, you know, you don't have anywhere to kind of have to go through with it. So, you know, being reluctant to do anything, you know, I still sign for the car and whatever. That was three years ago. Fast forward to today, of course, covid by my employers. Cable down, woke up at 40. I base my life around the all the time.

And basically I am saying it will look like he's having issues. So right now, basically I'm focused on running and I don't make enough to switch, you know, to to pay for the repairs or just pay for the car basically. And forgive me if it sounds like I'm being a victim or anything like that.

No, you're not. You're not. You just it's it's just a mess, man. I'm sorry you're there. Yeah, I understand. I've done lots of stupid stuff, so I don't have any trouble. It's no fun to be there. I'm sorry you're there. OK, so what's it take to fix the car. What's wrong with it?

I'll be honest with you, I'm mechanically inclined. We even to my family helped me out taking the car to the dealer because again, I just wasted just about every choice to fix on the car. I spent about seven hundred seven hundred dollars, somebody step one. And I'm I'll be really honest with you. I'm kind of holding those three hundred dollars up because I'm scared to lose that for sure, because I don't know when I know what I'm asking is what does it take to get the car repaired.

Well, I took it to the dealer and they told me to fix what I already replaced, which is, you know, the throttle body on the car and I mean, replace it with the same brand, you know, the car cars, parking lot. Again, I think, you know, one thing, if it's not that, it's the other. I guess my my question is, do you know what it takes to get the car running?

The no, not because I put it to the dealer, that's the first goal now is to get a mechanic or to get a couple of opinions and let's figure out what it takes to get the car running. That gives us a goal. So it's not running at all. It's completely sitting there.

How are you getting to work, co-workers or family or how long has this been going on? On and off for about a month and a half.

OK, so big deal. We need to get this thing in front of a couple of different mechanics ASAP and say what's it take to get this car running or if it's running? Once we know that, let's just make up a number. OK, I'm just going to pick one out of the air as an example. We need a goal. In other words, let's say it takes twelve hundred dollars to get it fixed. Well, you need to find twelve hundred dollars by working extra selling stuff, doing all kinds of crazy things.

Anything you can do right. In order to take a weekend gig that you don't want to do. But go do it anyway and have some kind and get some money scratched together. Let's get the stupid car fixed because it can't sell it the way it is. Then once we fix it, we say, all right, what's the car worth? What do you think? It's worth fixed.

Watch it. Once it's running, I just stick it on the TV. And you know this operating conditions are not about a thousand dollars. Oh, it's not worth anything. Yeah. OK, and what do you owe on it. About thirty one hundred dollars. Oh great news.

OK, super. We're not fixing this car. You can probably sell it for a thousand dollars without fixing it. Most anything will bring a thousand dollars salvage, if nothing else. OK. OK. And then you've got to have the 2100 now we've got a different target, so we've got to pay this off. Who is this 26 percent rip off Scrooge?

You loan with American credit acceptance. Aren't they wonderful people? Just helpful they are so you need to call American credit, ripped me off acceptance and have them accept the idea that you need to get out of this car and we're going to sell it and you're going to sign a unsecured note with them for the 2100 dollars at the same interest rate. And we're going to sell it for a thousand and then you're going to owe them two thousand one hundred dollars.

Now, when that happens, you no longer have a car payment. You have a two thousand one hundred dollar payment, but you also no longer have a car. So then our next goal is to scrape up a thousand dollars and go buy a garage sale, car or cash. I'd be happy with that Bondo colored car. That's a good one, but maybe that's the one you want that cash car that is ugly.

Zero sex appeal. It needs a name. You have to name it. Oh, Beth, you have to name it. Obasi Henry. I don't care what we name it. Big Red. Give it a name because it is the car that is going to straighten your life out. It's going to be the one you tell your grandkids about.

Marc-Andre back in twenty I drove Obasi. You'll be telling that story when you're 70 years old.

And that's because you're a millionaire, then? Yes, sir. All right. So we're going to get rid of a stupid car, stupid car payment, stupid acceptance. I just love the name. I'm accepting of you for 26 percent. I'll accept you.

