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. Open phones this hour as we talk about your life and your money. It's a free call, and some say the advice is worth exactly what you pay for it. The number is triple 8825-5225 that's triple 8825-5225 Dr. John Deloney, number one bestselling author, Ramsay personality and host of the Dr. John Deloney Show, a very, very popular podcast on the Ramsay networks, is my co host today. So we're going to be talking with you again. Triple 8825-5225 Ben's in Salt Lake City. Hey, Ben. Welcome to the Ramsay show.

Hey, Ben. Sorry. Hey, Dave and John, thank you for your time today.

Sure. How can we help, sir? Hey.

So I'll just try to skim over the top real quick. I am a full time single dad, and I was on baby step two when I got sued by my ex for custody. And so I put everything on hold. Been trying to cash flow through the process that started back in September and basically starting to run out of money. And I know there's a lot more expenses coming up. I'm looking for a way to be able to do that because I don't want to lose my son. And I'm trying to decide whether to take a loan or if I can go on anymore. You know what I mean?

What's the basis of the custody suit?

She just. So she lives on the other side of the country, and she just wants to basically flip it. She said, he's not been treated well, and he's struggling and things like that. But he's doing very well with friends in school, and he's being taken care of. So that's her argument for it. But her attitude is basically, we tried to work it outside of court, but nothing. I would be very surprised if she changed her mind on that, man.

I'm sorry.

How long have you been divorced?

It's been about three and a half years.

Where did she get unlimited money?

Her new partner is very wealthy.

Okay.

And I think that's where a lot of it stems from, is the pressure from her new partner, because it's kind of out of character for her to really go for this.

Well, here's the thing. How much you're talking about borrowing.

About 15,000.

What happens when that runs out?

Well, I've had a family member say that they would give me a loan, but like you say, thanksgiving.

What happens when that runs out?

Yeah, I don't know.

So we really have to address this issue, because all you're doing, it's not like you're going to win all of a sudden with 15,000 more, or if you take out another 10,000 from a relative after that, at the end of that, it's not necessarily like you're going to win. So it's not, I'm going to lose custody if I don't take out a loan. I don't have a good strategy to end this. If you could tell me that you could take out a $15,000 loan and 100% beat her, and it's over. I'm not going to tell you to choose your kid over getting in debt. I don't borrow money. I find a way around it. But what's happening here is that borrowing money is allowing you to continue in a process that's not got an end to it, because the party on the other side has got unlimited funds. Right?

Yeah.

So if you can get some kind of assurance from an attorney that this is going to draw to a close, there's one more course of action. It's about this many hours, and we're going to be able to wrap this up. That's one discussion. I'm just going to keep fighting until I run out of loans and they never run out of money. That's not a process that's good for you or anybody, except the lawyers. It's good for them.

Have you tried to roll this into mediation? And the reason I asked you why she was suing you? Because outside of some egregious abuse or something else, these things are often handled offline in mediation, which has an endpoint and a dollar amount attached to it.

Yeah, I talked to her about that about a month ago, and.

She just.

Basically told me what she would be willing to do. And it's that the custody would switch over.

Yeah, but, I mean, that's the point of going through the mediation, is one side says, this is all I'm going to do, and the other side says, this is all I'm going to do. And the mediator's job is to bring people together. Following up what Dave said, the reason I would push for that is because there's some finality to it. There's a period at the end of that sentence. It just doesn't go on and on and on and on.

Where is it being heard? In Utah or in her state?

In my state.

Okay. All right. Ask your attorney about bringing this to a close and how have you been funding it so far. What do you make a year?

About 40,000.

Okay. And you just been funding it out of cash flow?

Yeah.

So you're out of money. Why?

If it were to just continue with all this pre court stuff, then I could keep going. But I asked my lawyer about how much for the rest of it, and he said if we go all the way through, he thinks about 15,000.

Oh, he thinks that's going all the way through. Okay.

Yeah. Which we have a court date and everything set.

Okay. Then what I'm going to do is take six jobs and work through the 15,000, if that's it, because that's doable.

Okay. Yeah. I've wanted to do that. The reason why I haven't done that is because I also am a student and to just help me.

Not anymore. Not anymore. Take some time off from being a student. Right now. You're fighting a battle, for one thing. So now what we're saying is we're going to borrow money so we can stay in school indirectly, and we're definitely not doing that.

Someone is trying to take your son.

Yeah. That's way more important than being a student. And avoiding debt is more important than being a student.

I also think it could. I don't say will, it could serve you in court to say, I had to stop doing these things because this person is dragging me and my child through the mud. And so I had to stop going to school. I had to stop doing this and take more work on to fund these accusations or this attempt to take my child from me. And I'm going to do whatever it takes to keep that from happening.

Yeah. And lean in on your lawyer and say, I'm a guy makes 40 grand. I don't have 15 grand growing on trees. Let's figure out what we can do to clip that. That's a little rich. So just fulfilling your lawyer's dreams is not one of my dreams. That's awful, Ben. I'm so sorry. Your face.

Six for you.

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37027 Dr. John Deloney Ramsay personality is my co host today. Thank you for joining us, America. We're glad you're here. If you're a new listener and there are a bunch of you, a bunch of new viewers on YouTube and TBN and all over the place, all our numbers are up across the board. Thank you for that. A lot of you are trying to figure out some of the inside lingo, like baby steps and debt snowballs and all that kind of stuff is a simple way to do that. Just go to ramsaysolutions.com, click get started and we'll start walking you through the process. Matter of fact, we will show you with a get started process exactly where you are financially and what to do next and help you with your plan, your journey, the whole bit. Click ramseysolutions.com completely free. No salesman will call. Completely free. Chris is with us. Chris is in Lansing, Michigan. Hey Chris, how are you?

Hi Dave. Thank you for having me. Sure. I am on baby step six and I kind of have a two part question. My job security isn't too great right now and I wanted to know should I wait until I get a new job before I pay off my house? And if I didn't do that, what payments should I get rid of to work towards paying down my house?

What payments should you get rid of? You have other debt.

Like life insurance, 401, like the educate 529 account, tithing. So those are all things that I pay in towards that maybe I could redirect towards my house.

Okay, no baby step six. We would tell you to keep living your life, and with money you find in your budget, you would pay extra on your house. It sounds like this job thing has got you rattled. How long you been working there?

Well, it's my company for 20 years and I have a business partner.

Okay, so you're not going to lose your job. You might lose your business is what you're saying.

Yes, if one of us doesn't leave, and I'm the main contributor and it's not enough to support both of us. So slowly my income has gone way down to a point where I can't really afford not to leave and he's not leaving. So I'm going to look for something different.

What do you do?

It's a marketing company.

Okay.

Are you married to your business partner?

No, but I am divorced.

Did you used to be married to your business partner?

I'm sorry?

Did you used to be married to your business partner? No. Okay, so how is your business partner squashing your ability to earn a living?

Because he's not contributing and we're 50 50 partners.

So he's not bringing in his side of the business yet. He's taking half of what you bring in. And since he's not bringing any in, the total pie has shrunk.

And he's what keeps you from closing the doors and opening a door next door and just doing this on your own and making all the money.

Our partnership agreement, I basically wouldn't be able to do that. You have to buy out in order to get out. You have to buy out.

No, he'd have to buy you out if you want it out.

That's not how our partnership agreement is structured. A partnership agreement is structured that if you leave, you buy your clients if you were to take them. But I'm looking to get out of this industry altogether and start just a whole different chapter.

Okay, so what are you going to do and what are you going to be making?

Well, I'm looking right now, but I'm hoping to manage a team of people and be in sales. And I'm looking at around 200 to 350.

Okay. So this sounds like it didn't just suddenly occur. It's crept up on you and you've put off making the decision.

Correct.

You've delayed. And so what you need to do is not worry about your house and not worry about your tithe. You need to get on the phone today and get a freaking job. Chris. It's time to do this. Painter. Get off the. You've. You're. You're a year at least, maybe six months late on someone kicking you. And I'm going to kick you right now because I love you. Get going.

I'm probably about five years to ten years late.

Okay, then somebody needs to break the fog up. So I'm your guy. I love you. Enough.

Okay.

Get going, girl.

Okay.

You're too sharp to be this dumb. Get going, get going. Let's go. I want you to have this done by the end of April. A new job. And say bye bye. April?

Yes.

You got a month.

I got it. I'm in the. Got my resume ready to work.

You need to call me back on the air and tell me you did it. I'm going to hold you accountable.

Okay.

And you need to call. Who is your best girlfriend? That's mean.

Say it. Say her name.

Say her name.

Yes, you do.

Okay. What about your sister? Is she mean? No, I want somebody mean. I want you to call them and tell them to call you and kick you if you don't do this. I want you to declare to the world, it's time for you to roar again. Chris, you're meowing.

Yeah, I understand.

And you are not a kitten. You are a lioness. Am I wrong?

Understood.

This thing was built up by a woman. This whole thing was built up by a woman of substance. This was built by a woman of substance. And yet, for some reason, you have watched this thing deteriorate, and your life with it, to the point now you're going, I don't know if I need to pay for groceries. No, you need to get a freaking job.

I know this is what's going on.

Yeah, go get that. And all of these other questions go away, don't they?

You're 100% right.

Ding, ding. That's why I'm here. Something I don't hear at home very often.

You keep answering questions like this, you're going to turn this into a job.

Yeah.

We get now so stuck in just the day to the day that sometimes it just takes someone looking at you and be like, what are you doing? You can solve all of it. All of it. Just get trapped.

But you really need people in your life, in your community, that love you enough to go, I'm watching you do nothing, and I'm tired of it.

There's that famous psychological study where they took the dogs, and you couldn't do this study now, but they shocked them and they did. Didn't give them an opportunity to escape. And then they had other dogs that they would shock, that they would allow to escape. And over time, they would take the barriers off the dogs that they were shocking. The dogs just took it. It was just learned helplessness. This is just the way this is going to be. And you need somebody to go, hey, go. You can run, run away. Then they take off.

Right?

It's got to get somebody to look at you.

That's the fun thing. Yeah. We all need that, though, because the fastest way. That's a classic frog in a kettle thing. I mean, fastest way to boil a frog is turned up one degree at a time, just a little bit at a time. Gradual, gradual. Five years, this has been deteriorating. And then you look up and you go, wait a minute, I'm boiling over here.

Yeah. And this guy's doing nothing and still collecting half the.

