Ram. Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions. It's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality number one, best selling author of the book Paycheck to Purpose, and host of The Ken Coleman Show, where he talks about career and jobs all day long. He's my co host. Today we're going to be talking to you about your life right in front of you. The phone number is triple 8825-5225. The call is free, and some say the advice is worth exactly what you pay for it. Ben starts this hour in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Hi, Ben. Welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Hi, Dave and Ken. So grateful to be on the show today. Thank you again for taking my call.

Sure. What's up in your world?

Well, the brief synopsis of the situation is I'm wondering if I should take on an additional student loan to go through a coding boot camp to, in essence, double my income so that I can accelerate my baby step two progress for my family.

Okay, so I'm guessing you've not been listening to us for very long.

It's been off and on for a couple of months. I know the short answer would be, of course not. Don't be stupid.

That's a good short answer. Yes, sir.

How much is the boot camp going to cost?

So the boot camp is $13,900.

And what is your expected increase in income from what now to what then what would you be making?

Currently, I'm making $38,000 a year, and I would be bringing that up to anywhere between 75,080, 5000, depending on the position that I would get.

All right, that sounds about right. And what's the long term play in technology for you? Where do you want to go?

Honestly, my dream job would be to be coding and developing analytics software for professional football programs.

Okay, great. So you have a huge upside. So the answer is not just simply no, but it's not necessary for you to take out a loan. $13,000. If you really commit to this and you come up with some incredibly intense ways of selling things three, four, five jobs, you should cash flow this and move forward. So you're going to go find an additional $13,000 to pay your way through this and see that income increase and get through the baby steps faster. But don't go into debt for it. It's not necessary. The boot camp will always be there. So if you got to wait, you got to wait.

How much debt do you now have?

The quote, unquote, only debt that we have is my master's degree, which is 39,000 in debt.

Your master's is in what?

Music education. But I'm unfortunately no longer able to continue in. That why I had some bad choices that I made and I'm just not able to continue teaching right now.

Oh, you can't teach in the classroom?

That's correct.

But you still have a Master's in music, correct?

I still have the license, yes.

Okay. All right. What you've done made it illegal for you to tutor people on an individual basis? No, sir. Okay. All right. And so you can make serious bank doing that. You know that, right? I would open a music tutoring school immediately. Private lessons immediately. $50 an hour. And I'd go get me $13,000. You there?

Yes, I am, sir. Sorry.

That's okay. All right. Traditional classroom teachers tutoring in traditional subjects are making anywhere from thirty dollars to fifty dollars an hour. You can do online tutoring, you can do in person private lessons, music lessons of different kinds and tutoring. And with that degree, if you have basic music ability, and I'm guessing you do, for goodness sakes, then I'm opening a tutoring business right now. And I'm going to go like crazy all the time doing nothing but that. I think you got put in time out based on what you did from what you thought you were going to be. And so you stepped back and you accepted a $38,000 position as a reality. And I don't think that's the reality. I don't think that's a reality.

It's not. And I would also say that beyond the music tutoring, you're doing anything and everything. It doesn't matter now. $20 an hour job. $25 an hour job. You're doing it three, four, five of them. To get the 13,000. You can amass that pretty quick. Those numbers add up. Get yourself a calculator and literally write down how many hours, how much money per month can I make? Do I need to make to quickly get 13,000?

Do the or to get the first half or the first half to start the coding and get the other half while you're finishing? That's right while you're in class.

The idea here is that the boot camp will be there and so will the technology opportunities. So don't further your debt. Don't put yourself further behind when you don't have to. There's zero reason to do this.

See, the other thing is this, the overall concept, Ben, and for the rest of you out there, the only time that the debt system works is if everything works and everything never works. So I went $39,000 in debt to get my master's degree in my dream job, only it doesn't work. And now here I sit and I'm making 38,000. And I can't justify the 39,000 that I spent in student loans to get a master's degree in music ed, because it doesn't work out. Life never goes down. This like this little cute little yellow brick road. Follow the yellow brick road. I mean, you just really you can't.

Keep.

The problem with going to see the wizard of Oz is there's flying monkeys between here and there. That's the problem. And so you got to count on the flying monkeys. They're part of the program. And so when you do that, all of a sudden, the debt doesn't look so delicious. But when you assume everything is a clean path and everyone's following the speed limit and no one's talking on their cell phone while they're driving beside you and no one's eating a Big Mac while they're driving beside you and no one is putting on their makeup while they're driving beside you. And so there's never any danger on the highway. When you make that assumption, in order for your debt idea to play out, you've set yourself up for the flying monkeys. You're going to get hit. And that's what happened to Ben on the first round, and I don't want that to happen to him on this second round. So when you pay cash for it on the second round, even if the flying monkeys knock you off, you don't have any debt.

That's exactly right.

I got the education, but I don't have any debt.

That's right.

And so let's go do it. Let's go pay for it. Roll up your sleeves. Work like a wild man. All you're going to be doing, Ben, is it just work, work. And you don't have to worry. You won't die from it. Right before you die from hard work, you'll pass out. Don't worry about it.

That's right. Someone will be there to catch you. By the way, there's a return on effort when we don't have to take a loan out that we're going to just in the distance pay off. We say, I've got to gut it out, hustle it out big time to come up with 13 grand to change my life. Boy, the return on that effort is so much better, you're going to find yourself paying better attention.

By the way, in boot camp yeah. Most people get better grades in grad school than they did in deer pong school. Yeah. Also known as undergrad. This is the Ramsey show. What we teach at Ramsey boils down to taking control of your life. It's all about personal responsibility, and if you own a gun, that's even more important. So I recommend becoming a member of the US. Concealed carry association. You'll have immediate access to liability insurance, education and training to protect your loved ones and defend your rights in the most responsible way. Go to uscca.com slash ramsey and join today. That's uscca.com slash Ramsey. Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, is my co host today. Love this guy. I love his books. I'm so glad I got to hang out with him today. Back at Christmas, two different people gave me the book comfort crisis. If two people give you a book, even if it's on weight loss, you should take it seriously. And Comfort crisis is a serious book. It is a great read and got to know Michael through that and had him on with Mike Rowe and I and a couple other guys as we're talking about the status of work ethic, the state or, I don't know, the condition of lack of work ethic in America today.

We did an event on that a few months ago that was highly successful. So when we heard Michael was going to be in town, we put him on a bunch of our podcasts and asked him to stop in here on his new book, Scarcity Brain. Welcome, my friend.

Thanks for having me.

And congratulations on the huge success on both of these. It kind of came on a little bit late. It was a late bloomer, but it's become a huge book.

Yeah, like a good horse man, it breaks late, I guess.

Yeah.

I was as surprised as you are.

I'm not surprised. I love a book that breaks late like that because that means it's got legs. It'll be with us for a while because the contents is so strong. Okay, so scarcity brain versus, obviously abundance brain, I guess. Yeah, exactly. Both sides of it. But the human lizard brain for survival teaches us to think scarcity first, right? Correct.

We hone in on scarcity. We're very sensitive to scarcity cues, which is basically pieces of information in our environment make us think things are scarce, and our reaction is to acquire more.

I think I'm hungry, but it's really I'm just low on sugar.

Yes, you think you're hungry, low on sugar. You think you need to buy that third thing on Amazon Prime for the day. And so you do it. You think you need more information, so you spend more time on Twitter, on and on and on. All these things that I think we overdo in life today track back to that. They were things that would have given us a survival advantage in the past.

It does lead us to obesity. It does lead us to materialism the loop, the scarcity loop, the scarcity brain, this constant striving to do something that's totally not I don't need to eat again. I just ate, and I sure don't need to eat twelve more donuts. I just had one. I mean, I don't need to buy another gun, my wife said. But I did. I bought another one. But I mean, what is it about that? How's that work?

Well, I like to say that everyone knows that everything is fine in moderation, yet why are we all so bad about it? Bad at it, right. And I do think that these tendencies we have, when we overdo things, it's usually with things that would have given us a survival advantage in the past. So for all of time, pretty much everything you needed to survive was scarce and hard to find.

Food. Food. Safety.

Safety, information, community, even status. The number of people that you could influence possessions.

Right.

Tools.

Sounds like a video game. Yeah.

So we default to more of those. If you were the type of person that defaulted to more of those, you would survive. Now, the difference is that we sort of have that ancient drive for more in a world where we have an abundance of all those things and we don't necessarily have a good governor that tells us, oh, you've had enough food or you own enough guns or you've got enough information on this event unfolding in the world. And you don't need to spend all night up till 03:00 a.m scrolling Twitter.

To get the next little death. Scrolling?

Death scrolling, exactly.

So why do we get stuck in this loop, do you think?

Well, I think that one thing that's interesting is that technology has really pushed us into more. It knows what is going to work to get us to over consume. I was part of this book. I went into a casino in Las Vegas that is brand new. It's cutting edge, but it's not open to the public. It is a casino laboratory that is used entirely for human behavior research. Now, if you think about something that people overdo, over and over and over, it's a slot machine, right?

And so they've really unpacked, completely illogically, completely illogically, but they do it anyway.

So I identify what I call the scarcity loop and it is the sort of ultimate behavior loop at pushing us into more. And you can think of a slot machine, so it's got three parts. It's got opportunity, unpredictable rewards, and quick repeatability. You got an opportunity to get something of value that enhances your life. Unpredictable rewards. You know, you'll get that thing of value at some point if you keep repeating the behavior, but you don't know when, you don't know how valuable it's going to be. So with the slot machine, it's like if you keep playing, you'll eventually get a win, but you don't know how big it'll be.

Right?

And then quick repeatability, you can repeat the behavior over and over. Now the reason that this is important to know, because it doesn't just apply to slot machines, it's in all these different technological systems and institutions that really kind of determine how we spend our time, our attention, our resources. So this loop is being put in social media.

It's what makes social media work the dopamine hit.

Yeah, it makes dating apps work. It drives a lot of online shopping behavior. It's in the rise of sports gambling. It's being put in certain personal finance apps and on and on and on.

It's made the online porn industry the largest industry in the world.

Exactly. And so in the past, this wasn't a thing that was just part of our life at the scope and scale that it is now. But because we spend so much of our lives on screens now, it's twelve to 13 hours a day engaged with digital media. It has this ability to sort of creep into our life and push us into behaviors that I think although can.

Be fun in the short term, they're always fun.

They're always fun in the short term, but can hurt us in the long run.

