Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey show. We help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create amazing relationships. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Ken Coleman, number one bestselling author, host of the Ken Coleman podcast on the Ramsey networks, is my co host today. So you want to talk about jobs or careers? Well, he's here, and we can work that in for sure. But because we talk about all parts of your life here on the show and how we can make it all work together so you get a better one. Open phones at triple 8825-5225. That's triple 825-5225. Rob's in Los Angeles. Hey, Rob. Welcome to the Ramsey show.

Hey, guys.

Absolutely love the show.

So big fan.

Follow most of your advice.

My question is about romance and how to keep it alive with the joint bank account. So my wife and I recently got married, and we're doing what you suggested, having one centralized checking account.

But my question is, what do you.

Do on Valentine's Day or her birthday? I don't particularly want her to know how much I spent on flowers or if I take her out for a meal, how much it costs.

You'll get over that. The longer you're married, the less that matters. Because actually, Sharon and I go out to dinner for Valentine's after 43 years, and we play guess the check before it comes. We want to see who can guess the closest to what it's going to be. So it'll work out. No, I'm messing with you. But that's a sweet, wonderful question. Thank you.

Okay.

We just need a mechanical way to fix it so you've got some money that is spent towards her, but she doesn't know what it is. And so I guess around Valentine's Day, you could, as an example, around her birthday or something like that, you could increase your Rob spending account because you should have a his and her account for blow money, right?

Yeah, we have a guilt free account.

Yeah, guilt free account. Okay. Let's increase your guilt free account around that time. And she knows that we've increased the amount, but she doesn't know what you spent on the particular items, then.

Got you.

Okay. But, I mean, she's not going to be okay with you dropping five grand out of budget. Okay, but you don't want her to know if it's a $200 flower or a $300 flower. Right. Exactly.

That's my importance. Yeah, I understand financial infidelity, et cetera, but, yeah, there's a happy media here.

Yeah, I agree. So just build it up during that time. And it's just kind of a stated thing. I get a little more guilt free money because I'm taking care of your birthday out of that. Shut up. Right? And so that's what I would do. I don't know, Ken. What do you all do?

That's what I do. I tell Stacey, especially around Christmas time, I go, hey, listen, we plan out a budget for the kids. And then I go, all right, this is a range for. I said, you know, you just not worry about it. And she loves that. And your wife is going to love that, too, because you've had the forethought to say, all right, I'm going to do a little extra over here, and it's not going to be crazy. And then she'll know all the details once she gets the gift. And so I think the thought that counts around the gift is great, but I think the thought to say, hey, we're going to stay controlled. We're going to stay disciplined. But you know what? I want to do a little extra for you. And I think as long as you're communicating and you're disciplined, the romance is very much there. I love the heart of the question, but you guys communicating well allows for these month to month changes when you've got a Christmas of Valentine's and a birthday.

Yeah, exactly. Because in February, we have Sharon Paloosa.

I know. Well, this is a big month for Sharon in February because of her birthday.

Well, our first date was February 6. Her birthday is the eigth. And then there's Valentine's Day on the 14th. So the whole freaking month is Sharon Paloosa. I mean, she just gets. It's, like, ridiculous. So, yeah, budget for February is whack. Because good month for sure. I got a little category. It's swi. Sharon wants it. So there it is. Right. It's one of my budget categories. And it works. It works.

Could you also call that same envelope, Sharon gets it.

Well, that's the point. Yeah. Sharon wants it. Sharon gets it. Yeah. SWI S-G-I. That's it. Yeah. You have to give it all a full acronym, like we're in the military. Yes. I love it. Good for you. Well done. Well done. Rob, Charlotte's with us in West Palm Beach, Florida. Hi, Charlotte. How are you?

Hi, Dave. How are you?

Better than I deserve. How can I help?

I have a question. So, during COVID we decided to put some money in stocks. And now we made enough on the stock market to pay off our house. My husband really wants to because Florida is going crazy with insurance and taxes, and it's just going crazy down here. So he really wants to take the money out of the stocks and pay off the mortgage. How do you feel about that?

What do you want to do?

I don't know. I'm torn because how much is the mortgage up? And I watch it go down. But we pay $2,500 a month on our mortgage.

How much is your balance on the mortgage?

About $100,000.

Okay, how much you got in stock value?

About 120.

Okay. Let's pretend your house was paid for and you didn't have any stock, like you did what he wants to do. Okay. Would you go borrow on your house to buy stock? No, same thing.

We want to.

Stop. You drove right past that. It's the exact same thing. If you had a paid for house and no stock, go borrow a mortgage to put the money in the stock market. It's just reverse engineered. It's the exact same thing as you taking this stock and paying off this house before close a business today, which is what I would do. I have never, in 32 years of doing this radio show, had anybody call me back and go, I paid off my house. And I hate you, Dave Ramsay. That has never happened. There's a lot of people hate me for a lot of stuff, but that's not one of them.

Okay.

Pay off your house today. Okay. Do it by the end of the week. Have a little mortgage burning party with a little dancing stuff in the backyard on Friday night. Pay it off this week.

You sound like him. He's just. Okay. Okay. Thank you so much.

Sorry, Charlote. He wins the argument. He's right. And you're going to love it.

I figured that.

I figured that you called me and asked that question. You knew it.

Yeah, that's why I asked. I was like, what do you want to do? Because when you lead with my husband, once we know where that's going, and it's funny for her to, she's kind of reconciling that. She's like, I'm watching it go up, go down. But she really wants to ride that wave.

Well, they made some money.

They did. And she's going, I like the way that feels.

I want to do that again. That's exactly what you do, is you take the 2500 a month that you don't have anymore, round that up to 3500, and go if you want to do single stocks. I don't, I don't like the risk of it. Right. But if you want to do that, then throw some money in there and just watch that money grow. And now you got a paid for house in the backdrop.

That's exactly what I would do.

You breathe different when your house is paid for, the air goes more deeply into your lungs. It is a physical manifestation of peace, financial peace. Two words that don't go together. Like airline service. Right. That's exactly. It's just, you know, Delta. What's that mean? It means when you look it up in the greek, we're probably not going. That's what it means.

The airline joke.

Financial peace.

Well, but here's the investment reality, too, though, Dave. It's that 100,000 in equity is no risk compared to the 120,000 of the stock because that could go up and down. But your house is not going to do that. Not in Florida. Hello.

You could get Biden reelected or Trump elected, or the world could come to an end, which is probably similar at this rate.

Maybe that's the best option.

C, none of the above.

Yeah, I know where I'm going. It's a lot better there.

This is the Ramsey show.

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Ken Coleman Ramsey, personality number one best selling author of the book Paycheck to Purpose. He's my co host today. Erica is with us in Huntsville, Alabama. Hi, Erica. Welcome to the Ramsey show.

Hi, Dave. Thanks for taking my call.

Sure. What's up?

So I'm going to give you a little bit of background so you can understand the situation I'm in. I moved to the US by myself when I was 21 and I worked as a nanny until I was about 28. And when I was 28, I finally had the opportunity to go to college and I pursued a physics degree. And in college I got as many opportunities that I could because I wanted to build my resume and have actual work experience. So I got an internship, I did three research teams. I was a physics pa, I published a paper and I got a job right after college as a developer. And I'm making forty k a year. But I'm moving to Atlanta soon. I only have ten days left at work, and I have been looking for a job since October, and I haven't even gotten an interview yet. And the people who went to college with me, they all got really good jobs. They have the same background as me, but they found jobs in engineering, in tech. But I can't seem to find anything, and I don't understand why. And now I'm having to pay back my student loans, and things are getting tough.

Erica, so let me ask you this. What have you done? When you say I haven't been able to find anything, does that mean you haven't been accepted in the form of getting hired, or you just literally are having a hard time ideating and selecting things to do with that physics degree?

No, I actually have been applying to lots of jobs, and I haven't gotten an interview.

Okay.

I applied for tech engineering, so.