Because I'm trapped in a really stupid partnership agreement.

Hey, I hear this happen a lot. People have an imaginary amount of money they're going to make when they leave their job. How tightly do you tell somebody to hold on to that versus get something.

And then begin to maneuver in this one. Get something and then begin to maneuver. Yeah. But.

253 just like I've been doing this job for 20 years, I'm just going to transition.

She might. I mean, in this current environment where there's such a shortage of everybody, high quality white collar people, I mean, yeah, she might. I don't know. I don't know what her skill set is. But urgency is one of them. We got to add back to. Yeah.

Yeah.

There we go. This is the Ramsey show.

This episode is sponsored by Betterhelp. Hey, it's Dr. John Deloney. This time of year can be great, but the holidays can cause anxiety for a lot of people, especially about giving gifts. Maybe your family makes super thoughtful, handmade things, or they demand you buy really expensive things. Or maybe you just like experiencing time together. Or you all just pick up random gift cards last minute. No matter how your family does gifting, remember to take care of yourself. Whether it's going easier on yourself during tough moments or treating yourself to a day of rest from everyone and everything, remember to give yourself some love this holiday season. And if you're thinking of starting therapy, give betterhelp a try. Betterhelp is flexible because it's online, so it can fit into your busy holiday schedule. Just fill out a short questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist, and you can switch therapists anytime for no extra charge. In the season of giving, give yourself what you need with Betterhelp. Visit betterhelp.com deloney today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp he lp.com Deloney Dr. John.

Deloney, Ramsay personality number one bestselling author is my co host today in the lobby of Ramsay solutions on the debt free stage. Andrew is with us. Hey, Andrew, how are you?

Hi, Dave and John. How are you doing?

Better than we deserve, brother. Where do you live?

Kiakuck, Iowa.

All right. Very good. And how much debt have you paid off, sir?

303,000.

Whoa.

How long did this take?

49 months.

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

37 five up to 88 five. And I was also doing a part time job, taking about 15,000 a year home.

Good for you. What was your part time gig?

Working at a gas station. Quick trip. A local chain in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa.

Working a lot then?

Yeah, every holiday every evening? Every weekend.

Wow. And what do you do for a living? Day job.

Well, actually, I'm a quality control scientist, but right as I finished my debt, I was laid off. So, still looking for a new job there, but in quality control.

But now you're $303,000 less weight to carry.

Exactly, yes.

Good for you. Well done. What kind of debt was that?

93,000 in student loans, 28,000 for a home improvement, 22,000 for a car, 10,000 in credit card, and then 150,000 for a house.

Dude, your debt free house and everything.

I sold the house, but to push it off.

Wow, look at you. Well done. Well done. So you're homeless, but you're debt free?

We're renting now.

Okay. That's all right. You're in a really good place. Congratulations.

Well, thank you.

How's it feel?

It feels great. It's amazing.

Well, you got wired up about four years ago. What happened? What got you started on this Ramsey stuff?

I had just moved up to Wisconsin, in Edgerton, Wisconsin, just outside of Madison. I moved back to Iowa last November. I was sitting there looking all my debts, and I was like, well, this is going to take me 30, 40 years, and had to come up with something. And your book was on my shelf, picked it up, started reading it again. I just remember always seeing you on fox business and stuff like that. So just got the fire lit.

So the world's largest coaster was on the coffee table again. Just waiting for years for you to open it and do it.

Yes.

So you reached kind of a moment that night, didn't you?

Yeah, I definitely reached. And I had a moment and just looking, and I was like, you know, this isn't a good life. My mortgage was probably 40% of my payment of my income and just couldn't get there, so had to clear it up. And that's why I got the part time job, because I said I needed an extra thousand a month.

Dude, I say this with all due respect. You've never made a ton of money. And we hear people all the time with half or less of this amount of debt, making six figures, making $100,000, and say, well, I can't do it. I can't figure out how to do it. And you making 37, five to 88, it's a great salary, but we're not talking. You didn't do this. Making 500 grand, paying off $300,000, that takes a level of courage and bravery that most of us don't have. I'm looking at myself thinking, if I made 50 grand. I don't know how I could pull this thing off in 48 months. What got you going?

Just keeping them. Just seeing that. Hey, there's light at the end of the tunnel there.

That's a dim light.

The debt didn't go down at all. I paid off the credit cards, but the way the student loans were, even though making payments, it still just didn't go down.

Wow.

But then really got the fire going. Big cheerleader was one of my friends, Bjorn. We would just text each other back and forth and keep each other accountable. He's on four, five, six.

So I would love to see that text chain. I hate my life. I hate mine, too. Keep going, man. Keep going.

Yeah.

Actually, when you guys were having a sale one time, and Bjorn and I were talking, I said, this isn't the budget for me right now. And it was all of your books. And he actually sent it to me as a gift, so that was a great motivation there.

Wow. Very cool. Good for you, man. I'm so proud of you.

Thank you, thank you.

Other than Bjorn, who was your biggest cheerleader?

My dad was a good cheerleader, but, yeah, just kept going there.

And he came with you today. He did. He did. Good.

So, where are you living now?

Living? Kiakuk. Renting a house for my brother, actually.

Okay. All right. And got to land in a new position, and off we go into prosperity. Yep.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Ever go back into.

Oh, no. Never again.

What do you tell people? The key to getting out is definitely.

The budget and just sticking to it. There's going to be days where you want to give up, but where you're at that point where you gave up, you've wanted to keep going. So just remember why you started and just keep moving forward.

Four years is a long time.

Yes, it is. Long time.

And it's really not that long. In the scope of your life.

No. Maybe 5% of my life if I make it to 80.

So there you go.

Short time, blink of an eye.

What do you tell somebody staring, like, just speak directly to that camera. What do you tell somebody who's staring at 200 and 5300? $400,000, and they're not making 350?

Once you get motivated, once you get started, that's when the promotions will come in. That's when the money will come in, because once you clean up one part of your life, other parts will get cleaned up, too.

Yeah. Amen. Well, good for you, brother. Thank you. Very proud of you. So we've got the live and give box for you, the bundle, the baby, steps millionaires book. That's your next chapter in your story. The total money makeover book for you to give to somebody. And maybe you'll be Bjorn for somebody in that.

There we go.

And financial peace, university membership as well. So if you haven't been through the class, it's time to go through it now. Make sure you finish this process out. I'm very proud of you, brother. Thank you.

Thank you, Dave.

Very well done. Very impressive. Good stuff. All right, it's Andrew from Iowa. 303,000 paid off in 49 months, including the sale of his house for 150 of that, making 37. Five to 88. Five. Count it down. Let's hear a debt free scream.

Three, two, one.

I'm debt free.

Yeah, man. You know, I think we've always worked with obviously, married couples and singles as well, for 35, almost 40 years now. Walking them through this process, in some ways, being single like him and doing this is easier because you don't have to talk somebody into it, but in other ways, you don't have anybody to kick you. There's no accountability, there's no camaraderie. When you fight for 48 months, that can get a little lonely.

Yeah.

Bjorn, which is backing him up by text and became his community in that process. And you got to have that.

And I don't care who you are. It's hard to keep eating right for 48 months. It's hard to keep exercising every day. 48 months. It's hard to pay off debt and having somebody right there with you. I think you're right. It's harder to stay on the tracks, but, man, it's easier when somebody's just walking there with you.

Yeah, but, I mean, it's a different dynamic to go through this transformational process, to clear the debt, to stick with it for a married couple than for a single. Each one has its own advantages and difficulties. You haven't got it easier, but you haven't got it that much harder. You just got a different kind of hard.

There you go.

When you're single or when you're married, and all of it's hard, but there's a process. And so sometimes it's hard. You got to talk somebody into it. You're dragging along the spouse, you're trying to get them involved. You can't seem to get them. It's dead weight you're dragging. And then, on the other hand, the other way, you're like, man, I wish I had some help here. I wish I had somebody to tell me to do this. So there's different kinds of hard, but it's worth it. But for me, watching someone like him, that's a particular kind of hero.

Yeah, this one's hard. I just think back to the time when my wife and I owed six figures and we were living in a residence hall and we made good money, our combined salaries, and I didn't know how we were going to do it. And to look at. To be able to say, I'm making 37 five and I've got a $303,000 hole, I'm going after it. That's a level of strength and bravery and commitment that inspires me even to this day.

Amen.

Like, man, I don't care how small I am, I'm going to get in the ring. I'm going to hit that dude right? I'm going to try to knock him down.

So the point for those of you that are listening or watching is you too can do it. We don't go with excuses around here. We don't even go with reasons. You can do it. You can do it. People just like you have done it. We've been doing this a long time. I don't care who you are. Someone like you has done their debt free scream. I really don't care. Yes, you can. Now it's time. It's your turn. Ready, set, go. 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. With debt payments and now with inflation stealing more and more of your paycheck, we know a lot of you feel like you're drowning and you're scared to death.

I've been there myself. It's no fun. Doesn't have to be that way, though. You can say, just like our last debt free screamer, Andrew, I've had it. Not living like this anymore. And we can show you how to do some new things with your money that you've never done before that'll cause you to be able to win. They're nothing really earth shattering. It's basically common sense. But we not only show you what to do. We help make you do it. It's called financial Peace University. It's a nine week, nine lesson course that'll teach you how to beat debt, build wealth and be outrageously generous. It's everything you wish you'd learned about money. Nearly 10 million people have been through financial peace University. FPU. And now they're in control and they got margin, and you can, too. So decide that you're done with money stress. Decide you're done and you're going to take control. Start financial peace university@ramsaysolutions.com. Slash fpu. Ramsaysolutions.com Slash FPU Jessica is with us. She is in Jeff. Whoops. That's not Jessica. Let me try again. Jessica is with us in Jeff City, Missouri. Hey, Jeff. Jessica. What's up?

Hi. Thank you so much for taking my call today. Sure. I'm in a rock and a hard place. I want to have another baby, but I also want to go back to school to get my income up, and we don't really know what to do.

Which one do you want more?

Both at the same time. Both.

And why can't you do them both at the same time?

We have two children now, and we just got out of debt on the first, so we're trying to build our emergency fund. So we're in baby step three.

We have health insurance.

Yeah.

How much it costs to have a baby?

Like ten grand.

No, it doesn't. Not out of pocket.

It did for us the last two. We did.

You have horrible insurance. It doesn't cost but ten grand to have a baby.