So how do you flip that and go from this false scarcity that puts you into a loop and go to an abundance mentality?

Well, I think, first of all, if you have a behavior that you keep doing over and over and over, and that is hurting you in the long run to be aware that it probably does fall into the scarcity loop. This leverages what researchers call the Hawthorne Effect. So if you can observe a behavior, it usually changes the behavior just by knowing that, oh, this is happening. I'm doing like you'll start to change. And then second, you can change any of the three parts of the loop, so you can change the opportunity. You can slow down the quick repeatability. So an example is if you're the type of person that is buying too much dumb stuff on the Internet, even just having a rule that I'm only making my purchases in person, that inserts.

A pause because you have to get.

Into your car, you have to drive down to the store, and then you have to scour the aisles to find that item. And in that time, you probably realize, I didn't even need this thing in the first place.

I forgot what I was here for. I forgot what I was here for.

One of the things that you discover in this book that I found fascinating is there is a way to actually thrive with enough, which is in your subtitle. You call it a very unlikely hack that you discovered. What is that?

The abundance loopiness.

Yeah.

When you look at, okay, well, why is this scarcity loop so attractive to humans? It probably helped us find food in the past. So if you think about the past, if you needed food right, that was going to allow you to survive. And so you go to one point, no food, the next point, no food, the next point jackpot food. That's the exact same architecture as the slot machine. You can use this loop in habits that enhance your life. So, for example, you hunt. Hunting is the exact same system.

Right.

You know, you're going out there to get an animal. There's your opportunity. You know, you'll probably see an animal at some point, but you don't know how big. You don't know if it'll be the right one. You don't know if it'll be old enough. You don't know all these things. And when you find that there's a gamble too, like, am I going to be able to pull the trigger in the right spot?

Right.

And then you can repeat that annually, but along the way, instead of a slot machine where you're sitting in a casino, you're surrounded by smoke, you're indoors. When you're hunting, you're outside. That's good for us. You're also being physically active. That's good for us. You're probably hunting with other people. That's good for us. So you're getting all these ancillary benefits, and you see it in hunting. You could see this through fishing, even things like foraging so foodies will forage for mushrooms. But even something as simple as like, you know what? I'm really into collecting vinyl. And there's this album that is really hard to find and I'm just going to walk around my city that I live in and I'm going to go from vinyl store to vinyl store and see if I can find this thing. That'll be an exciting way to spend my time.

Okay, break the cycle. Michael Easter. The way we discovered him was through Comfort crisis. The new book, fix your Craving Mindset rewire your Habits to Thrive with enough. It's called scarcity brain. Highly recommend it. I will be absorbing this this weekend. I have not gotten to it until now and I will immediately. Good stuff. Absolutely great. Honored to have you on the show, my friend. Congratulations on these great works.

Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it.

Check it out. Michael Easter Easternmichael.com and you can follow him on social media at michael easter. This is the Ramsey show.

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Hey, folks, it's Dr. John Deloney. This time of year can be hard and seasonal affective disorder is real. When I moved to Nashville, the time change caught me off guard. It got dark at like 430 and I was ready for bed by 06:45 p.m.. Things weren't as fun. Even the food lost its flavor. Now I know how to prepare my body. When things get dark, I go outside to enjoy nature. I stick to an exercise routine and I intentionally connect with people. Another thing I did is therapy. Therapy can be a bright spot even when the sun goes down too soon. Something positive and interactive to make us feel grounded and give us the tools to manage the way seasonal change can affect our bodies. So if you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. BetterHelp is flexible because it's totally online so it can fit into any schedule. Just fill out a short questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist. You can switch therapists at any time for no charge. Find your bright spot this season with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com Deloney today to get 10% off your first month.

That's BetterHelp. He lp.com deloney.

Ken Coleman Ramsay personality is my co host. Today in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions, we have a stage. It's called the debt free stage. If you stand on that stage, it can only mean one thing. Well, at least partially could only mean one thing. You're debt free. Tommy and Heather are standing on that stage. Congratulations, guys.

Thank you. Where do you guys live right now? We live in Paris, Florida, but we're originally from Connecticut.

Ah, fine. Well, welcome to Nashville. Good to have you. How much debt have you guys paid off?

It was 112 and change.

112,000? How long did this take?

Just over two years and three months.

Okay. And what was your range of income during that time?

It started at 110 and ended at 150.

Cool. What do you all do for a living?

So before we relocated to Florida, we worked in a syringe factory in Connecticut. And with COVID we had a lot of business, so there was unlimited overtime. And in 2020, we decided to go get our real estate license.

Okay.

And yeah, our first year we had 14 sales. So that took off and moved to.

Florida to do that?

No, we sold houses in Connecticut. And it was just this past July.

That we moved to Florida.

Okay. You're doing real estate there?

Not yet, but we're going to be okay.

All right, cool. Well, way to go, guys. Okay. What kind of debt was the $112,000.

Oh, my God. What was it? The debt? Let's see. Credit cards, cars. Cars. Solar panels. Solar panels. My son's braces, cell phones. Cell phones, iPads.

You were unfortunately and normal in America. Sucks, doesn't it?

It does. Absolutely.

So what woke you up two years and three months ago? And how'd you get connected to all this Ramsey stuff?

Truth be known, this whole thing started like, right when we first met. I have a history with addiction, and she walked into my life at a time frame when everybody else was walking away for that reason. Happy to say that October 7, I celebrated eleven years of sobriety.

Congratulations.

But unfortunately, when the using stopped, the spending began.

Switched it out for a different one.

Pretty much for years and years. It's basically what happened. We would spend on everything and anything. She takes half the accountability for it, but 95% of it was me. I'll be the first one to tell you that.

What were you addicted to before that you've been dry? Eleven years.

Alcohol and painkillers.

Okay. Well, congratulations.

Thank you, sir.

That's a huge victory. You're a powerful guy to do that. Not everybody can do what you've done, and I'm very proud of you.

All right, thanks.

And now you've applied it. Start applying the whole concept to the other parts of your life. Yeah.

So as far as us being introduced to you, I had a friend of mine, Joey Schwartz, and his wife Ruby, who've been telling me about you for a long time. And right after we got our real estate license and all that stuff, he comes up to me and he says, hey, Tommy, you need to get on this Dave Ramsey planter. However he talks, I hope he doesn't.

Talk like he says.

He keeps telling me about it, and I thought it was just one of those get rich quick things, but anyway, quite the opposite.

Get rich slow. Yeah.

So he was telling me about it, and he stayed at me about it. He's like, between real estate and all the overtime that you're working, he's like, you're going to be a millionaire in a few years. I'm like, yeah, whatever, shut up. So it was 2021 after our first year in real estate. We wound up getting dave, you're going to kill me for this. We got our generous biden bucks, as you call it. Now, you would think, $5,600, I'd be smart and pay off two of my credit cards that are maxed out at 2500 each. No, we're going to take the kids to Vegas. And that's what we did. And this is where the big moment happened. So when we get there, the limousine picks us up at the airport. I'm getting a Camaro the next day. We got a room with a volcano view. And we get to the hotel and I don't have money to cover the incidentals, so my 17 year old daughter, who was with us and my son, she had to pick it up so we can eat for the week. And our first three days that we were there, I didn't even feel like I was there.

I was like, beside myself. I'm like, you even realize what a freaking loser you just made yourself look like in front of your kids just now? And that was it. And it was the following Saturday. We were back home. We're getting ready to go to her sister's house. She was in the shower. And I'm scrolling through my YouTube feed. I'm like, yeah, seen this. Watch that, don't care, yada yada. And then I come across this five things that'll make you wealthy. Video. And it says Dave Ramsey. I'm like, hey, this is the guy that Joey keeps telling me about. So I'm looking down at my looking down at my phone and I'm looking right at you and I'm like, all right, hotshot, you got about 90 seconds to sell me on this. Dave, you didn't even need 30 seconds. I'm like, I'm in. And then there's the part that you said.

What was that?

Oh, yeah. You know what the Republicans and Democrats have in common? Neither one of them can freaking add. I freaking texted Joey. I'm like, I'm in.

That was the statement. That was so how intense did it get quickly, from this moment to the moment you guys start this journey, how intense was it for you guys?

Very intense. I mean, I've always been like a workaholic, so it wasn't anything that I wasn't really used to. But I mean, her and I, we would work like twelve hour shifts and then we'd go out and show houses.

You got the gazelles on the shirts, so you know about it. Yeah. So what do you tell people the.

Key to getting out of debt is so as. I mean, I've been down this road twice with using and with spending. For me, the two key components. Number one is accountability. You got to look in the mirror and like David Goggins once know the accountability mirror. Every day that you make an excuse is just another day you don't have to do anything about it. So accountability is big and perseverance, man.

Just and being on the same page.

Exactly.

If we weren't on the same page, it wouldn't have worked at all.

Yeah. Way to go, you two. I'm proud of you. Proud of you. Well done. Very well done. How does it feel to be free? How does it feel to have him where he's saying, I'm not going to spend us into the poor house? It's a big deal.

It is.

It's a big deal. I mean, that's a big thing for your marriage. Big day. Big thing for you to respect your husband when he does stuff like I mean, that's manly. That's well done, both of you. I'm proud of you. Excellent, excellent job working together, pulling this off and pushing it through and phenomenal. Hey, we've got the live and give box for you. It's got the Baby Steps millionaires book in it. That's your next stop. The Total Money makeover book to give to somebody who's inspired by your story, financial peace, university membership as well. You can enjoy these things or give them away. That's what they're for. A lot of people buy the box just to take some of it and use it and take some of it and give it. So we want it to give it to you guys to say thanks for coming out. We appreciate you coming in from Florida to do your debt free scream. Tommy and Heather, St. Petersburg, Florida. $112,000 paid off two years and three months, making 110 to 150. Count it down. Let's hear a debt free scream.

Three, two, one.

We're yeah, that's it. You know, the money thing is not as serious as the substance addiction thing. But the parallels in changing it are.

Still there and the parallels between what's underneath the problem. And it's so important for us to understand that when we want stuff and we put it on a credit card because we can't wait for it, there's something deeper going on. And understanding what's really going on you said this so effectively for decades, is that I'm the problem in the mirror. The person I'm looking at, who I'm shaving, like I'm the problem. Something is going on with me in my heart and in my head that's making me live beyond what I can live under. And that's what's going on. And he recognized it twice and beat it twice. Incredible story.