Erica, I'm interrupting because that's the challenge. So we live in a world today where getting noticed is harder than ever. If you're just going to apply, I mean, you could sit and LinkedIn message people all day long. You can apply, apply, apply in your exhibit a for applying without a connection. And you are maybe not even getting noticed. There was some data that came out, Erica, in 2021, that said 4 million actually qualified candidates never even got noticed by the companies they applied for because of the artificial intelligence software that we have to use now to be able to process the amount of resumes. So I'm trying to encourage you, not discourage you. The encouragement is you've been going about it the wrong way, and now you need to do it the right way. And so if you're moving to Atlanta, you've got to start to zero in on everybody that you know that lives in Atlanta, everybody that you know that knows somebody that lives in Atlanta. And we're going to show them the impressive degree that you got in physics. I'm assuming you had a great GPA and some of the papers that you've written, all these things are impressive, correct?

Right. That's what I have been doing. I have been trying to network there, and I even went in person to a few companies to deliver my resume, introduce myself. But no luck here.

No, but, sweetheart, listen. The days of walking into the street, into the receptionist, while I love the hustle factor there, it's just not the way things work. So what has to happen is you've got to have somebody who is making an introduction for you to somebody who has a say in the job. Is this hard work? Absolutely. Is it harder than submitting resumes all day, every day. Yes. But with your background, your pedigree, your issue is not qualification. Your issue is connections and getting in front of somebody who gives you an actual interview. There's no silver bullet advice here. This is you literally locking in on. This is where I'm moving to Atlanta. And so if I draw a circle around Atlanta and I know the north side, south side, you're looking at all of the companies. And one of the things you probably need to do is narrow in on what is it that I really want to do with the physics degree? Do you have an answer to that? Give me top of the list. If you had three things, what would be number one at this very moment?

Well, number one at this moment is what I have been doing right now to work as a developer. But I know that things have been tough for developers at the moment. So my second option would be engineering.

You're doing code with a physics degree?

Oh, yes. Because in my university we have to have a lot of.

I know, but I mean, code background. Yeah.

Okay, but you want to be a developer. That's the long term ladder for you. I want to keep taking my developer skills and move up.

Because your current developer job sucks.

Yeah.

You're on the be a developer. That's awful.

Yeah, it's because I was hired for a nonprofit company.

Okay, so, Erica, not only are we not fishing properly, when you have fished, you've been fishing in the wrong pools. Nonprofits, by the very nature of their existence and operation, there's just a lid on you financially. You should be in the 75 80 range, easy, very soon with a dev.

One to six figures. A first level dev. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, that's what I'm trying to find.

And developers are not hurting. There's a shortage. I don't know who told you the market is dried up for developers. There's a shortage.

Oh.

It's because I could hire five today if I could find them that were competent.

Listen, I just went on a popular job site. I'm not going to say their name, but there's 977 developer jobs on their site in the Atlanta area.

Not exactly a shortage.

977?

Yeah. So I have been applying for these, though.

Sweetie, you're not listening. That's why you're not getting an interview for ten minutes. Ken's been telling you that applying for jobs doesn't work unless you know somebody inside the building that takes your resume out of that stack that's 9ft high and walks it over to their friend's office and says, hey, I don't know if Erica will be great or not, but you ought to at least talk to her. She's my buddy. That's who gets you the interview. Otherwise, listen, we get 15,000 applications into Ramsay every year. We hired 170 people last year. What do you think your chances of getting out of that needle in a haystack are? It's not because we're mean or heartless.

So something Erica just said, and this applies to a lot of people, so I want to break this down. So Erica just said, I don't have any buddies. Well, first of all, it's not true. So let me give you all a really quick example of what I've done a thousand times on the Ken Coleman show. Someone says, ken, I don't know enough people. So I say to them, Dave, how many people do you know? Give me close ties, close network, social media, friends from college. And they usually say, every time they say, I know about 150 people, 200 people. Okay, great. How many people do those 200 people know? And then they say, well, 200. And I go, quick math. That's 40,000 people.

Yeah.

So when someone says this, and Erica is still listening. So, Erica, here's where I want you to understand. You know everybody that you need to know, but this takes work. Let me give you a classic example. Here's what people do wrong, Dave. They go on LinkedIn, and they fire a bunch of emails and connections, and they feel like, I did good today. I put some hooks out in the water. What you got to do is no.

Bait on the hook.

No, you got to go to LinkedIn and you go, okay, so I'm looking at a job right here, folks. I'm not going to say the company, it's a lead, full stack developer. She's not qualified for that. But this is developer job at a company in Atlanta, Georgia, and it's listed via LinkedIn. So what you do is you go into LinkedIn, you go, how many people on LinkedIn do I know at that company? If she comes up with zero, then she goes, all right, let me start looking at the connections of people on LinkedIn that work at that company. And I will guarantee you she's three or four degrees on LinkedIn from that one person who's at that one company. Now, folks, our advice here is practical, and it's doable. We don't give out this kind know Mary Poppins kind of Pollyanna advice this takes. Mary Poppins, I know, but my point is, it's not just go out there and do. It's, you got to work it and work it and work it to the point where someone goes, all right, I know Fred over there, and Fred knows the hiring manager. Fred's going to connect you based on our relationship.

Here's a copy of Ken's new book, number one bestseller, Proximity Principle.

That'll help.

The proximity principle is what we're talking about. Find someone that you're in proximity of the job with that can pull your resume out of the stack and walk it down the hall to their buddy and the hiring manager and go, hey, I don't know if she'll work out, but least look at her. That happened to me last week. An old childhood friend texted me and said, a friend of a friend's daughter has her stack stuff in your stack. Would you pull it out? We pulled it out. It did not result in her being hired, but we pulled it out and let them look at it. Yeah, this is The Ramsey show.

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Ken Coleman Ramsay personality is my co host today. Open phones at triple 825-5225 so, Ken, I'm thinking about Erica's call in the last segment, and she's applying to a bazillion jobs and not getting any reaction. And your goal is to get her to go to a human being that knows a human being or that actually does currently work inside the company and let the human being take her resume and walk it to the hiring manager. And you've made a really good, huge impact on social media. And the podcast is very successful. Telling people that simple idea, among several others on the whole idea of a job hunt. And you and I have talked about this for, I don't know, that book is three years old, two years old, the proximity principle. So we've talked about this concept on air and off air a long time. It just suddenly hit me coming back from that break, and she couldn't seem to get her head around what we were telling her to do it was almost like it was impossible for her. But how much of this. This is a passive aggressive question, because it's actually a statement.

How much of this need to do things digitally instead of relationally is caused by a generation or two that grew up doing everything digitally instead of relationally?

Yeah, I think it's a portion of it. I'll tell you the biggest cause is the sting of rejection. So every time you have to put yourself out there and ask somebody to help you, one of the hardest questions we know to ask is, will you help me? We don't want to feel like we're a burden to somebody, and we also don't want to potentially hear the word no. So, actually, the fear of rejection is what's really driving most of this. Now, to your point, social media and technology and devices has made it feel as though we are digital.

People have digital courage. I mean, they'll say crap, trolling, and do crap that would get their dad gum nose broken where they do it in person. Right. Somebody punched the freaking lights out if you said that in person or something. Right. But you got digital courage behind and behind your little avatar living in your mother's basement. That's right. And it's a generation that breaks up with their boyfriend or girlfriend instead of doing it in person. A, with a little class, and d, b, dealing with relational conflict properly. They do it with a text.

Well, let's go a level deeper. Now we have ghosting, where you don't even actually send a breakup text or whatever.

You just don't show up ever again.

It's a scourge we have, literally. There are story after story of businesses hiring people, and their start day arrives, and the person doesn't show up. They get worried about them, they reach out to them, and they never hear from them. I'm not kidding. This is called ghosting.

I know it's called ghosting, but it's ghosting on a new hire.

They're not showing up.

We've had people start here two times in the last year, and I have raised cane with our recruiters and our interviewers because they shouldn't have got it in the building. They started here, and they quit on the first day because they found out, like, we work and stuff, right?

Yeah.

Like, whoa.

Imagine taking a job and then Dave.

Ramsey's place and discovering I had to work. Why would that be?

A.

But I work. But I think you make a very good point. The rejection feels less when I'm submitting a resume online. I feel good about myself because I submitted it.