Yeah.

Well, I was in the hospital a.

Lot with both our kids with COVID and health issues while I was pregnant.

Okay. So we had extended stay. So it's not just a simple labor and delivery. Yeah. Okay. You anticipate that this time as well?

Possibly. I'm healthier, but possibly. So I would prefer to anticipate it than not.

That makes sense. Which helps it not to happen because you're not stressed. That makes sense.

Yeah, I'm not as stressed, so that's good.

Are you working right now?

Yes.

Is there a way to split the difference and you and your husband really get fanatical and put $3,000 in an account and just pause everything and store up some cash? Would that give you some peace?

Yeah, we can. He wants 30,000 for our emergency fund.

Well, I want a pony, too, and sometimes, you know what I mean? I don't actually want a pony at all, actually. Not even a little bit but weird. You can wish all kind of things, but sometimes it's going to take a minute to get there. He wants 30 grand.

If you had 10,000 in your emergency fund, you'd be well on your way. If you want to keep going towards 30, that's fine. Is that necessary before you had a child? No, it's not. Okay, but I think you do need to. So the answer is, how are we going to do all these things in order? Not all at once. When you try to do them all at once, it's impossible because it's overwhelming and you just simply don't have the bandwidth of time, energy, money to just say, oh, by the end of April, we'll have all of this going. No, you're not. You're not going to graduate from school, have a baby by the end of April. It's not going to happen. So why don't we just say which one is going to happen later than the other one? And I don't care. It's your life. So, I mean, like, we're going to have our baby first, and during the time that we're having that child, a nine month time frame, we're going to finish up this emergency fund and get it up to $15,000 to $30,000 during that time. And then after the child comes home and I'm able to get back to work, and then I'll start talking about going to school, or I'm going to put off having a kid to get my degree finished.

I don't care which one, but just decide. So it's not. No, it's not now.

Yeah. I feel like I'm not contributing if I'm not working and if we have another baby. Daycare costs are expensive.

So here's what I don't want you to do, Jess. I don't want you to circumvent that concern, because that idea that I'm not contributing is something. It's in the air we breathe. When it comes to making women feel guilty, if they choose to go to work, if they choose to stay at home, there's all this contribution nonsense that is just pumped at you. 24 7365. You have to make peace with that, because no degree, no other kid, and another kid, another kid, no emergency fund amount is going to let you sleep at night, because those aren't the issues. The issue is you're looking in the mirror and thinking, I'm not participating in this household. And that's simply not true. You got to address that.

What's your husband make.

80 to 90.

Does he say you have to be a financial contributor to you?

No.

Okay, so this is you saying this to you or our toxic culture saying this to you.

Me saying it to me.

Yeah. So let me give you an example. Okay? 38 years ago, my wife, 36 years ago, I mean, my wife went home when she had our first child as a full time mom and has never worked outside the home since. And one of the reasons that I am a national brand and a highly successful business person is because I don't have to deal with drama at home. She's the opposite of a drama queen. She maintains the fort and the fortress. She fights off all the enemies. And when I get home, it's a place of peace, not a place that I have to add yet another level of stress that has given me a foundation to come to the office and fight the dragons every day for 30 years. I would submit to you, Jessica, that Sharon Ramsay is a contributor.

Yeah.

To our wealth. You see how that works?

Yeah.

She really is. I mean, that's legitimate. That's not me just philosophically discussing something. There's an actual, factual piece of data here that says that one of the reasons we have the money we have is because I've been able to focus at work instead of having to deal with a bunch of crap with some princess at home. And so I call that contributing. And so did she go out and make $10 million during that time? No, she didn't make a dime during that time, except for consignment sale clothing, which I still can't get her to quit doing. But, like, we're still broke. I mean, come on. She still sells our clothes. Give them away. But anyway, yeah, because she wants to contribute, but, yeah. Oh, my God. But, yeah, that's the we. There's mom guilt if you work, and there's mom guilt if you don't work. Right? And so that's what John's.

And it's coming from the outside in. It's come from the inside.

It gets him. It gets planted in you early on. And Sharon's dealt with that. Rachel, who's a very busy career woman, Ramsey personality, deals with that. Deals with it, and talks about it openly. Okay, I feel bad if I'm leaving to go, but also, this is what I'm called to do, and I'm going to go do it. And if I didn't go do it, I'd feel bad for not going to do it. That's right. And so it's like, yeah, damned if I do. Damn if I don't. Some point, you've got to work through that and make peace with it. And then that allows you to decide why I'm going back to school.

That's exactly right. That order you're talking about, it tends to line that order up pretty easily. Sometimes if you're trapped in a story that you're telling yourself, I'm only worth this, or my only value is this, or I'm not contributing, there is something really powerful about writing that down and reading that to your spouse, especially in this situation where there's not a spouse, like, man, you need to get off your butt and get a job. And there's two kids and a third on the way. That idiot. That doesn't sound like her husband at all. No, it sounds like she's telling herself a story.

And he doesn't make a bad income.

He's doing fine. Yeah, he's doing fine. Especially, you're going to have a madhouse of three young kids running around, and no one's got a lot of money with all that. That's life. But he's doing well. But I think, sit down and tell him that, hey, I don't feel like I'm contributing, and let him respond like you did. And sometimes there is a sense of peace that we didn't even know was.

There when we were doing it. I'm not sure I really grasped it. I didn't care.

I didn't.

I didn't care. But when I look back on it now, I'm 100% sure I'm Dave Ramsay that everybody knows because of what she took care of at home. It would not have happened otherwise if I had to deal with what some of my budies have had to deal with. Oh, my lord. Yeah.

No question in my house.

This is the Ramsey show, 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. Dr. John Deloney Ramsay personality is my co host today. Open phones at triple 8825-5225 John, sometimes people wonder why I say we help people build actual, real relationships, and that's because you and I have made this unbelievable discovery that in the current century, there are people that are starting to realize, finally, that Facebook friends are not real friends.

They're not real friends.

It's not a real relationship.

The way you tell somebody that you love them is not an electronic thumbs up. That's not how love is transferred these days.

Can't click a like. Nope. Click like I like.

Can. It's just. It's going to leave you hollow.

We used to send these little notes up and down the aisle in elementary school. Oh, yeah. Remember those things?

Yeah. And you'd be like, you're dumb. Well, you're ugly. Well, you like Dave.

Ooh, Grody.

There was something tactile about it, and you could see them.

There was an actual human over there. Yeah. Not a digit. Yes.

You weren't arguing with a bot with the 0110.

Yeah, man. Yeah.

It's a different world.

It turns out that trolls are the mean people on the Internet, when you meet them, are highly disappointing individuals. Yeah, they're really kind of sad, little cowardly people that don't. That in a real world would never be that just. And people who are mean on Facebook and gossipy, if you ever sat in a room with them, would never have that kind of courage. We call that digital courage. So it turns out real, actual relationships are something that we specialize around in here. And it's kind of like common sense, and it's really marketable in America today. So it's like a discovery. Your Facebook friends will not help you change your tire at 02:00 a.m., well, and it's not one of them.

Dave, the criticism of Ramsay solutions is you're just giving people common sense. That's where we are. That's where we are.

100%, unashamedly.

I'm giving people, like, and I'll charge.

You for it since you haven't got any.

Turn your phone off and talk to your children, and I'll show you how to do.

Yeah. If you don't know how to have a conversation, John will sell you a deck of cards to help you do that.

I got you. If you don't know how to tell your wife, hey, this is what I need. I will help you out. It's a wild world, man. It's a wild world.

Well, Dave, people are. There's a relationship revolution that's starting to occur where people are saying it's not okay to sit in a restaurant and both of you send texts across the table. There's people starting to understand that.

That's sick, Dave. I saw some students that had, they took all their phones, and they stacked them up in a pile, and the first person who grabbed them had to pay for the whole meal. And they are practicing. We realize we're addicts. We're going to practice just sitting at the table together.

Yeah.

I love it.

So for five years, I've been trying to learn how to play golf, and that's another story. We'll go. It's another type of problem and addiction. But anyway, aside from that, one thing I've been practicing is I have my phone on the golf course. Well, I mean, golf is a really ridiculously difficult, complicated game for somebody like me that is limited in athletic ability. And so add to it distractions of crap coming from the office on the iPhone. So my new thing is for 4 hours, I don't look at it.

Okay, how do you feel when you do that? Are you angsty or do you feel free?

For a little while, it was like an addict. It was like I was being taken off the pill, right, or taken off the drug. But now I kind of look forward to it. And there's this peace when you come because there's an agitation that goes with the constant screen check. Was it 2500 times a day somebody checks. Those numbers are typical people, 2500 times a day, they check their.

Just grab for it, grab it, grab it.

It's like I just got dinged. I just got liked.

Has your golf game improved?

I just got unfollowed. Oh, my God. I'm rejected by somebody I didn't even like.

Did your golf game improve?

Considerable. Really, it's all about concentration. Anything that interrupts you. If you're thinking, I was playing with a pro, and he said, his sports psychologist says, okay, after you hit every shot in the round, we're going to step to the side and grade a five is you were thinking about nothing but the golf ball. A one is you were thinking about buying a car when you get home. Okay, right. And then we go back and we take the one to fives, and he said, guess where my best shots were? Well, duh. Where you were concentrating on the shot. Well, guess how life and relationships work. You're married.

Not the same. Right?

Right. Guess what? I follow a guy out of the neighborhood the other day. My little hoa. It's 06:00 in the morning, still dark. He's swerving all over the place. I'm like, he's drunk at 06:00 in the morning? No, just texting. It was a contractor setting up his subs while he was driving. And he's driving like he's drunk with a stupid phone. Like, okay, decide. Are you going to drive? Are you going to be on the phone? You drunk? Get out of the way, too, by the way. Oh, my gosh. But it's hard to do that thing, that phone thing and anything else, right?

But here's the other side of it. And you noticed in short order, I get itchy without it. And then I go 4 hours, and then suddenly there's a piece, and my golf game is improving, and now I kind of crave it, and I can't wait to get out there because I don't have this thing. A few weeks ago, my wife left town, and it was just me and Josephine and Hank. And Hank had something he was going to. So it was just me and Joe. And I just told sheila, I'm going to get off the rails. We're going to go eat every donut. We're going to go eat, like, a pancake breakfast at a restaurant.

Me and her are just pizza and chocolate cake.

