Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, number one best-selling author, host of The Rachel Cruz Show and the Smart Money Happy Hour co-host. My daughter, Rachel Cruz, is my co-host today. Open phones at 828-825-5225. Thank you for joining us, America. We're so glad you're here. Shane is in Denver. Hi, Shane. What's up? Good afternoon, sir. How are you doing today? Better than we deserve. How can we help?

Of course. Yeah. Hey, I'm just calling to... My wife and I, we bought our house in 2021.

We bought it for 500,000.

We put 100 down on it.

We had about 100 in our savings account that we kept in there, too, for our emergency fund.

We have now paid it down to about two. We owe about 280 on it as of today. Very good. In three years, we've put down another 115,000 into it.

You're killing it, dude.

We have no debt.

Our cars are paid off.

We have no debt, and we have still about 100 in our savings account today as well.

We are worried about the house economy crashing here in the next six to Six months or so, and our mortgage rate is at 2.5%..

Let me stop you. I'm sorry. Why are you worried about the housing economy in Denver, Colorado, crashing? I don't know.

I don't know.

My wife, she's more of a realist than I am.

I'm just going with the flow, and we're just trying to- I'm sorry, what does being a realist mean?

You Are you a pessimist?

I guess so. I'm not trying to talk down on her because- I wasn't either.

I'm just saying there's a realist is someone who observes facts. There are no facts in the marketplace that indicated a housing crash in Denver, Colorado, in the next six months. Absolutely zero facts.

Well, that's good to know. Then also we're wanting to see if we should sell our house- No. And collect our revenue.

No.

It's already at 700.

No.

No. Okay.

You guys need to get off the internet.

That's what I say, too.

I'm sitting next to the Ramsey family conspiracy theorist.

I'm a conspiracy theorist. I don't know. When I She went out last month, I thought, this is it.

Rachel, what's the Denver Housing Conspiracy? I missed this one. You're up on all the conspiracies.

It does have a Denver airport. You are close to the bunker that could happen if it all goes down, Shane. That's your greatest asset right now.

Again, at the same time, to my son, we have a seven-year-old son, and I travel a lot for work in the state, and we're trying to maybe move to the Southern part of Colorado to where I don't have to travel as much, and I can work from my office down there. That's a logical reason.

If you want to do that, but please don't do that because the Denver housing market is going to collapse in the next six months. That should not be one of the factors that drives your decision. Okay. Because it's It's not going to collapse. Okay.

Well, and then percentage-wise, I didn't want to go get a new house and then pay a percentage on something with a higher interest rate when we're at 2.5..

You're not going to have a higher interest rate for much longer because you're paying it off so fast. Yeah, that's true. I mean, it might be three or four years you carry it, but you're not going to carry it for 30 years, so it doesn't matter. But make your decisions out of a glass half full, not out of panic, and really quit reading the I'm at. I'm serious. There's some really dumb, dark people out there.

Yeah, and I'm too busy with work.

My wife's a nurse practitioner in psych, and the last couple of years, she's been just a stay-at-home mother with our kid during these years. Now my son's getting to be where he can be in full-time school.

She's about to go back to work, too, now.

We're going to have a double income. Yeah, that'd be great. But I mean, psych nurses, maybe she... Oh, my gosh. She's just seen a lot of crazy stuff, no pun intended, right? That can leave a mark on you. But I don't want her to live in fear. I don't meet people who, and anticipate the end of the world who prosper? None. I just don't. The people who... I mean, there's preppers and then there's crazy preppers. Prepper is one thing, but crazy prepper, that's anticipating the end of the world. I have a friend who has gold bars. I have a friend who has gold bars in his basement, and it's just not right.

Let's keep talking about this, though, Shane, because the housing market is a point in our economy that a lot of people are panicked about. Back during COVID, when everything surged in 2021, we sat here at this desk and people were like, It's a bubble. It's a bubble.

It's going to bust.

It's not supply and demand, supply and demand. We did the real estate. It's gone up. Yes, we did the real estate hour and all of it. It It is, though, Shane, to your wife's credit, it is a point of fear for a lot of people because I think it's- Not to her credit.

Empathize with her. I understand how people are afraid, but that doesn't mean that it's accurate or logical.

No, I'm not saying that. Okay, so then give us the logic behind it.

Well, the logic is there's a house Housing shortage. Still. There's still three buyers for every stinking house on the market, and houses have gone up. Right now, today, in most major markets, homes that are on the market are getting multiple offers.

But they're sitting on it longer, It's not- Yeah, like eight days longer. No, but it's not- The average days on the market has gone up eight days in the past 12 months.

My wife sent me something the other day, and it says new home sales fall as mortgage rates way down the house.

I know. When the mortgage rates, It slowed it down, though.

No one clicks on stuff unless it bleeds. That's a click bait lead.

Okay.

Housing starts fall as mortgage rates go up, which they did. A lot of builders slowed down. There's not as many houses coming out of the ground. You know what that does? It means there's an even bigger shortage of inventory, which makes your home even that much more. But house prices didn't fall. Builders slowed down building because they didn't want to get caught with specs if the market slowed down on them. But not if the market crashed. Housing starts did drop, but headlines always go, Everyone's dying. That's what the headlines always say, because that's what people click on is that stuff. So Yeah. Look, that's what I mean by don't read the internet, okay?

With the election year coming up, traditionally in election years, things slow down closer to the election, too, so you may see that happening.

Traditionally, interest rates go down because the sitting president doesn't want to get unseated by a stinky economy. We'll see. Yeah. We'll see. But interest rates have come down a little bit in the last month and a half. They've come down a full point. The market is some areas, the Southern areas of the country, the grass is starting to get green. People are coming out of their winter caves. They're starting to buy houses, and the house market is heating back up. It's a dirty little secret. Nobody's talking about it. But I've been anecdotally involved in three or four deals lately where I'm watching, and there's multiple offers coming in on these. I'm getting ready to put our home on the market. I was just looking, it's a different dollar amount, but I was just looking at what's the average days on the market? The average days on the market, what's the inventory? Inventory is dried up. I'm sitting My timing is excellent to put a house on the market. It's far from a crash, quite the opposite. You're going to see your homes go up in value in the next 12 months. Just write it down and say the old bald guy said it.

This is the Ramsey Show. If current times have shown us anything, it's that the least expected events can and will happen, and we have to deal with it. That's why everyone who has a family counting on them needs term life insurance. For over 25 years, the only insurance company I've recommended is Xander Insurance. Not only because they search all of the top term life plans to find you the best rates, but over the years, they have constantly changed and updated their systems to make the whole process simpler and easier to get the protection needed. You can now apply with a completely touchless experience with everything being done either over the phone or the internet. They also have plans with super competitive rates that don't require an exam, allowing you to skip a step and get the coverage you need faster. Go to zander. Com or call 800-356-4282. Great rates and a simple process mean there's no excuse to not How do we get this done, people. Well, there's one thing most of us agree on, taxes suck. This is the time of year which I generally stay grouchy, just in general, just because I think about how much Theft my government is involved in.

Can we talk about this real quick, too? It adds on to the text. I don't know why. It was an epiphany I had yesterday where I was like, It is weird. You could pay off your house. You could be completely debt-free. But the government, to a degree, still owns it. You got to pay your property taxes. In a sense, they own your career. If you don't pay your taxes, you get put in jail. And then car insurance, you got to pay off car, but you got to pay insurance. There's a level of this that you're like, Man, it's not like- Some of these things never stop. It's what it feels like. I don't know. I had that epiphany the other day. I was like, Man.

You got two choices for claiming tax deductions. Understanding the difference can save you big It sucks. Literally over seven out of 10 Americans get a tax refund. That means seven out of 10 of you are doing math poorly. There's a shock. Listen, I'm old. I know Santa Claus. He's a friend of mine. He never goes to Washington, DC. That money that's coming to you is not from Santa Claus. He has nothing to do with it. It's not a gift. It's your money. You sent too much money to the freaking IRS. They held it all year at no interest, and they send it back to you, called a refund, and you have a celebration like you hit the freaking lottery. All it was was a bad Christmas account. You just saved up money, and then they sent it back to you with a 0% interest with the stinking IRS because you had too much taken out of your check. Stop it. Adjust your deduction deductions to the proper amount of tax withholding to where you don't owe any taxes and they don't give you a refund. That's the proper thing to do. Now, this is what you got to do, guys.

Now, if you're doing your taxes right now, you can take a standard deduction. That's the easy option. If you're single, you make 65,000 a year, the standard deduction knocks off close to 14,000. You only pay taxes on 51,000 of your income and not even that, really. That's if you're single. So itemize your deductions. If you're going to do that, it takes more work and you need a bunch of deductions, right? If you want to know more about all this tax stuff, there's two things we'll do to help you. One is if you have a very simple return, you can get the Ramsey tax software, Ramsey Smart Tax software. I can't say it. I'm not smart enough to say it. It's not very expensive and it's very easy to implement. A whole bunch of people have moved from those other guys. Like 100,000 of you will do your taxes on the Ramsey Smart Tax software this year. It's very easy, very simple. Now, if you have a complicated return, like you have a small business, a side hustle, you bought or sold a house or whatever like that, and you want to get a tax pro, we've got tons and tons of tax pros that are endorsed local providers that we have vetted.

I was just talking to one a minute ago from Houston, and there she is waving at us. She was at the break getting her picture made. She does taxes for you in Houston. Good folks taking good care of you. That's the way to do it. Go to ramseysolutions. Com/tax, and you can find out about either One of those. Noah is in Sacramento. Hi, Noah. Welcome to The Ramsey Show.

Hey, Dave and Rachel. A huge fan. Thank you for taking my call.

Sure. What's up?

I got myself into a predicament. I was living in Huntington Beach around 2021. And then after COVID and stuff, I lost my job. And my family in Sacramento said I can come live with them. So that's where I've been the last three years, I got a good job. Well, I make about 60K. But over the three years being here, I've made some very bad decisions. Severe gambling addict. I think that me just having to pay my parents a couple of hundred a month gave me too much, not enough responsibility, and I was just blowing it left and right, maxing out credit cards. Long story short, now I'm I told my parents everything, and I just told them that I have a game plan to move out of here by September and just pay off everything I can until then. I got a job opportunity to go out and spray for pests, the pest control in Texas, that is guaranteed 30,000 for about four months of work until September. I'm wondering if I should quit my current job and go do that and I'd go pay off all my debt, but I'd come back with no job.

Where in Texas?

Waco. I think Waco. Yeah.

You think? I'm not even sure where it is. Yeah. Okay. What have you done about your severe gambling addiction?