I'm going further than that. I'm saying not everybody in these generations. I'm not throwing a whole generation on the bus. That's right. But the skill of personal relationships. You're right. Has been stunted.

That's exactly right.

It's hard, though, by this technology instead of enhanced by the technology.

And you're right, and I'm agreeing with you. But I'm saying what's really going on underneath all of that is this fear of rejection and fear to ask for help. And to your point, they've not exercised the muscle to where it's no longer scary. So you're absolutely at the pinpoint of why it feels better and feels easier to do what this young lady said.

Because I'll never forget, I was, like, in my twenty s, and I went to a sales conference, and the guy was talking about, the guy with. There was a big, in my 20s, there was a huge real estate company called Century 21. Yeah.

Oh, sure.

And the guy that won the award for selling more houses than anybody else in this huge company was a Vietnam veteran. And they called him up the stage, and he kind of was just this little guy, not real impressive looking. And they got him in front of the microphone. He really wasn't that impressive. And they're like, so how do you, the number one guy in the nation, I mean, you'd think a guy would be a dynamo, right? And how are you the number one guy? And he goes, well, just talk to people about houses. And they buy houses. He goes, well, what do you mean? He goes, well, like, example, the other day he goes, I was in Burger King and heard this couple sitting over there talking about houses, looking at homes magazine. I walked over and told him, I'm in the real estate business. And three days later, I sold him a house. And he's like, well, weren't you scared to walk up to a stranger in Burger King? And he goes, honey, I did two tours of Vietnam. Burger King ain't scary.

Isn't that the truth?

So it's a muscle example. It's a muscle. That's.

And that's exactly right. So we all have to understand that when we put ourselves out there, just in the act of applying, what you are essentially doing is you are in a place of vulnerability, and you're kind of going, I hope they like me. And so now, what's happened with this caller, and we hear this all the time, is she has tasted rejection so much that now she has really begun to believe the narrative that I can't find a job.

And developers, nobody's hiring. Developers in Atlanta and keystroke live on the air. You get 977 jobs to come up.

So what's happened? What's happened is the warped reality, right? But from what? I can't find anything. Nobody wants me. And we believe it. As opposed to what's really hard is to go taste rejection. I'm going to tell you something. When I was a kid, my dad, I remember my first job, he walked me up to a, drove me to a McDonald's and sat in the car and said, go in there and turn your application in. I had to go ask for the application. This is going to freak out some young people. I had to go ask for it. They hand it to you. Then I go sit in the corner. My dad gave me a pen, I filled it out. Had to walk back up and interrupt the manager who's busy trying to fill a large fry order. And you're standing over there. But it's those kind of things that. Yes, it was terrifying for me, and I'm an outgoing, extroverted guy, but still.

I mean, when you're four years old, that's hard.

It's true. I was young, but the idea is that you have got. Let me tell you, let me just say this. The most underrated, underused question in the world is, would you help me? And here's what I found about successful people.

Most anybody will.

Just about everybody does. Successful people who have been helped by the way they say this. Come on in. The water is nice. Sure, I'll help.

Plenty of room for everything.

You have got to ask, which means you've got to be okay here.

And success is not a fixed pie. There's a lot of room for all of us. Come on in. I'll help.

It's your classic story of the turtle.

Yeah. Turtle on a fence post. One thing you know if you see a turtle on a fence post, two things, you know, one is it's a curious sight. And two is the boy didn't get there by yourself and it's so rich. Are you a turtle on a fence post? Most successful people feel like they're a turtle on a fence post. They know they didn't get there by themselves and so they're willing to help. They're willing to do mean, if I can't help, I'll send you to somebody that can.

That's right.

I will help you by giving you an instant no on an email. I'll just say no.

And I just feel like there's some people out there who are watching and listening today. You need to hear this. I'm going to share this. Years ago, I had the opportunity to interview solid out Brian. She was at CNN at the time, and I was asking her about her journey starting from scratch in media. And she said something. A producer pulled me aside one day. She goes, I was in a heap. I had asked for a role, an anchor. They told me no. And she was just devastated. And she said. The producer pulled her aside and said, listen, you need to start turning no's into not yet or not here. And stop looking at it as finality. And the word no when we don't even get crickets back. You remember when we were kids, we'd write the little note, do you like me? Yes, no, or maybe. What's weird about that is the maybe was more excruciating for me than the yes or no. Because at least I knew where I stood, right?

I can move on.

And so we treat no's in the form of no reply to a job application. We treat no's in the form of I interviewed. I thought I did well, but I got beat out. And we treat that as this final period. End of statement. And I can tell you, Dave knows my story. I heard no from Ramsey leaders three years before I actually came here. And it wasn't a no. It was a not yet. Turned out. I didn't know that at the time.

We weren't in a position to handle a thoroughbred like you. Well, I don't know. Took a little while.

No, I think you had to find.

It took a little while to get ready. We had to get a really good saddle and bridle.

But you get that. We got to start.

No is not finding exactly. It's true, though. We didn't.

Not yet. It's not now. Right?

Yeah, it's exactly right. Well, or not here.

Not here. So what are we somewhere else?

Moving somewhere else.

Keep moving.

The guy that turned down the book. Financial piece. One of my best friends. Yeah. Sold 3.2 million copies. Now, oops. He's still in publishing. And I'm still an author. But that deal never happened. This is the Ramsay show.

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Ken Coleman Ramsay personality is my co host. All right, one last thing on that, and then I'm going to move on, because one of our team members working in the lobby mentioned this to me at the break. I'm saying that we've got a couple of generations now that have grown up with a magic wand in their hand, and they have learned to think Facebook friends are real friends, which is a lie or break up over text, and that there's a stunted growth associated with a digital level of communication versus a personal level, a relational level of communication. I'm not making that statement. And to her point, she corrected me, and I appreciate her doing that. To her point, it's not a generation wide malady, but it is not a. And so there's plenty of millennials that know how to do relationships. That's not my point. Other than digital, right? There's plenty of Gen Z's that know how to do relations. But you guys have learned how to make almost that your default mechanism. And if you don't watch, you'll fall into. That is my point. Because our generation, we didn't have that. I mean, our phones were connected to the wall.

It's so true.

And so you had to kind of go around the corner to talk to your girlfriend and your sister, not here at the dinner table. How long a cord could you get on this thing? And so it was a different situation with communication, and we didn't fall prey to, we didn't have the option of doing something stupid that goes viral and stays on your digital tattoo the rest of your life. So we didn't have that disadvantage either. But we didn't have the advantage of any question you ever want to answer in the world is at your fingertips, and 30 seconds later, you can have the answer hypothetically correct, depending on whether Google likes your algorithm search or not. But anyway. But conceptually, it's a wonderful piece of technology. It is. And all millennials and all Z's are not stunted. I want to make sure I'm. Because I was not saying that, but I'm saying you can fall into that if you're in those categories. So be careful. All right. Helen is in Vancouver. Hi, Helen. Welcome to the Ramsey show.

Hi, Dave. Thank you for having me.

Sure. What's up?

So I want to know, do I have a moral obligation to financially support my sibling, who is likely over $250,000 in debt?

No, you don't have a moral obligation to financially support your siblings, period. Under any circumstances.

It's. It's. I understand that, but I have very limited family, and I'm actually worried for her health.

But that's sweet. And you love her, but that's different than a moral obligation. I love my sister, and I want to help her is different than a moral obligation.

Okay, so let's phrase it that way. Is there a way I can help.

Her that protects me? Sure. Unless you want to give her $250,000 to pay it off. Then you've got to coach her and be her cheerleader to give her some instruction and some encouragement to work her way through this. You're her biggest fan. You're her biggest cheerleader.

She'll never work her way. Okay.

Yes, she will.

Almost 60. Her net income is $50,000.

Well, change her income. What's her $250,000 in debt for.

Living large?

What's it owed on?

Pardon me?

What does she owe the money on?

The primary is a line of credit that I think that she's put onto her mortgage and then her mortgage.

Okay.

She doesn't even know that. She doesn't think that she can actually.

Okay, so how much is her mortgage when it comes? What's her mortgage balance?