It was 24/7 madness. Her blood sugar wasn't so great, but everything else. Listen, since that weekend where I put my phone away and she had my undivided dad's going to be with you for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner. I have a whole new relationship with my kid. She comes in hugs, and when I wake up in the morning, and it was literally day, 48 hours. It was 48 hours of, I'm just going to laser in on this little girl and to control delete our relationship. It's amazing. It's really amazing how quick it comes back around.

Well, that's the good news. It'll heal back. Bad news is it doesn't if you don't put the screen down.

Got to put it down. You got to put it down.

And screens aren't evil, but the overuse of them and substituting that for real connection and real relationship is evil.

I'm starting to think you've said for 30 years that money is a byproduct of your marriage or relationship like what you got going on your life.

It's not the problem. It's a symbol.

I'm starting to think screen time is, too. If you're sitting there at a restaurant and both of you are staring on screens and you're on a date with your wife, that is the smoke coming up from the fire of your assuming.

You ever knew how to do a relationship.

That's right.

But we have a segment of the demographic that has never been without a phone in their hand, right? And so they don't know how to break up except by text.

I tell you what, man. I had a student come in that got his wife, left him divorced via text. And Dave, listen. And I said, what are you doing in my office? Why aren't you going home? And this is a direct quote, we have a Zoom conference set up for Friday. And I was like, you should probably just get out of my office. Good grief.

We have a Zoom conference because she texted me leaving. Why are you here? We're so real. Relationships. It's part of what we do here. This is the Ramsey show.

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Dr. John Deloney, Ramsay personality, is my co host today. Luke is with us in Cleveland, Ohio. Hi, Luke. Welcome to the Ramsey show. Good afternoon, gentlemen. It's a pleasure to speak with you. You too. How can we help?

Well, I'm either on baby step two or baby step seven, and I need a little clarification to figure out which one I'm on.

Okay.

So I have a credit card, which I don't want to have a credit card. But with where I'm at in my life, I'm fortunate enough that I can take a trip to Mexico or to the Caribbean about twice a year. And on all the debit cards I found, they all have a 2% foreign transaction fee. And my credit card does not. So I do have the credit card, but I use it for the time.

When I'm at the trip, and then.

I pay it off the following month.

When the bill comes due. You know, that's interesting. I got back from Mexico Sunday, and I have been there ten days, and I didn't have a single charge. You're talking about on my debit cards. Really? Yeah.

Because I've called.

They just asked me, do you want to run it? Pesos or dollars? When they run the little machine out to you, right? Yeah.

No, and it's always in dollars. And that's still apparently a 2% fee at my two credit unions.

And two, I just booked a trip out of the country, in the south, too, and they had the same.

I think you just need a better debit card.

A different bank.

But anyway, we would tell you to get a different, better debit card because we don't believe in credit cards at all. But even then, if you use a credit card and you paid it off, what's your problem? You're not in debt. That's not a baby step two thing. Well, there's a bill, but it's not.

Really, I guess, a true debt. But also I'll keep my credit score.

Which I don't really want. Yeah, that's a problem.

I know something that you talked about.

Before, so I was just kind of.

Confused on what I should do.

Well, number one, here's the thing. The amount of pain that you were in before because of your stupid money decisions will dictate how drastically far you go with these things. I went completely broke, so I don't walk anywhere near a bank except to make a deposit. Okay. I can't stand those people. Even my banker, who's a friend of mine, I'm not sure I like. No, I'm kidding. But you know what I'm saying, right. And so it's just the whole thing. There's no chance, even if I wasn't the guy about no credit card, Dave Ramsey guy, I would have a credit card because of what I've been through by listening to you have not had that. I've been that burned experience. So it's a little bit more, eh, whatever for you. And I get that that's not a criticism, but I'm just an observation. Is that fair? Yeah, absolutely. So again, what we teach is, based on this absolute, I'm never going to go near a debt instrument again because I'm never going in debt again. So that would dictate for someone doing that that they go and find a bank that doesn't have ridiculous fees on their internationals.

And I'm really shocked your credit union does. I would talk to them about just removing that because credit unions are very customer oriented, much more so than banks in general, and they don't want to.

Lose a baby step seven customer.

Yeah, but if you have a bill that comes in during the month, like your electric bill, and you pay it, you're not in debt. If you had a credit card bill that came in and you paid it. You're not in debt. You're on baby step seven. You're just on baby step seven. And you still have a credit card, which is the only thing I would obviously have just griped at, you know. But you're a baby step seven, guys. Where you are, to answer your overall, dude, I'm in Mexico three or four times a year. I like Mexico. And I do have to watch the peso exchange shifting a little bit. It's gone from .2 to, .18 and so it does affect things a little bit. You have to watch what you're doing, and sometimes they'll catch you with a conversion if you're not watching your math in some of these locations. But that's a vendor issue. That's the merchant. That's not the credit card or the debit card. So we use our debit cards frequently. We use a lot of cash, too. Mexicans much prefer cash, by the way, for the same reasons a lot of Americans do, but even more so, they don't want the government after them.

So that's the whole thing. They don't want the government knowing. They like being off the grid as much as we do. Those of us that are rednecks. Okay. So we don't want to be on the grid, either. We don't want anybody knowing where we are. So. That's very interesting. Good question. Hannah's in Pittsburgh. Hey, Hannah. Welcome to the Ramsey show.

Hi. Thank you for taking my call.

Sure. What's up?

I was just wondering if we should pay our mortgage or if we should wait until we have a little bit more saved as, like, a safety net.

Okay. Do you have any other debt?

No.

You're fairly new to this whole Ramsey stuff, aren't you?

Yes.

Okay. So we teach a process called the baby steps. It's how to apply. It's the next step, the next thing, and then the next thing, and the next thing. A clear path from where you are now to wealth. First thing is get $1,000. 2nd thing is be debt free. But the house, you've done those two, right?

Yes.

Okay. Then the third step is to have a fully funded emergency fund. Grandma called it a rainy day fund. The proper amount is three to six months of household expenses. What's your household income?

Well, I just quit my job, so now it's going to be about $100,000.

Okay. Are you going back to work?

No, I'm going to be a stay at home mom for a while.

Okay. How much is your house payment?

About $650 a month.

Wow.

Good work, Hannah.

Wow. Okay, that's weird. That's wonderfully weird. Okay, so let's pretend that your monthly expenses, if everybody's income stopped, that you could live easily on $4,000 a month. I wouldn't be far from wrong, would I?

No.

Okay. Three times four is twelve. Six times four is 24. So you should have an emergency fund of twelve to $24,000 before you start paying off your house. How much do you have in savings?

Savings? We have about $95,000.

Okay, let's allocate 20,000 of that to your emergency fund. Now, everything else is going towards your mortgage. How much is your mortgage balance?

About 92,000.

Great. Okay, so you said you have 95,000 in savings?

Yes.

Okay. Well, the way we would teach it is you keep your emergency fund of three to six months. We could call that 15 for fun. That'd be putting 80 on the house. And then you pay off the house, what, by Christmas, if you only have 15 owed. Right. And then if you want to build up your emergency fund a little further, you could. That's what we would do around here. Because no house payment is going to make you even more brilliant than you already are. And you're pretty stinking brilliant.

Good grief. I love that. That was like a slow flex.

We have a $95,000 and $600 house payment. Fantastic translation. Hannah, you are well on your way before you ever met anybody called Ramsay. But we'll help you get there even faster.

So, Dave, one of the criticisms I get is, let's just this situation. How do you tell somebody? Because mathematically, you kind of win in the lottery, the $650 house payment. But there's the umbrella, the shadow that sits over you, that says somebody else you owe money to.

Right.

You owe money to somebody else. How would you explain that to somebody that says, no, it's worth it to go ahead and do it. It's worth it to go ahead and pay that thing off, even though your house payment is so low relative to what you're bringing home every month.

Because several things happen in addition to the math being freed up. The first thing, number one, the math is freed up. And now you can invest and save and be generous with your entire income, and it will cause you to be wealthy faster. That's the basic thing. But it's only $600 we're freeing up here. So it's not like it's a ton, but it's there. And whatever else extra they were paying or putting into savings. So she's got this vague savings over here that hasn't got a real assignment yet. It doesn't have a mission. The second thing that happens is that people that don't have a single piece of debt, you talk about this, they relax in a place they didn't know was tight. Their relationships get better, their employment changes for the better because they don't have to work there. Their health improves, literally. I mean, the hypertension that we face in this culture. People with mortgages don't have as much high blood pressure. Hello. Wow. Just think about it. People that don't have mortgages have peace. Financial peace. Two words that don't go together, like airline service. This is the Ramsey show. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, is my co host today in the lobby of Ramsay solutions on the debt free stage.

Corey and Amber are with us. Hey, guys. How are you?

Hey, David, John.

Good to have you guys. Where do y'all live?

Raleigh, North Carolina.

Oh, fine. That's a great town. We love Raleigh Durham. Good. So how much debt have you two paid off?

$181,558.

Wow. Give or take. Way to go. And how long did this take?

Two years and five months.

All right. Love it. And your range of income during that two years and five months?

We started at 95,000, and now we are a little over 200,000.

Nice. Double in two years. So how'd you double your income in two years?

Well, starting about the beginning of 2020, I didn't realize how much debt we actually were in. It's primarily student loan debt. Amber finally shared it with me, and I said, I'm tired of all this money going out the door and not being able to keep it. So we got that gazelle intensity. I'm a mental health therapist, and so when March 2020 hit, unfortunately, Covid impacted a lot of people's mental health, and.

Therefore, you were kind of in the plexiglass business, right, budy? Mental health and plexiglass. Big deal during COVID right? Wow.

You just took client after client after client after client. That's exhausting work.

It is.

That's like walking through spider webs.

You had long hair when that.

Yep.

Wow. That's a lot of therapy without getting any.

And, Amber, what do you do for a living?

I'm a reseller, and I have a small YouTube channel.

Oh, cool. What do you resell?

Clothes and shoes and really anything and everything.

What do you do? EBay or Facebook marketplace?

EBay, Poshmark, Mercari, Facebook marketplace.

What's the most successful, which platform?

It varies. It changes depending on the season, the years. But ebay and Poshmark are pretty much the top two for me.

I've met people that are buying clothes at garage sales for ten cents and selling them for $3 on eBay, and they're making ten grand a month. I've met people doing that.

I was afraid when Covid hit that my sales would decrease because they went up. They did. Because people didn't want to leave their homes. So online shopping.