Haven't gambled. What is it? It's three or four months. It's been about all year, but it was bad. I broke down in front of my family.

How How have you dealt with it? You just decided to stop and that's it. You've got no help at all?

No. It cost me a relationship and a bunch of stuff, and I just realized I just had to stop. No, I haven't got a therapist or anything, but I've been good. Deleted all the websites.

Okay, there's two possibilities in this conversation. One is you don't have a severe gambling addiction. You were just stupid. That's one possibility, and you decided to stop being stupid. Two is you have a severe gambling addiction, and if that's the case, you have not done enough to fix this. You would need to get into Gamblers Anonymous, and you would need to be seeing a counselor. Okay. Okay. How old are you? Okay.

I'm 25. I just turned 25 in December. Okay.

So I mean, I've never had a severe addiction, but I have done stupid stuff, so I can relate to one side of it as a possibility. I don't know if this is just immaturity and stupidity, and you can ask yourself that question. I'm not calling you that. I'm just saying your actions were. The way that you just quit cold without any help at all makes me think it was on that side rather than the addiction side. But I'm not a therapist. What do you think?

Is it a compulsion? Do you know what I mean, Noah? Usually with an addiction, there's a level of compulsion there.

It was compulsion, yes. It was being bored. I don't have any friends in Utah. I mean, sorry, in Sacramento. When I got here, I got a job right away, but it was work from home. I've been working from home for three years, so I never met anybody. That's my bad. I could join a club, I could do stuff, but I haven't. I've just been working in my room, and after I get off, I'm in my room gambling because it's just been horrible.

How much debt did you go into for it?

I've been climbing myself out of it all year. I also have a car payment because I just had to have the Lexus. You guys know it's stupid. But I have a credit card with 1,800 on it, 4K on another card, and that's it for the credit cards. Then I have a $10,000 car loan. I also owe the IRS $1,300 because I decided to go exempt on some paychecks, which was really dumb.

Yeah, because you were gambling. Okay.

Well, you hit your rock bottom, Noah, and I I think for a lot of people, there is that part of their story where it's just you lost everything, your relationship. I mean, it's just you got to a point you couldn't continue to move forward until you had those conversations, right? To actually bring up what's been going on. But I'm with Dave on that, that I would... Just for your own sake, and I think that all of this is good for anybody just to do some work around who you are, how you got here, what are these things, these compulsions, where is it coming from? I mean, just doing some digging into your story.

The problem with going to Waco is you go with you.

Yeah.

So all of these things are still there. You're not getting away from them.

Totally. The good thing is they're putting me in a hotel.

I have a roommate. I know, which is you were in a room before by yourself. That was dangerous. Yeah. It's not a good thing.

They're paying for rent. I have a work truck waiting for me out there. I know.

It sounds like a It's a deal, except that you're going with you. I'm worried about you.

Yeah, I would just say if you were to do this from a financial aspect, I would put some parameters around it, and I would. I mean, things like GA is so great. I mean, the 12-step stuff is so good.

You need to plug into Gamblers or not.

Yes. Being in a weekly group. I mean, honestly, it's like these practices that you put yourself in front of continue to work on the shame. It continues to work on the actual act of it. I mean, I just I think it's, I don't know.

I Without having... Without making sure you're healed or in a healing process, just taking off to Waco is a bad idea. If you're engaged in some healing process and Waco is part of that process, great. But running away and you following you is a bad plan. This is The Ramsey Show.

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It's common sense for your dollars and cents. This is the Ramsey Show proving that having common sense is somewhat like having a super power today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions, we have a wonderful thing called the Debt Free Stage. When people stand on it, they do their debt free screams. We do this show on the glass five days a week from 1:00 to 4:00 every afternoon. You're welcome to stop by and join us here in Nashville. Anthony and Susan are on the debt-free stage. Welcome, guys. Hey. Hi. Where do you guys live?

St.

Louis, Missouri. Oh, wow. Nice. Well, welcome to Nashville. How much debt have you paid off?

We paid off $54,773.

Very good. How long did that take?

About eight months.

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

Yeah, we went from making 165,365 $365 in 2022 to $266,678 last year.

Oh, my gosh.

Jumped 100K. Yeah. What do you all do for a living? I'm a nurse.

She's a registered nurse, and I'm a precision plater for a defense company.

Okay, so what you all do? Just work overtime out your ears? Yeah. Or get big promotions or what?

Twelve hours a day, seven days a week.

You all went nuts.

Oh, my gosh.

What debt was the $55,000?

It was the The bulk of it was student loans and also a Discover card. Then we had a lot of smaller stuff like jewelry loan. We had phones that we owed money on. We had a 401k loan.

You all were like normal.

Pretty normal, yeah.

Normal sucks. Yeah, it did. You woke up and said, This sucks. How long you all been married? Fifteen years. Fourteen years this has gone by. What happened a year ago? What was the How did that show up? What was the Ramsey connection?

Well, a year ago was about a year of us really being stressed out with having a lot of debt. I remember we were always sitting in the hot tub that we, of course, got a loan for, finance, and complaining about the burden of the debt and what do we need to do to get through it.

That is a great picture.

Yeah, it was pretty crazy.

I'm sitting in my finance hot tub whining about the debt.

That is so great. I actually had an injury where I had to have a medical procedure done, and I was out of work for three months.

Oh, and that put the pinch on stuff. It did, yeah. You went, Oh, this crap ain't working.

We took a 401k loan out to try to cover that span of time. Then the credit card just took off because it wasn't enough. At that point, we knew that something had to change.

At the point Okay, so the pressure built up, gave you a wake-up call. Then what did you do?

Well, we had your book sitting on our shelf for three months, for a long time, the Total Money Makeover. We started to read it probably three or four years prior because we wanted to change things, but we didn't think we had a big enough problem when we dove into it. Well, God put it on our hearts at the beginning of last year that we could change, and the book was staring us in the face. So I picked it up and read it within a couple of days, started really listening to the podcast and watching you on YouTube. And then we buckled down and we started to create a budget. We used the Every Dollar app, and that was the game changer.

Was there one of you guys that was more like, Hardcore, We got to start, we got to start more urgent about it, or were you both pretty equal?

Was it equal? I think he started things off, but then we were together wanting to get rid of the debt.

Okay, yes, in that process. What was the hardest part for you guys for eight months? I mean, you're working insane hours, and you're doing a lot.

You went crazy in a great way. Yeah.

For me, it was like, he's working all the time, so I'm taking care of everything at the house and the kids.

The scariest thing for me, honestly, was putting my 401k on hold because I've always invested 10%, and he was like, We I have to do this.

I was like, I don't know.

But we did it. That was the scariest thing. The weird thing is it was only eight months.

It didn't hurt. No, it didn't hurt. We ended up doing the whole year and saving more money.

Then this year, we started with a new investor, and my 401k is doing better than ever before. Okay. Funny how that works.

Yeah, we hooked up with a smart investor pro, and he really sat down with us and explained what we were doing. Like you always say, the reasons We started to understand. She just pulled up a statement the other day, and since she started taking some of that advice, the changes have been pretty insane. Wow.

Good for you all.

So encouraging.

Well done. Well done. Excellent. All right. Now, when people find out you did this, that you got completely out of debt, we were just bopping along 14 years of marriage, and then boom, a year of hell, and we get out of debt so that we don't have to live in this mess anymore. When people ask, How did you do that? What do you tell them secret to getting out of debt is?

I think for me, the big thing was you got to go to work. You have to work hard. You have to... And not only that, you have to get on the same page and create a budget. For us, for the longest time, Susan always handled the finances. I was looking back an ostrich with my head in the sand. She would come to me and say, This is going on, and I didn't want to hear it because I felt like it stressed me out. I needed to grow as a man and step up, and we needed to lock arms and come together and create a vision for what we wanted the money to do.

Every wife in America just went, Touchdown.

I don't know if they said, Touchdown, they probably said, Amen. Amen. Hallelujah. That's so good. So, so good.

And the budget- This had to impact your all's marriage then. Big time. Susan, you're not carrying the whole way the stinking thing on your back. It's been really awesome sitting down with him.

We sit down every week and do the budget, do the bank book together, do everything together. It was just me for the longest time.

It's amazing. Anthony, when you actually started leaning in and doing it, did it stress you out as much as you thought it would back in the day when you said, I don't want to look at that. I might get stressed.

In the beginning, it might have stressed me out because I know for a while, it was hard to learn how to compromise. There were things that I saw that money was going to places that I had no idea. I had to learn that this needs to go there. This isn't frivolous or anything like that. Because my eyes were open to where the money was going, if that makes sense. That's very good.

You weren't scared of hard work before, but when you had a reason for your hard work, you went after it.

Kicked it in overdrive.

Yeah, big time. You kicked it hard. Well done, guys. Well I'm so proud of you. You're heroes, man.Thank you.You're heroes.

You have three kids.

Yes. All right, let's bring them up and introduce them and give me their names and ages, please.

Our oldest daughter, this is Courtney. She's 14.

Hey, Courtney. Good.

Then Our middle daughter is Sophia. She's 12. Our youngest daughter, Abigail, is seven.

All right, Ms. Abigail. All right, very cool.

There's so many families that are in the middle of this journey. I really think you guys, just being here is such a beautiful picture that it's possible. It's so possible. Well done.

It sounds amazing. We've got a one-year subscription for every dollar for you for the premium and another one as well for you to give away to somebody and get them started on it. Way to go, you guys. You're heroes. Very proud of you. Those three beautiful girls' lives have been changed by a grown man and a grown woman doing what they're supposed to do. Well done, you guys. Very cool. Anthony and Susan, Courtney, Sophia and Abby from St. Louis, $55,000 paid off in eight months, making 165 and then went to work, 266. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream.

Three, two, one. We're debt-free.

That is how that is done. Man, I mean, all the questions we get, I can't get my husband involved. I can't get my wife involved. That guy just outlined right there. He just stepped up. That was the most manly, masculine thing I've heard in a long time for that guy. He owned every bit of it and stepped in there beautifully done.

So many women were her that are running the household on their own, and it's a lonely place to be. When you sit down, you end up talking about life. You end up talking, This is where the money is going. What's going on here? It's so much. The connection point is so huge. It's so, so huge.

It's massive. They're incredible. This is The Ramsey Show.

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Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author, my co-host today. Emily is with us in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Hi, Emily. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi, how are you? Good. How can we help?