Looking for love in all the wrong places.

There it is.

Clicking prime. Prime. Prime. Prime. Prime.

Yeah.

Oh, wait. I still don't feel any better. Isn't that weird? Who knew? Yeah. That's how this works. This is the Ramsay show. No matter what time of year it is, focusing on your family's financial plan is always a smart move. I get questions all the time about where to start and what to do first. Getting term life insurance needs to be a top priority. I recommend ten to twelve times your income. And lock in rates for 15 or 20 years. This gives you plenty of time to get out of debt and build wealth. I've been recommending Xander Insurance for over 25 years. They understand and live this strategy and will take the time to help you find the most affordable term life rates. Go to xander.com or call 803 564282. Ken Coleman Ramsay, personality number one bestselling author of From Paycheck to Purpose is my co host. Today, Allison is in San Diego. Hi, Allison. Welcome to the Ramsay show.

Hi. Hello.

Hi, what's up?

So I'm calling because I have about $16,000 in credit card debt. Maybe a little bit, a little bit over $16,000 and 17,000 in student loans. So a total of like $33,700 in debt. Total debt. And the problem is that my credit cards, the balances on those, I've had them for years and the interest is really high. On some of them it's like 30%, on some of them it's like 24. And the balances just don't go down. So what I'm wondering is whether I should maybe ask for maybe a personal loan from one of my family members to tackle one and then start slowly tackling the other ones. I just got a new job and doubled my income.

Oh, that's great. What do you make?

I'm going to start making about $6,000 per month. I'm going to say more.

And you were making about 3000?

I was making about 3000, yes.

Okay. And so if you keep living like you were living on 3000 and you put 3000 a month towards the debt, you'd be out of debt in a year.

True. The only issue now is that I do have a commute and the gas is really expensive. It's about an hour and a half commute every day.

Sounds like you need to move 200.

That is the plan. In about a year. My daughter's in why would you wait a year?

Why would you drive an hour and a half for a year?

Because I share custody with my daughter's dad in the town that I live in. And it's a legal thing that I have to go through or we have to figure something out. But for now, my daughter for 3.

Hours a day I'm going to figure something out.

Yeah, I mean, I have figured something out to where one week a week that she's with her dad.

Borrowing money will not get you out of debt. You can't borrow your way out of debt. Interest rates are not your problem. Finding a way to not pay $3,000 a month on this debt for eleven months is your problem. You need to find a way to pay $3,000 a month instead of finding a way to not pay $3,000 a month. That's what you've done so far. You've now got this fabulous moment in time where your income has shot way up. Let's find reasons and ways to, to make take advantage of that and get this mess cleaned up. You can't borrow your way out of debt. This is not an interest rate problem. This is an Allison problem.

It is. Yeah, you're right.

You're a smart lady and you know all so because I tried to do this for years. I tried to borrow my way out of debt. I tried to out earn my stupidity. I tried to do all this. But finally one day I just said, that's it, there's only one way to get out of debt. It's pay it off. I got to pay it off. That's how I get out of debt. I need $33,000. That's 3000 a month for eleven months. Oh, there's some interest, so it's going to take me twelve. Okay. But it's still going to get yeah, whatever. And I got some my gas bills higher and I'm commuting oh well, maybe I'm not. Or maybe I am a couple of days a week or maybe I don't know. Is there another way to do this? I got to find a way. I got to find a way to put $3,000 a month on this. I got $3,000 a month I didn't have before I got this new job. You see what I'm doing? Yeah.

Well, there's an old phrase where there's a will, there's a way. And it's really true. It's not just a nice little saying on a quilted thing in a country mean it's it's really that we begin to see opportunities when we do what you just said, Dave, when we actually say I have to find a way. So I keep looking, looking, looking, and things that solutions, opportunities that weren't seen before are all of a sudden seen. And it is just that simple. Seek and you will find. I mean, that is the goal right here for her.

The way I changed my mindset was I always take it. Pretend like there's some kind of whacked out tragedy which is not really happening. But go with me for a minute. Those of you that have children that you like, okay, let's pretend one of them was ill and you needed $33,000 to save their life.

Yeah, watch out.

And you had to do it in two years. And you would not find reasons to not do it. You would find reasons to do it. Hell hath no fury like someone trying to save the life of their child. That's really and what that means is that you can do this. It just has to become a priority in that case, in that bizarre, tragic situation which doesn't really exist. But if it did exist, you would find a way. You'd find a will. Where there's a will, there's a way. And we're going to figure this out. We're not losing this. Kit, have you ever seen somebody that didn't like the diagnosis they got? They go to about 16 doctors till they get a diagnosis they like or a treatment plan that's going to work. Instead of everybody going up, you're going to die, you're going to die, you're going to die. And they find some kind of alternative, something or other weird thing. And I don't know, some witch doctor claps their hands twice and spins around or whatever, but they find a way, right? Because I don't accept this. And when you reach that point that you go, I've had it.

That's where it changes. Alison and that's what I need you to do here. Instead of using this new job as just some extra margin in life, it needs to clean up your mess, and you need to cut up those stupid credit cards, get you some scissors out tonight, light a candle, have a plastic surgery party. Maria is in New York. Hi, Maria. Welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Hi. Thanks for taking my call. Can you hear me okay?

Yes. What's up?

Okay, so I started listening to you guys about a month ago, and I'm on baby step four. So I currently consider trying to contribute 10% to my employer's Roth 401, which is the maximum to get the match. So I want to increase that. And my question is, should I contribute more to that Roth 401K? Should I contribute to a separate IRA account?

Are the options inside your 401K good options?

They're pretty good, yeah.

Well, that's not exciting if they've got good long term track records. Yes. Just increase above your match and get to 15%. If not, then you can go open an individual Roth IRA with a Ramsay SmartVestor Pro. Click Smartvestor@ramsaysolutions.com, find the people we recommend for investing, and they can help you set up a personal Roth IRA and help you pick out some good mutual funds that you feel good about. You'll learn about stuff in the process of doing that, which is kind of cool. I'd probably do that just for that reason. But you're onto something here. What we tell people is it's kind of rock, paper, scissors, except there's only one way to win it's. Match beats roth beats traditional. In your case, you've got a match up to ten, and you're going to take that and you've got it in a Roth, which is a double dip. That's awesome. And you can do Roth beyond that to get to 15%, either in an individual or at your company. If you're not excited about the options at your company, then go get an individual Roth for the balance of that other 5% of your income going in.

But if your options are decent and you want to just stay with one simple plan, you just increase what you're doing at work, and then you don't think about it again. Yeah.

And I think the key here is what's my long term goal and understanding what we teach. She's new to the show, and so I just want to point out that you've taught all the Ramsay personalities as we've learned. Try to learn what you know. If we look at the long term effects of the stock market and the investment. That plan there, that little rock, paper, scissors, I love that. It works, and it works all the time.

Works every time.

Stay with it. And so she's brand new, and I'm just getting back to you to tell her, once you get on this plan, stay in it. That is the key. Don't get off when we hear your analogy that's so powerful is the roller coaster. Yeah.

Well, if you were not invested in the last twelve months, you would have missed out on a 15 plus 15 plus percent rate of return yeah. In good mutual funds. That's the last twelve months. Nobody's talking about that. Everybody's talking about what mortgage interest rates are, right. The dad gum, stock market skyrocketing and you're not even on the ride. Come on. That puts this hour of The Ramsay Show in the books. Listen, folks, this show has always been about you and for you, so we want to hear from you right now. The Ramsay Show annual survey is live. Text survey to 33789 or go to ramsaysolutions.com survey. When you fill out the survey, you'll be entered to win a $500 gift card. That's survey text it to 33789. Thanks for helping us understand how to serve you best. Live from the headquarters of Ramsay Solutions, it's The Ramsay Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Open phones at Ken Coleman, Ramsay personality number one. Bestselling author of the book From Paycheck to Purpose, talking about careers and jobs. He's my sidekick today, my co host.

Open phones here, triple 8825-5225. Danielle is in Tampa, Florida. Hi, Danielle. How are you?

Kind of stressed out, trying to wrap my mind around a couple of things.

Ouch. That doesn't sound fun. What's going on, kiddo?

Well, I would say 2022. There was death in the family, and that's kind of where it started. And then my fiance, I guess, was let go from his job because he was having a hard time with the loss. We all were. And then we decided to start our business. And so business is going fine. And then I got laid off from my full time job, which was kind of surprising. So now we're at a point where it's like, all right, neither one of us have the full time job, but we've just been working our businesses and they've had some pop up problems here and there, and so it's definitely causing a lot of issues.

Who passed away?

It was my fiance's brother's wife.

Okay. That's certainly a tragedy. It's certainly a hard thing to get past. And that was three years ago.

That was no, just last year.

Last year. Okay. And your fiance, when are you all getting married? How long has he been your fiance?

It was supposed to be this July, but I actually got laid off then.

So I was like, well, they don't let laid off people get married.

I didn't feel like that would make.

Sense to it made sense to start a business.

Well, we had already had the plans and did everything to start the business.

Yeah, you kind of already had a plan to get married anyway. Okay, so how much does your fiance make? At his job or his business?

Well, it's our business. It was a turo business. And also he has another property where he's a landlord and has tenants.

That's not a job. You have one property in tenants that doesn't take ten minutes. That's not a job. Okay, how much does he make?

Well, he did have a job.

No, honey, he started a business. How much money does he make? Nothing. That's what he makes.

Okay.

Right. You wouldn't be calling me if he was making 100 a year. Wait, stop. You just drove past. Stop. Let's stop right where we were. Your fiance is not making any money. Am I correct? Yes or no? Right now, darlin, right now. You got no money because you got laid off, and his business is not a business. It's a hobby. He does not make any money. Am I wrong?

No.

Okay.

Yeah, probably not much.

Okay, so he needs to get a job, and you need to get a job, and all of a sudden, y'all will have income. And quit calling this sitting on my butt a business.

Danielle. You guys are in Tampa, Florida. You guys need to be working multiple jobs. If you can't get a really good job in the industry that you were in, we need to be bringing in income. This is a game changer.

Yeah. The question on my screen says, how can I handle my finances after losing my job? And the answer is get six jobs.

Right. No, we do turo.

That's where you'renting your car out to people. You're just using your car as a rental car.

Yes.

Well, we have actual two cars on the platform that aren't either one of our cars.

Right, but my point is, you're in a rental car business, and there's not enough margin in that.