Well, and they're bored. They're just sitting there dinging on, buying stuff, going deeply.

Then they feel ashamed, so they call, you got it figured out, and they got to get back up.

You guys got a rack.

Well played.

All right, so what got you all started on this? Two and a half years ago, I.

Shared with Corey how much debt we were in when we first got married. I pretty much handled all of the money, and Corey kind of was just on the back burner. He just worked and just had his head down. And when I finally shared how much debt we were in, and he realized how much debt we were like, we have to do something. And I found the seven baby steps, and we were like, this is it.

As a mental health therapist, what was it like when you realizing, oh, we should probably communicate?

Not only aided me in my personal growth, but professionally as well, teaching clients to do the same thing. So it's all about communication, intentionality, being on the same page.

Definitely. That's very cool. Okay, so what was the 182,000? What kind of debt?

It was primarily student loans. We did have a couple of credit cards and furniture. But someone went to a private university for six years.

So when you shared it with him, you told him. Right?

The one he already knew, that he was deeply in debt.

Okay, the way you all say that is so gentle. I shared with him the debt. No, I told him how much you racked up.

Yeah, I had some as well. But his was the larger chunk of it.

Yeah. Okay. So he looked at it and said, oh, yeah, this is a thing. So talk to me for the sake of the audience about that dynamic, because it's a really important one. We're kind of joking around and laughing over the top of what is some actual pain. You were carrying a lot of stress, and by you, I mean Amber. And you kind of went, I don't know what happened. You just like, I'm at the end of my rope. I can't carry this by myself anymore, or I need some help and you're not paying attention or what was that dynamic like?

It was pretty much I had to tell him because we had to change what we were doing. We'd go on vacations, but we'd always cash flow it. And then when I get home, it's like, we have all this debt left.

You couldn't manipulate it enough to make it work.

And then when I finally shared it with him, because I didn't want to stress him out, when I finally shared the numbers with him, it was eye opening.

Over the years. I've done this for 30 years, talking to people in this situation, whether it's the husband that was doing the bills and has to bring in the wife, or the wife, in your case. There's this weird thing that it's like, I'm supposed to be taking care of this, and I can't do anymore. I don't know how to fix this. I've got to have some help. And it's like people feel. Sometimes. I don't know if you did, but sometimes people feel like you failed at your job, which was to take care of the money. And so there's almost a shame to bring it to the other person when it actually is their job to help you. But there's this weird thing. It's like, I can't do it. Did you sense that?

Yes.

Okay. It's hard, isn't it?

Yes.

And then, Dave, you just nailed it. It's a stress to shame, loop de loop, because then you handed him your stress, and then you felt really shamed about all this debt you wrecked.

Absolutely.

It's very challenging, but self compassion is a very important trait in this journey. Without it, we wouldn't have been able to make it.

Yeah. That's good.

And it made our marriage stronger as well.

Yeah, that's a good one. Self forgiveness, right? It goes with compassion. Yeah. Like when I went bankrupt, it was completely my fault. Sharon, I mean, she didn't have any idea what was going on. We've owned houses. She never saw. It was completely my fault because I ran the thing in the ditch. And so it took a little while for me to get over going. You're an idiot. I was an idiot, but it took me a little while to get over that. Just forgive myself and move on from that and go, I'm just going to learn from this. We're going to take all these lemons and make some lemonade. Yeah. There's a real thing to what you guys have been through. It's very powerful. Thank you for being open about it and sharing it. You're going to help some people today by having done that. And you're victorious, too, by goodness. $182,000. How does it feel to be free?

Wonderful. Wonderful.

Okay. Now that you did it and you leaned in for two years and five months, almost two and a half years, there's a whole reformation that occurs during that time, not only in your relationship, but just in the way your brain looks at money. A transformation, if you will. What do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is?

I would say, don't focus on what you have to give up. Look at what you have to gain. If we would have stayed living how we were living, there's no way that we could be able to afford the future that we want and have a house one day. So that's what I would say.

And be willing to sacrifice a bit. We'd work seven days a week, weekends. All our friends. Hey, want to hang out? Love what you said. One episode, Dave. No means yes. Me later. A lot of our friends really stuck to it. Have some great support because of that.

And then we also really cut down on the grocery budget. And for two and a half years, he had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch every single day. So that's his tuna fish.

That's how you get muscles like that. Wow.

Yes.

It's a peanut butter and jelly protein system. Yeah. That's how you get those muscles. Okay. Yeah, that's for sure. Oh, my God. Yeah, it didn't kill him. I can tell.

Way to go. Can you eat peanut butter and jelly now? That's the question.

No. Okay. Can't do it. I ate tuna fish sandwiches when we were broke, and I smell tuna fish still to this day, my net worth goes down. I hate them. I hate tuna fish. Just because it was broke. People, food for you, it's peanut butter and jelly. You get that smell. It's like, do you have a peanut allergy, sir? Yes, I do. I'm completely allergic to peanut butter and jelly now.

You all are incredible.

Well done, you guys.

Thank you.

Very well done. Very well done. Now that you're 100% free, how's it feel? Amazing.

Wonderful.

Cool. Proud of you. Very well done. Now, who are these cheerleaders you brought with you?

These are my parents.

Okay. They're awful proud. Just watching their body language while you're talking, they're just like. They're so proud.

They were our biggest supporters.

When your grown kids actually have sense, it makes all of us parents proud. It really does. Because we all have friends that their grown kids are idiots. I mean, we do. And when they're not. It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. So, hey, we've got the live and give bundle for you. It's the baby steps Millionaires book, which is your next step in this process. You'll be there before you know it. The total money makeover book, which is what you've just done. Maybe you can give it to one of your friends that stood by you out there. A financial peace university membership as well. And again, the live and give bundle. We're so proud of you guys. You're a very neat couple. What you've been through is very obvious. It's on your face. It's on the way you're looking at each other. It's on the words you're using. You're very powerful, very well done. All right, it's Corey and Amber. Raleigh, North Carolina. 182,000 paid off in two years and five months, making 95 to 200. Lots of communication, lots of hard work. Count it down. Let's hear a debt free scream.

Three, two, one.

We're debt free.

Yeah. Oh, you gotta love it, man. This is the Ramsey show here at Ramsey solutions, we're on a mission to bring hope to the hopeless. We've helped millions find peace in their money and their life, and we need people like you to help us. We have open roles in our sales, marketing and technology teams. We offer financial, developmental and health benefits to help you live a balanced life while doing life changing work. You want to join the crusade? See our openrolls@ramsaysolutions.com careers and apply today. That's ramsaysolutions.com careers. Dr. John Deloney Ramsay personality is my co host today. Thank you for joining us. Open phones at triple 825-5225 if you're a new listener and we know there's a whole bunch of you out there that are. And some of this that we talk about is like tribal speak. The vernacular that we're using, the words we're using are new to you, like baby steps and debt snowballs and all that kind of stuff. If you want to kind of figure out where you are and start to plug into this whole thing completely free, go to ramsaysolutions.com, click on the get started button. Ramsaysolutions.com. Click on the get started button.

And that'll get you moving in the right direction, get you where you're supposed to be. So our question of the day comes from neighborly. It's sponsored by neighborly, your hub for home services. To repair, maintain, improve our home. Researching dozens of providers is a thing of the past. Neighborly is all you need to remember. A nationwide network of local home service pros of all kinds. We love neighborly. We're honored that they're sponsoring us. Molly made Mr. Ruder, Mr. Electric, to name just a few. Just really good stuff. Neighborly.com, and you can get some help near you. All right.

Today's question comes from Molly in Oregon. Molly writes, my husband makes $30,000 a month take home. Well done. And I'm fortunate enough to stay home with my daughter. We have zero debt. Our rent is currently $2,100 a month, and utilities are fairly cheap. We have visited Maui several times and are planning on making a move there. The thing is, I feel like even though we have no debt and a paid off car and everything, we are still scared to go into debt on a house. We're waiting for a good deal and think we found something really nice, around 900 grand. We're making a trip out to see the house at the end of this month, and if that doesn't work out, we have a property we think we might buy and build a house on for about the same price. Are we too scared to spend money? We've just been at a point in our life when we first got together where we struggled so much, and I think we both just get scared of being there. That's. That's the story of my. You've. You've really helped me with that one, Dave. I think when your identity is survival, and I say it sounds identity, when your body's trying to survive all the.

That you just develop a scarcity mindset. This all goes away in any second. And then we live in a world that tells us it's all coming down. It's all coming down. It's all coming down. And so it's really easy. $30,000 a month is a ton of money. And they still live like they're broke, right? They're still renting. It's just this terror that's in there. And you taught me, Dave, that in my language. You got to practice your way out of this thing. And for me, the gift that you gave me was practicing using ratios and to stop looking at, like, for a couple that went broke, $900,000 feels like a billion, right? Let's look at the ratios, let's look at the cost. Let's look at the actual percentages of things. And that's given me a lot of peace and allowed me to practice a new way of doing life.

Well, it helps use your intellect, your brain, to make the decision on facts.

It's bringing my brain back online.

Yeah. I'm using facts instead of feelings.

That's right.

Because what happens is there's two things that cause two situations, and they usually go together, actually. Number one, if you've gone broke, like I have, then, or like she has, in this situation, you have to heal from that. And the only way you heal from that, move from this. I'm always going to be broke mentality to I'm never going to be there again mentality is you have to practice, and you have to do new things. The second thing that happens is when you start and you are making $30,000 a year, and then you're making $30,000 a month, what happens is the math grew faster than your emotional capacity to manage that. Now, I'm not saying you didn't have the intellectual capacity to manage the money. I'm saying that I'll give you an example. Around here at Ramsay, okay? I mean, I grew up normal kid, right? And I worked my butt off cutting grass and doing everything else, shoveling whatever had to be shovel, all this kind of stuff, right? And what we spend on coffee at Ramsay, with 100 employees, I never made that much in a year, and we spend it on coffee.

Oh, my God. It's just, like, to get my emotional head around those numbers sometimes. It's an intellectual exercise, what we spent on copier paper in a building, it's just, like, because of the scale and we're not doing anything wrong. It's nothing irresponsible. The coffee is not ridiculous. It's not Starbucks. I like Starbucks. But it's not inexpensive coffee. It's just good coffee. But it's not that. It's just, there's a lot of it, right? And so the same thing is true when you're buying a, you've been driving a $5,000, $8,000 car that breaks down and the tires are bare for the majority of your life. To emotionally buy a $50,000 car, even if you're worth $10 million, doesn't matter. It's a difficult decision because you feel, like, weird, because your emotions are not used to sitting in that car. Your nose is not used to smelling that smell. The new car smell, it doesn't come.