I would say probably the grandson I know is like 250 plus.

Okay, and what's the house worth? What's the house worth?

House is probably worth 600.

Sell it. Boom. She's out of debt.

That's what I think.

But she's out of debt. She doesn't need help. She just needs somebody to go. If you want to be out of debt, I can tell you how to do it. Sell your house, and you got, what, $350,000 left over. You can survive in Vancouver, equity in it.

I don't even know that.

Yeah.

Pardon me.

Well, you're dealing with a bunch of unknowns and a vague set of worries. And a whiny sister when she won't deal with her issues. Her issues are she's spending like she's in.

Living for today, not worrying about tomorrow.

You can't make somebody grow up. That's up to them.

Helen, I've heard twice on this call. You begin to make excuses for her, and I think there's a bit of guilt.

I think you started this call because I'm financially secure.

Wait a second.

But you didn't cause her to be insecure. What are you guilty of?

I hear you, but I'm in the helping field. That's kind of where I come spend.

Every day of my life, helping.

Would it be a good investment for me to buy the property and rent it to her?

No.

Okay.

The last thing you need to do is get involved in this woman's finances. She's an absolute out of control car wreck. Yeah. You need to stand back and just watch the car wreck and say, darlin if you will turn left, you will not wreck the car. Stop turning right and pushing on the gas. Slow your butt down. Turn left. Sell the house and get your act together. But she doesn't want to get her act together. You want her to grow up more than she wants to grow up.

Probably true.

Yeah.

Well, I think it's a step below. I think it's lower, deeper. I think you want to protect her from the car wreck. You see it coming and you feel like it's your obligation.

Yeah, of course. Right.

That's what's all over you. You have guilt all over you. It's your responsibility to stop the car wreck because you know it's coming. And I get that. But I don't think you can.

But people you love, all you can do is say, hey, what I've learned is that when I do this, I get pain. And when I do this, I get joy. And so I'm going to recommend the joy actions and behaviors, not the pain actions and behaviors. And I love you, and I wish you'd do that, but I can't make you do it, and I can't do it for you. You're not in the helping business, I hope very deeply, because you have the language of an enabler, and you don't want to start doing that.

Well, I haven't given her money.

Good. But you're about.

No, I said if I would give you money, it wouldn't be a gift, it'd be a loan.

And don't do that. What do you want to be a creditor to this woman for. Yeah, she's not dependable.

It's like throwing a rock to somebody who's drowning. Don't loan her any money again. You're trying to help something that can't be helped.

Yeah, if she wants to make positive steps in a right direction, and you can do things to encourage her and cheer her on. Even if you matched some of her debt reduction and you said, hey, if you pay off $10,000 worth of debt, I'll put in $10,000 towards it. But if you just start loaning her money or giving her money and she keeps on the same behavior pattern, that money went down a rat hole.

Yeah.

So you're not really helping, you're just enabling. When you do that, you're giving a drunk a drunk.

That's what I'm trying to avoid.

So don't get involved unless you can assist her moving in a positive direction that she has chosen to move in. She might have chosen because you talked to her about it, because you love her, you confronted her, all those kinds of things, but you have no moral obligation, no obligation of love to give a drunk a drink. As a matter of fact, there's quite the contrary. Your love obligates you to not give a drunk a drink. I've got a friend who's been dry twelve years. The last thing I'm due is taking him to a bar. Absolutely, I love him. I'm not taking him there. And so even if he wanted to go, I wouldn't take him there, and he doesn't want to go. So I'm not going to put him in a position where he's going to be in trouble. So, Helen, if you want to sit down and talk to her and say, I'll help you. If you start doing some things that are positive, I'm scared for you. I love you. I think you're getting ready to crash, and I'm really worried about you. But you can't make other people stop doing stupid stuff.

If you could, this show would have been over 30 years ago. But instead it grows in popularity every year.

True. We're like the Krispy Kreme store. We just keep making the donuts. Same recipe, hot lights on, hot. Now, same questions, same advice. It's just rolling off the track there.

Whole nother generation here doing the same stuff, and they got more sophisticated tools for their stupid. That's great. Oh, Helen, you're a sweet lady. You're kind. Be kind to her, but you're not responsible for 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. Ken Coleman Ramsay personality, is my co host today. The phone number is triple 8825-5225 thank you for joining us, America. Chrissy is in Raleigh, North Carolina. Hi, Chrissy. Welcome to the Ramsay show.

Hi. Thanks for having me. This is exciting.

It's honored to have you. How can we help?

I have a car loan that I have been trying to get out of since I've got the car. Because I was negative from the previous car and just tracked it onto the new car. And I'm on baby step two. So I've got my savings from step one. And my goal is to pay this off as my only debt. I'm 35, and I make 43 a year. So my question is, should I pay the principal down? Because my payment is 613 a month. So can I pay the principal and then sell it to a private seller and give it time? But again, I'm trying not to put as much miles on it so it can sell with less miles, because I feel like that would look.

So what do you owe on the car?

$29,000.

Have you looked up what its value is today?

I looked it up on Kelly blue book. For a private seller, it would be, like, $24 to $25,000.

Okay, so you're $4,000 in the hole, right?

Yes, sir.

Okay. Are you single?

Yes, sir.

What is your income?

Per year or.

Yes, per year?

Per year. It's like $43,000. And I just started making that.

Okay.

Because I just got a rate.

Okay, you're right. This is a car that needs to be sold. I agree with you. Who's the loan with on the car? Who do you owe the money to?

It's through southwest. Through, like, the Toyota. It's a Toyota rav is what I have.

Yeah. What's your interest?

It wasn't bad. I know it was under. It's around, like, I think, six point something.

That's very good. Okay. All right. Is your credit good?

Yes, sir.

Okay. I would hop to your local bank or your local credit union and talk to the manager in person about getting about a $10,000 loan for a $5,000 car and $5,000 extra to pay off the balance of this one to get this one sold.

Okay.

I'd rather you be $10,000 in debt than $30,000 in debt.

Exactly. Yes, sir. And I have learned that through watching you all the videos and stuff. I'm definitely watching more than I probably should. But I've learned a lot.

It's a good addiction. If you're going to have an addiction, we're a good one.

Yes, sir. And I had kind of wrote that in my notes and I've kind of been, like, contemplating because I want to make a good decision going into my next decision. And I travel for work, so I need a vehicle. That's going to be a great a to b, but also I need to make sure I'm not on the side of the road in a mess.

Amen. And I think you can probably do that for ten grand. Well, no, it's going to be a $5,000 car. You might not do that for 5000. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. And I didn't know would it be better to sell to anybody, whoever will.

Give you the most money. But usually a dealer won't give you as much money as a private. No chance as a private.

Okay.

Private is always going to be more than a dealer because a dealer is buying it at wholesale to resell it to a private individual.

Right. That makes sense.

They want to make a profit and so that's their idea. But the other option, of course, is do some things to increase your income. Sounds like you've gotten a new job that makes more. That's great. But also, if there's some side hustles and you could raise your income up, if you get the thing paid down really rapidly, you may want to work your way through it. I think it's too much car for your current income. But I also understand you're on the road and whatever you're driving, if you're putting a bunch of miles on it, you're destroying the value of whatever you're driving. So you're right. The sooner you get this fixed, the less the car is going to go down in value every day. You keep it. You're running up some pretty serious miles, so. Good question. Matt's in Raleigh, North Carolina. Hi, Matt. Welcome to the Ramsey show.

Hi. Thanks for taking my call.

Sure, Matt, what's up?

I just had my moment where I realized that things are really bad and they need to change. And I'm trying to figure out a way out of the hole that my wife and I have put ourselves in. And I'm wondering if I should sell the house to help dig us out of that hole.

Wow. So what happened? Tell me about it.

So things were looking really good. We had our first house we bought when we were young, about 22 or 23 and basically flipped that while we lived in it and sold that for a nice profit. And we moved up to a new house right around then. We had our first kid. We have two. Now they are one and three. And we were just stupid and young. We had never planned for anything.

So how much debt have you got?

About $295,000.

On what?

110 of that is a student loan debt that should be forgiven by the government.