Right. And then then we're going to get a garage sale car. And then the next goal is get the debt paid off and then the next goes, go get a three thousand dollar car, which, by the way, is ten times better than a one thousand dollars car wreck. And then the next goal, save up and pay cash for 10000 on a car. All the while, your career is getting better. You're on a budget. You're doing all the stuff you're supposed to be doing.

You can turn this around. But if you let this continue to just sit there, it's like a splinter under the skin. It's just going to fester. You're going to get gangrene. You have all kinds of trouble.

So proactive get after fixing this mess, get on the phone with these people, wear them out, just wear them out about letting you sign a note for the difference. Wear them out. We've got to get out of this car. I got to get rid of this car. I got to get rid of this car. Worst case scenario, you just work your butt off. Go get your things. Quit paying them. Let us sit there. If they want it back, they can have it right.

I mean, what's the big deal? And then we'll think come the repo, this thing. Good Lord. It costs them more to report than it's worth. They're not going to come get it. So tell them good luck. I'm not paying you right now. I'm going to save up a thousand dollars and go get me a little garage sale car with a name.

I'm will get my butt back to work, get working six jobs and get some money and get these stupid people out of my life.

The good news is, is thirty one hundred, not thirty one thousand. Because lots of people do what you did with 31000, and that's harder to fix the already 100 day that's delivering pizzas six nights a week for, I don't know, a month and a half, two months. You can do it.

I mean, but you got a car to do that because open the pizzas. Little takes a while. So you got it. You got to work this out. But do have some fun with this. Bust it out. Hold on. I'm going to have Kelly pick up. We're going to put you in Ramsey for a year as my guest put you through financial peace university, get you on every dollar budget on a walk with you, my man.

I'm proud of you. You're going to turn this around. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. You know, I don't sit back and just trust that politicians have my best interest in mind, which is why if I had student loans, I would not be waiting around for the government to save me right now, splash financial as some of the lowest rates they've ever had. If you have private student loans, get your rates down. Now, no one's going to fix this for you.

Take control of your own money. Go to splash financial dotcom slash Ramsey. That's how they will know you're one of our listeners. Splash financial dot com slash Ramsey.

Thank you for joining us. America opened fire on in Tripoli eight two five five two two five, several million. If you follow us on Instagram, thank you for that. About a million of you are still hanging out on Twitter. Not sure why on our account anyway, but thank you. Appreciate you following us.

I'm just not sure why anybody is on Twitter other than trolls. And of course, all of you people are on Facebook. And I have wonderful social media team that watches over all that and make sure that I. Now that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing in those spaces, I make sure we're helping here because I'm probably not nice enough for Instagram and I'm not gossipy enough for Facebook. I really fit in with the old Twitter people. They just tell it like it was until that all went to trolls.

So this is my analysis of the social media platforms right now, which is absolutely no help to you people at all.

However nice. Jill from Instagram does send us a wonderful Question Day.

Would you recommend auto drafting the majority of my monthly bills and expenses for my checking account?

Jill IDU. I want as many things on autopilot as I can put on autopilot. There is no danger at all. I have my all of my utilities, I have most of my investments, I have most of my insurances, I have whatever else on auto draft. I've certainly got other things that the debit card is on file. So if we were to, for instance, purchase something from Amazon Prime, it comes out the debit card automatically. Right.

That's a that's an auto draft as well, in a sense. And so if you post your debit card with Netflix, then that's an auto draft of sorts. Some of them are actual drafts and some of them you're putting up a card like your debit card. We don't recommend credit cards. We recommend everyone chop up your credit cards and get a debit card. You folks know that a lot of you don't do it, but you know it.

So, yes, the only time I do not use electronic access. Is where I'm in a dispute or a pinch now, a dispute would be you've got an account out for collections. And you're behind and the collector is calling and saying, oh, we want to take an auto draft on your account, you never let a collector have access to your checking account under any circumstances because you can tell a credit card collector is lying. If their mouth is moving, they're scum.