Up well for us. So for Sheila and I, when we bought a house in Texas, I had a great job. She had a great job. I could not believe that a human being would spend this much money on a house. Dave, I didn't sleep for two or three days. Couldn't breathe when we bought it. And we closed. We went in with the key, opened it up. Sheila fell to the floor crying. She could never have believed that she could live in such opulence. And we sold the house, and I made enough money to pay cash for, like, a $15,000 truck. So we made a little money on it, and we got 185 for it. And then we moved to Nashville. And you can't buy somebody's.

Here's the thing.

I'll use the word sinfully. I had lumped people who buy houses that cost this much money into. Those are those people. We're these people and people like us. I had divided the world up into us as and thems in an unfair way.

Sometimes people do that on race. Sometimes they do on everything on education level, on religion. Sometimes they do it based on the fact they've been broke or they grew up broke. A friend of mine grew up in the hood, and he said, getting out of the hood is easier than getting the hood out of you. And that's the truth. That's the thing. And so what we're saying is, every one of us have had downtimes or broke times or made more money than we ever made in our life. And it is normal for your emotions to struggle to catch up. So, Molly, you're normal. Buy the house. The way you fix this is you have to do what John says about trauma of any kind. You have to say, facts are your friends. These fears are irrational. And so if you have $600,000 cash in your bank account and you want to buy a $15,000 car and you have a weird feeling. It ain't the math, bubba. It's you.

And acknowledge the feeling. Acknowledge it. I have a little thing that I write them down. I still write them down. When they're obnoxious and they're dumb, I write them down, and then we move on.

Yeah. Because that takes the power away from.

That's right.

Stacey's in Fort Worth, Texas. Hi, Stacey. How are you?

Hi. I'm fine. Thank you so much for taking my call. I'm very honored to speak with you both.

You, too. What's up?

So, we have a daughter who's in college, and then our younger, our twins, who will be going off to college in the fall, and we had a very lengthy. Not your normal baby step two. And it's left us with a house that needs repair on everything. And so my question for you is, would it financially make sense to just sort of get rid of the house as is. Sell it to one of those companies that just takes it off your hands.

No, they take it off your hands at wholesale. You need to call a good real estate agent and have them come in and say, there's ten things you could do. Six of them are worth the money. The other four, you need to let the other people do whatever it is. Okay. But if you'll spend the money on paint, on landscaping, on the recarpet, it's going to two x your return when you get ready to sell the house. And you're going to get the enjoyment of it. So you need to make a list of projects. The way you eat an elephant is a bite at a time that your real estate agent, your future real estate agent gives you the priority on. This is the most important one, down to the least important one. And work your way down those projects with cash. And then some of them you don't need to do because they're not worth doing. We'll let the next owner do it. But it's a retail buyer, not a we buy houses buyer. So we buy houses buyer is a wholesale buyer. And you don't need to take that hit because you don't have the energy to fix this house.

Get the house fixed up, get a real estate agent to guide you through it, get multiple bids, prioritize it, work one project at a time. You don't have to do them all at once. And you don't go into debt to do this. So. Good question. You're on your way. You're on your way, Stacey. You're closer than you feel like. This is the Ramsey show. 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. Dr. John Deloney Ramsay personality is my co host today. Thank you for joining us. America open phones at triple 8825-5225 Genesee is with us. She is in Springfield, Illinois. Hi, Genesee. How are you?

Hi.

I'm doing great.

How are you?

Better than I deserve. What's up?

Hi.

So I am a fresh new baby graduate, and I'm about $217,000 in debt. Both of my parents didn't go to college, so I don't really have anybody to talk to about loan repayment and things of that nature. I did luckily get gifted your course from a Facebook group that I'm in and I'm on step two. But I'm wondering, so I'm a single parent. I'm 26 and she's ten. I had her at 16, and I just did school straight through, so no working in between. High school, undergrad, and then I just graduated from veterinary school.

Oh, wow.

I have my doctorate.

Wow. Good for you. Good for you.

Thank you very much. I'm just wondering how realistic it is because it seems like I'll never get to step three with that much debt. And I know, like I said, I'm on step two in the course. And I see a lot of married couples.

We work with a lot of veterinarians in entree leadership because a lot of them come through to learn how to run their business, the business aspect of being a veterinarian. And so what I'm discovering just in having conversations with them is that there are veterinarians working in a practice that don't own the practice. Lots of them that are making 100 and a quarter. 100 and a half. There are a whole group of them, too, that are making 60 and 70. And so what I would tell you is don't get too caught up in a certain area of veterinary medicine. Get caught up in the area that can make you the most money for a little while.

So I've actually signed on to a practice. It is a corporate practice, so I don't own it and I don't have any stake in it. I start Monday, actually.

Okay.

And my base is going to be $105,000 a year.

Ding ding. Sounds like my information is accurate. Okay. And you'll be going up pretty quick in that. That's just your starting. And so you'll be at 100 and a quarter within a short period of time. So I'm pretty close. All right. And you're used to living on nothing? Yes. Because you've been a college student your whole life?

Yeah.

Okay.

So if you lived on nothing, how much is nothing?

My rent at my house that I was living in, in my vet school was about 550. I was one of five roommates. And then my mom was helping me with my daughter at that point in time. So now when I've moved back to my hometown, the rent here is pretty insane. It's going to be about for me to rent and not have a mortgage. Rental homes and rental apartments are looking at about $1200 to $1,200 a month.

Okay. That's $14,000 out of 105.

Yeah.

Okay. Then we got to eat and we got to pay lights and we're not going to go buy a car on payments.

Yes, I have a car. I've owned it. It is on its last leg.

You're a veterinarian? Just prop the leg up. Yes. All right.

And then living expenses.

Here's what I'm saying. All right? 55,000 a year minus taxes is the most you can spend to live. The other 50,000 goes on your debt, and in four years, you're done.

Okay.

So you think it wouldn't be worth signing up for an income based repayment?

Why would you want to stay in debt the rest of your life?

I don't.

Okay. Let's get out of debt in four years.

Okay.

Or sooner.

Okay.

I'm talking to a woman who, at the age of 16, with most people trying to figure out how blinker works on their mom's car, had a child. And you have managed to be a mother and a daughter and a graduate student and now a veterinarian making 105,000.

At 26 years old.

You cannot sell me on the fact that you can't, quote unquote, do something.

You can do anything. I would proven it.

Fight you for all the money in the world. You're incredible. My friend Jade Warshaw, who's also co host this show, her and her husband had almost half a million bucks, and they did not have veterinarian in their holster. They were music students and they did it. Here's what's going to be frustrating for you. You have been waiting for this moment for so long in your doctor Genesee now, and that car is going to stay the same and that lifestyle is going to stay the same. And that ten year old kid that you promised, just wait. Just wait. Just wait, like three more years to go.

Now they got to wait because it's going to take you four years. It's going to take you three to four years to do this.

And you can also work shifts on Saturdays and Sundays and maybe even do emergency medicine overnight if you need to. And let your kids stay with your mom every once in a while.

If you go pick up another 50 grand doing that, you can be out of debt in two and a half years.

Okay?

So it doesn't seem unattainable.

You can do this.

Here's the big math, okay? Take 200,000 and divide it by the number you're going to put on it a year. I put 50 a year on it out of your 105 a minute ago. Then John added some work to your life and we put another 40 or 50 on it. So 50 a year into 200 is four. Right?

Right.

This is attainable. And by the way, this is not static. You're not going to only make 105 for the next four years. And the extra income. You're not going to only want to do that forever. But if you go. Made another 30,000, $40,000. And now we put 80 on this. What is 200 divided by 83? Not even two and three quarter. Right. Okay. You following me here? It's a big number, math. You don't have to have a master's degree in finance to pull this off. You just divide 200 by the amount you're going to throw at it. And that tells you how many years it's going to take for you to get this done. You're going to get it done very, very quickly.

And here's underneath the math. My mom, I've told the story on the show. My mom, at 42, the age of 42, took her first community college class, one class. And it was either geometry or algebra, one of the two. And we took it together. I was in high school. Fast forward to 57 is when she graduated with her phd and she became a tenured professor at 63. And she teaches her last year at Oxford this summer in her seventy s. I tell you that to tell you, I had a ringside seat to a mom who completely transformed her life. And it was hard and she was busy and she had to miss games. And she was working on Saturdays and Sundays, writing papers and reading and doing grad school work. And as an adult, she took away every single excuse I could ever have because I got a ringside seat to watching a gangster be born. And so your son is going to watch you, and you're going to feel guilty. I want you to think of the long game he's going to watch his mom teach him through action. He can do anything.

He's married to. I mean, his mom's a warrior princess.

It's incredible. You're giving him the gift of a lifetime.

Yep. Way to go. Proud of you. Good work. This is the Ramsay show, folks. Changing your family tree takes more than rice and beans and side hustles. It's also about transferring the big financial risks off your family by having the right kinds of coverage in place. That's why my team created the coverage checkup quiz. It only takes about five minutes to find out what types of insurance you need and don't need to protect your finances. Make this quiz one of your regular checkups, starting right now@ramsaysolutions.com. Slash checkup. That's ramsaysolutions.com slash checkup. Dr. John Deloney Ramsey personality is my co host today. If you're a pastor listening today, we know that you've had a hard few years, you got long hours. Church attendance is down. Church is still trying to come back after Covid in many cases, and all while trying to keep your own house running. You've had to take care of so much, and we want to take care of you. You deserve a safe space to talk about the hard things you're dealing with, especially money. So we created a free pastor's only version of financial peace University. Over six weeks, you'll learn with pastors from all over the country how to get out of debt and build wealth, how to get control of your money with a budget, how to work with your spouse if you have one, and even how to retire with confidence.

It's all free. And this class is led by folks on our team who understand pastors. Many of them are former pastors, and they have a heart for you. So join our free pastors only financial peace university by visiting ramsesolutions.com Slash pastor. Ramseysolutions.com Slash pastor Today's question of the day comes from Shelly in the baby steps millionaires community on Facebook John, my.