No, it won't.

Years?

No, it's not. That's absolutely bogus. Okay, now then, what else have you got?

We have about 30,000 on cars, 55 on a truck that is about to go away, and 100 trucks being sold? Yes.

Okay, what else other than the truck?

$100,000 on a heloc.

Okay. And what's your household income?

We bring home around 67,000 a month.

$67,000 a year?

Dollars. I'm sorry. 6000 is what we bring home per month.

I got you. Okay, I'm hearing you now. All right, so you're making 90 a year. Okay. Or 100 a year if you're bringing that home. Okay. If you're selling the truck. I think I can see my way through this, can't you?

I think so, but I wanted to hear your opinion on it.

I tell you, the thing that's bothering me the most is there's no fight in your voice. You sound defeated.

I'm a little nervous.

Okay, that's fair.

A lot of fight.

That's fair.

Yeah. I've been working about 16 hours a day.

Okay.

I'm working seven days a week for about a year, but I realized this a few weeks ago. I've been really grinding.

Yeah. Okay, well, you may need a little rest to start with, but that explains it. I wasn't being critical. I just want to make sure that you've got enough gas in your tank because the math I'm seeing with the sale of the truck, you can push through this, you can scratch your way through it, but you do have to stop all of the negative habits of overspending that you've been doing. Hang on. We'll send you through financial peace University as our gift and hopefully we can help you get on the right track here. It sounds like you're heading the right way. It continues to amaze me how identity thieves keep finding ways to use our own identities against us. Not only do they commit crimes related to financial fraud, medical id theft and insurance benefit fraud, but now we have to deal with home title fraud. Thieves are using your own personal info to take ownership of your home. So they can take out loans, and you end up with a pile of debt and foreclosure notices. Over 4000 data breaches happened in 2018, exposing 3.6 billion records. So thieves have plenty of identities to use, and there's a one in five chance it will be yours.

That's why Xander insurance is the only program I use and recommend. Their plan covers all types of identity theft, and it takes over all the work. If you become a victim, visit xander.com or call 803 5642. 80. Ken Coleman Ramsay, personality is my co host today. I'm Dave Ramsay, your host. Thank you for joining us, America. One of the things that we have not done very much of, and I regret that in the last 35 years on this show, is to follow up on does somebody actually take our advice? We pretty much tell you what to do and you just go off into your world, and the listener never knows what happens to you. And neither do we most of the time, unless there's something there. But occasionally we get to follow up. So Marcus called in and had not filed his taxes and asked Ken and I our advice a few months ago. And here's an edited version of his call, so you guys get the gist of when he called the first time.

I'll just be quick into the .2 thousand and 22,021. I was working a mortgage company. They closed their doors in 2022. I was making quite a bit. Now I'm a teacher. Didn't file my taxes for 2000 and 22,021. Probably 80% of that was obviously commission. So I did dumb. I know I need to file those now, obviously. And I'm going to owe quite a bit. I was just going to see if I can maybe get some advice on how to go about doing that.

Not paying taxes is not a criminal act. Not filing taxes is a criminal act. That's the danger that you're in. I'm more concerned about that than I am the payment plan. If you were doing mortgage origination in 2020, you made some bank.

Yes, sir.

Like, what did you make that year?

Probably 250.

And you paid zero taxes?

Yes, sir.

I want you to get it done now. I don't want them to come find you. Okay. I want you to go to them, like, immediately, no later than the middle of January. These documents need to be filed. Okay. You've got the cancer diagnosis. You just don't know what the treatment is yet. So he's probably got a $50,000 plus tax bill and needs to get filed and doesn't have the money to pay it, and that's where we left him. But you have to go get filed immediately. That was the advice. So you guys heard the call. So Marcus contacted us and said he wanted to follow up. So let's talk to him. Hey, Marcus in Oklahoma City. How are you doing these days, brother Dave?

I'm doing a lot better. I'm doing a lot better from that last call and I appreciate the help and advice.

Sure. Tell me what happened.

Got online, I got hooked up with Dave Ramsey, endorsed tax professional who basically said, kind of what you said sounds like, you know, you've done dumb and you've got a long road ahead of you, but I'm here to help. Sent me an affidavit to basically sign and everything stating that if the IRS contacts you, we're going to be able to talk on your behalf. He got everything down. They called lot. It was still bad, but it was worse than, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. And I think really at the end of the day, just knowing that number, knowing the monster that we have to attack is a lot better than just not just the unknown, I guess, so to speak.

So you've gotten a filing done, took.

Your advice, got the filing done as soon as possible. I think it was maybe mid to late January once it was all said and done.

Okay. And now you've got a huge bill with a payment plan.

Well, yeah, I had about 60, 70,000 I put towards it, which dropped it down to about 20,000.

Oh, that's not bad at all. I thought you were in a deeper mess than that. That's awesome. It's horrible that that money is gone, but I'm glad you had. Somehow I didn't remember you having a pile of money. Or maybe I didn't know that from the call, I don't know. But I'm glad you had that pile of money. So you had a $90,000 tax bill is what you're saying?

Yes, sir, that's correct.

Ouch.

And it's just something about every phone call. I know, as dumb as it sounds, every phone call you get, when you're in that predicament, you're thinking, oh, my gosh, I wonder if that's the IRS calling me asking you, why haven't you filed anything else?

Where are you so we can come get you? Yeah, right. The monsters in the closet.

Getting it filed, getting that number and getting that, at least it still hurts. But just the unknown, not knowing when you may get that call or that certified letter. Or whatever the case may be, is a lot scarier than what that number was.

So true.

Well done. Well done. You were brave. That took some courage. And the moral of the story is the known is not as scary as the unknown 100 times over. Yeah. So maybe that'll inspire some other people to take care of something. Because sometimes when you got something just off in the background from your past and it's hovering out there and you're just waiting on it, the shoe to drop, so to speak, that is a lot scarier than just dealing with it. And you go, oh, that's $20,000. We'll get through this. That's all that's left. I mean, $90,000. But I'm really glad you had the 70 saved from those good income years to throw at it. Yeah, that's good.

Definitely helped.

So, are you married?

No, sir.

Okay, so you're single. All right. In a sense, that makes it scarier, because it's just you, right? And it's like, who's going to feed the cat if they come get me?

Just knowing that.

Go ahead, Marcus.

Like I said, just the unknown, just the phone calls and thinking sometimes it'll say USA or us or something on your phone, it sounds stupid, but just.

No, it's not. No, it doesn't sound stupid at all.

When you see headlines like they're arming IRS agents and hiring 80,000 more, I mean, that's called a real nightmare. Here's my quick question. Obviously, you went into the tax pro to solve the current issue. Did you walk away with, speaking of things that, you know, did you learn some things, you have some better strategies going forward? Because I feel like you're a guy that's going to have more windfalls and more success. I'm just curious how much of that you've talked with your tax pro about.

Yeah, I told him, I said, that number is a lot less than I expected. I said, you will be my CPA for. He just, he really kind of talked me through, know. He followed up with what was needed. Here's some other deductions we can take. So he really worked with me. And I think Dave said, don't do this alone. Don't try this alone. You've got to get a tax guy. You've got to get somebody to help you out. And just deductions that I would know about things that he got up and was able to do for me. And then, like I said, I think the first step was when he sent me that affidavit and know, sign this. If the IRS tries to contact you or anything, like to, we're going to speak on your behalf.

Yeah, it's a great feeling.

It's a great feeling. It's like if you're the little guy at school and the football player says, I'll take up for you, here's my number.

I'm not kidding. I feel like that happened to me once or twice. Hey, Coleman, I got it. Just don't go out on the playground, all right? Stay in the classroom. I love it.

Marcus, congratulations. That took a lot of courage. I'm glad you did that. And thanks for allowing us the honor of the follow up call. It's good for folks to hear it. And it's inspiring when people take the bull by the horns, take responsibility, and run straight at the problem. And that's the shortest route to solving the problem. Run straight at it.

That's exactly right.