So you never let them have access because they'll take more out than they promised and then try to get it back when you're trying to pay your rent, you know, at the money.

And we have that happen all the time with folks for coaching. So that's an adversarial situation where there's a a dispute. No, you cannot have electronic access to my checking account in that situation. Absolutely not. We will send you a check.

We will do a prepaid debit card of some kind off to the side that only has that exact amount in it.

So you can't screw me or something like that.

But we're not going to allow you to take the money that I need to feed my children with because you lied. And that's what happens in a disputed account too often. Now, the other one is in a pinch, like, for instance, I've had folks who had a 700 dollar car payment that they were having trouble making the car payment and it was set up on auto draft. So I'll have them take that off so they can control whether they pay it late or not, because they may need to pay a seven hundred dollar car payment late in order to first feed their children.

And that's a pinch, hopefully that's temporary because if you got a freakin 700 dollar car payment, you can't feed your kids Summerlands bass ackwards here, you need to sell this car. OK, so this is ridiculous. And that crazy now the show, but that's a pinch, you know, credit union coming automatically out of your check for your car payment, that kind of stuff, that's all fine.

But I really don't want big stuff like a car payment or a house payment, auto drafting, if you're anywhere near in a pinch, if you're struggling financially. So if you're in a pinch or you're adversarial, no. Otherwise you need to run great. All run as many expenses as you can through there. If you're worried about it being a variable expense, like your utility bill, your water bill, your light bill or something like that, it's not going to be you're going to budget a certain amount.

It might be more. Might be less.

Most of the utilities offer budget billing, which they allow you to smooth it out and have the same amount taken out every check.

And then if it comes out a little over, they give you a credit. Once a year, it becomes a little under. They charge a lot more once a year and they readjust. But if you need to smooth it out to make your budget run better, that's fine. But most of the time, you know about what it's going to be this month and you budget that amount in your every dollar budgeting app and then you're ready to go.

So the good the thing is, though, auto draft does not mean you don't have to keep up with your freaking checking account. You still have to post the stuff, you still have to know what's going on in your checking account, and so autograph doesn't mean I'm not paying attention. It means I don't have to remember to do it on a certain day. And I get all the discounts for early pay and all that kind of stuff, so I love the convenience of auto draft, as long as you are responsible and you're on top of it.

And I believe in auto draft. I believe.

I think you need to use it unless it's a disputed situation or unless there's a pinch. That's the way to go about this. Really, really good question. Jill, thanks for reaching out. Our Question of the Day comes from Blind's dot com, they have a 100 percent satisfaction guarantee. That means even if you miss Major, you picked the wrong color, they'll remake your window blinds for free. You get free samples, free shipping with the new promos they run every month, you'll save even more.

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Ramsey, it's magical. It'll get you the best deal. Questions from Emma in Texas, I'm on, baby step one should be funded next week, my first thousand dollars won't go him. I'm looking at paying off my car and credit card debt three thousand four hundred dollars by January. Good. A little over a month ago, before I found you all, I took out a student loan of 7500, which is paying for my fall and spring semesters.

I still have a year and a half of school left, which would cost me around ten grand. My question is, should I save up seventy five hundred dollars towards next year before attacking my student loan so I don't have to take out another one or begin paying towards my loan? Well, it doesn't make much sense to pay off the current student loan. Then turn around, take out another one. That's just not logical. So your first goal after you get your other stuff paid off other than your student loan, first go 30 400 that gets a car and a credit card paid off by.

The next goal is save up the money to finish school. Then once you've done that, then we'll pay off the student loan, but there's no point in paying off a student loan and turn around next fall and taking out another one, you've got to stop borrowing money. That's a big deal, you guys, you need to hear that one. Let me say it again. You've got to stop. Borrowing. Money. One step, one of the biggest steps of all is getting out of bed and staying out of that is you have to stop.