Good. I'm reaching out today. I feel like I'm a Ramsey kid growing up. Your theme song has been like a jingle in the household for the last 26 years of my life. I'm reaching out today. I'm nervous, not sure what to do at this point. We make just under $100,000 a year, my husband and I, and he is getting ready to hopefully go back to school here in a couple of weeks, just waiting on that official acceptance. We will be losing about 60% of our income. We were running numbers last night, sitting down, trying to evaluate things, and I'm just not sure what we do with such a large reduction in our income based on what we sell with our expenses.

Are you guys able to cover the basics on 60% or on 40% of your income?

Bare. We do have two kids, so we are bearing the price of childcare times two. On the positive side, he's old enough now. He's in his early early '30s where he's going to be going to be going to school on a telegrance and scholarships, so we don't have to necessarily work on the cash flow in his education. But I'm just concerned with how we're going to structure our living expenses.

How long will he be in school for?

Roughly 8-13 months. It's a full, roughly seven days a week, 9:00 to 5:00. They said, Don't plan on working during the program because it is such a vigorous course.

Well, that means there's child care is no help at all. Exactly. Okay, so child care stays there and you're making 40K, and you can live on that or not. If the answer is not, you can't do it.

Yeah, I don't think. We've looked at a couple of different options. My parents are getting ready to retire, but I don't really want them spending their whole retirement watching their grandkids five days a week.

The 8-10 months is not their whole retirement.

True.

Okay. If they want to do it, that's another thing. They may not want to do it. It may not be an option. But what's he going to study?

Electrical line then. He wants to do high power voltage.

Okay. He's making 60 now. He'll come out making 80 day one.

Yeah, I think they said apprentices start roughly 45 to 50 an hour flat rate, not including any overtime.

The in-keep car rate comes almost to go. His apprenticeship is only a couple of years, and then he'll be making serious money.

Yeah.

Is he going to travel with it?

No, I think he plans to stay local. We bought our house in 2020 for fairly cheap at a super low interest rate, so we're not really willing to give that up right now.

Because if he's traveling, it's a whole different world, even in that world, as you know. Okay. Well, here's the thing. It feels like the way you're describing this That you first decided for him to do this and then tried to figure out if you could afford it rather than the other way around. You should have figured out if you could afford it before he decided to do it. Because his primary job is to not become a high wire guy. His primary job is to feed his family. If he can't do that, then he can't do this.

He talked about picking up a part-time job or working with his current employer to see if he can work odd-end hours to fill those gaps.

But they said not to do that.

Yeah, they didn't recommend it until they get into the core of the program. He's been working towards this. Roughly about six years, we paid off roughly $7,000 in debt because currently we've done step one. We've been working on step two, but as soon as he started to get the beginning of the acceptance, we froze Step two for a minute to say, Okay, you know what's that?

How much did you guys have left, Emily?

For our debt?

Yeah.

Not including our mortgage, about 35,000.

Okay. On what?

Student loans, a vehicle, and then we put a new roof on our house after we purchased it.

How much do you owe on the vehicle?

I want to say roughly 5,000. Okay.

Is there a way for him to delay this, like a year, and you guys get in a position where you pay off debt, you can get savings or any level of traction before- If you had no debt and had your emergency fund fully funded, you could probably see your way through this a lot more to Rachel's point.

Yeah. That's something he's considered. I just know the program he's currently in. Put it off and talked about it and applied.

So what? No, that really matters if you have hungry children.

He paid it off. It's tough.

This is grown-up land. Yeah. You got to do what you have to do to feed your family first, and then you do this. You'd be in a much better condition if you said, I'm going to intentionally spend this next year getting our crap together so that when I do this, it doesn't put my family in jeopardy. Because you're really calling saying you can't figure out how you're doing this. You keep saying we're barely going to make it, but what you're really saying is we can't make it. Okay. Aren't you?

Well, looking at the numbers, I think it's slightly doable, but it's then again getting out of our comfort zone of our current lifestyle and getting into that new lifestyle.

I'm just concerned- I can handle you. I mean, you can give up your comfort zone. That's what? That's nothing. It's not comfort zone I'm concerned about. It's food.

The necessities will be met. That's our biggest thing. I'm just worried about any additional expenses or things that come up.

How much is your house payment?

A thousand.

And your take home pays 3,300?

Yes.

You're going to run the rest of this household on 2,300 bucks a month, including $35,000 worth of debt? Bull.

Bull crap. Yeah, the numbers aren't crunching.

No, they're not crunching at all. They're crunching, but it's not a good sound of crunch. I would wait, Emily. Honestly, I'm not a dream killer, but I love killing nightmares. I don't want to kill his dream, but if his dream to put this whole family, you call me back eight months from now, you know who he went, but we're in foreclosure. I'm not going to sign you up for that and have my stamp of approval. I want him to go do this, but I want him to do it in such a way that he doesn't put all of you guys in jeopardy. He doesn't want to put you guys in jeopardy. But you guys have not thought this through until last night.

We've been looking at stuff, and I've pretty much run our budget.

I mean, he's not a spender. That's not the question. I'm not saying he's a It's a good guy. I'm saying you guys together have not thought this through until last night. You have to. Stephen Covey says, One of the seven habits of highly effective people is they begin with the end in mind. Last night, you did that for the first time on this, and took your breath away, and that's why you called.

Yeah, because I just wasn't sure what I wanted to do.

Here's what I'm going to tell you. If I were in your shoes, here's what I would do. My first choice would be for him to wait a year. Rachel's suggestion is excellent. If it takes 18 months or if it puts the whole thing in jeopardy, so be it. I'll call that God. God put it in jeopardy because God says, Don't do things where you can't feed your own family. Those that don't take care of their own household first are worse than an unbeliever. Bible. We're going to call it that. But I am convinced that if he can get in there this round, he can probably get in another round. That's choice one. Choice two is you guys look around there and figure out how we're going to increase our income above your base, and mom and dad are going to commit to keep the kids and drop your daycare bill because your daycare Our bill is probably, what, two grand a month?

Yeah.

Honey, your daycare in your house, and you don't have any money left for food. I just did that.

Yeah, so that's the word. We're looking at childcare alternatives, and you're reaching out, trying to find lower cost.

Is your childcare 2 grand a month?

Yeah.

Plus 1,000, 3,000. Yeah. Your take home is 3,300. Your budget's not tight. It's impossible. You cannot go forward unless you adjust something. It's fantasy. You don't have any… That's just ding, ding. So adjust the childcare, sell a car, take six jobs. He works on the side even though he's not supposed to.

For eight months, you grind it out like that.

For eight months, you pay a price for him to get to be this. I'm okay with paying a price to win, but I'm not okay paying a price knowing I'm going to lose. That's a bad idea.

It's one life event away from, to your point, foreclosure, a car, we can repow, all of it.

No, look I can't even make it. It's one month away. Yes. You can't even get to the food budget here. 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. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thank you for joining us, America. Open phones at 888-828. Com. 5, 5, 2, 2, 5. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality number one best-selling author, is my co-host today, and we're happy to talk to you, America, about your life and your money. When I wrote the first book I wrote Financial Peace, in 1994. Raise your hand if you weren't born yet.

They did in the lobby.

When I wrote that In our book, I proposed a concept in our seminars that we were doing in those days. It was a different world in 1994. Sure. The '90s are back a little bit. I proposed a concept, and I got so much. On the first times, I got just showered in hate.

Oh, I can't wait.

It was fabulous. The concept was this, and I don't remember the exact exact numbers, but they were a whole lot lower than they are today. I'll make up some numbers that would be similar to what they probably were. I said something like, if a lady is making $30,000 a year in her job, she has two kids, and daycare is $1,000 a month, and she buys professional clothing to go to that job, and she dry cleans the professional clothing- Because in the '90s, you were wearing suits.to go to that job.For a lot of places.Yeah, they weren't wearing sweat pants to work in those days, or your pajamas. It was a different world, like I said. If because she was working, she didn't prepare meals from scratch at home because time and fatigue, the family would go out to eat more and they would spend- Not from scratch, but just meaning like home-cooked meal. Spend more on pre-prepared things or going out to eat because of fatigue. Order pizza because I'm tired and I don't feel like cooking.

Or the husband is choosing not to cook.

Yes, keep going. Well, whatever. I'm just saying. And so 1994. I know. This is the '94. Just hang with me here. I propose that if you add all of these things up, making $28,000 a year, paying $1,000 a month for childcare, these other things added in after taxes come out and gasoline to drive to said job and wear and tear on the car to drive to said job. When you take all of those things out, she's probably losing money working. It might be cheaper, net, net, net, net, net, net to stay home with the kids if she wants to. I didn't say she should be at home barefoot and pregnant. I did not say that. I said if she chooses to and wants to be at home. Now, people said I said a lot of things I didn't say, but that's exactly what I said. But even on the premise that she can't afford, she's not making enough to justify working.

Yes, or he's not making.with.

The expenses at that time. I caught hell for suggesting that net of daycare, net of all these other expenses, she might not be making anything because I did some math. Dad, blame if I didn't get blamed for the other side of that, not that, but the other way- Of what? Of not understanding the cost of daycare and that you can't afford to work because of the cost of daycare, the stinking Wall Street Journal, some woman writes an article trashing me. Recently, not 94.

No, just the other day.

Just the other day, said, I said on the air that women, that they can't... That daycare is ridiculous, and so you just need to shut up and go to work. I didn't say that at all. I've said quite the opposite since 1990 freaking four. If you're going to hate me, hate me for the right thing, okay? If you're going to bitch about something Dave said, pick out something he actually said, okay?

But I think they I think there was a clip of you saying that's a ridiculous amount to pay for childcare, and they clipped that not knowing the whole call.

Well, of course, because it's the freaking media.

I know, but that's specific- And some idiot on TikTok. Yes, that specific guy was paying.

But he was paying $28,000 for one kid.

Yeah.

That is dumb.

Well, I don't... Yes. Average right now is $16,000. Yes. Okay. So depending on where you are, if you're in New York City, in Manhattan, that is going to look different.

No, that guy was calling in. He was trying to put his kid in Gucci Daycare. I don't remember.

I'm just telling. No, I don't know.

It was Gucci daycare he was signing up for. I don't know. His upper lip was sunburned because his nose was in the air.

We don't know that. Yes, I do. No, we don't.

No, we don't. But I am not. I'm on quite the other side of what I got blamed for, which is what I'm upset for. I did not... I mean, all I'm talking about, that particular instance, it's like somebody calling up and going, I'm paying 46,000 dollars a year for my child to I attend a private elementary school and I make 60,000 dollars a year. What do you think of that? I think you're a moron. That's what I think of that. You can't do math. Your kid shouldn't be in a school that fancy because you're just stuck up. That's all that is. That's what this guy was. It had nothing to do with the actual cost of daycare.