So if you're facing something out there like that, guys, I mean, yeah, the tax pros are there. If you want a tax pro to do your taxes or to help you with a tax problem, the guys and gals that we've approved across the nation that are Ramsey trusted@ramseysolutions.com. You just click on the Ramsey trusted thing and there's tax pros everywhere. They'll help you. There's people like that in a lot of different industries, insurance and real estate agents and so on. And we've got the smartvestor pros over in the investment side, all of that. And we put this network, there's almost 8000 of these different folks available that we have vetted in these different areas. And so you can check it out that way. But here's the thing. Jim Collins told me this that wrote the book, good to great. The research he did on his last book, he was telling me this in the green room when we were speaking together one time not long ago. And he said, ambivalence, not knowing is more scary than bad news.

Exactly right.

It's like I've got a friend with a cancer diagnosis. And from the time they gave the diagnosis until they gave the detail and the treatment plan, the not knowing was scarier than the actual bad news of what the treatment plan and the actual prognosis was. Once you know what the demon looks like, once you know the size of the dragon, then you know the size of the weapon needed. That's right. And even if it's an uphill battle, even if it's a battle, you don't know if you're going to win or not. But at least, you know, the knowing how tough it is and doing the tough thing is easier than the not knowing. And that's what he just outlined.

That's right.

So fear of the unknown is a bigger fear than fear of tough stuff. That's what I'm saying. So step into it, people. Step into it. I don't know how much debt I've got. I'm afraid to look. That's scarier than knowing how much. Get in there and figure it out. This is the Ramsay show. Ken Coleman. Ramsay personality, is my co host today. Open phones at you. Jump in, and we'll talk about your life and your money. Ian is with us in Tacoma. Hi, Ian. Welcome to the Ramsay show. Hey.

Thank you guys for taking my call.

Sure. What's up?

Hey. So I have a question regarding my career. So a while back, about a month and a half ago, I kind of asked myself the age old question of if I could wake up and do any job in the world, what would I be doing? Such a great question across the answer of being a pilot. Because for a while, I've been interested in planes and aviation, and I've been to a bunch of aviation museums across the country. And it's just been something I've been interested in in a long time. For a long time. And after doing research on the career, it's a lot. Training is expensive.

A lot of time and money.

Training is expensive. Job security is iffy, depending on when you enter the market and when you finish your training. So it's a lot. And I have a very stable career right now. I make decent money for what I do. So I'm kind of stuck in a head versus heart situation.

No, I don't think you're stuck. I think you're scared. And I would be scared at this kind of staring at this giant mountain of time and money. That is the transition that you're going to have to make. But I would say that the stable job is. It's your platform. It's everything. And whatever you choose to do, if we choose to go the pilot route, you're not choosing between these things. And there is no head and heart wrestling match. I know what you're talking about, and I use that analogy a lot. But the only thing that's happening is your heart knows it wants to be in the air, and your head's going, how do we get this is absolutely excruciatingly hard. And some days, the brain is telling you it's impossible. And so what we have to do is get the head aligned with the heart. And so the heart says, this is what we want to do. And then we go, okay, how would we go about getting there? And here's the question for you, Ian, since you went with the metaphorical question, if you're willing to do what it takes, are you willing to wait as long as it takes?

Absolutely.

All right, now we got an answer, and I want to just get real personal for a second. I was 33 years of age when I got to a conclusion that I was supposed to go into broadcasting, but I had no degree in it and zero experience. And everybody I talked to in Atlanta told me I was too old. And truthfully, I was 33 is ancient to get into broadcasting. But my wife and I sat down on one very specific night, and I looked at her. I needed to know if she was willing to go all in with me on this, because I told her I thought it was going to be five to seven years before I caught a major break. It ended up being seven years when Dave asked me to join him, and it was two and a half more years of paying dues. So about nine years. So if you're willing to wait, and it may be five, seven, nine years, depending on your financial situation, if you're willing to wait as long as it takes, then I would go for it. And that means you're going to be stable in a day job the entire time, because we must stay stable.

And then we build. We build. We build. We build.

You get your hours, you get your licenses, you put the hours in, because you got to get the hours in the air. That's right under your belt. There's no exception to that. The only way to get around that and short circuit it is join the air force.

That's right.

Or the air national Guard, where they will train you and pay you.

That's right.

And it's a full time gig. And when you finish your service time, you come out a pilot and you're ready to go. That's if you get approved. Now, you could make that route, but otherwise you're going to be a weekend warrior at the airstrip, and everybody over there is going to know you, and you may even be doing some light instructing or something as you go along to keep your costs down on your time in the air.

How many years, based on your financial situation, have you mapped us out? How long it's going to take you to save up the money? Because, you know, we don't want you to go into debt just in order to get in a big old plane. What's it going to look like?

Yeah, I've thought about that. I actually ran the numbers a bit ago, and in theory, I should be able to cash flow flight school by the summer of 2026, assuming I'm working full time while going through flight school.

Great, man, that's two years to get started. What's it look like? The full timeline on the other side of that, when you're ready to get hired.

From what I've heard, it's generally 18 to 24 months to go from 0 hour to a commercial flight instructor, which is the most common way to build hours. And then after you get commercial flight instructor, it takes around another two, three years, depending on how many flight hours you get. It depends a lot on region, weather, stuff like that, students, how big the school you work for is, but it's very dope. From 0 hour to air transport, pilot license, minimums. Generally it's three to six years.

Okay, so let's split the difference, right? So let's say four and a half, and that's starting at 2026. So by 2030 ish, we're ready to roll.

Yeah, in a best case scenario.

Yeah, I know, but I'm just letting you get your head wrapped around that, because we're talking about a four to seven year play and you got to be signed up for that. But on the other side of that, I want to challenge one of your suppositions. The airline industry is in dire need of talent. And so you keep your nose clean, you do a good job, you become extremely likable. Really work the relationship game this entire time, you're going to be in demand.

You married?

No, I'm young. That's one of the advantages. I'm 20.

I love this. 27. He's doing it.

Why don't you go the air force route? It'd be faster.

It's true.

I actually have a medical condition that prevents me from flying for the military.

Okay.

I have amblyopia in my right eye, so. Lazy eye. So it is uncorrectable to 2020.

Okay.

But you can fly commercially with that condition?

Yeah. Just. Military has got heavy requirements.

I would have to go through some medical process through the FAA, so. Yes, I can. But that's a process I wouldn't be able to jump immediately into training with the medical license I need.

Yeah, that's right. Okay. All right. Gosh. Yeah, he's sharp.

Young man, who's.

Here's the other thing, Ian, I want you to give yourself permission along the way for you decide oh, it's not a career, it's a hobby.

That's a good point.

And maybe I've got a different career in front of me, and that's okay, too. You could go. I mean, the number of guys that I know, and I'm in my sixty s, that are pilots that do it just because they enjoy flying. They are not doing it for a career. But they've gone and gotten their pilot's license because they enjoyed the intellectual stimulation and the thrill of flying and having the airplane at their control. There's a bunch of them, a bunch of good friends that do that. I've avoided it because I know how I am. I'll get sucked in and I won't do nothing else.

I see you in some, like, one of those stunt planes.

Yeah, I wouldn't be doing anything else. I'm not a good personality for that. That's why I did not try to learn to play golf until I was almost 60, because I knew it would get sucked in, and I did.

I just want to see you in one of those old school planes with the leather hat and the little snoopy hat.

Yeah, Snoopy and the red bear. Yeah.

The chin strap flapping in the wind.

Yeah. I've actually got a picture of me doing that in a biplane. But I wasn't flying it.

I was. Yeah, but I like. I need to see the picture now. We do know that you like to jump out of planes.

I have done that.

That's kind of a thing for you. Are you done with that? Have you gotten that out of your system?

No, I'll do it again. I mean, it's not. I'm not doing it every weekend.

Right.

Yeah, that was a fun time. I started doing that when I was.

You're a recreational skydiver. You and George Herbert Walker Bush.

There you go.

Our 41st president got into it.

Well, yeah, I think that was his military training, if I recall, but, yeah. Good job, Ian.

Very cool, sharp young man who's really laid it out.

And most people want to microwave everything. He's willing to crock pot.

It sounds like it. And that's what it takes.