Borrowing money. So if you want to buy a car for the rest of your life, you cannot buy a car. Unless you save up and pay for it. Otherwise, you have a stupid car payment and you're saying raising my hands, saying I want to be middle class the rest of my life, I never want to be wealthy. When you take out a car payment, that's what you said. You just joined the club. I want to be middle class and normal and work my butt off and make other people rich.

And I broke. That's what car payments say, that's what student loan payments say every time I have a problem, I run to debt.

I go every I was doing pretty good, but then I borrowed money for this. Now you have to stop. Borrowing money. For ever, for any thing. Period. Otherwise, you will have debt. Now, why is that hard? How do you avoid that you don't borrow money? Oh, I get big money, right? That's why they pay me money, right? They pay me money to do the show. If you borrow money, you have that.

And then you have payments and then all your hard work goes to some stupid bank with better furniture in a nicer house than you have. You have been in the bank, don't you wish you had their furniture? They got nice furniture at the bank. You know why you freaking bought it and you don't even get to sit in it except when they're pissed at you. This is ridiculous. Why are you doing this? Stop borrowing money. Wow. It'll get you out of debt.

There's an idea. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Hey, guys, at the Dave Ramsey Show, we really value your input, it helps us to know what's important to you so we can deliver relevant content to help you crush your money goals. We just launched a brand new survey, and we'd love your feedback.

It only takes a few minutes and you'll be entered to win a one hundred dollar Amazon gift card. No purchase necessary. Take the survey at Dave Ramsey Dotcom survey or text survey to 33 789.

I'm a dad free stage in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions, Maya is with us from Washington, D.C.. Hey, Maya, how are you? Hi, Dave. I'm good. So good to have you. And you're here to do a debt free scream. Yes. How much do you pay off? Sixty nine thousand five hundred fourteen dollars and 28 cents.

I love it. And how long did this take? Twenty eight months. Twenty eight long months. Yes, sir. And your range of income during that? Two and a half years.

I started out at about 52000 dollars and currently about 68000 dollars.

Good for you. What do you do for a living? OK, so I work for a federal agency that is kind of famous right now for giving out small business loans. OK. All right.

I'm sorry, was this the SBA? OK, good for you. What do you do at the SBA? I work in disaster recovery.

Oh, wow. OK, well, that's a valid thing. You get to see some sad stories, but some inspiring things. Yeah. Yeah, very cool. How long you been doing that for the past three years. Good for you.

OK, so a fairly new job and a fairly new life all in the last three years. What happened to turn all this around? What got you going?

I was you know, I live in D.C. It's very expensive. Yeah. And, you know, to be honest with you, you know, one day I looked at my Navigant statement and my student loan statement and I realized, you know, after talking to, you know, some friends and family that I had this debt from it. It was around 20 years ago I got like a pet. It was a grown child. Yeah, a grown child.

Sallie Mae grew up in my house.

Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, I was just like, you know, I have to do something about this, you know, and I have friends, you know, who work in D.C. who are just like, you know, they're content with having the debt. Forever's no debt forever, you know? And, you know, I was just like, well, I make enough money, I can pay this off. And so after that, you know, I was just looking for resources.

You know, I was looking for a way out, you know, looking to pay it off. And, you know, I was just, you know, searching online. And I found I saw something on YouTube about debt free screams. I saw that. And so, you know, I started doing some searching and then I found, you know, some local classes at a church near me.

Oh, Financial Peace University. Yes. OK, yeah. So I enrolled in that in October of 2017. And, you know, I just, you know, started with the church. I wasn't a member, but, you know, I joined it was it was awesome. But then a month later, so November twenty seventeen. The Hurricanes, hurricanes, Irma and Maria hit. And so, you know, I was working, you know, actually not in disaster recovery at the time.

And, you know, when the hurricanes hit, you know, SBA called me and, you know, they basically said, you know, can you do this? You know, can you work, you know, hurricane areas? And I literally just dropped everything and said, you know, I'll go ahead and do it, go make some money, go make some money to pay this off.

Yeah. Know. Yeah, I like it. Yeah. So I was in the Virgin Islands for three months. Wow. In Puerto Rico for 11 months. Wow.