Mother is always giving me money that I don't ask for, but I know she has bad spending habits. What would you do about this situation? I've never had this happen to me personally. This is a new one. I would probably do one of two things. The passive part of me would probably take this money and put it into an account and let it just sit, because there's going to be a day that she comes and asks for it more. The last four or five years, six or seven years, John would tell my mom, hey, mom, I'm really working hard to build a life with my wife, our own life. And so I appreciate your gift. I'm really grateful for it. But we want to make a go at this on our own. And so please feel free to give that money to my brother, my sister, whoever else. Yeah, as gentle as I can. The problem is not her, the problem is me.

Don't bring up the fact that she's too broke to give. No, wouldn't even go there. Wouldn't even go there. I would just say, I appreciate this and you're so sweet. A, I don't need it, and b, I'm trying to practice the discipline of living on my own. And it would be helpful to me if you would give this to someone else.

My promise is if I ever get desperate enough, I'll call you.

I won't go hungry. I promise, mom. And you're so sweet and thank you, thank you. But I can't accept this anymore because I'm trying to work on me and just turn the whole thing back on yourself. The other one that comes up is, and I've heard this one a bunch of times over the years, is mom and dad are broke. But mom keeps buying my kids toys and trips and whatever. Grandparents stuff, Disney grandparents stuff on credit cards and making mom and dad worse. How do I stop her from doing that? And it's a similar conversation, only this one's even harder. But it's like, mom, we're trying to limit what the kids are getting. You just can't do this anymore. You've got to stop. You're going to have to check with me before you buy anything else again. It very seldom is positive to shame them and go, you're too broke to do this. Stop it. That doesn't work. Although that's a true statement, and it's tempting to say that, but it's really not profitable. Devante is with us in Minneapolis. If I can push the button. There he is. Hey, Devontae, how are you?

Hey, how you doing? I'm doing well. Good. How can I help? Well, in the better interest of just getting the question out there, I guess I'll just say a question you guys can rip into me after that. The question I have is that I have a car or I have about $50,000 in debt. The car is a little over half of that at about 20, 719 percent interest rate I'm trying to get out. And then a follow up question is just if I'm gazelle intense enough based on how much I'm working and the things I'm doing to make money. You owe 27,000 on a car at 19%? Yes. Okay. What's the car worth? 14,000. Did you roll negative equity from another deal into this one? No, I didn't. You're looking at the wrong number then, because a 19% loan is a subprime loan. Translation, they screwed you. Okay. Or you screwed yourself by signing up for this. And they have a different calculation on those loans. When you ask for the balance, they use a total of all payments, a top number, to give you the loan balance. That is not the payoff. So your payoff is unlikely to be 27.

Not with a $14,000 value. How long ago did you buy the car? This is about a year ago, just under. What did you pay for the car? Thus far I've paid about $700. No, honey. What was the price of the car when you signed the paperwork? The total price of the car, not the financing. What was the price of the car? I guess I don't know the answer to that. It was 27 on. The only overall price that came out was 27, so I thought that was the value. Well, I mean, if the car is worth 14, honey, you surely didn't pay 27 for it a year ago, unless.

You went to one of.

It was a third party dealer. I was just desperate trying to get into something low credit, and that's what they gave me. Even those guys don't do that. Okay, so I really think that you probably actually paid 17 or 18 for the car, and your total of payments is 27. So you have a finance company you're paying this money to, right? Yes. Okay. Call them and ask them for what the payoff is. If I bring a check today and pay it off, and they're going to tell you more like 20 or 18 or something like that, that's the number you're going to get. And you obviously don't have any money, right? No, I've since recovered my situation, so I do. How much do you have, like, on hand or overtime? On hand? I'm sorry. No, currently speaking, no, I don't have any in savings. Oh, you don't have any money. Okay, so I was right. What do you make? Anywhere between 113, 130, depending on. How long have you been doing that? Four months. Why don't you have any money? I've been putting everything to debt. Okay. All right. I want you to stop putting it to debt because I want this car to get sold.

Okay? I want you to stop putting it to debt. I want you to save up enough to sell the car for 14 and put 7000 with it, and sell the car because it's going to be 2020, 118, something like that. Payoff. Then I want you to go get a $2,000 car and pay cash for it. This car needs to go bye bye. It's bad juju, bad car. I agree.

It's going to be a sense, dude, that you're taking 7000 or 10,000, whatever that final payoff is, and putting it in your backyard and just lighting it on fire. And you are.

No, you already did that. Now all we're doing is admitting it.

Yeah. And it's going to hurt, and it's going to be a good scar or tattoo for you to never do this again, ever. Yeah, desperation makes us do crazy things, man.

Everything you did, when you went on the car lot, 100% of your moves were wrong. You went on the car lot, wrong move. You bought a car. You never looked at what it's valued at. You have no idea what it was. You just said if I sign here, I can drive it off. Yes, and you signed whatever they put in front of you, you never looked at it. This is the recipe for getting screwed. And if you do it again, you're going to get screwed again. If you do it again, you're going to get screwed again. This is how it works. This is how these people exist in these rip off car situations. And so they feed on the desperation and the immaturity of people. And so the next time this comes up, you need to step back, breathe a little bit and think, okay, where can I get $1,000 car? And where can I get $1,000? And let's get a garage sale car. You bought a garage sale and drive it around a little bit. And if it goes bad after a month or two, it was still cheaper than your payments and go get you another one.

I mean, these are disposable cars, like disposable phones when you're doing $1,000 car compared to what you're driving. But yeah, this thing is a weight around your neck. It's shaming to you every time you get in it. Every time you write the check, it's a rip off. There's nothing good coming out of it. I would do everything I could to get rid of it as soon as possible. How many times have you started January saying, this is the year I've got to get my finances in order? Make this the last time you feel so out of control with money and sign up for financial peace University. In this class, you'll learn proven biblical principles for handling money, all with a group of other people cheering you on. That's how you set yourself up to win with money all year, guys. Another year will fly by. Take control today@ramsesolutions.com. Slash FPU thank you for joining us, America. Dr. John Deloney Ramsey personality is my co host today as we answer your questions about your life and your money, today's question is brought to you by neighborly, your hub for home services. Here at Ramsey, we believe in making homeownership a blessing and not a burden.

So we recommend neighborly's network of service professionals to repair, maintain and improve your home. Find the help you need@neighborly.com.

All right, today's question comes from Andy in Virginia. When I get closer to retirement, how do I access the money in my retirement funds? Do I take a set amount each month? Do I only take money made off interest and leave the Principal loan. How do I make the money last? That's the question, David. I love the simplistic, mechanistic question here, man. How do I do this?

Well, you can set it up with your broker. You have the money in the mutual funds, hopefully in your Roth IrAs, that kind of thing. You decide which of your different retirement accounts, because most people aren't going to end up with more than one retirement account. You may have a 401k from an old job. You may have Roth Iras that you did. Your wife might have had a 401k rolled over. Those are all different buckets of money. And you say, okay, out of those buckets of money, we're going to draw on this many. We're going to draw this much. And you can set a set amount and say, I'm going to draw this amount, I'm going to draw $5,000 a month. Or you can say, I'm going to pull a percentage a month, or you can say, I'm going to pull the gains. I would not say I'm going to pull the gains. If you've got the money invested in good growth stock mutual funds that have a track record, that's ten to 12%. If you pull off 10% of it, or eight, let's say you pull off 8% of it and it makes a twelve, then you've left four in there.

If it makes ten, you left two in there. So it's going to be growing forever. You're not only not hitting the principal, it is continuing to grow. So it will run in perpetuation if you do that. So in other words, if the percentage that you're pulling off is less than the percentage average percentage of growth, then you're going to come out. So over a ten year period of time, if it averages growing ten to twelve and you pull off eight every year, you're going to not have touched the principal at all in the end, it will have grown. Now, it might or might not have kept up with inflation, but if you've got a million dollars and you're pulling off 8%, that's $80,000 a year, and that's how you live.

Do you pull it out of lump sum? Does it come out monthly?

I set it up monthly. Just get a monthly check on it, 88% divided by twelve and just have that amount coming out. I want 8% of the thing coming out to me. Or you can say, look, there's a million dollars there. So I'm going to say $80,000 and have a monthly check. Come on, $80,000 a year. It's whatever that happens, or I'm going to pull $40,000 on 500,000. That'd still be 8%. I don't quite want to do that. So I'm going to pull 36,000, which is $3,000 a month. $3,000 a month coming off, and it'll last forever if you do that.

What about a mandatory disbursement? What is that?

You have the required minimum distributions that begin at 73 on traditional iras and traditional 401 ks. If you're doing this, you will easily meet that. Okay. You will easily meet that. So it's not a problem at all. If they're Roth IRAs, they don't have that or Roth 401 ks.

So let's say you're in a situation like you, Dave, and you've got some rental properties that are generating cash flow. You're not technically working anymore, but money's getting deposited, and now you have this mandatory withdrawal that you have to make. Can you take that money out and just reinvest it?

It becomes taxable when you take it out. The purpose of them making you take it out is so they can tax it.

So you can get some money from you.

Yeah. So you're going to take it out. It's a taxable event. So I have this income now. What do I do with that money? You can do whatever you want to do with your money. You can invest it, you can give it. You can do whatever you want to do with it, but it's coming out. And you're going to pay taxes on required minimum distribution, getting at age 73. So either way, except for that part where it's like me and I'm not working because I still work.

Correct?

Yeah. Just to be clear, okay.

I was pretending you were 73.

Oh. How do you know I'm not working when I'm 73? Well, that's only ten years. This is an uncomfortable conversation, John.

I think it's very comfortable. One of us is living in reality.

You're thinking I'm going to be playing more golf and spending more time in Cabo. That's what you're.

I think you're going to be 73.

I'm just saying that's how that works. All right. Joanne is with us in Boston. Joanne, get us out of this. How can we help?

Hi, Dave. Thank you. Thank you for taking my call.

Sure.

I have a question. Should I sell my house and downsize? I'll give you my numbers, I'm 59, I'm single. My salary is 152k. My house is worth 950, I owe 380. And also I have in the. My savings 20k.

Why would you sell your house?

That's a good question. There's a couple of reasons. I live in Massachusetts. I just unremote. And I was thinking to go southern New Hampshire and get away from some of the taxes.

Okay.

And also downsize.

You're thinking you're going to move to a different state.