You're not making any money.

Yeah. That's not a company. You're using an app to rent your cars.

Right.

Well, that's a great side hustle if you've got it and the cars are paid for.

But it's not supposed to be a side hustle.

Right, but we don't need side hustles right now. We need seven side hustles. Or six, as Dave said.

Or full time. Full time job. What were you making at your last job?

I would say about four grand a month.

Okay. What were you doing?

I was a quality engineering technician.

And why did they fire you?

No, it was a layoff. The whole shift got laid off, so there was only one shift.

Okay. All right. So you need to replace that income with a good core career and quit messing around the side with I'm a landlord, and I rent out my cars and calling that away to make a living, because you're not making a living. You wouldn't have called me if you and your fiance were making serious bank. So your problem is not an outgo. I'm struggling with debt. My finances are out of control issue. Your problem is you don't have any income. And the great news is there's a tremendous labor shortage in America right now and lots of people hiring, and we're going into Christmas season. Yeah.

And listen, Dave, if there are some debt on those cars, which many times people are carrying car payments on these cars and then renting them just like they would do a house, I would sell the cars. If you have some equity in those cars, move the cars, get out of the turo business. Get rid of the debt. If you own them free and clear, Danielle, sell them anyway and get yourself a little bit of a cushion. Get an emergency fund, get employed, pay off any debt. Work the baby steps. You've got to get out of this turo long term. It's just not a good play because you've got an asset of a car. It's not an asset. It just continues to go down in value. And you hope that you can rent it out enough to people who fly into Tampa and don't want to rent from any other rental car agency. It just is fraught with all kinds of problems.

Your fiance may need to sit down with a good counselor and help him unpack because he might be depressed, he might be struggling with the grief at an unbelievable level that's affecting his whole life now. And he may need to sit down with somebody and unpack that. Because what I hear in your all's whole story is we want to figure out a way to have money without working. That's your whole story that you told me on the phone. And now that I got laid off, it kind of just doesn't work. So you guys have got to go back to work. You got to get your career, start bringing home the bacon. And sometimes that may be because of the death that you guys have been through and the grieving around that that's fair. But in the meantime, you got to get your life back, kiddo. This is the Ramsay show. When your business gets to a certain size, the cracks can start to show. If this is you, learn these numbers. 36,000 businesses have upgraded to NetSuite by Oracle, the top cloud financial system. For 25 years, NetSuite has been helping businesses do more with less and drive costs down.

And one, because your business is one of a kind. And right now, download NetSuite's KPI checklist absolutely free@netsuite.com. Slash Ramsey. Ken Coleman Ramsey personality is my co host today. Paul is in Portland, Oregon. Hey, Paul. Welcome to the Ramsay show.

Hey, Dave, thanks for taking my call.

Sure.

What's up? My wife and I, we own a house. We refinanced a couple of years ago when interest rates were good and got locked in at around 3%. And now she and I disagree a little bit on how we should use some of our investment money. I think we should put it towards 401 and IRA and other retirement investments, whereas she would like to pay down the mortgage sooner. My philosophy is the IRA should give a better than a 3% return, so it's a little bit of a better investment in the long run. But I wanted to hear your opinion.

Okay, well, we teach people to do both. And the process that we use has led millions of people into a situation where they're wealthy and the process we call the baby steps. And the first goal is to become debt free other than your home. That's baby steps one and two. Then three is have an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses. I assume you've done those things before you ask this question. Is that right?

Yeah, that's correct.

You don't have any debt and you have an emergency fund except your house, right? Correct. Okay. And then that brings us to baby steps four, five, and six, which we do simultaneously. Baby step four is put 15% of your income into retirement. First to the match if there is a match at work, second to Roth and third to traditional if it takes that to get up to 15%. Baby step five while you're doing that is you start doing something towards kids college, if that's appropriate. And then six is all other monies that we're not spending on life above 15%. Going into investments, pay down the home because you want to have both a paid for home and a large nest egg. In the millionaires that we have studied, those are the two primary things that they did to become millionaires. And we did the largest study of millionaires ever done in North America a couple of years ago, and that was our findings. So all that to say is you're both right, but around those numbers and that structure. So what's your household income?

My income is 110, and hers is variable. She's a substitute teacher, so it's a few hundred a month.

Okay, so you make like, 130,000 a year? Roughly, yeah. Okay. How old are you?

31.

Okay. 15% of that. If you never do anything else in good mutual funds, in your 401, in a Roth with a match, particularly on portion of it, will make you extremely wealthy by the time you're 65 years old. Like $10 million is what the math will come out. Yeah.

Currently, I'm putting 20% with a 4% match.

Then what I'm telling you to do is I would back it down to 15. I'd throw the rest at the mortgage. Okay. And I'd get that house paid off because it's one of the two elements for the first one to $5 million of net worth that people come up with, and you get that house paid off. Then you don't have any payments. Now you're freeing up your most powerful wealth building tool, which is your income. Meanwhile, you've been getting a match. Meanwhile, you're putting, what, $17,000 a year? $18,000, $1,500 a month, give or take, is 15% of your all's income. You're going to be unbelievably rich if you never do anything else. But certainly we'll have the house paid for in a few years, and then we'll be able to put even more towards everything. And the whole stinking thing mathematically just blows up in a wonderful way. So you're both right in that sense. But would I ever never pay extra on the house and keep the home mortgage? No, because we found that the typical millionaire doesn't do that. The number of millionaires that we talked to that said, you know, the way I got rich was I didn't ever pay off my house.

I put it all into investments. Almost none. Almost none. They did both. They invested, and they got their house paid off. That's the thing. We see. That's the two big things. We see other stuff around the edges of it. But if you want to plow right through the middle of what these people do, that's it. They get the house paid off and they invest steadily, not one or the other. Yeah.

And by the way, at 31 years of age, I love that we're hearing this question, because this is exactly what we look at when we talk to everyday millionaire. Excuse me. Baby steps. Millionaires in our theme hours, and we were on last week together. And just one after another, one after another, they play the long game that we teach. And this 31 year old is going to be there.

Well, we didn't ask about the house value and the balance on it, but we're more dealing with the concept. But mathematically, he'll be there in about a decade. Yeah, 41 for his first million, and then we go from there. So, yeah, that's a pretty cool place to be. Andrew's in Orlando. Hi, Andrew. Welcome to the Ramsay show.

Hi, Dave. Thanks for having me.

Sure. What's up?

So I recently got a promotion at my current job. I work in the hospitality field. I'm making $18 an hour now, and the company I work for is about to see a large growth from now until 2025. But I'm interested in possibly going back to school. I do already have two degrees. Both are in music performance. I use them for my side hustle, where I'm teaching marching bands on the side and writing music. But I'm interested in possibly going back to school to get something in the data analytics side of things and to transfer departments in my company into the data analytics side. And I'm just kind of looking for advice as to if I should go back to school or not?

Probably not. But I want you to understand why I'm saying that. You don't have to get a four year degree to get hired into data analytics. There are so many boot camps and certification programs where you can spend a whole lot less money and a lot less time. And that's great for you because you're now a professional and you're in with this company. And I would also tell you that if you find a reputable opportunity and take it to your company leaders and say, hey, I love this company, I'm in the hospitality game right now, but I want to move over into the technology side of this company. I want to be with you guys long term. Would you be willing to reimburse or pay for my tuition? And because you are so valuable to them now and you're going to be adding technology skills, you could very well get this paid for by your company. But even if you didn't, it's a whole lot less money to go get that through a boot camp or through legit programs like Bethel Tech, which we endorse here, than going back to four years of school. You've already done your time with two degrees.

You don't need a full four year degree in technology to do that work.

Yeah, and so that makes complete sense, which I'm glad to hear with that. The company does pay for schooling, but they won't pay for boot camps. I know you said just kind of approach them. I guess I would have to figure out who to approach within the company if they would not reimburse it. Is that something? I have about $6,000 of debt right now in credit cards. I know. Dumb decision would be to go into more debt for more school.

Well, first of all, so what I would tell you to do is pay off your debt, the technology qualifications and certifications, that's all going to be waiting for you. You're fine, you're young, you're on your way. You're in with the company you want to be with. This gives you a chance now to show them the value that you have and go ahead and pay off the debt. Pay off the debt and then save up the money or cash, flow your way through your budget each month and go get the work done. Because let me tell you something, even if they won't pay for it, you'll get all that money back and then some.

Yeah, but I think I'm going to spend a little time with the folks over in the data side and say, I'd really like to be over here. I'm about one certification or boot camp away from being valuable to you. If you guys will help me with that, we're going to be game on. And I don't pay for boot camps at Ramsey. I do pay for education at Ramsey. But if you come into one of our leaders office with a reason to do something that's going to make you more valuable while you're here. We will pay for the tool. We do it all the time.

And we may be getting hung up, too, on boot camp. I'm using that, generally speaking, maybe just a certification program, just a legitimate program. There are legitimate programs that aren't technical boot camps. You need to do your research on that. Do exactly what Dave said, but take them options and go. This program, this program and this program cost this much. Take this amount of time, and I want to do it to be on your team. Would you be willing to help me? And I think you're going to be surprised at what you might hear.

Yeah, I wouldn't take my first no or a policy decision on that. I'd be knocking on the door till somebody answered. This is the Ramsey show. Remember, folks, your forever home can be forever, but your interest rate doesn't have to be. We haven't seen a real estate market like this in a long time, and Churchill Mortgage can help. Churchill is the only mortgage provider we trust to help you do it the Ramsay way and navigate interest rates over time. Go to Churchillmortgage.com to learn more. This is a paid advertisement.

NMLS ID 1591. Nmlsconsumeraxis.org equal housing lender.

1749 Mallory Lane, Suite 100, Brentwood, Tennessee. 37027. Ken Coleman Ramsay Personality is my co host today in the lobby of Ramsay Solutions on the debt free stage. Abby's with us. Hi, Abby. How are you?

Hi. Better than I deserve.

How are you?

Better than I deserve. Welcome. Where do you live?

Frederick, Maryland.

Oh, fun. Well, thanks for being with us. Thanks for hanging out. How much debt have you paid off?

$67,912.

Good for you. And how long did that take?

Six years.

Good for you. And your range of income during that time?

44,000 to 68,000.

Okay. And what kind of debt was the 68,000?

Student loans and a car.

Okay, cool. How old are you?