How Puerto Rico doing. I've checked in with friends. I think they're still going through some PTSD. Yeah. Honest with you, it's been slow and very slow. Very slow. And then, you know, definitely with everything going on this year, it's kind of compounded every day.

Yeah. It's some things to a screeching halt. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. But you know, it was so this the 70000 was all stood alone that.

No, no. So about 47000 of it was student loans. The rest was car loan tax debt, credit cards. Oh. You were just kind of normal and broke. Yeah. It was pretty normal. Broke. Yeah. All the money comes in, all the money goes out. Nobody knows where it went. Exactly. This is normal. Yeah. And you said I'm not I mean normally more I'm going to be weird now you're weird.

I look at you. Why to go. I'm proud of you. Very cool. What do you tell people? The key to getting out of debt is 70000 paid off in twenty eight months is remarkable. Well done.

Yeah, I think the support group actually helped a lot. You know, I was a little, you know, sad that I had to leave my support group after a month, you know, peace group, financial peace group. They did check in with me. The pastor of the church checked in with me. And so it was nice having that check. And even though I was via email, so having some type of support, you know, especially if you're not surrounded by people who really see it, as you know.

Yeah. Everybody else is going, what are you doing? Yeah. You got to have some people that are we're trying to do it with you, right? Yeah, exactly. So, you know, having a support group, especially if you're single. Yeah. Yeah.

It makes all the difference in the world. Yeah. Well that's why even while we're doing from. University, virtually. We got a virtual groups are meeting now. Yeah, and sorry by checking in with everybody and some of these groups are all over the nation. You know, it's like 20 people in a group and they're in 20 different cities. Yeah. So the virtual things really working better than I thought it would, actually. But it's the whole thing is about encouragement and accountability and support and having people around you that are cheering you on, right?

Yeah, definitely. I'm proud of you. Thank you. Well done. Other than your group, did you have any supporters, any cheerleaders outside them?

You know, I met people along the way, especially while I was in Puerto Rico, other people who were also paying off, you know, debt, huge sums of debt. And so we were able to encourage each other and keep each other accountable. So that was nice to have as well. And, you know, we all had, you know, pretty awesome stories.

So very cool. Very cool. Very proud of you. All right. Now that you did it, what do you tell people?

The key to getting out of that is I'll stick with it. I literally towards the end, I would say I got that payoff fatigue. I was tired. Yeah. You know, and definitely while I was in Puerto Rico, I mean, there's no greater famo than, you know, seeing everybody else doing different excursions. And you're like, OK, I have to kind of hold back. I can't, you know, go on this excursion or that excursion or do you know different things with the group, you know?

And so that was a little tough.

But, you know, just stick with it, you know, and I I was part of a Facebook group, actually.

And, you know, I towards the end, I you know, I told them, you know, towards the end of paying off the student loan debt, I told them, you know, I'm just tired of paying this off. You know, I'm done. And I literally had two payments left, like two paychecks left. And they they said, you know, just get it done, you know, and for some reason, that just kind of kicked like you're at the end of this.

Yeah. You need to kick your butt. You need a kick in the butt. Yeah, I need to finish it. Shut up. No whining. No whining. Finish it. Yeah I like it. That's good. Yeah. What are people doing that we all need that. Yeah. So you are so amazing. Well done. So proud of me. How's it feel to have no payments. Oh my god.

It feels amazing. You've never been debt free in your whole adult life.

No I haven't. I haven't. Wow. Yeah. How fun. You're going to be a millionaire. You know what I am.

If you thought about that, that's pretty crazy. Yeah, pretty cool. My the millionaire. I love my Amaia the millionaire. I love it. I love it.

That's fun. We're going to give you a copy of Chris's book, Everyday Millionaires, because that is definitely the next chapter in your story.

You have learned to control one of life's toughest things, which is money, which really means you learn to control the person in your mirror. And that's that's the hardest job we all have. That person is a pain. Yeah. And if we can get that person to behave, we can do almost anything. So well done. Very, very well done. Very well done.