I think the thing is, it's such a hard subject because unlike 94, you fast forward to today where it is. It's like childcare. It's- It's ludicrous. I think it's more than 30 to almost 40% in some areas since 2019.

It really is crazy. It's going up faster than tuition. I know that.

Yeah, for working moms and parents.

No, it's not different than 94. So the exact same thing is true. Some people now, with the cost of daycare, aren't making money.

That's right. I totally agree.

So I'm still saying the same thing. Yes.

No, I know.

But now I'm getting hated for saying the other thing that I didn't say. I know.

But I think, too, the conversation of a household income because so many families are dual income. And a lot of families are dual income and make on average, in that 60, 70 range per year. And then in order to pay the mortgage and have the food.

I mean, there is a- These days, mama might be making more than daddy. A hundred %. That's not unusual at all.

Oh, yeah. That's the other option is that the spouse who's making more- The dad is the one that goes home.

I don't care. That's not the point. It's a math thing is all I'm looking at.

The problem is, though, again, people are getting to this place now because it's risen so quickly that it is- Oh, it's hard. That they're having to look now at exactly what you're saying, at the options of like, Oh, my gosh. I've known some moms that they're like, I got to go home. I have three kids under the age of five, and We can't afford it. We can't afford it. We can't afford it.

You make $40,000 a year today, and you have three kids under the age of five in daycare, you're not making money. I know. That's that 1994 example in $24. Right. $20, $24.

I know. There's There's some other ways you can look at it. I mean, there's creative options.

You got to find an alternative childcare situation if you're going to work in that situation.

Yes.

Because you're not actually making money. You're working and going backwards.

What's hard is for the single mom, too, who doesn't- It's almost impossible. Who almost doesn't even have that option. But here's the other thing.

But here's the other thing. 16,000 is the average nationally. This includes expensive markets, inexpensive markets, and it includes expensive daycares and inexpensive intensive daycares. There's a lot of ways to skin the cat. There's a lot of ways to take care of the kids. But it is a valid thing to sit and look at it as a family and make decisions.

And make a call and the values, yes.

But people don't use... They get emotional Because the issue is their children and their brains melt down, and they quit doing math.

Because as a mom with little kids who works, you go through some of these places. You're like, I don't feel good comfortable sending my kid here, too. Then don't. I know, but it's the idea that It's a hard subject for a lot of people. It is hard. It is. Okay, so we left everyone with- We're not going to keep the rant going. How hard that subject is in life.

Yeah, how high childcare is and how hard it is. Yes. It is high and it is hard. The trick is to not be irrational and justify stupid numbers because you love your children. Love of your children does not make math go away. Math still will roost. It'll still come home. We want to help you face this high cost. If you go to ramseysolutions. Com, we have a blog there called 13 Ways to Afford the High Cost of Childcare. Almost like everyone at Ramsey knows that childcare is high. I know this one.

Yes.

Just in case some of you on TikTok weren't listening, we're aware that childcare cost is high, but that does not mean that you suddenly get a pass on math. The cost of real estate in Manhattan is high, but some of you can't afford to live there because of math. It's that simple. The cost of real estate in Tokyo is high, and some of you can't afford to live there because of math. We'll I'm not going to help you with this, but I'm not going to help you with denial or the system is broken, so I'm going to ignore math. No, we're not going to go down that alley.

No, but there are some different ways, creative ways to look at it. One of the options is what we talked about in the last segment was maybe one parent decides to stay home. Maybe it gets to a point that. It's a valid option. Yeah. There's that.

Here's the interesting thing. I'll add one more thing. I said we weren't going to extend the around, but now we are. There are parents out there right now with this thing, you and I have talked about this at length, mom guilt. If you work, you're guilty because you're not home. If you're home, you feel guilty because you're not working. Moms can't win. They got guilt either way. Society and heaps on them, they help keep it on themselves. If I'm at work, I feel guilty because I'm not home with the kids. If I'm at home with the kids, I feel guilty because I'm not using my degree and I'm not out making money. You just can't get away from it. Guys don't struggle from this, by and large.

The mom guilt is more than- The mom guilt is a very real thing.

In the midst of that statement, there are ladies who really would prefer to be at home with their children. Sure, yeah. And have never sat down and done the math that says you should be. And so this sets you free.

Because stay at home moms.

I want to set you free if that's you. Yes. If you're a professional lady, Rachel's in the workplace, my other daughter works. If you're a professional lady in the workplace, we're not trying to say you should go home or you're not a good mom. We're not saying that at all. We're saying if that's your choice to be at home, but you feel like the family needs money for working and yet you're not netting anything, this math is going to give you permission to go home.

Yes, there's a value, a dollar value for stay at home moms, the amount of work that they do.

No question. Ashley in Savannah, Georgia. Hi, Ashley. Welcome to The Ramsey Show.

Hi, you all.

Hey, what's up?

Well, to continue off of what you all are talking about, how do my husband and I pay off debt, rebuild our savings, and potentially have another baby while living in this world where expenses keep increasing, like daycare and rent?

What do you all make? What's household income?

We both make $80,000. Okay.

So you make $160,000?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. You make $160,000.

Well, our joint.

That would be…

How much debt do you guys have?

We are renting at 2,300, and then obviously power and all that stuff.

How much do you owe on your car?

Just debt.

We have no car notes, car loans. My car is paid off, but she is reaching 200,000 miles, and my husband has an old Blazer that we just can't rely I on if anything happens in my car.

You have any debt? What debt do you guys have?

I have two credit cards. One is 3,700 that I'm making minimum payments on. Unfortunately, one was charged off recently, I got my other card, which is about 15, and I'm pretty sure there's some medical debt floating around.

How long have you all been making 160,000 and overspending?

The 160 just happened this year.

What were you making in the other years?

Well, COVID really rocked us. A 60-day furlough turned into over a year. Then I took a job for 50,000, and I just got back up to 80.

What was your husband making?

He's been slowly progressing as well, so probably about 60 and just got to 80 as well.

Okay, so you all were around that 100 mark for a while.

Here's what's happened, okay? You went through a downturn in your income, and you slowly progressed back to and beyond where you were before. Faster than your income went up, your spending went up. Because you didn't give me anywhere. Nothing you've given me so far tells us where $160,000 is going. I have no idea why you should be this broke. How in the world you have a $3,000 credit card charged off Making 160 means you're out of control, disorganized, and chaotic in your house.

The credit card, I haven't put anything on a credit card in yours. This is really direct- But why don't you just pay it off?

You make 160 grand. It's $3,000 because you didn't have any money because all your money is going to restaurants and trips you can't afford.

We're not eating out. We're not going on trips. I'm not getting my nails done. I haven't got my hair seriously.

Where's your money going? Okay, hold on. Seriously, where's all your money going then? If you're in control and you have a budget laid out, where's your 160,000 going? Because it's not going to rent. You don't have that much rent. How much rent? It's not going to debt. It's 2,300, she told us. Your rent's low. You don't have any debt. Where's Where's your money going?

All of our money goes to bills.

What bills? You don't have any bills.

This is hilarious.

Yeah, what bills do you What bills do you have?

Don't yell at her.

What bills do you have?

Hello? For help.

I'm sorry. What bills do you have?

All of our bills combined are $4,000 a month.

Okay, that's 2,300 for rent. What's the other 1,700?

1,250 for daycare, which keeps going up year over year.

Yeah, it does. Okay.

Then power, electricity, all the basic minimum gas, food.

Did you say $4,000 a month? Did I hear you right? Correct. That's $48,000 a year.

And then plus childcare.

No, that includes childcare.

Did it? The $4,000 includes childcare?

It's $1,250 for childcare. So that's $48,000 out of 160. So somewhere I'm still missing $102,000.

Taxes.

Okay, somewhere I'm still missing almost $100,000. That's what I'm talking about.

This is recent. And then any money that we have left over is going into the snowball method.

How much is left over per month that you guys have?

About 500.

I'm sorry?

$500. We're just dumping that into savings.

500.

Okay. Something's really, really, really, really off in your math. Because you gave me $48,000 worth of debt. $500 is $6,000. That's $54,000 out of 160. I'm still over $100,000. It's missing not counting taxes. You're following this?

Are you looking at a yearly number? Yeah, I am. I'm trying to look at monthly.

I am. $500 a month is $6,000 a year.

Hold on, Ashley, how How much hits your checking account every month, income-wise, after taxes? What are you guys bringing home now?

I get 1,800 every two weeks.

What about he?

That's around the same thing as well.

Okay.

That's not $160,000 a year.

Before taxes. Yeah.

How much you got money going in your 401k?

No. Okay.

You have way too much withholding. You guys need to- Maybe for your taxes. Okay. I'll tell you what. Hold on. Here's what we're going to do. I can't break this because I can't break her. I'm going to hook you up with one of our financial counselors, actually, who can sit down and calmly go through this and try to explain it to you. Because I can't... Nothing you're saying makes sense. Well, 60, yeah. These numbers are 50, $60,000 off. She's just so far off. It's unbelievable. There's something else going on with your math here. I don't know where your money is going. You don't know where your money is going. All you've figured out is that it's not working. You guys have got to sit down because $160,000 a year is not 1,800 bucks every two weeks. It comes two. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Our event season is in full swing. We have three events coming up where you can experience the Ramsey teachings, live and in-person, with thousands of people just like you. Our next one is the Total Money Makeover Weekend event. Rachel and me, Dr. John Deloney, Ken Coleman, Jade, George, all of us, will be speaking at this two-day ultimate motivator event to get fired up and wired up to live the life you've always wanted.

Tell every dollar what to do, make every dollar behave, and learn to win with money. Get out of debt, become wealthy, be outrageously generous. We're going to show you how to do every bit of it May 10th and 11th here on our campus. We're already half sold out, so if you want to come, you need to get your tickets immediately. Then on May 21st and 22nd, I'm going to be doing a virtual event with George Camel helping me as we unpack not only the basics of investing, but the Dave Ramsey's Investing Essentials, something I've never done before. I'm going to open my playbook, my personal playbook on real estate. I own several hundred million dollars worth, and I'll show you what I've done and how I've done it. It's not a TikTok video. It's not easy, but I can show you how to really do it. I've actually done it. It's not a theory for me. I don't live in my mother's basement. We're going to walk this through for you. Then, Rachel and Dr. John Deloney will be doing the Money and Marriage Getaway October 24th and 26th, through the 26th, that is, here on our campus as well.