27. I turned 28 in December.

Okay, so this journey starts when you're 21.

Yes.

Tell us about it and how'd you get connected to us.

Yeah.

So back in 2011 when I was in high school, my parents took FPU, and I remember in my bedroom having envelopes on the back of my door where I had to put cash that I would get for allowance and things like that into different categories.

Hardcore.

Exactly. I know. They're so tough, aren't they? But it invested that principle into me in the beginning, and then I went to college. And then after college, I graduated in 2017, and my parents had been starting to take it more seriously, and I was unsure exactly of where all my money was going. I knew generally how much I should have or how much I was spending, but I didn't really know for sure. And I was living at home for a few years to help pay. Off my debt. And so that's where it really started. I wanted to get rid of it right away and not wait till I was in my forty s and fifty s to pay all this stuff off when I was single and living at home, to try to pay off as much as I could. So I got started then and really took it seriously. I took financial peace in 2020. We had to go virtual in March right when COVID started. So I took that in 2020, and then I've just been getting after it ever since. So that's kind of how I got started.

So a lot of this has been the last three years?

Yeah, a big bulk of it has. Absolutely.

All right, so you go from high school student, where your nerdy dad made you have envelopes on the back of the door. I love nerdy dad. There you go. But then still go get a car loan and a student loan.

Yeah.

How's that happen?

They said we were just talking about it before I came on. They were like, yeah, we weren't really taking it seriously until about 2017. 2016.

Except for the envelope part. They were a little ish.

I know.

And then that infected you.

Yes.

Okay, I'll give you a pass then. Okay, that's cool. It all worked out all right. But the end of the story is awesome.

Yeah, absolutely.

Very cool.

So I love that. This is a six year journey for someone your age. You stayed with it. You didn't get distracted, you stayed with it. What's the key if you were talking to other people your age and they're going, all right, I'm graduating with some student loan debt, or maybe they got the car, whatever it is. We have a lot of young people joining the show all the time. What would you say to them is the key to maybe your generation sticking with this plan? What would you say to them?

Yeah, I have two things that come to mind. First of all, my faith is so big to me, and this journey taught me more about God's faithfulness and provision than probably anything else in my life. So realizing that it's not my money, god actually trusts me with this money, and I'm to steward it well. And so if I'm being reckless, that's not being a good steward. So being able to recognize that made it easier for me to be sacrificial and let go of things, because it's not mine at the end of the day. But secondly, budgeting is just so important. Like I said, I knew previously vaguely how much money I was spending, but once my dad and I put together a little Excel spreadsheet and worked it all out and he got all the formulas for me and everything, that budget really helps me, and I look forward to it every month. And I tell all my friends, I'm doing my budget this weekend, and having to ask my roommates to pay me back money for things so that my budget can be equaled out. It's challenging but it really pays off in the end.

And being able to say no to things like during COVID all of my stimulus checks, $1,400 going to advantage hurt. But wow was different than all my other all of my friends were doing with their stimulus checks and things like that. So I paid during the whole pandemic. So just that self denial of things that you might want right here and now and looking forward to the future.

How's it feel to be free?

It feels great. It feels so great. With all the student loan stuff coming back and not having a care in the world, I'm like, not me. Exactly.

I'm not signed up for your loser plan.

Yes, exactly.

Love it.

I've been trying to tell my friends, I'm like, get on this. I was just texting someone last night. She's making so much money. I'm like, you could be debt free in a year. Just do it. It's going to be tough. It's going to be hard. But just stick with it and you got it. So I'm trying to inspire all my friends to get on the train.

How are they reacting to the fact that their payments are now due?

They're stressed. People are very stressed, I think especially if you weren't paying during the big pause. It feels like this big boulder coming at you. So they're really overwhelmed and I actually think it's a good thing for right now because my dad and I are actually teaching FPU at my church this spring and I lead a young adults ministry and so I'm trying to get all of my friends to come and I'm like, guys, you can get in control of this. And once you're in control and you know what's going on, your anxiety is going to ease so much.

That's a big deal. Congratulations.

Thank you.

What do you tell people? The key to getting out of debt.

Is that sacrifice, being able to deny yourself and it's going to be okay, you don't need everything, which is a hard concept to learn, but it teaches you that self sacrifice. And again goes back to my faith that Jesus died for me and denied himself. And so I can deny know, a new pair of shoes or wanting to go on a trip or something like that for a longer goal that's going to be able to let me bless other people in the long run. So, yeah.

Well said. Very well said. Well, congratulations. Other than mom and dad who was cheering you on?

My brother and sister, Brooks and Emily and then my brother in law Scott. Scott watches you all the time. He and I were going back on the phone last night talking about what's he going to say and he has all your impersonations down pat. Yeah, he does a good job. He really nails it, but so, yeah, my family and then my roommates, they all know, and all my friends, really, all my friends cheer me on. I don't really have too many people telling me that I'm crazy or anything like that.

That's good. Yeah, that's good. It's one of the reasons you win. You got to be careful who you have around you.

Yes, absolutely.

Become who you hang around with.

Right.

Well done.

Thank you.

Well done. Congratulations. We're proud of you, hero.

Thank you.

Very good job. Hey, we've got the live and give box for you. That's the Baby Steps Millionaires book, which is your next stop.

Amen.

For sure. The Total money makeover book and the Financial Peace University membership and all of that will work to help you in the ministry that you're doing and for you to enjoy as well.

Thank you.

Thanks for making the trip from Maryland. You're a fireball. You're fun.

Thank you.

Yeah. Very well done. Good job on the air. And, man, what a great story at 28 years old, right?

27, right. And I wanted to be debt free.

Before I turned 27 years old. Exactly 68,000 paid off in six years, making 40 to 68. Abby from Maryland, count it down. Let's hear a debt free scream.

Three, two, one. I'm debt free.

Yeah. Whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop. What is fascinating about her story, if you listen carefully to it, and this happens with a lot of debt free scream people that are in here on the stage, we hear this often. She had a six year journey, but the majority of it was done in three. And what was the difference? Was it the income? No, it was her outlook when she decided, I can sacrifice a pair of shoes. I can sacrifice this to get control of my life. I can sacrifice I can sacrifice. I can do needs, and wants are different things. I can get control of this. And once she decided that, and then the income came with it, too, man, the last three years, it's like, boom.

Well, there's something powerful, too. We know this from tons of psychology studies to put a date on something. There's something about 28 years old.

Yeah.

And that really motivated her. You could tell that she was like, oh, I'm not 28 yet, Dave, because I said I was going to be debt free. And by golly, she did it. And there's something powerful about putting again. Life happens. So I don't want anybody thinking, well, it has to be by that date, but it certainly helps. There's something about seeing the finish line. We know this about runners. I only ran one race, Dave. I retired because you guilted me into one race. But I learned one thing. Having a mark that you're trying to hit does drive you towards it.

You want me to get out the world's smallest violin. Now, where I guilted you into doing something incredible, but it was actually great for who came alongside you in the last mile when you were struggling.

I looked like a wounded wildebeest in those nature shows and Dave came alongside as I was cramping up and got me through. But setting a time, setting a goal.

I'm not sure his feet touched the ground the last mile I think we carried.

I did.

Oh, no.

I actually ran, but it was all guts. And there was no glory, by the way, ever. None.

Oh, bless his heart. This is the Ramsey show. How many of you have heard a debt free scream and said, that's going to be me someday? But then something else got the focus in your life. Money got tight and now months or years have gone by and debt still has your family by the throat. Don't just say you want to be debt free. Decide that you must be. And the proven fastest way to beat debt is Financial Peace University. This class works because it puts a group of people around you who will hold your feet to the fire and get this done. And it's that kind of accountability that's caused millions to be debt free in two years or less. The only thing stopping you is you. And yes, things are busy. That's why we've got thousands of virtual and in person classes happening on nights and weekends. So don't tell me you don't have the time. Decide that it's worth it to stand on this stage and scream that your family is finally free. Join a Financial Peace University class right now@fpu.com. That's Fpu.com. Ken Coleman Ramsey personality is my co host today. The Ramsey Show Question of the day is sponsored by Neighborly, your hub for home services.

Take your home's efficiency and style to the next level with convenient solutions from Shelf Genie, Window Genie and Glass Doctor. Download the Neighborly app now to find and schedule home service professionals near you.

Today's question comes from Jeffrey in Connecticut. What are some good careers to transition from being a teacher? I'm in my third year teaching and I would quit tomorrow if I could. I absolutely adore my students, but the district I work for is making life unbearable. I thought about transitioning in a few years, but at this point I'm at my breaking point. Well, first let me say sorry, Jeffrey. I hear from teachers on my show, the Ken Coleman Show, all the time. I see it on social media. The environment in which our public school teachers are having to teach is absolutely awful in many cases, and it is making good men and women like you want to leave a very honorable profession. So to ideate here what we want to do is we want to realize that the reason you want to leave is because you're doing this right thing, this thing you love in the wrong place. So if you can't stay in actual teaching, maybe in a private school environment or maybe in a college environment that might be slightly more advantageous to you as far as students wanting to be there, then I would be looking at what you do as a teacher, what you're good at.

That's the instructing, the planning, the communicating, the encouraging. And then write down what you love most about those roles. And what you're going to do is in this little exercise is create a job description that's written down and you can see it. And now when you're out there looking for roles, you can begin to match up what you love about teaching, what you're good at in teaching. And you begin to see that you could go into corporate training, you could go into HR work, you could go into management and leadership. There really is no limit if you understand what you're good at as a teacher and what you enjoy doing as a teacher. And that becomes the job description. And I can tell you this, the private sector is very welcoming to former teachers because you bring such a great mix of talent and experience to the table and you care about people. That's what teaching is about. Instructing, influencing, so that someone can transform and grow. And so that's what I would be looking for. And if you take the education lens off and just look at what you do, I think you're going to find a lot of opportunities.

Yeah. And I would add while you're working towards finding what your work life looks like, your volunteer life could be with the youth group at the church and teaching a Sunday school class to teenagers, teaching lessons at summer camp to teenagers. And that might not necessarily be how you earn your living, but it might be an outlet for your gift as well. In my twenty s, I hung out with teenagers all the time.

Yeah.