That's a big deal right there. That ability to delay pleasure to win. That's called maturity. Regardless of the number of years you've been on the planet. This is the Ramsey show. All right, let's cut to the chase. It's easy to get discouraged about crazy house prices and interest rates, but when you have the right real estate agent to help you buy and sell the right way, you'll have confidence to make smart decisions. Ramsey trusted agents aren't just experts who guide you through buying or selling. They're someone you can trust to have your back from the first call to closing day. Find a Ramsey trusted agent near you@ramseysolutions.com. Slash agent. Ramsaysolutions.com slash agent Ken Coleman Ramsey personality is my co host today. Thank you for joining us. Today's question of the day is from Adam in Florida. I'm a new listener, and I've got a burning question. Is there any way to Leverage debt and stay aligned with your methods? No. We tell people not to borrow money. I mean, you don't have to listen to show, but about 30 seconds to figure that one out, dude. It seems to me as a WT employee that the only way to attain outsized financial freedom would be to reach sea level suite corporate America.

Oh, brother. Or become wildly successful salespeople. Salesperson. Oh, brother. I recognize that there is much more to life than acquiring wealth. But if there was ever a time to take a shot at entrepreneurship through acquisition or buying short term, long term rental properties, that'd be now. You sound like a TikTok ad, dude. I would also prefer to be my own boss than an officer of a large company. Okay, so you don't want to work for a large company. But here's the thing. You have created a world in your mind that says that the only way to become wealthy is go borrow a bunch of money and buy real estate other than do things that you don't want to do, which is be a C suite or whatever. The truth is that C suiteers don't become that wealthy that often anyway. So that's a misnomer. A high percentage of small business owners build wealth if they survive in business. The number of people that borrow money to buy real estate and ten years later are not bankrupt is almost zero. So I'll give you an example, Adam. When I was in my twenty s, I did this.

You obviously have not heard the story. So I got a degree in real estate. I grew up in a real estate household. I got my real estate license when I turned 18 years old. Three weeks later, I sold my first house to another guy as an agent a week and a half after I got my license. So I've been doing this a long time. It's in my blood. I really know real estate. I started buying real estate from nothing, went deeply into debt, buying everything I could buy, everybody that would loan me money, because I was doing this stuff back then, before there was cable tv or TikTok to tell you how to do it. And I was doing all the things that they're showing people to do now. And I bought and bought and bought and bought and bought. And by the time I was 26, I had $4 million worth of real estate that I owed $3 million on. Starting from nothing, I was a millionaire. And in 1983, I made $250,000. That's $20,000 a month in 1983 doing real estate. So I was successful, except I'd borrowed a lot of money, and my largest lender, that I owed a million, two of that 3 million to, got sold to another bank.

And they called our notes because they looked over and said, there's a 26 year old child that owes us a million two. And this scares the crap out of us for good reason, and we want him to bring us our money. Now, let me tell you what you call real estate that you sell fast, cheap. That's what you call it. There's one way to say real estate. Sell real estate fast, low price. So I start giving away my real estate to meet these note calls. Our second largest lender got word that I was in trouble. Within 24 months after all of that, I was bankrupt. I lost everything I owned. I was sued. I was foreclosed on. Our marriage was hanging on by a thread, and with a brand new baby and a toddler, I was bankrupt and got the opportunity to start over. So a man with an experience is not at the mercy of an idiot on TikTok with an opinion. I've been there, done that. I got all your t shirts, so don't do this, Adam. Don't do this. Not because I had a bad experience, but because what I learned in that during that time was I joined the Nashville Real Estate investors club.

As a matter of fact, I was an officer in the Nashville Real estate investors club. It was formed by a nothing down guy named Robert Allen, who wrote the plaque called nothing down. If Robert Allen was in the business today, he'd be big on TikTok. Nothing down. The book called nothing down, and he formed these clubs all over America. People buying nothing down real estate. By the way, he went bankrupt.

Interesting.

The guys that were in that club that were buying real estate on debt, which was almost all of them, some of them more debt than others, some of them less debt. Ten years after I was bankrupt, you know how many of them were still doing real estate? Two. The rest of them had gone broke. The two that didn't had sold off the vast majority of their property to get the debt paid off and clear a handful of properties. So this idea that you're going to build wealth with highly leveraged real estate is absolute hogwash. It simply does not work. Ten years later, you can't find somebody that's been doing these flips with heavy debt that survived ten years. You can't find a ten year old one. They don't make it because it's such high risk. There's so many mistakes you can make. And I'm a freaking expert at this. I mean, I was really, really good, dude, I was a millionaire by the time I was 26. Starting from nothing. I was good at it. I was a pro. The things you are asserting in this are absolutely false in this question. So how do you become wealthy?

Our millionaire statistics, the largest study of millionaires ever done in North America, say it takes an average of 17 and a half years. You fully fund your 401k with a match and good growth stock, mutual funds, and you pay off your house and you stay completely out of debt on everything. If you want to buy some real estate, you do it after you get your house paid off and you pay cash for your first rental. And then you'll have a lot of cash flow because you don't have any stupid payments. And then you pay cash for your next rental. And then you pay cash for your next rental, which, by the way, is what I started doing when I turned 28 after I was bankrupt. And now I'm worth several hundred million dollars. And most of it's in real estate. And I haven't borrowed a dime since I was 27 years old ever again. I don't borrow money. It is not a proven plan to wealth. As a matter of fact, it's a proven plan to not become wealthy. Yeah, and I missed something.

Well, I want to address this last sentence. I would also prefer to be my own boss. We have a young man here. I don't know if he's young or not. Sounds like it. But you don't know if you want to be your own boss or not. We have 70% of Americans in recent polling said they wanted to work for themselves, but only 6% of Americans do. There's a massive gap there. And the reason is because what we think we want to do in the form of working for ourselves, actually, we don't want. Because when you've got a gap, Dave, between 70% wanting to be self employed and 6% are, it's not all it's cracked up to be. When they actually look into it, it's really hard.

I'll tell you what. When you work for yourself, your boss is a jerk. Yeah.

And more demanding that you think you had a demanding boss before. Wait till it's all on you, pal. And so I just want to point this out.

You to death.

Yeah. I love the entrepreneurial spirit we see of this young generation. There's a difference between wanting it and wanting to do what it takes to get it. And I think this is a young man who doesn't know what he wants. I would say I want to validate.

I know what he wants. He wants the shortest possible path to wealth.

That's it.

That's all in here.

Well, we all want freedom. Welcome to the human race, right? That's why John Locke and Cicero and Epictetus and Thomas Jefferson all created this phrase, the pursuit of happiness. But here's the deal. I've sat here in this studio and watched thousands of people talk about attaining outsized financial freedom. The words he used here, and they did it the way you described outsized financial freedom in 2024 is the baby steps millionaires that we talk about and that we have helped do it. That's outsized because most Americans are up to their eyeballs in debt and are going to retire broke.

There's only 15 million millionaires in America.

That shows you the percentages right there. That's outsized, don't you think, Dave?

So if you have a million dollar net worth, what you own, minus what you owe, you are outsized.

That's right.

And it's the first step to having 10 million.

Never has there been a c suiteer on that stage that I'm aware of. Maybe there has.

Yeah, we get them occasionally. It's very rare. But the correlation between. I have to be in the C suite in order to be one of the 10,167 people that we interviewed that are millionaires. There's almost no correlation. None. None whatsoever. Now, I will tell you that the fourth largest category of career is business executive.

That's right.

Which would include C suiteer. But these people are steady investors. They're not impatient. But, Adam, your question screams of immaturity. It screams of, I want it. I want it now, and I want it easy. Please, honey. I did it. Don't do it. Don't do what I did. It's painful. That's why I do the show. So keep guys from like you from becoming guys like me. Because what I did was really stupid, and it really hurt everybody I loved. Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, this is the Ramsey show. We help people build wealth. Do work that they love and create actual amazing relationships. Ken Coleman Ramsey, personality host of the Ken Coleman show. And number one bestselling author of the book Paycheck to purpose, is my co host today. Thank you for joining us. The phone number is triple 8825-5225 that's triple 825-5225 sarah starts this hour in Baltimore. Hi, Sarah. Welcome to the Ramsay show.