All right, Maya from Washington, DC. Seventy thousand dollars paid off in twenty eight months, making fifty two to sixty. Count it down. Let's say you're a debt free scream. Three, two on deck. Oh, yeah, this is how it's done, so sometimes people that are paying off all their debts make 200000 a year, sometimes they make 52000 dollars a year. Have you ever noticed that the thing that they have in common is not that they have big incomes or little incomes, that the thing they have in common was they decided to take control of their life?

And what folks don't realize sometimes when you first intersect this whole idea of a debt free scream or this whole idea of getting your money under control, handling money with common sense is that you're really learning to control yourself in a culture where there is no self control. We have entitlement coming out of our ears. You're learning to control yourself. Welcome to Grownup Land. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. You know, one thing we really didn't expect with covid, the real estate market is booming.

I mean, people are a lot of people are changing states because they're state stupid.

But but the real estate market is booming.

There's a tremendous migration going on in the United States right now from stupid towards smart, from restricted communist leadership to freedom driven leadership. You're seeing people migrate from state to state based on this like crazy.

You would not believe the numbers we're seeing on this.

Nobody's talking about it. But the we're seeing it in the real estate world in particular. And houses are selling some areas. Values are going to go down because people are fleeing these areas and some areas are going to go up. But there's a tremendous supply demand thing happening in a lot of things happening.

Here's the deal. In some of your areas, a monkey can sell a piece of real estate. And a monkey could get a real estate license. It's really not hard to get a real estate license. It's not in most areas, it's not that big a deal. I mean, if you can get out of high school, you probably can get a real estate license. I mean, it's not it's not like getting your CPA. It's not like, you know, passing securitise exam.

It's not it's not the end of the world. It's a test, but it's not the big deal. Most people can get it to do it.

So the trick is who is going to list? Your largest asset and sell it for you. Now, if you work for me. And I assigned you the job, I said we have a 300000 dollar thing here that we want to do and we want to hire a marketing person to run this 300000 dollar thing if you hired someone who had done it twice. I would question your sanity. If you work for me and you came in, Godiva hired a marketing consultant who's done it two times.

That would be crazy, you wouldn't do that, you'd say, no, this person has done this for 20 years. They've done this thousands of times. They can do this in their sleep. That's because it's two it's 300000 dollars, 500000 dollars, so you don't hire a real estate agent who sold two houses. That's dumb. I don't care if it's your cousin that makes it double dumb, he's your cousin and he's inexperienced. No, I don't care if they go to church with you know, I don't care how sweet they are.

No, I don't care. A pig, a guilt trip they put on, you know, your largest freaking asset use some common sense hire, only experienced help, meaning that they have actually sold and helped people purchase hundreds and hundreds of houses over their career and probably hundreds in a year. Not I've sold four houses this year. No. No, that's known as a failure. You don't hear failures to larger market your largest asset, even if they're sweet failures.

Even if they're kento you failure, oh, you get a real estate agent who has a clue and the house will bring more, it'll sell faster, you'll have a much smoother experience. And it'll bring more and it'll sell faster and you'll have a much smoother experience that I mention, you'll get more money in your pocket if you hire smart people that are experienced. This is how this works. So never pays off to settle for a subpar agent. You had your house on the market.

It's not selling change agents.

You picked poorly. What's that line from Raiders of the Lost Ark? You chose poorly. Yeah, no, don't don't do that. Don't be that guy, OK? No get.

You know, get somebody who has a clue, go to Dave Ramsey, dot com, click on L.P for Indorse local provider. This is who we endorse for real estate agents. We do not endorse inexperienced agents. Sorry, guys, you're going to get your experience somewhere else before we endorse you.

We love you as a person, but we're not ready to tell people to use your services until you have done it a lot.

High octane, high protein Gitter done baby. This is who you want on your team working to sell your house. You know, one of our LPs listed one of my guys houses in here that they sold in two days, another one in four days and these right here people working on our team that usually helps. And so it happens and they got, they got top dollar because they good analysis of the market. You know how to price it. You don't overpriced it.