Spend a weekend away with your spouse in Nashville and with Dr. John Deloney and Rachel Cruz. Real-life answers to real Life Answers to Real Marriage Questions. Gets a little dicey in there sometimes, I'm just saying. But you're going to love the event. You're going to learn a lot. It's pretty incredible. So any of these three things you can get at ramsey solutions. Com/events, and all three are likely to be sellouts well before, so get your tickets quickly. On the debt-free stage in the Ramsey Solutions headquarters, lobby is Tyler and Jesse. Hey, Guys, how are you? Good. How are you? Better than I deserve, man. Tell me, where do you guys live?

Worcester, Ohio.

Cool. What's that near? Akron. Akron. All right, cool. How much debt have you guys paid?

$289,000.

How long did that take? 44 months. Good for you. And your range of income?

We started at 116, and now we make 169.

Good. What do you guys do for a living?

I'm a firefighter.

I'm a physical therapist. Very cool. What was the What debt?

It was two car loans, and then most of it was a student loan.

Nice, you all. Good for you, guys. How long you all been married? Four years today. Happy anniversary. Happy anniversary. They set it in unison. That was perfect. Great. Very cool, you guys. Somebody comes out with a bunch of student loans. Maybe physical therapy could be. I don't know. That's the doctor's degree. Possible doing a PT degree. You guys get married and you go, Okay, cleanup time. Tell me how that happened and what the conversation sounded like. How did you plug into Ramsey? I grew up, my parents did the Dave Ramsey program, the Baby Steps. When I graduated in 2017 with My doctorate degree, I asked my dad, I'm like, What do I do about this? He said, You need to read Total Money Makeover, and you need to get signed up for FPU. It'll be the best money you've ever spent. I went to FPU a year before meeting Tyler, and then I Tyler at work, we started dating the next year. We started talking about marriage, and I said, Okay, I want you to go through this course with me. You need to know what comes with me. Yes. That's right. We had the talk, the money talk.

How long had you been dating before you disclosed hundreds of thousands of student loan debt? Two months. Here I am. Get this out of the way. All right. Just see if he's a keeper or not, right? Yeah.

Great. Oh, my gosh. For four years, you've been doing this. So pretty much since you've been married, you guys have been on this. Okay, so how hard was that? Because I feel like, especially when you have a new event, like whether it's marriage or a baby or you graduate from college, whatever it is, you want to jump into a new season and just enjoy life. So how hard was it being newlyweds, knowing we're buckling down and doing this? It was rough.

I mean, we got married during the pandemic.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

And so my income actually reduced- You got married At the height of the pandemic. Yeah, we had a COVID wedding. About the time the quarantine started. Yeah, we were on shutdown whenever we got married. This is the end of March. Oh, my gosh. It's your anniversary. Yeah.

Whoa. Okay. The whole pandemic, you guys were Doing this then. Yeah. Wow.

Yeah, trying to. Yes. My income reduced by half because my outpatient hours were reduced. It's just amazing because I actually found other opportunities, screening in the ED on third shift, doing cash-based physical therapy in people's homes that didn't want to go out in the community. Yeah, God really showed up. She got after it, too. Wow, you were getting it. Good for you all.

Amazing.

Wow. You get married right at the quarantine, and then you go wide open into this thing. What was the hardest part of the whole journey?

I think the hardest part was just not playing the comparison game and walking our own path. We're at an age right now where everybody in our life is making different milestones.

We just had to celebrate ours through the debt snowball.

The way it's set up, you can still celebrate while you're paying off your debt.

What do you think? Yeah, just got to shut up and do it. I think what got me through was that I was hearing the debt-free screams of all these other people who lost a spouse or or just different things.

Hard life stuff.

Yeah. It's like, Okay, they can do it. What's my excuse?

It's our excuse. How much did you guys work, would you say? What was at the peak? How many hours a week was the...

Oh, gosh. We were like animals. We would go whole week without seeing each other because we work opposite schedules. With my job, I think I sometimes was somewhere around 60, 65 hours in a week.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

As a fireman, I could go upwards of 100 hours a week, but sometimes we get to sleep, but not always. It's not guaranteed by any stretch.

Okay, so besides work and income, what's the other part of this that you would tell somebody? What do you tell me?

The key.

What's the key? What's the thing? The number one thing.

To get out of that. Oh, just take every opportunity you can to increase your income. I know we did. We just went after every certification. We're at work anyways. We're spending the hours anyways. Let's just do that, too. Let's try to get our time worth more. Then also to at home, just making meals at home, packing lunches. We made our own laundry detergent. I mean, all these little things that really add up.

Yes. Just to add on to that, we're lucky enough that the phase of life we're in, we don't have children yet, anything like that. We took this time for a lot of professional development. Our life wasn't on hold, really, because we've developed a lot.

That's awesome, you guys. In other ways. That's awesome, you guys. Yeah, for sure.

Your income's have increased permanently because of that.

So nice. No payments.

You're heroes. Well done. So the first four years, you worked your tail end off for four years. You're 100% debt free. Was it worth it?

Yes. Oh, yeah.

Yes. It's amazing to walk into work and know that we have the ball now. Every dollar goes towards our goals. We're not paying some bank. It's amazing. That's it. Just put me in, coach. That's right. I love it. Well done. Well done. So proud of you all. Who was cheering you on? I bet your dad. Yep. Our family, our friends. We definitely talked to people who had gone through the steps and were successful with it.

It's It's funny. At work, I almost have a second family. We brought some people around, and they were cheering us on at the end, too. It was awesome.

Yeah, that's great.

Very cool. So great, you guys.

Well done, guys. Home run. Touchdown. Way to go, heroes. Hey, we've got an every dollar subscription for you for the premium. You're probably already using it, and that'll extend it for you. Another one for you to give away for somebody that can't believe you really did this. I'm impressed with these numbers. Very hard work. Very hard work. She's not kidding. Lots and lots of hours. She said it like six times, but she's exactly right. Oh, yeah. Really happened. All right, it's Tyler and Jessie from Akron, Ohio. 289,000 paid off in 44 months, making 116 to 169. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free. Yeah. Way to go, you guys. Now, their debt-free scream is permanently enshrined in the YouTube Hall of Fame to encourage other people who are in the middle of their hard journey, telling you it's worth it. This is the Ramsey Show.

Listen, I know a lot of you would rather watch paint dry in slow motion than file your taxes. But thankfully, you don't have to dread filing when you've got Ramsey SmartTax. It comes packed with everything you need to file online before the big deadline. That means all major federal forms and deductions are covered with no hidden fees. Plus, with Ramsey SmartTax, you can save up to 70 % compared to other tax software out there. It's a no-brainer.

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Com/smarttax and see how simple tax filing can be. That's ramsey solutions.

Com/smarttax. Open phones this hour. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thank you for joining us. Today's question comes from Anonymous. I haven't heard from Anonymous in a while. He used to write me all the time. Usually, he doesn't have nice things to say. But let's see what Anonymous in Arkansas says.

Says, How do you learn discipline? I spend so much of my income on going out to eat. I work overnights at Walmart and make $20 an hour, but my bank account always is a race to zero. I borrow money from my paycheck before I get it and use apps like Dave.

Yeah, there is one.

It's not mine. To get cash advance. Is it really named Dave?

Yeah, they named it. They did that on purpose.

Oh, no, Dave. Oh, gosh.

It charges $5 for an instant deposit.

I feel like I can't get out of this $3,000 credit card hole that I'm in. I also owe the IRS around $4,000. If I was disciplined with my money, I wouldn't be in this spot. I'm 27, I need to get my stuff together.

Wow. Anonymous, that is a very… I think you have your stuff together. My dad used to tell me that when you recognize a problem, 90% of the problem is solved. I think you're on a really good path here. I did the same thing, Anonymous. During the Fauci pandemic, I ate every donut in a 50-mile radius, and I looked down and there was a thing growing on the front of me. It looked like a belly. It was ridiculous. There's still a little of it left, but I haven't got rid of all of it. But I said, Dave, you're a mess. Dave, you're an idiot. Dave, you're out of control. That is not good self-taught. If you would not eat everything in sight, you would not be the size of an elephant, Dave. You are not an idiot.

No, I was. You're making idiot choices.

I was doing idiot stuff. But it's not who you are. Well, I'm just saying. I did not have an identity crisis, never fear. But the point is that I looked down just like you did. I said, What I'm doing is not working. I'm getting negative results for negative behavior. I've got to change my behavior. That's a huge thing, and I did. I hadn't had a donut since the Fauci pandemic. I lost 37 pounds, and I've walked every day for 1473 days. As of this morning, at least a mile, up to 5 to 7 miles in most days. I get it. I understand. But what did I do there to change my negative behaviors that were giving me negative results was I said, What has to be true? What has to change? Well, weight loss is a lot like money. It's a fairly simple concept. You eat less. There it is. And you exercise more. There it is. And so with money, what are we going to do? We're going to make more, so you need to probably be working more. And maybe even at a different place, I don't know. You might make more. You might be able to find a better job.

And then the second thing, Anonymous, is I would be giving the Every Dollar app. You can download It's a little bit of money. I can download it for free. If you want the upgrade, it's just a few dollars and it connects to your bank. But that's the world's best budgeting app. What the budget does is it's making every one of your dollars behave before you get them. That's the trick to budgeting, is you say, before it occurs, before the money comes into my hand, I'm going to already have spent it on paper, on purpose, on the app or whatever. That will give you control. Then the discipline will come from you saying, I don't want to live like this anymore, so I'm going to live like that. I'm going to be the guy that wrote this stuff down. I'm going to be the guy that doesn't I'm going to be the donut. I'm going to be the guy that doesn't sit on his butt and watch Netflix. He's going to get up and go walk 4 miles. I'm going to be the guy that does something different because I want a different result. But you've got something to measure it against.

In my case, it was the scales. In your case, it's some debt, and your written down budget will give you tremendous motivation, if you really mean it. I'll be honest, I've been doing this 32 years reading this email from you, Anonymous. I think you really mean it.

Yeah, and you see things like I spend so much of my income on going out to eat. Like the planning with your money, you plan food, though. You know what I mean? Just to say, Okay, I'm going to meal plan on Sunday night, and I'm going to know when we eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every single day, and it's not going to be great food. It's going to It's going to be cheap and it's going to be quick, but I'm going to do that instead of going out.

My buddies want to go out for a drink.

I can't afford to. Yeah, and so it is.

My buddies want to go out to eat. I can't afford to.

It's like a muscle. It takes time. It takes time to build it. There's going to be- But anonymous, that couple that was just up here that was making $170,000 a year, they made their lunch and took it to work.

Hello? And they paid off $289,000 in debt.