Yes. Which is only 20 minutes. It's that close. Yeah. And I was also thinking, now I'm 59, I'm single, and I have to mow the lawn and do the yard work.

Well, if you bought a house in Jersey, would you not have to mow the lawn?

Oh, I was thinking a townhome, so I wouldn't have. So that's what a thing? But yes.

Okay, so you're thinking of getting something that helps you get rid of the maintenance that's a little newer, in a better tax situation.

Yes.

If you spend exactly the same money, it'd be a net gain in lifestyle and no change in your finances.

Right. I was thinking smaller.

Yeah. If you move down, then it's kind of a net gain. But you don't have to do this for your finances. Your finances are not out of control, but you're wanting a better quality of life by moving down. Well, that's kind of a no brainer. Do it.

Just do it. Okay.

Yeah. You're not going further in debt. You're not going to bankrupt yourself by doing this. You're going the other way. You're going to free up money, have a lesser mortgage, which you could get paid off going into retirement, which is the thing you need to be doing. You need to be aiming at getting that paid off. So if you bought a townhouse in Jersey, what would it cost?

She's going to New Hampshire.

Oh, New Hampshire. I'm sorry. What would it cost? I keep sending you Jersey. You did something wrong, apparently, but probably it looks like 550 instead of 950.

Yeah. I can get a townhome there. I've been looking.

So you're paying cash? Yeah, I'm doing this for sure.

Move tomorrow?

Yes. Because if you got no house payment now, we're going to pile up cash even more. So let's play this out. You got 450 in your 401, and now you got no house payment. And you said your household income is 152. You're single, right?

Yes.

Okay. So the 450, if it's invested in good mutual funds in your 401K, if it's not, make sure it is. Will double about every seven years. You're 59 and a half. When you're 66, that's 950. Okay, so when you're 73, that magic number, those old people. Shut up, John. It's $2 million.

Yeah.

Okay, so when you're 73, if you've got this invested in good mutual funds, you're going to have $2 million. If you add nothing to your retirement and a paid for house, you have no bills. Yeah, I think we call that a touchdown in the Super bowl.

Yeah, I think so, too.

Yeah. And you're going to be adding even more to it. So you're going to have $4 million.

That's going to be fun.

Yeah, this is great. This is great. And you don't have to cut the grass.

There's always benefits because those old people can't.

Yeah, that's it.

She's going to be getting it.

And you won't be in New Hampshire. And you won't be in New Jersey. You'll be in New Hampshire instead. So there you go. I was trying to send her there. I really was.

You were trying?

I think it was Alzheimer's.

No, I think in addition to being really good with numbers, you are also a geography savant. It's outstanding. Outstanding.

And sarcasm gift. There it is.

It's just over there. And it's cold.

It's north and there's taxes.

Go stealth.

And Yankees. Yeah, that's right. This is the Ramsay show. Our scripture of the day. Matthew 1316. But blessed are your eyes because they see and your ears because they hear. Brene Brown said, I don't have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness. It's right in front of me. If I'm paying attention and practicing gratitude. Denya is with us in Charlote, North Carolina. Hi, Denya. Welcome to the Ramsey show. Hey, what's up?

Thank you for having me.

Sure.

Yeah. Me and my husband. I'm 52, my husband's 54. We don't have anything safe for retirement. And I wanted to possibly go back to school. I'm a registered nurse. And if I went back to school, my income would go up as an advanced nurse practitioner. That's what I was thinking of going towards. But we do have a lot of debt. I don't know if it's practical. At my age and his age. He was concerned about that.

It's 100% practical to go back to school. It is a dreadful idea to borrow money to do it. I have 100% confidence you could get through an MP program. Please don't borrow money against it.

So where do you work?

I work part time in hospital PRN, and also at a nursing home PRN. I do a few days a week with both of them.

So I would check out some of the local hospitals and see if they will hire you and then have an education program that pays for your NP, where you are. They don't have that ed program, but a hospital. Would you work as a registered nurse in a hospital? They'll pay for you to get your NP? Yeah.

The local hospital is probably about an hour away. I did work there years ago, and the distance was the issue. And it is a graduate degree. I don't know.

They'll pay for it. They want mps. Someone will, or someone in corporate medicine will pay for an NP. Now they're not going to at the nursing home, they're not going to in a nonprofit, and they're not going to in hospice or a PRN situation. None of those that I've never seen one of those that has a program that pays for it. But hospitals and large doctor practices that are corporate owned. Most of them have an education program and would love to have their registered nurses become in peace. They need them. Gotcha.

I'll also tell you this. It doesn't hurt to ask where you are. One supervisor I went to at one point, we didn't have a program, and I said, hey, I really want to get this. Will you help me with it? And he said, no, but I'll send you to Harvard. So he sent me to Harvard for a program. Then another boss, I said, hey, can I take this money and move it over here for graduate school? And she's like, I never even thought of that. Absolutely, go for it. And that's how I got my second degree paid for. And so it may be worth sitting down and saying, I'll go full time, but I need some help on this, or here's what I want to do. Will you all help me get there? The worst they can tell you is no, and you're right back in the same spot. But they may surprise you.

You may have to go to a full time gig somewhere to get that, though.

I think you have to go to a full time gig wherever you got.

Two part time gigs right now, right?

Yeah, about part time.

And you're making good money? Probably. Possibly. But you might make a little less money and have them pay for your degree. And do you all own your home?

We do. We have a mortgage.

Okay. What does your husband make?

He makes about 50 what do you make? About 35?

Yeah. You're not working much. Registered nurse ought to be making 70 if they're working 40.

Why aren't you working that much?

Well, I just took a breather for a little while here. I've just been home with my and just kind of taking care of stuff at home.

What stuff is at home? Kids.

Well, yeah, I just got my hours cut a little bit. I needed a break a little bit.

How much debt have you got?

We have a lot.

How much?

Mortgage is 260. Credit card debt is 330. I do have a student loan that's 15,000 for my bachelor's, which I took out when I was working at the hospital.

And they require you guys need to sit down and have some soul searching conversations, Danielle, because I've talked to two different women on this phone. One of them was willing to lay it all out on the line and go back to school and go in debt to get a degree, an advanced degree as a nurse practitioner, so she can make more money to get out of debt. The other one isn't even working much and doesn't do anything except sit at home. These are two different women, and I talked to both of them in the last few minutes. Did you hear me? I understand what you, the woman that I'm talking to that doesn't want to work much, doesn't need to go back and get a degree.

Is there something else going on?

No.

You sound like you have some heaviness in you, like in your soul. You sound exhausted. But exhausted spiritually, right?

Yeah.

I'm trying to figure that all out.

Okay. All right, honey. So the way we're going to get you out of debt is we're going to get your income way up, but that's going to involve a lot of hours, and I can get hope from that if I'm you, because I can see that instead of making 35, I'm making 80, but I'm working all the time, and that extra 50,000 a year is going to clean up this debt really fast. And I'm not tired in that situation. I'm not exhausted. I'm not fatigued to where I can't breathe. I might be tired, but it's a good tired because I'm getting traction and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. That's not an oncoming train. If you can find energy in the fact that you're going to accomplish the goal and gear back up, then you can clear the debt and you can start to make the moves towards nurse practitioner, the condition that you're in today, where you want to work just a few hours a week, there's no point in going to be a nurse practitioner. Doesn't serve any point because you're not going to utilize the extra degree to get any extra income.

And I would not go to the expense or the trouble to go get the degree. And if that's going to be your plan, but I don't think that's your plan. I think you've kind of surrendered because you lost hope that you were ever going to get out. Dave.

And it also sounds, if we had another hour to sit with our friend, it almost sounds like if she brought home an extra $50,000, her husband would have that money spent before that check cashed. And she may just be saying, I'm done. I'm tired of not being on the same page. And so there's something about sitting down and saying, if we're going to get out of debt, we're going to do this thing together.

Yeah. The two of you together sit down and say, all right, we're both going to work an extreme number of hours and we're both going to knock this out in twelve to 18 months. And then I'm going to go get a nurse practitioner degree and then we're going to go become wealthy. I'm going to double in a second, only 52. And we have 15 years before we're 67. You could build substantial wealth in 15 years if you clear all the debt and you guys create extra incomes, increase your incomes. But simply going back to school as an escape mechanism is not going to work. We see a lot of people do that and then they've got an escape mechanism with a student loan attached to it. And this is a double dip. It's a double dip. You just don't want to do it in bad things. So let's just not go there.

Please don't go borrow money and go back to college right now.

No. Be a bad idea. Do sit down with your husband and do say, what if we were to live on beans and rice? What if I was to pick up and double my hour? Hours? What if you doubled your hours? What could we do? How fast could we get this done? What do we need to sell? What do we got to do? And when are we going to grow up and be responsible with money and not spend everything we make so that we can retire with some dignity? Because I'm tired of being scared. As a matter of fact, I'm exhausted from being scared. And let's step into that. Do that. That's going to make sense for you. So, hey, hang on. We'll send you a copy of the book, the total money makeover. The two of you could sit down and read it this weekend together, and it'd be life changing if you got on the same page. There's something really special that goes on when you do that. Dr. John Deloney. Good hour. Thanks for being with me.

You got it, man.

All right. And Jenna, Ben, James, Zach, and Andrew are all in the booth making this show happen. Thanks, guys. We appreciate 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 Dr. John Deloney. If you like what you heard in this episode and want to know more about getting started on the Ramsey baby steps, go to ramseysolutions.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. That's ramsaysolutions.com. And click get started.

Hey, guys, I'm Rachel.

And I'm George.

And you've probably heard our voices before on the Ramsey show.

And do we have a surprise for you.

Yep, we have our very own show, smart money happy hour, where we talk about pop culture, current events, and of course, money. George. It's a great show. And what else do we talk about?

So much, Rachel. Not enough. And yet too much. We talk about guilt tipping. Because tipping is out of control and I won't stand for it anymore, which is why I'm sitting.

I'm glad you were taking such a stand.

And we also talk about something else I'm passionate about. Disney adults. Why is it a thing?

Listen. Some adults still find the magic.

Sure.

We also talk about toxic money, traits and girl math.

And if you don't know what those.

Are, you have to listen to the podcast.

Yeah, there's a lot there.

You guys.

It's pretty fun.

We keep you relevant is what I'm trying to say.

We help you out.

So pull up a chair to the happy hour you wish your friends were having. We promise you won't regret it. And if you don't have friends, we'll be your friends.

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