As a matter of fact, I went to funeral of one of my friends this weekend. That was one of the youth leaders back then. And a lot of the kids that were there that are now, of course not kids have children of their own now and that kind of thing. They're older than my kids because they were in those days. But seeing that whole group of teens that we taught back then and the impact that it's had on their lives, hopefully positively. But yeah, there's a lot of ways to use your giftings in this. But teaching is for some reason we have declared that teaching only occurs in the classroom and teaching occurs a lot of different places. I'm positive that one of my spiritual gifts is teaching. I'm a teacher. I teach you guys every day here. I teach you with books, I teach you in curriculum, I teach you on this show, but convincing you of a new idea, teaching you something you didn't know before. And so that's all I am is just another a glorified teacher. And so it's one of the reasons I get so fired up, is if somebody's not right.

That's right.

So, yeah, you got a lot of opportunity out there, Jeffrey. A lot of things you can go to where you don't have to put up with the garbage being shoveled by your district. Jane is in Canada. Hi, Jane. Welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Hello. I'm so thrilled to be on your show. Thank you for having me. How are you guys?

Better than I deserve. How can we help?

Okay. I have a rather complicated sad, but trying to make most of my situation going on. So my husband passed away in August.

Oh, no. What happened?

That's the complication. He died of alcoholism. He died of cirrhosis.

I'm sorry.

So thank you. He was the breadwinner. He, at one point, made a lot of money, and we had a beautiful renovated house in Toronto, which I have sold because I couldn't afford to keep it. So I am left with a chunk of money. I've got two small kids, seven and twelve. So I'm a single parent. I'm a classical pianist. So obviously I don't make a ton of money, but I'm okay. So I've got about $1.5 million. And my question is, do I put I live in Toronto, downtown, where I would really like to stay. And I know that I don't have to stay here, but my kids, I'm trying to minimize their disruption. And also my work is downtown, so for me to buy a house would be about 1.3, and I could do it in cash. But I also know that you're not a fan of pretty much all of my net worth being in a house.

I'm a fan of you not having a house payment right now. And Toronto is an excellent real estate market, so I'm okay with that. I'm probably going to try to change my budget on this house from 1.3 to one or something like that. Let's try to free up a little bit more of this money and downsize. The disruption to the kids is going to be a lot more severe if their mom is stressed out because she gets herself in a financial pinch than based on where they live. So I'm a lot more concerned with you building a sustainable life mathematically, than I am where you live. As far as the children's disruption goes, they don't know. All they're going to know is what you tell them. And believe me, you're going to tell them a lot without telling them a thing if you get financially stressed. So let's get down on that budget and free up some more of that money. And then also, can your career sustain you guys at that point?

Well, here's the complication. So I'm renting right now, and I know that I've been watching you guys religiously for the last sort of six months that you're in support of me renting short term in a time of stress and transition, but not long term. But I don't have my piano with me. Where I'm making money is I'm at two different conservatories downtown Toronto. So I could make more money having my piano which is in storage because I moved from a rather large house to a two bedroom apartment just to get my bearings.

Yeah, that's fine. And so when you get a house, you get a piano and then you can make money giving lessons, I'm guessing, or what?

Yes.

Okay.

That's giving lessons and doing it online.

My guess is with an online lesson program and some in house lessons that you might make more doing that than you are playing in the local orchestra. Am I right?

Absolutely, yeah. No, I mean I have good potential to make quite a good living.

Yeah. Okay. But I need to let's set up that small business idea as a part of this home purchase. But still it does not have to be. There's no requirement that it's 1.3. That's just where you've landed so far. So the further down you land on that price, the better this idea is and the more you're not going to like it. But that's still the direction I would go. I'd try to get down as cheap as I can on the house and still meet these different needs, the location, the size for the piano. That makes a lot of sense. I think she can do really well with that.

I think so too. And because of her know, she's not just someone who has a degree, she knows people too. And so I would really encourage you, Jane, to maximize the relationships that you have because of what you currently do and they begin to spread the word for you. It's really, really credible. I think you have more business than you'll know what to do with and I think I would be charging premium taking your time as you move into this new season of life. We're really excited for you because this is a great opportunity for you to reset and rebuild good stuff.

If we can help further you call us anytime. I'm so sorry for your loss. Thanks for calling in. Ken Coleman. That puts this hour of the Ramsey show in the books. Live from the headquarters of Ramsey solutions, it's the Ramsey show where we help people build wealth, do work that they love and create actual amazing relationships. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Ken Coleman. Ramsey personality number one, bestselling author of the book Paycheck to purpose is my co host today. As we talk about your career, your job, your life, your money, it's all right here. The phone number is triple 8825-5225. Anna or anna is with us in Los Angeles. Hi, how are you?

Hello, how are you? I'm doing great.

Good. How can we help?

So I've been working for some time now and I thought I did an okay job for building up my personal wealth. But I also like to hear your opinion about how I'm doing thus far.

Okay. How are you doing? Tell me about it.

Yeah. So I've been in the real estate business for many years. Personally, I have four rental properties, and the yearly income is about 50,000 given or more or less. The total mortgage balance I have about is a million. And one thing, I don't know what I was thinking, but I did take out a home equity line for the purpose of purchasing other properties. So far, I've been paying it off the highest. It was close to $600,000. But based on my calculation, that's back in 2019, and I should be able to pay that off, completely off by next year. Middle of next year.

And then you'll still have a million dollars owed on the rentals, correct? Yes. Okay. And you make, what, a year?

That's the wild card. So I'm in real estate.

How would you make last year?

Last year is about $200.

Okay, all right. That's probably your average year, right?

Yes.

Okay. Yeah. All right, good for you. And so what's your plan? Just stay in debt the rest of your life? I mean, what's your plan? Sounds like it because it sounds like you keep buying rentals with more debt.

Yeah. And that's my question. Although I have these rental properties, but I always feel I have this piece of rock inside of me. I feel very heavy.

It's a million dollar rock. It's right there in your stomach. Yeah.

So should I get rid of some of the properties? So to get rid of this feeling, I'm not sure what to do.

I would develop a game plan to have them all paid off within a certain period of time. There's nothing panicked here because there's no desperate situation, but what you're experiencing is you finally are measuring risk. And most of us I grew up in the real estate business, so I understand when you get in the real estate business, one of the things they do is they take a hammer and they break your risk meter. We don't even know how to measure risk once we're in that business, because we just buy crap. I mean, it's just like we go get a mortgage to buy an investment. Property is like, that's the only way to do it in our minds. You can't do it otherwise. People in the real estate business really believe that it's just not true, but we believe it to be true. But you're starting to feel the weight of the risk that you've taken on that no one in your world talks about, but you're starting to feel it, and that's how you ended up talking to us. So yeah. What are these properties worth total? You owe a million on them. What are they worth total?

Total, I would say about 5 million.

Good for you. Okay. So that's a great equity position. I mean, obviously you're in a 20% loan to value ratio, which is phenomenal. That's not a big risk position, but there is a million dollars worth of problems there. So what I would do is say I'm going to pay off that million with my income and with the sale, strategically, of one or a couple of these properties over the next five years. Okay. And it might be you can just sell one of them and be clear and clear the rest of them, and that'd be pretty cool. And then from there, you pay cash for all of your additions to your portfolio. You don't use home equity loans ever again. You don't borrow again to do that because you've got great cash flow when you have no mortgages. And that's going to be the way to go.

Yeah, she's going to be in a really great position out there. Now, I'm curious, Dave. So you wouldn't sell why not sell one of the houses and knock it out that way?

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Okay. I'd pick out one of those properties. All right. And or the income. But I mean the income, if it takes you two years to do this instead of a month right. That's okay, because there's nothing on fire. But you do want to aim at having a debt free portfolio and aim at and stick with the promise to yourself that any additions to the portfolio, we're doing with cash. As soon as we get, first and foremost, get to debt free. Then when we add something later, we're going to do that without borrowing money to do that. And folks, I understand that the get rich quick real estate world and borrow all you can on real estate is out there. It's always been out there. And I understand it's real hot again. That Tic TAC has made it really a big thing again. And you guys get on there, and there's all these goobers on there that have no life history. They're 14 years old and they're buying houses. And I got it figured. It's a bunch of crap. You don't I mean, when I was 22 years old, out of college, I started buying houses, nothing down.

I bought $4 million worth. I had a $1 million net worth by the time I was 24 years old, I made $250,000 cash taxable income doing flips in 1984. That's $20,000 a month in 1984. You don't put that in today's dollars. That's a half million dollars a year. Okay? Now, I don't know what neighborhood you grew up in, but the neighborhood I grew up in, we called that rich. It was fun. I was having a blast until I found out about risk. And the banks called our notes, and we spent the next two and a half years of our life losing everything we owned. We were sued, we were foreclosed on, and with a brand new baby, a toddler, and a marriage hanging on by a thread because my poor wife thought she had married Sir Galahad. Turns out it was goober. And there we were, bankrupt. And at 28 years old, I got the opportunity to start completely over because I followed the exact same crap you people are seeing on Instagram and TikTok and you're all walking around acting like you're smart. You're not. You're straight up freaking stupid. Quit doing it. I walked it.

And don't tell me you know more. Listen, a man with an experience is not at the mercy of a man with an opinion. This is ridiculous, you guys. I've walked the exact path that some of you are signing up for right now.

Now.

Not her. She's got a different situation. She's moving away from the debt. She's calling about that. But this zero down, nothing down. I'm going to get rich in real estate is absolute bullcrap. Broke people shouldn't buy real estate. It makes them broker. That's why they call them brokers. This is the Ramsey show. Here's the thing about investing advice. You can find it just about anywhere. But that doesn't mean it'll always help you with your personal goals. Here's another option. Check in with a SmartVestor pro. These financial advisors can review your plan or help create one that's personalized to you. To find a SmartVestor pro in your area, go to ramsaysolutions.com slash SmartVestor. Go to ramsaysolutions.com. Slash SmartVestor.

Ramseysolutions is a paid non client promoter of participating pros. Learn more@ramseysolutions.com slash SmartVestor.

Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, is my co host today. Our Ramsey Show annual listener survey is now live. We want to know your favorite parts of the show, what you like, what you don't like, what you want to hear more about whatever it is we want to hear from you. Two ways to participate. You can text survey to 33789 or you can go to ramsaysolutions.com survey and fill out the survey. Either way, if you sign up, you're going to be entered to win a $500 gift card. Taryn is with us in Pennsylvania. Hi, Taryn. Welcome to the Ramsay show.