Change is hard, though. I think like- It is hard. Well, and we laugh at you sometimes, or I laugh at you sometimes because you're like, Change. Just change. You do this clapping thing. It's funny. But here's the deal. It is difficult because there is a norm that you set in. It's a human experience of what I know is normal is comfortable, even though I know it's wrong. And that change, that's almost the scarier step. It's almost the scarier step to say, I'm going. That's why I say maybe step one, sometimes the hardest, because I'm engaging in something new. And so In a sense- Changing to do something that feels hard is hard.

Yes. But change is not necessarily hard. If you change from driving a horrible car to driving a great car, that's not hard.

Yeah, that's fair. I guess so.

That's a good change. That's not a hard change. If you change from living in a dump to moving into a million-dollar house, that's not a hard change. Change is easy. When it feels benefit, it's when the change has sacrifice. What you got to do is you have to say, Is this hard change taking me to a better place? Then I got to work my way through it. Is it worth it? It's like the bumper sticker when I'm fat from the donuts, I see this bumper sticker and it says, Nothing tastes as good as it feels to be thin. So don't put it in your mouth. It's that thing. You cannot run a Big Mac. You can't do enough exercise to eat Big Macs. It doesn't work. That's it. These things, you get, okay, I'm going to live like no one else so that later I can live and give like no one else. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but it yields a harvest of righteousness. Instead of sitting down and looking at my numbers and going, Well, this can't be done. There's no way. Instead, I start looking at my numbers What has to change?

What must be different? Okay, we're not eating out. We're going to have a written game plan. We're going to look at increasing our income. When you align yourself to all of those because the belief that you're getting to it, that those are going to take you to a better place, you'll instantly be motivated. No one exercises. Well, I won't say that. Most people don't exercise because it's fun. Some of you do, but you're sick. But most people exercise because it's good for you.

But you feel good, though. You do get a high.

You do get a high off of it.

You do get a high off of it. Don't kill their husbands.

You get a high off of it when you're done. Name that movie. But I'm just saying it's not because it's like, whew-hoo. Legally blonde, James. Yesterday morning, it was raining. I did not want to walk. It was not fun. I did not want to walk. What I wanted was the result more than I wanted the action. I can't tell you that was fun.

You should lift.

Yeah, I should do something. But at least I did that. You're trying to find something I can do indoors, I know. But anyway, the point being, Anonymous, I really think you're on to something. I really think there's good things are going to come to your life because no discipline seems pleasant at the time. His question was, how do you learn discipline? But it yields a harvest of righteousness. The way you focus on it is you focus on the harvest.

Of what you're going to get. But there's also the day in and day out consistency that it just becomes a part of who you are. James Claire talks about how new habits, you just take on a new identity. I am a person that fills in the blank.

I am not a person that borrows money. I am a person that does not have credit card.

I'm a person who takes their lunch to work. That is who I am. It's these new identity markers.

I'm a person with four pieces of plastic in my pocket, two debit cards, my driver's license, my handgun carry permit. These are the only plastic I own. I don't have any other plastic. That's the person that I am. Somebody says, Well, you need to borrow money to do that. I can't do that because I'm a person that doesn't borrow money. You're a person that has discipline. You're a person that works extra. You're a person that doesn't eat out when they're broke. You're a person that doesn't go to happy hour when you should be working overtime. You're a person, and you're right, that James Clear change of identity in atomic habits is a big deal. It's really big, yeah. Anonymous. I think this is It's a fabulous question, and I'm really encouraged for you. 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. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author and co-host of the super popular Smart Money Happy Hour on the Ramsey Networks, is my co-host today. Also my daughter. Phone number, 888-825-5225.

Victoria starts this hour in Portland, Oregon. Hey, Victoria, what's up?

Yeah, hey, Dave and Rachel. Thanks so much for taking my call. Sure.

How can we help?

Yeah. My fiancé and I are getting married in July. Just this week, we started your financial peace university. Within the last month, we've been meeting weekly to go over our personal budget through the Every Dollar app. Just for personal debt, my fiancé has about 4,000 left on his student loans that should be paid off in two months.

Cool.

My fiance is a contractor. He owns a construction company. He brings home about... Not brings home, but his salary is about 65 annually. I work full-time. I have a side business that I recently started with my employer, and I bring home the same amount.

You guys are doing great. Congratulations.

Thank Thank you. My question is, how should we approach business debt?

Who has business debt?

We both do. My fiancé has business debt. He has about 180. On what? What did he buy? On a lot of equipment. He has an excavator, two trucks, dump trailer, a loan, and a credit card. There may be another loan. Okay.

What about you?

I'm not recalling. Yeah, For me, mine might be a little bit unique. My business partner, who is my employer, she has funded 30,000 into it, into the business.

I'm sorry. Your business partner is your employer. Those things are inconsistent.

Well, you're like day job, and then you guys started a business. Is that right?

Correct. Yeah, correct. Outside of my 40 hours.

And so that person put $30,000 into the business that you started together? Correct. How is that debt then? They invested into it.

Well, I guess it's not really then, is it? Because I'm not paying it back right now.

You're not supposed to. Is it supposed to be repaid by the partnership before profits come out or something?

That's how I've always assumed is that he would get paid back.

Do we not have an agreement as to how it will be paid off?

I guess for that one, no, we don't. You need to get one by the end of the weekend.

We need to know what's going on here. This is the stuff that destroys partnerships and businesses. She has one set of expectations and you have another. Then all of a sudden, the thing gets blindsided. You guys need to determine that very, very quickly Usually, it would be something like a percentage of the profits go to the debt until the debt is cleared. That would be a normal thing. Until there's profit, there wouldn't be any. It's not debt. Until their investment Their investment is recouped is really actually the terminology. Okay. Now, over on his side, he needs to quit buying equipment.

Yes. Correct. He's on board with that, not buying additional equipment.

Yeah, he's got way too much. He may need to sell some. Now, he took a salary of 65,000. What was his actual profit?

I don't know. So next week in our budget meeting, we're going to going over his business, and then I'm actually going to be set up taking quick look classes, and I'm going to be taking over that for his business to start helping out. Okay.

All right.

Probably we need to find half of that debt in equipment to sell because I don't think his business…

I don't think he's got another 100,000 coming out of that business. I don't think he's making much money, considering the amount of debt he has. So I'm scared.

Okay.

Yeah, I know. 180,000 on a $65,000 net is really scary.

Right.

That's what I mean. Eighty-thousand, I can see my way to work through that. So I'm selling about half of this stuff, give or take, and try to get a bunch of the debt paid off that way. Now, let me give you one other nuance, and then let's address your question. The nuance is this. They're technically in both of these situations are business debt because he signed personally for that equipment. The bank doesn't think he has a business. The bank thinks it's him. The law thinks it's him. You didn't borrow money, so you don't have that. You have an investor that has a recoup plan on the investment before you guys divvy up profits or as you divvy up profits or something. You got to figure that out. But his equipment is personal debt that he uses for business. That's the legal technical thing. That does matter because it's him that'll be bankrupt if this goes sideways, not his business. That's what matters. Now, once we said all of that, then We say, We're going to get the QuickBooks going. You're doing very good stuff, Victoria. You're asking all the right questions. You're doing all the right things.

Congratulations. You've got good answers to everything so far. Now, when you're doing the quickbooks, what we suggest when I'm teaching our Entree Leadership brand, and he can start listening to the Entree Leadership podcast if he wants to, if he wants to learn business stuff from us, it's how we teach small businesses to grow their business like we grew this one. When I find that they have debt, I do it differently than I do with your personal credit card debt. Okay? Okay. What we do there is we say after he makes a basic living wage out of the business, which now he's getting married, he might make that be 40,000. Okay? Because put with your income, you guys can probably make it at home if he's doing that. Everything after that we're going to call profit. So pretend like he was just a manager at this business and got paid 40,000 and I was the owner, then whatever was left from a keeping books standpoint, income minus expenses, including them $40,000 manager is net profit. You know that, right?

Right. Okay.

So of that net profit figure, or whatever it is, and you can adjust the salary to be whatever you want it to be, but of that net profit, I want the vast majority of it each month to go to debt reduction and the rest of it to go to retained earnings, which is business talk for savings account.

Okay.

Now, most companies will do something like 70-30 or 80-20. So like 80% of your net profit after you take a living wage goes towards the debt, 20 goes to build up your retained earnings because you have to have some cash in business to operate.

How much? How many months of that would be a retained earnings?

No, he's going to every month take a percentage. Every month, take a percentage of the net profit, whatever that is, a bunch of it, 80%, whatever. Set the formula ahead of time. You all look at that and figure it out. 70%, 80%, whatever is going to go to debt. The other is going to go in retained earnings. If retained earnings gets too big, you got too much money in the bank, reach over and pay off a piece of equipment. But I don't think that's going to happen. I don't think that's going to be your issue. You're probably going to be short of cash with the formula I'm giving you. You're probably not going to have as much as you want, especially now that you can't borrow money anymore to buy more equipment. You're going to want cash to do that after you get the other equipment paid off. But that's a formula that will work for you. I think you guys are on the track to success. Well done. This is the Ramsey Show. It's way too easy to put off making a will. Believe me, I've heard every excuse in the book. But not having the time is one excuse we can kick to the curb right now.

Because these days, most folks can make a legally binding will on their laptop between loads of laundry. If you're wondering if you can make your will online or if you need a lawyer, we have a quiz to help you figure that out in less than five minutes. Just go to ramsey ramseysolutions. Com/wilsquiz. Ramseysolutions. Com/wilsquiz. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Cassie is with us in Denver Hi, Cassie. Welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Hi, thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? I'm looking for advice on how to improve my relationship with my husband as we struggle with burnout and the feeling of equity during baby steps two and three. We've been doing the baby steps for eight months and had our first baby seven months ago. Prior to that, it was easy to feel like equal contributors to the household and relationship, which is important to us. But now he's working extra, and I'm doing more at home with the baby, even though we're both working really hard, it's just hard to get that feeling that we're both in the same spot. We're both dealing with the burnout right now We're just looking for any advice you guys might have.

You're not burned out. You have a new baby.

Yeah.

It's really hard. I'm keeping one of my grandkids tonight. It's hard. I'm keeping the littlest one. It's hard because they take up a lot of energy. They can't do anything, can they? They're completely helpless.

Yeah, and I guess me taking on more of the household stuff, I'm feeling a different burnt out than he is. Yeah.

Well, you got a brand new thing. You've never had this gig before. If you guys weren't working Baby Step 2 and 3, just having a newborn, it ain't no picnic.

Yeah, and it's a different exhaustion, what you're doing, Cassie.