You don't underprice it. You get her done and don't screw around with this stuff. Real estate is too important to mess around with a newbie.

Nope. Don't do it.

Thadeus is with us. Thadeus is in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Hi, Thaddeus. How are you?

Pretty good. How much better than I deserve. What's up? So it's kind of silly because the last caller had a similar situation. I'm having car issues. I'm right at the beginning of of the program. I've listened for a long time, but I just started to really, really want to get into it. And the issue I have is that my fiancee and I, we share a car and it's very high mileage. It has mechanical issues. It's not highway safe.

I've already put probably the value of the car in trying to get the car fixed. And, you know, I'm still having these issues. So we're working on baby stuff one now, identifying our dad, getting the thousand dollar emergency funds. And what I heard in the last caller was in between step one and two, we should be looking for, you know, another vehicle to supplement this one. Yeah.

So my concern now and get rid of that and get rid of that one because it's killing you, right? So you're driving a thousand dollar car. You might as well drive a reliable thousand dollar car.

Exactly. Exactly. So where my concern is now, as I drive a lot for for work at least ten to fifteen hours a week and. I'm concerned that if I get into another thousand dollar vehicle, that I'm going to have all these same problems again where it just kind of turned into a money pit, we just constantly feel like we're spinning our wheels and not getting ahead. Yeah, well, here's the thing.

Here's the thing, OK? You don't have choice. You owe any money. Yes, sir. And you're not going to do it forever. What do you make?

So I recently my income was variable and it's going up. So it's kind of difficult for me to say what I make.

What do you think you're going to make next month?

Next month? Five to six thousand. Wow, that's pretty good. It is pretty good.

And, you know, like four months ago, you were making hardly that, right?

Four months ago, I was making like 15.

Yeah, OK. So that's a lot of money. You got a lot of spare change right now. You have a thousand dollar car out of that one month. Yeah, if it doesn't work by another one the next month. Yes, sir, it's difficult for me budget because I'm paid in arrears 30 to 45 days and and my paychecks vary. You know, I'll get a paycheck for a few thousand dollars and I'll get one. That's like nearly a thousand, depending on how the payments are processed.

So I'm having but if you're going to make 5000 dollars in a month, regardless of when the payments come or when the checks come, you're going to have 5000 dollars in a 30 day period of time. Agreed? Correct.

So when you get the money by car, OK, OK. And pay cash for it, you know, pay cash for Biya 1500, 2000 our car. And then if you and then start saving to where you know, after Christmas, maybe January, maybe you buy 5000 on a car that you saved up for the difference and weave that into because you need to get up out of the junk.

I agree with you on that. These junky cars will kill you. OK, I don't want you driving a car for five years. I don't want you driving it for one year.

But if you have to for a little while, you can. And if you buy wisely on a 1422 car, you can get a year out of it.

Agreed, agreed. I mean, just an old Honda that looks like crap, but is really mechanically in good condition, old Toyota Camry, right. Adulteries, they got a lot of life in those cars, their ugliest crud, some of them. But that doesn't matter. We're not trying to buy something attractive. Girl, you already have a fiancee.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I don't have anyone to impress, so I just want to want to and by the way, by the way, you and your fiance, I don't need to own anything together until you're married.

Yes, sir. That's going that's going to cause problems. So but when are you getting married?

We just got engaged and with the whole Caronna thing, it's like kind of up in the air, I'm of the mind that I just want to go to the courthouse and get it done and that we can do the same thing later. Yeah, but I don't know how she really feels about you. She's trepidations about that, you know. Yeah.

Well it's going and preacher and go over and sit down with them and you know, get married this weekend and then later on we can do all the celebration stuff.

Because I'm guessing if you guys were combine your resources and combine your dreams, they'd probably be more efficient for you, not only relationally but financially as well. And so that would always be my recommendation in these situations, because I can tell you're playing house anyway. You might as well be married. So that's the thing. I get off latter day. This is the Dave Ramsey Show. Dave here. We just launched a brand new survey and we'd love your feedback.

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