Hi. So I recently got my master's degree. I got it last year. I'm in the field of education and a position had opened up at my current job. That's in my area of expertise, so I had applied for it. I interviewed and I found out that they want me for the job. However, they had to clear it with basically my supervisor supervisor before I was allowed to transfer. And my supervisor waited about a week before answering and said that I could go, but not for over three months. And so I'm kind of torn because I'm thankful that he said, yes, I could transfer, but it also just seems like an excessive time to keep me.

What was the reason?

I teach special ed, so it's kind of hard to find people, so I assume that's it. But, I mean, the end of January, that seems like just a long time to hold. Someone?

No, it doesn't. It's not a long time.

Three months is good.

No.

How old are you, Taryn?

I'm 27.

Yeah.

So I was 27 long time ago. Yeah, I knew that was coming. But the reason I said that, Terry, is because this is not a judgment on you. Three months is a really long time for 27 year old, but for old guys like us, I'm here to tell you that three months is not a long time, and they really are probably in a crunch, but instead of children.

That you take care of, have to have someone to take care of them if you're leaving.

That's right.

They have to line that up, and those people are hard to find. Is that not true?

It is true. We have a lot of new people coming, but I guess with that yeah.

You were getting to a question.

They're kind of debating whether or not they are going to go with me or go with someone else because of the time frame. They're kind of, like, not in a hurry, but they would like to get someone to fill the position shortly.

Okay.

This is all within the same district, though, right?

Yeah, it's at a cyber school. So it's all within the same company.

Yeah. So they should be able to go. One part of the company is willing to release some of their talent to go to the other part of the company as soon as they're able to do a backfill. So we will wait until the backfill comes in. We do that inside of Ramsey all the time. But if you want to move inside of here, we don't move you until we have your workload covered, but we also don't fill the position out from under you. We'll say you can go over there as quick as we get somebody hired to take what you're doing. You know what I'm saying? So if you can get that assurance, then you shouldn't have any issue with this. Agreed?

Yes. If I know they're willing to wait, I guess that's one thing.

No, I mean, you're hired for the new position as soon as your backfill comes in. If you can get that promise, three months is reasonable.

So what are you wrestling with?

If she can't get that promise, should she stay?

Yeah. And I guess because we're also, like my husband and I were in baby step two. We're hoping to start homeschooling our son. So I'm like, oh, if I don't get this position, because it really is my dream job, if they're not willing to wait, I would like to leave the company because I just don't and I don't know if that's a crazy idea, too, but if I don't get.

That job well, it's not about crazy. It's about you and your husband talking about if that's a viable option with you being in baby step two. That's a pretty big hit. You're just going to quit and I wouldn't if it were me, I'd say, wait a second, I want to try to maneuver this thing. I think you've got to sit down with the new opportunity and say, hey, I need to know. I know that my supervisor has cleared this, but with a three month wait, are you guys willing to do what? Dave said and say, all right, we're signing on the bottom line, it's your position, and as quick as we can.

Get a backfill, I'll be over there. Because that's reasonable.

It is reasonable.

It's also reasonable for the people moving that you're moving to to wait and not damage their own company.

But I wouldn't quit. How big of a hit would it be if you go home and home school and you're not making money? How much?

Yeah, before tax, like $65,000.

I would not recommend that.

They haven't done anything wrong. Yeah. There's not an ethics breakdown here, and they're not a horrible people or a horrible company. They do need to give you some clarity. I don't disagree with you on that. I'd like for them to give you the lockdown on the position, but if they won't give you that clarity, they still haven't done anything wrong. They're sloppy, is all. And if you want to work somewhere else, that's fine, but you might jump from there to a place that's totally toxic. That could happen real easy, because what you're describing is not unreasonable or toxic in any stretch of the imagination. Now, if they lie to you, cheat you, hold you back artificially with no solid reason, we're just screwing around with you because we just can. That's toxic. But this is saying, hey, we got to fill this position. These little kids need a teacher, and if Taryn steps out, we got a big hole over here. These children are not going to be taken care of. That's very reasonable. As a matter of fact, it's responsible. It's not saying, I'm going to politically hold you back. It's saying, hey, yeah, you can go as soon as we get your work covered.

And then the other side, the place you'd be going needs to give you the clarity and say, all right, the position is yours. As soon as they can get the backfill over at the other place, we'll bring you over. We understand the time horizon might be as much as three months. We've done that here, Ken, and sometimes it's even been more than three months.

That's right. I mean, that's the reality of workflow, and you have to understand that, and you have to be patient. I know it's hard. My goodness, it's hard to be patient at 37, 47, or 57, certainly at 27, but we've got to keep our eye on the big picture. And here's the other thing I just want to mention very briefly, because if we see an opportunity like this and it looks like it's right there, but then there's a hurdle there's reality sets in. And if for some reason she doesn't get this, we shouldn't hang up the cleats. We shouldn't just say, we're done. We're out. We're not going to play anymore.

Take my toys and go home.

Yeah. Because it represents the dream job. But it's not the only dream job. That's the key. The dream job is already a bit of a unicorn for a lot of people. That's why I've actually stopped using the phrase a lot, because I think for some people, they think, well, it's the playing in the NFL or something. Something that's not realistic. It's not. The dream job feels like a dream because you're spending most of your day using what you do best to do something you really enjoy to produce results that you care deeply about. That is really a dream for most people because the alternative to that is a nightmare if you do it too long. And so don't get hung up on that was the dream job. That can really devastate you and knock a lot of people off that path. And I would really caution all of our audience on this to say, okay, it looks, it smells, it feels like it. But if it's not it, that's okay. Don't think. No, think not yet, not here and keep moving forward. And that's what I'd want her attitude to be if this doesn't work out.

Yeah. By the way, dream job is what you said. It's doing things you love with the gifts you have that's right. To accomplish something and see traction in something you're passionate and care about. That's right. I've got the dream job. That doesn't mean that last week didn't suck. Right, but you have some of those days. Actually, last week kind of sucked, and it was a long week, and I'm really thankful that I don't have last week anymore. I'm glad it's gone. I'm glad I've got next week instead. But this idea that you're not going to run into conflict in your dream job, of course you're going to run into conflict in your dream job. You're not going to run into crappy people while you're doing your dream job. Oh, yes. You can be assured that if you run into people, you're going to run into some crappy ones. Just count on it. None of this is going to get easy just because it's your dream job. It's all rainbows and skittles or something. That's just crap. It doesn't work that way. Boys and girls, this is the Ramsey Show. Are you a small business owner who feels stuck in the daily grind of running your business?

Well, you're not alone. We've helped thousands of business owners just like you get unstuck with learnings from the entree leadership stages of business. Our free assessment will tell you which stage your business is in today and what you can do this week to get out of the daily grind. So don't wait. Go to ramseysolutions.com slash BIZQUIZ to take our free stages of business assessment today. Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, is my co host today in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt free stage. Andrew and Emily are with us. Hey, guys. How are you?

Hey.

Good.

How are you?

Better than I deserve. Where do you guys live?

Weatherford, Texas.

All right. Welcome to Nashville. How much debt have you paid off?

So we paid off 55,000.

Good for you. And how long did this take?

Six months.

Six months. And your range of income during that time?

We started at 110 and finished at 130.

Cool. What do you all do for a living?

I'm a financial advisor, and I work.

As a pediatric nurse.

Very good. Good for you. Great careers. How long have you all been married?

One year.

Okay, so right after marriage, you look up and you got 55,000. What kind of debt?

Two cars and student loans.

All right. And you start off with a burden here and you say, all right, we're clearing this and we're clearing it fast. Tell me the story. What happened? How'd you get turned on to us?

So I've known about you all for a while, and we had been talking about this for kind of what we wanted to do, and I started reading the total money makeover, and it was kind of firing me up. And then we celebrated her birthday on December 14, and I pretty much came.

Home and was like, let's pay off the car. And after that, it was like, what else can we pay off? What can we switch around in our budget to make it work for us? And I think that's kind of where it all started for us.

So you got the financial guy straight?

I think I'm just impatient. Very impatient.

Good. I like it. We're going to actually do this stuff you're reading about? Yeah.

Good.

Very cool.

I got to know Dave was the newlywed groomed. Did you figure out I should probably make her happy with this, or did you push back a little bit or were you all in what was going on when she came home with this idea?

Well, it's pretty hard to once she has her mind set to something, it's pretty hard to get her off. And so we had been talking about, like, hey, what are we going to do with this? And then she said, hey, I want to pay off my car. And then right after that, I said, hey, I've got a truck, a nice Chevy silverado. I think we probably should sell it, and that can knock off a lot.

And then you sold your truck?

I sold Dream Truck in Texas.

That's real?

Yes, sir. Sold it to buy a car, too?

Yeah. And people I bet you had people saying, you have lost your mind.

Yes, sir. Very much so.

Wow. How much was the truck?

The balance when we sold it was about $27,000.

So it was half of this debt.

Yes, sir. We rolled that into and then the Ultima was what we bought and we did not pay for it fully. That became a new part. And so the next thing was her student loans and then the car was last and so we took it from total money makeover try to get fun creative. So we created a whiteboard. It had the total amount, how much we had paid. And then every time we paid something off, we would play the song Jump Around from House of Pain.

Yes.

It's one of Dave's favorite songs.

We would just like, blast it through the house and just dance. Why not?

Got to knock out another one. I love it. Dance party.

Yes, sir.

That's fun. Good job, you guys.

Thank you.

Okay, so you're married a year and you're debt free. How's it feel?

Pretty good.

Pretty good.

You sold the truck?

Yes, sir.

Was it worth it?

It was worth it. 100%.

You'll get another buy the truck later.

You'Ll get another trio, right? That's what I exactly. You're going to get another one later. And another one and another one and another one.

Yes, sir.

It's not like you're only going to own one truck in your life. I mean, come on. Wow. That's awesome, guys. Way to go. All right. Young married couples out there listening, they're going, how do they do that? Well, they sold the truck. It's part of it. How they pay off 55,000 in debt? What do you tell them? The secret to getting out of debt is?

I would say accountability and just staying to it. Even though you're like, oh, man, I'm losing my truck and may not be able to do all the things that other married couples are going to do. Just sticking with it.

Now you can do anything right?

Yes, sir.

Yeah.

I'm curious. You guys are newlyweds. This is exciting. So what are you dreaming about now that you're debt free? What's the mindset looking forward to the rest of your life?

We're on baby step three A right now.

Okay.

And then baby step three B would be next. So the next step is definitely to buy a house.

Okay.