You never sleep.

Yeah, it's that. It's awful. It's a lot of stress. How much debt do you guys have left?

39,000.

Okay. Do Can you guys have a timeline on when you think it'll be paid off?

We know we're getting inheritance, probably 50,000 to 60,000 this summer, but we're trying to live like we're not getting that. That's smart. Trying to make the sacrifices now so we don't go back into that. Then also, we don't have a house, so the end goal is a down payment for the house.

The more you can pay off, the more the inheritance can go towards the house. I love that. Exactly. That's a good goal. Number one, we have brand new baby is a different thing. I'm not poking fun. I'm empathizing. It's a real… It's one of the toughest times for exhaustion and a different fatigue than you'll ever have any other time in your life. As a matter of fact, every day it gets better. After this, it really does.

I went through the night last night.

Yeah, there you go. See, I'm not kidding. Every day gets better. It's precious and it's wonderful, but it's exhausting. It's a different thing than just we're working our tails off to get out of debt. It's also a different thing because your body's adjusting after having had a child. The physical attributes of that affect this discussion, too, in a very real way. That's wonderful, too, but it's also a very real part of the chemistry of what's going on.

It's just tiring.

Yeah, it's just tired. You get tired.

Yeah. So your husband, are you working outside at all the home or are you there full-time? Oh, yeah.

I work full-time, too. And so, yeah.

Have you guys sat down? Because even my husband and I, we did this when I was working and we had kids, where it was like, what are the things around the house that I need help with that I feel like, Oh, my gosh, I can't do all of this? And where are the areas that he could step in? And everything's for a season. Life is going to change. Even if you have a second baby, it Change is the dynamic again. But have you guys sat down and had those conversations? Because I think to the responsibility at times, especially if you're a driver, you're a strong driver as a woman, it can feel like, Oh, yeah, I'll just take care of it all. I can do it. Asking for help is really difficult. Have you guys sat down and talked about that?

Yeah, we have. It's obviously gotten better than since I originally wrote in already. It's improved from talking. Okay, good. But I think it's hard because he works a physical job and mine's a desk job, and then we just start getting into that hole.

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

Who deserves a relaxing.

No, I think that's where you start splitting hairs because there's a different type of exhaustion to all of it. He works a physical job.

You did a physical thing having a baby.

Well, but her job is a desk job right now. I know.

Then you're at work all day, and then you got a baby.

Yeah. I'm like, it's all like we're all in this together. It's not this score keeping of, well, you do this job here, and I do this. You know what I mean? It can get into that. I think it's this whole mindset of we're both exhausted, so what is the plan of action for us to get through, even just day to day, the basics and necessities of stuff, and feeling some level of that control in the household because it is chaotic. I mean, it's really difficult. But when you have that stuff laid out, and I think that's what Winston and I did, we blew up the whole responsibility roles and responsibility of what we thought and assumed each other. It was this.

For a short period of time, we're going to make it whatever it needs to be.

Yeah, it's all hands on deck feel.

We could change it back and forth, and we could do it for two weeks and change it again. But I think when you said, Cassie, you all sat down and started talking about it. But I want to give you permission I don't think it's burnout. I think it's just tired. Okay? Burnout is, I don't emotionally... There's no light at the end of the tunnel except an oncoming train. You actually see your way through this, you're just freaking tired. Yeah, that's fair. Sometimes when you have to pick up something out of the floor or take out the trash or something because he went to sleep because he just worked a 12-hour shift or something like that, it's easy to... When you're tired, you get grouchy, at least I do. I'm grouchy sometimes when I'm not tired.

A little bit today.

But yeah, you see what I'm saying? I just want to give you... I want you guys to give yourself permission to say, We are in a very unusual season of life. It's a lot of grace. We're trying to do two very hard things at the same time. Get out of debt by working very intensely and deal with a newborn. Both of these are heavy lifting. Together, it's really heavy, and it won't be for long.

Yeah. Okay.

Then that helps me. If I'm at end of the game and I'm exhausted, I got to run one more play, I got to do one more thing, I got to push one more mile to finish that run, whatever it is, I'm at the end. As long as I can see the end, I'm not burned out. I'm just tired.

You're there.

You can see the end. Honestly, from what you're describing, I think you're both doing great. I just think you haven't given yourself enough credit for how much crap you've been going through. I mean, how How hard this is. It's hard. The only thing we've- To your point, Cassie, marriage changes so drastically after you have a baby.

I'm like, your marriage looks different in a sense. I'm like, the lack of sleep, the connection, all of that that you're talking about is so normal, so, so normal. I would say even for you guys, find a couple of things. I don't know. For us, it just helped levity. If we could just find levity and laughter and things just to relieve some of that tension and pressure, that build up, I think is really helpful because you guys may not be at a place where, oh, yeah, weekly date nights. I feel like some people are like, Do a weekly date night. I'm like, Do you know how crazy our life is? We're not in a season to do that. But what's something fun? Dr. John Deloney will probably kill me for saying this, but even a stupid TV show, that it's the thing that you guys do. You sit down together and you watch it, makes you laugh. What's a thing that just can bring some levity to you guys, I think is always helpful, especially in these seasons. If they're just now sleeping through the night at seven months, it's exhausting. You guys are doing a really good job, Cassie, and it doesn't last forever.

But I know exactly how you feel because it's a lot.

But it also helps to put the right language on it. And burnout is not the right language. Tired is the right language. And by the way, you have a right to be tired. That's what we're trying to tell you. But it's also worth it. So keep going. Figure it out, sit down, pars out the chores. Go, Honey, tonight, I just can't do this. I'm going to bed. I mean, whatever. Or, You got to take the midnight. I can't do it. Whatever. You just go back and forth with that and you just work your way through till the end on this and you do figure out what you can do, what you can't do, and keep handing it back and forth, handing it back and forth until you get across the goal line. You'll get there. I think you're probably a lot stronger than you feel like you are. Matter of fact, I'm sure you are. This is the Ramsey Show. If you've taken Financial Peace University, you know how life-changing it is, and there's no better way to share that hope than by leading an FPU class at your church. Because right now, someone you know in your church is struggling.

Bad. They're drowning in debt. They're scared to death and don't know what to do. You can be the one to step up and give them hope, just what your FPU coordinator did for you. Start making a difference as a coordinator by going to fpu. Com/lead. Rachel Cruz, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today on the debt-free stage in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions headquarters, John is with us. Hey, John, how are you?

Better than I deserve, Dave.

Very cool. Where do you live, sir? Seattle, Washington. Very good. How much debt have you paid?

$59, 696. Or $9,696.

I love it. How long did this take?

Three years, nine months, 27 days.

All right. And your range of income during that time?

$20,000 to start, and then after a lot of side hustles and a little bit of overtime, $60,000.

Very cool. What What are you do now?

I'm a youth pastor, and I'm also a financial coach part-time with your Ramsey Preferred Coaching. Cool.

So dare to be different, Romans 12:2. Yep. All right. Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Amen. Yeah, good. I love it. One of my favorite scriptures. Good for you. Well done, well done, well done. What debt was the 60,000?

Student loans. Oh, baby.

Youth pastor with student loans. Making no money. You get out of school and looked up three years ago, nine months, and said, I got to do this or what?

Yeah. So like everyone, or I was a high schooler, didn't really have any plans. I jumped straight into student loans, went to a private Christian school, and I didn't actually think about it. I was like, Oh, I'm signing. Okay, whatever. I don't really care what I was doing. Two and a half years in, I'm in my dorm, and I see this book, and it's Five College Mistakes You Can't Afford to Miss by Rachel Cruz and Anthony O'Neill. I was like, Oh, that's a good book. I looked at it, and the One of the chapters was College Choice. It said public in-state versus private out-of-state, and that's what I did. I was like, Oh, no. What did I do? I looked and I saw I accumulated 60,000, and I was only halfway through my degree. I just had this, holy crap, full of shame, full of hopelessness. What am I going to do? During my part-time college job, I was actually looking and I scrolled upon a Dave Ramsey bald guy giving someone hope on YouTube. I just jumped all in, just started consuming the podcast, the YouTube. I realized, wait a minute, I can pay for my degree online while working full-time.

I actually stopped. It was December 2019, right before COVID. I did online before it was cool. That wasn't a plan, but everyone followed my folks up. It's not really, but COVID happened.

Start of the fad. Yeah.

But honestly, the COVID pause actually helped me accelerate my debt payment. But I made 1,600 a month to start off, and it was nothing. Wow. A hundred fifty bucks a month for groceries, Instacart, DoorDash, House Sitting, Cat Sitting, anything and everything. But long story short, I didn't work for a car dealership for part of it. But using Ken Coleman's materials, I realized I have a passion for helping high schoolers find and follow Jesus. That became just really evident through the Ken Coleman materials, just community speaking into my life, as well as, Oh, wait, I also have this passion for finances since finances is the biggest and common reasons for divorce. I then did that. Now I'm actually at a church Bethany Pjollup. We do a FPU, which I love because I get to point my high schoolers to it. But a new thing now that I'm debt free and I can do is every senior that graduates, I'm going to give a copy of the total money makeover and say, Hey, I was an idiot with money, and I didn't follow God's ways of handling money. I was a terrible steward for his resources, for his kingdom, and for his glory.

Please learn from me, and to talk about what scripture actually says about it. To also help them, set them up for success, and to recognize that your decisions have impact your future.

You're amazing. Well done, sir. Great. Well done. How old are you? Twenty-five. All right. Very cool. Good for you. Who was your biggest cheerleader while you're going through this?

I had a bunch of cheerleaders, my mom and my sister. I got a list. Dave and Sara Stahosky, the rental house I'm allowed to stay in. My Community Group, The Gouges for my Landscaping Job, Accountability, Jeff Brink, Sean McArthur, Matt Rand, Noah Lilley, and Tony Duck.

Almost like he knew I was going to ask you. He's got a good...

He's got a great list. I have listened to so many of these. We've had this conversation so many times.

I just wasn't on the other end.

But one person in particular, I have a guitar pick that says, Never give up Portchop. Portchop was my family middle name. July 21st this year, my dad passed away. Oh, my. He was one of my biggest cheerleaders, and I out of debt in October, and he didn't get to see it.

Actually, he did.

You're right. But he sent me... Anytime you were on Fox News, Dave, he would send me articles. He's like, John, you're kicking this dead's butt. Keep going. He modeled for me sacrifice growing up. It was hard, man. There were times I didn't want to wake up early and go landscaping, and do all that stuff. But dad sacrificed for me and my sister growing up, so I had that picture. Rachel says more as cop than taught. I got that from my dad. That's amazing. I miss him, and I actually want to dedicate this to him because I really miss him.