And so that's where we're looking for short term and then long term. Whatever the Lord has in store for us, we don't really know.

And how old are you, too?

24.

I don't love it.

Good. Wow. You're in such good shape. You're going to be so stinking rich. Unbelievable. The math on things when you're 24, guys, it's just oh, it's awesome. Yeah.

I got to ask you guys this. What are you aiming for for that first time home? What price range?

At this rate, we have a really tiny rent home, which is perfect, but I think we can make any home a home.

Good for you. Meaning you're not going to get locked into something over your skis there. You guys are going to be smart about this.

Yes.

That's great.

Love that. Wow. That's the big draw for a lot of young couples. They want to get that really nice house like mom and dad had growing.

No.

No.

You know, I was listening to a guy the other day, and he said, the secret to building wealth is marrying well. I mean, you could marry a princess who demands an instagram house, or you can marry Emily who says, I can make a home anywhere?

Yeah, I thought the same.

That's that's that's a freaking home run. That's awesome.

By the way, Andrew, I mean, I'm sure a lot of people have told you you clearly outmarried yourself, and that's a good thing. That's a compliment.

Yes, sir.

We're glad she has poor judgment. You have done well, sir. No question about that's. What I say about my wife, that's not personal.

Yes, sir.

It's very true.

Well done. Very well done. I'm proud of you all.

Thank you.

And who was cheering you on out there?

Well, we had a lot of people supporting us. It was a good amount of people. I mean, family, friends. It was always interesting when we would tell people what we were doing. Just the reactions were varied. Most people knew about you all, some people didn't. But they were like, wow, good for you all. So it was just a good community of supporters.

Yeah. They walk away shaking their head. He sold his truck. He sold his truck.

There was a lot of that.

He sold his truck. Oh, my God. As if you're never going to get another truck. I mean, you're going to be so rich. You can have five trucks. I mean, who cares? Unbelievable.

Not really emily. He won't do that.

No, actually, they'll be wealthy enough. They could hit five trucks. It won't matter. Honestly, the math is like, oh, no, I just 40, 50 million trucks. I mean, it's just, like, crazy.

That's true.

Yeah. Way to go, y'all. Way to go. We're proud of you, I can tell you that. And we know that the sacrifice you made is temporary, although painful. And you got there, and now you get to go anywhere you want to go. Talk about buying a house. Talk about the next steps. Very cool stuff. We've got the Live and give box for you. It's got the Baby Steps Millionaires book in it, for sure. You'll be in one of those. And the Total Money Makeover book to give away to one of your friends. This is how I did this. I just did this right here. And the Financial Peace University membership as well. Enjoy them. Give them whatever you need to do that's. What our gift to you guys, to say congratulations and thanks for coming to Nashville to do your debt free scream. All the way from Fort Worth, Texas. Andrew and Emily. Wow. 55,000 paid off in six months, making 110 to 130. Count it down. Let's hear a debt free scream right quick.

Go, rangers. Three, two, one.

We're debt free. Yeah. Whoa. Wow. Hey, that's a power couple right there.

Yeah.

24 power couple looking for a place to happen.

Isn't that true? It's extraordinary to see young couples committing early on first six months of their marriage. They're like, okay, we're getting after it.

Most powerful wealth building tool that allows you to get out of debt and build wealth and be unreasonably generous is contentment. Contentment allows you to sell your truck when everyone thinks you're crazy. Contentment says, I can make a home in anything. These are the verbs, the words that people use when they're functioning in contentment. Godliness with contentment is great gain. And that's definitely what they're walking in. And that's a decision. It's a decision where I place my values. Am I defined by where I live, what I drive? If I'm not, then suddenly I'm what's called content. I can get nice things and I cannot get nice things. But either one's fine and it works out either way. And that's the beauty of where they are. And the irony is it's the key that's going to make them extremely wealthy and put them in a position to be outrageously generous and help people everywhere around them. They're an amazing couple, just amazing.

And congrats parents. I'm sure they're watching, listening both sides.

Way to go. Mom, dad, both of you.

Y'all crushed it. This is a great, great couple.

Yeah. Just slam dunk. This is the Ramsay show, our scripture of the day. Psalms 128. Two, you will eat the fruit of your labor. Blessings and prosperity will be yours. Claude McDonald said, if hard work is the key to success, most people would rather pick the lock.

And that's the truth.

Katie is with us in Concord, New Hampshire. Hi, Katie. Welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Hi. Oh, God, this is actually happening. Okay.

Breathe, Katie.

It's going to be good.

Holy moly.

What's up? How can we help?

Gratitude. This is crazy. Okay, first I need to thank you for everything.

Thank you. How can we help?

Okay, Dave, you have to promise not to yell at me. My boyfriend and I have combined all of our debt and our bank accounts and we are gonzell intense on our debt. We have about $89,000 left. We have smashed out all the credit cards. There's no more credit card debt, which is very freeing. So now we're working on student loan and auto loan. But my question is my family and I have recently joined a church that my children and I were baptized in. And every month we have our budget meeting and I'm the planner and he gets to change my plan, which I don't really like very much. But my question is month after month after month, the church column is a bunch of zeros because I feel like I don't really have anything to give and I want to be able to give, but 10% of our income is.

When are you getting married?

Ask him. I've actually had this conversation with him. I've actually been married twice before.

How long have you been dating?

We've been dating for over a year.

Okay. If you're willing to completely combine your finances, you should never do that unless you're married, and then you should do it immediately. But this is very dangerous for you. Very vulnerable.

Yeah.

So either take your finances back apart or get married.

What was his response when you brought it up to him? Marriage.

So we talk about it. We want to get married. His thing is he wants to be able to provide picture perfect for me.

Sorry, that's not an option. Yeah, there's no such thing.

I got a hunch here real quick, Katie. What does he make income wise? And what do you make? Separate those.

Okay, so I make 4000 a month, give or take. Okay, what does he and he makes about 5500, roughly.

Okay.

And I actually have more debt than he does.

Okay, well, number one, let's just back up. Back the bus up here. Either get married in the next 30 days or separate your finances. This is very dangerous for you. I'm scared for you. Okay. You should not be paying his debt. He should not be paying your debt when you're not married. It's going to put a strain on the relationship. Something's going to blow up, and one of you is going to get left at an unfair disadvantage due to this broken system that you should not be using. I'm not yelling at you. I just want good for you. I love you. I want you to win. Then once you've made the decision to either separate your finances or combine them because you're getting married immediately, not next year. Okay, then this is not something you need to plan for two years. Painter get off the ladder. And then once you've decide all that, then we can come to your question. How do we put you've just started attending church. How do you put church in the budget? Well, you don't put church in the budget. You put God and generosity in the budget. And for those of us that are evangelical Christians, the first stage of baseline generosity is a 10th of our income going to the local church.

But that is an act of worship. That's an act of not trying to buy God's favor. He doesn't need your money. He says to do this because he wants to turn you into a generous person. Because generous people are much better children, and you and I are better children of God when we are generous. And so he's trying to turn us into that. And that's what the tithe was established for. It's not established as a rule. It's not established as a shaming mechanism by religious zealots. It's established as a method of teaching us the power of generosity when it's a regular rhythm in our lives, and so were IU. I would live on 90% of my income and be giving a 10th of my income to my local church. If I'm a person of faith, that's not a condemnation, but it's what I have done for 40 years, and it's worked really, really well for me. And there's no guarantee you're not going to have bad times. There's no guarantee of anything. It's just an act of generosity, and it's teaching us the rhythm of generosity. A baseline start. And I was in a church when I was going bankrupt, Katie, in my 20s as a baby Christian, and there were people there that would say things like, well, God protects you if you tithe.

And I went, missed that part. Went bankrupt. I missed that. And then I had one old blue haired lady say, well, you just didn't have enough faith. And I said, Honey, I didn't have anything left but faith. They took everything else. So, I mean, come on. So broken doctrine. Broken theology. You can get twisted up in all that toxic garbage, or you can just say, hey, I'm going to live life with an open hand, and I'm going to be a generous person, because generous people smile more, generous people are less often depressed. Generous people are better at relationships because who wants to be in a relationship with a selfish person? No one. Right. The act of generosity becomes a character quality, and it changes your whole life. And so, yeah, I'm going to put that at the top of my list of things to do. Absolutely. But not as a legalism rule.

Yeah, absolutely right. That is really scary doctrine, and it's what drives a lot of people away from the faith. If you think you got to give God money to get something good from Him, that is a recipe for frustration and desperation.

Yeah, as if he needs your permission to bless you. Right. And as if his blessing is dependent upon you giving him a nickel. Good gracious. If he wanted your money, he'd take it to a big greasy spot where you were sitting. I mean, he's God. I mean, come on. He doesn't need your money. That's not the point. And so don't be shamed by it, Katie. And don't be going because I heard the guilt. Oh, every month I feel bad because there's nothing in the church column. Put something in there, but don't do it out of shame. Do it out of, hey, I want to learn a different way of living. That includes generosity, and it includes a smile, and it includes being married to this guy you've fallen in love with and combining your whole life, not just your money. And let's do the whole deal. Let's go. Game on. But don't pay someone's debts, ever. And don't let someone pay your debts that you're not married to. You're going to get yourself in a pinch. Been doing this a long time and I never see good of ends. As Deloney says, all the time, this ends in ash.

That's a pretty harsh statement, but it does. The thing burns to the ground. So I want you to win, kiddo. We love you and I'm happy that you and your family are in a good church and it sounds like you're starting your journey there or resetting your journey there. That's awesome. Any of that. I'm cheering you on, Ken's. Cheering you on. We want you to win. And, no, we're not yelling at you. That's not what we do. We yell at concepts, not people. But, yeah, those of you that are shacking up and aren't getting married, you can do that. If you want to do it. I won't be mad at you. I'm not going to yell at you. But don't combine your money. Don't combine your money because you're going to get burned. Don't buy a house with somebody you're not married to. You're going to get burned. I get it all the time in here. It's all the time. And you're just setting yourself up. You make dumb decisions like that, you get yourself burned. We don't want that for you. That puts this hour of the Ramsey Show in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it.

In the meantime, remember there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace Christ Jesus.

Hey, it's Kent. If you like what you heard in this episode and want to know more about getting started on the Ramsey baby steps, go to ramsesolutions.com and click on the Get started button. We'll help you figure out the best next step for you based on your specific situation. Again, that's Ramsesolutions.com and click get started.