Yeah, you got the T-shirt done. That's great. I like it. I like the pick on there. That's very cool. Good stuff. Gosh, John.

For you, your dad's story integrated throughout this. I know was a difficult part of the journey, but for you being in your mid-20s, figuring all this out and wanting to do something extreme, like get out of debt, right? And all these student loans, what was the hardest thing? What was it, the work? You mentioned the landscaping. What was the thing that was like, man, that was the difficult part.

I think it was everything. It was submitting to a process that's worked for millions of people. I think the key for me, well, it was saying no, working a lot, being okay with, I can't go skydiving or can't go on this, can't do that. But I realized it was like, you know what? I want to be 25 without any student loans, and I want to be a good steward of God's resources for his kingdom and his glory. I want to model it. Don't let anyone look down at you because you're young, which is an example for the believers. Yes. Amen. Speech in life and love and faith and purity, and I want to do that for my students. But I think submitting to a process that's biblical, that's clear, that has clear set paths, and I think there's something about that that impacts your mental health, your your finances, your relationships. There's something about God's ways of handling life that not just thinking about it, but actually doing it is really powerful, and you get to reap the fruit that comes from it.

But it's awesome. It is. It cuts through. It Walk us through quick and deep. Well done.Proud of you, man.Thanks, man. Good work. I know your mama's proud of you, your sister's proud of you, and your daddy's proud of you. Well done.Thank you for your mentorship.Very.

Well done.

Excellent stuff. When someone says, what's the key getting out of debt? What are you telling them?

Ownership. Ownership. I think ownership, vision. For me, I didn't really know what I was doing when I signed those papers, but I did, and I have to own that. But I was the problem, but now I get to tell my clients, I was like, Hey, you were the problem, but good news, you're the solution. You could do it. The power of the renewing of your mind, it's like, yes, the decision is hard, but you can do it. You can rewire your brain. You can do not be conformed to the powers of this world. Honestly, dare to be different. I think we, as followers of Jesus, should be different in every area of our life, not just our finances, but our relationships, our marriages, every area of your life. That's why I wrote, dare to be different. Do not be conformed to the powers of this world.

Amen. That's awesome. Well done, sir. Thank you. Congratulations. Very, very well done. All right, John from Seattle, $60,000 in student loan debt paid off in three years and nine months. It's making $20,000 a year, up to $60,000 with lots of side hustles. Yeah, don't tell me you can't do this. Those numbers, that's tough. That's some tough numbers right there. Well done, sir. Very well done. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream.

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

Yeah. Love it. That's as good gets, boys and girls. Love it, love it, love it. This is the Ramsey Show. Our scripture of the day, Proverbs 13:12, Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. Tommy Lesorda said, There are three kinds of people in this world, people who make it happen, people who watch what happens, and people who wonder what happened. Elizabeth is Colorado Springs. Hey, Elizabeth, welcome to The Ramsey Show.

Hello. Thank you so much. I'm excited to talk to you all. You too.

How can we help?

We are facing in the next several months, some changes in our finances. We have not lived on a written budget yet. We've just lived in our means, but I am tired of being panicky every night, wondering where my money is. Just now going into this season of uncertainty, I don't know how to start building that budget.

What's the season of uncertainty again?

Sorry, may I miss that. We just had our third child, and right before she was born, we found out that our daycare provider is moving. So now we have to enroll our kids in a new daycare, which is essentially doubling our daycare bills starting in July. We are also, any day now, going to start receiving these bills from the hospital. So we're just trying to figure out what those are going to be while also still paying off our debts and trying to provide for our family. Okay.

Good news, Elizabeth. None of that is uncertain. It's all very certain.

Okay.

It's happening. It's not like you can't predict it. You can know it. It may be hard, but it's not uncertain.

It may be- And the amount may be uncertain with the medical bills.

No, it's not. You know you've got insurance and you can tally up what your copay is and figure out what your bills are going to be. On a normal labor and delivery, if you've got normal insurance, you shouldn't have a huge bill there. But it's not one that's going to break your back. But what it amounts to is, just as you decided to tackle this, you had three things come at you that were extra. Well, two, one is I want to get out of debt. That didn't come at you, but the other two things came at you. What you're saying is it was really going to be hard to budget anyway. Now it's going to be super hard.

Right.

Not to budget, to make the budget work with the income we have. What you're going to have to do is look and say, there may be something that has to give. You landed on this daycare that's double, You may have to keep looking. That one may not fit your budget.

That one might not be the- We're on the waitlist for other closer, cheaper options.

But the one that you had was a friend or something. What was it?

It was a stay-at-home mom that just wanted pocket money, basically.

Okay, you got to keep looking for that.

Yes.

To replace the one you got. Then it's not double.

How old's your baby? How old's the third?

She's three weeks.

Oh, wow. Okay, so you just had the baby.

All right. I think what happens is, as you say, all right, we're going to lay out the written game plan. The written game plan is food is first, shelter is second, lights and water is third. Then with what's left, we try to figure out all this other stuff, right?

Okay.

Because you will emotionally be in a better place if you know you have a place to live, the heat is on, the water is on, and there's food on the table. Now, the rest of it's a monopoly game.

When will you go back to work, Elizabeth, or are the other two older ones, I guess that they're still in daycare?

Yeah, they're still in daycare. I go back mid-June. Then with that, I'm going to keep home my oldest when the younger two go to daycare until she starts preschool, which we also have to build into the budget when she'll start in mid-August then.

Wow, okay. I think what we're saying is the good news is you're going to see all this coming and you're going to happen to it instead of it happening to you, but it is still going to be tight and it's going to be stressful, but not nearly as stressful as if you added chaos to it.

Right. That is a relief.

Yeah. I would find out even as much as you can get the facts, I think is helpful, Elizabeth. Even the medical stuff, you're like, Oh, my gosh, the medical bills are going to hit. Figure out how much those are and see, okay, if we do a payment plan, are we able to pay off X amount next month? And really be really, really specific. And even for you, because there's going to be so much change with you going back to work in June, another kid starts a different preschool in August. Even if you do the Every Dollar app, which if you hold on the line, Emily will pick up and we'll get you the premium version for a year. But go ahead and build out a couple of months of budgets, looking out, knowing that these months ahead, that the budgets will change But at least you can get a plan of like, Okay, this is what it looks like here, here, and here. It is amazing when you have facts down and those numbers are actually down on paper, it's not just in your head. It does give you peace. It lowers the stress. It lowers the stress.

It gives you a lot of peace.

Yeah. Okay. Now, that's exactly what I need.

Because, again, when you know the house payment's paid, the lights and water's on and there's food on the table, then you can go, Oh, okay. Now, the rest of this is inconvenient.

Now, we know that we can pay the medical bills and even the preschool and installments. Is that considered debt? Should we try to pay that off?

Yes. Preschool is not. Preschool is just you're paying it monthly. That's like paying your electric bill monthly. You're paying for it as you use it. But the medical bills would debt. If you can clear it, clear it. Do you have any money saved?

Yes. We're fine financially. I just don't know what things are going to look like right now.

Yeah. Well, the more you do what Rachel said and dig up that information and lay it out in a very certain way.

Yeah. Elizabeth, have you guys ever done a really detailed budget, like how much we spend for groceries or out to eat, kids' activities? You're really like, line item by line item. Have you guys ever done that?

No. And that's always frustrated me in It's a week to me. Yeah. No. So even go back- This is my turn to be a relief checklist item.

Yeah. And go back, Elizabeth, even in your bank account, the last two or three months, and just average out, okay, here's all my grocery store runs. And just take a sheet of paper and just write them all down and divide it, and just say, Okay, on average, this is what we were spending at the grocery before we were budgeting, right? And plug those numbers in. And then usually when you're not budgeting, you're overspending in categories, not realizing it. And then say, Okay, if we really were on a plan, what could I limit that What could I shrink that down to? And so it just ends up being this puzzle piece. But you'll go back, you'll run some numbers, look back at your checking account for gas, how much you guys fill up on gas every month. It sounds so granular and detailed, but it is so, so helpful. And with every dollar, it's going to be attached to your bank account. So when those transactions come in, you just drag and drop them into a category, and it does the math for you, and it just shows you, Here's how much is left in the month.

And just having that control, it's amazing. It really is. And it'll take you guys a few months to get it down. It won't be perfect.

You and your husband are both looking at these numbers, and you're both carrying the weight of the decisions in the household. Both of you are looking at it. You may be the one that writes the checks, or he may be the one. I don't care. But both of you are looking at it and saying, Oh, if you're going to have an oh, crap moment, we do it as a couple. If we're going to have a victory moment, we do it as a couple.

How much you guys make a year, Elizabeth?

We make 220.

220, okay. You're in good shape. Any debt?

We got 50 in a car, a home repair, and some land.

Okay. How much do you have in savings?

About 25.

Okay. Yeah, you guys You're in great shape, Elizabeth. I think you're doing better than you think you are. But follow the baby steps. Throw some of that $25,000 once you get those medical bills and know, Okay, here's where we're at.

Pay the medical bills when they come in. Then let's start cleaning up the rest of the debt and build a good, strong emergency fund. In your case, Probably 50,000. If you had 50,000 in the bank and no payments but a house payment and a written game plan where every dollar had an assignment and you and your husband had agreed to it, your stress level is going to go down 90%.

That would be incredible. Yeah.

That's why we call it financial peace. You're really asking all the right questions. This is going to turn out well for you. Proud of you. Good stuff. You're going to get it. Good for you. Well done, well done, well done. That's how you work.

A lot of new babies, this show.

It was a baby show.

I know. A lot of- A baby show. A lot of ones. But that's great. It is funny how different life events can come up, and then you look at everything and you're like, Oh, my gosh, I was stressed about that. I want that to change. I see this. Then the domino effect of really helping your life overall, it happens. It's a beautiful thing.

It's a very John Deloney-esque thing. There we go. Love it. Good job, Rachel. That puts this hour of The Ramsey Show in the Books. We'll be back with you 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. Dr.

John Deloney here. Mental and emotional health challenges, broken relationships, it's all just part of life, but they don't have to define you. The Dr. John Deloney Show is here to help. It's a collar-driven podcast where you can get practical advice on dealing with anxiety, loneliness, depression, relationship challenges, your kids, and so much more. Listen to questions from our callers, or if you're walking through a tough situation and need some help, give me a call. You are never meant to do life alone, and that's what this podcast is all about. Follow along on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or the Ramsey Network app. Remember, you're worth being well.