Hi, how are you?

Better than I deserve. What's up?

So my best friend had recommended that I give the show a call. Going through kind of a hard time. I lost both of my parents. My dad passed in November. And my mom, most recently at the end of January.

Oh, my goodness.

Yeah.

I'm so sorry. How old were they?

So my dad was 70, and my mom was 62.

So unrelated events, I take it?

I guess unrelated. My dad was very unexpected. But my mom didn't do well once my dad had passed.

Broken heart. Wow. They were married forever, I bet.

Yeah, over 40 years. So it was a long time for them.

I'm so sorry. How old are you?

I'm 34.

Okay, how can we help, darling?

So I'm trying to give a call in. Because I've been trying to find some advice. On how to protect myself financially during this time. They didn't have life insurance. They didn't leave a will. And all they had left was our family home. However, I had found out after their passing, by going through their phone records. That my mom was in a bankruptcy. So now that she's passed, I believe that the bank will go for her house. I'm trying to figure out what my best option is to protect myself. But also protect the equity in the house.

You personally are not at risk at all.

Okay.

People do not inherit their parents debt.

Right.

So the only thing that's at risk here is the house. And what's the best and wisest thing you can do on that? Let's talk about that for a minute. But no one's coming after Sarah. You understand? Okay, you're completely clear. So this is more of a horribly tragic, sad thing. So your mom had filed a bankruptcy. What will happen there? And you can check with an attorney to verify. This is the creditor, which is the bank will file for a dismissal of the bankruptcy. Because the person has passed away. That'll be granted. Then the bankruptcy protection that prevents foreclosure will be removed. Allowing them to foreclose to take the house. That's what's going to happen. It will take a while, so we don't need to panic. This is going to be a long, drawn out affair if you want to fool with it. Now, what's the home worth?

So the home worth is between 330,450 thousand.

It's a pretty broad range, right? What do you really think it's actually worth?

I think it's probably only worth around 350 because it's not in.

Let's use that as our number for discussion. Right now, what is owed against the house?

They have two mortgages, one for 168,001, for 30. I want to say 33.

So we've got 200,000 owed with $150,000 worth of equity. Are you the sole heir?

I am not. I have a sibling. However, my sibling will be signing over rights so that I handle the affairs.

Okay. All right, well, let me cut to the chase. You've got a good option here long before they get it to foreclosure. Where is the home? What state?

In New Jersey?

Okay. All right. You can check New Jersey law, but I suspect it will take them three to six months to foreclose once they've gotten relief from the bankruptcy court, which is probably going to take them three months. You might have a year, but you definitely got probably. I'll give you a 98% chance. You got six months.

Okay.

That's a long time. Agreed.

Right.

Okay. Did your mom and dad have other debt?

He was a cab driver in the city. So he was paying off a medallion.

Is the medallion an asset that you can sell?

That's what I'm working with right now to figure out if I can sell it. They had depreciated in value greatly because of COVID of uber and Lyft.

So what is owed on the medallion?

Another 168,000.

Okay, so the principle is this, when you pass away, what you own assets has to stand good for what you owe. If you don't own enough to pay everything you owe, then someone doesn't get paid. But the debt does not go to Sarah.

Okay.

All right. So what I think I just heard is you have a $200,000 equity. Maybe you're going to have some legal fees if you want to go through all this stuff. Okay. And out of that 200,000, the medallion has to be paid off if it can't be sold. And so it sounds like there's nothing here unless the medallion has value.

Basically my question, like, do I fight for this or do I leave it? Right?

I'd toss them the keys. If the medallion has $100,000 value and you can sell it. I don't know. I don't have any idea. I've never done that before. Okay, so you got to do a little work on the medallion. But whatever the medallion is worth is about what you're going to end up putting in your pocket. Okay. So if you sold the house for 350, and you paid off the medallion, and it was worth zero, and you paid off the mortgages, you got nothing, so it's not worth the trouble. Does that make sense?

Makes sense.

Okay. Yeah.

Because the other advice I was given was to claim a bankruptcy for myself. No, by a lawyer.

And I thought, you're not in debt. Whoever told you that, stay away from them. They're not smart.

And it sounded absurd to me. To.

It is absurd.

And make my life harder.

It's also not now, but I think the hope in the story as far as actually getting something out of this estate is if the medallion has some value. Hey, ken, hit the things while we're talking here. Ken's going to look it up. Just google it. Can you sell a medallion? I don't even know. I mean, I know what they are. I've talked to cab drivers enough in New York City, and over the years.

30 years, I don't even know what it is.

It's like a little badge that goes on the cab that gives them the right to be a cab driver. It's a license to be a cab driver.

Says it's transferable by law and can be resold.

It can be. I know, but do they have any value?

Yeah, you got to talk to a broker is what it's saying here.

Okay. Google's no help.

Well, here it is. $137,000 low point, 79,000 high point, 137.

If you can get 100 out of it, kiddo, you may have something here. So whatever you can get out of that medallion is probably what you're going to clear by the time you sell the house and the medallion. Hey, you've been listening to the show. Now it's time to start doing no more excuses. Join me and the rest of the Ramsay personalities for the total money makeover weekend here in nashville on May 10 and 11th. Get a crash course in everything we teach about money, including budgeting, beating debt, investing, and more. In just one weekend, you'll leave with a plan to put it all into action. It's game on, baby. Early bird tickets start at $99, so don't wait. Go to ramsaysolutions.com weekend. Ken Coleman Ramsay personalities, my co host today. Ken, I am really excited about this total money makeover weekend that all the personalities, you, me, and the rest of them are going to be doing May 10 and 11th. And one weekend you're going to get a crash course on everything we teach about money. All new content. Deloney Coleman will be speaking, of course, rachel and jade and george and me.

Everybody will be there. Eddie will be our master of ceremonies, of course. And it's going to start on Friday afternoon, Friday evening, as a matter of fact, if you come a little bit early Friday afternoon, you can watch us do the show live here on the glass. We do it every day from one to four. And then we'll have things at the event center that night. I'll be speaking and some other things. And then all day Saturday, it's May 10 and 11th. We're going to give you everything you need to get your crap together and get moving on this money stuff. And you're going to see the whole thing. When you see it all in one place like that, in one short term setting, it becomes like a retreat for money, like a mountaintop experience.

We're all excited about it. We've all been talking about. We got some fun stuff planned. Jade and I are going to do something fun. And I get to be kind of the. She's got the expert thing. We've done a lot of fun stuff on the show. I don't know if you've heard about it. It's doing very well where Jade will come in and go through a little grocery budget thing and I get to be the straight stooge just eating the food and it's really quite fun. I get to eat on the air and sample, is the generic product better than the. It's really.

Yeah, I heard about that.

Right.

And you keep picking the generic products. What I heard, it's true. Your taste is cheap is what I heard.

I am no tastemaker. Let's make that very clear. That has been obvious. But we're all excited. We're doing all money talks and they're.

Going to do a lot of Q and A's.

A lot of Q and a.

The event center holds about 2500, folks. It's almost sold out. It's not quite. We've got a handful of platinum tickets left, which, of course are down front and backstage experiences and all that kind of stuff. And then in addition to that, some general admissions. So early bird pricing ends tomorrow and tickets are going up $100 apiece. That's a big deal.

Yeah.

If you want to save $100 apiece. Two of you coming, that's $200.05 of you coming is $500. Yeah. If you're planning on joining us get your tickets, like, today, by midnight. Okay. Because they're going up, and this is going to be a lot of fun. It's May 10 and 11th. You're going to learn a lot. It's very interactive. A lot of experiences going on. And you're going to get the greatest hits from Ramsay. I mean, we're going to show you the stuff that we love to teach and that we love to inspire with because it's transforming information. It's God's and grandma's ways of handling money and doing life. So. Ramsaysolutions.com events, the total money makeover weekend, May 10 and 11th. Please get your tickets immediately because they're going to be gone. This is a big event. I am excited about this. We haven't got to do anything like this in a long, long time. And I'm really pumped. It's going to be a lot of fun. Keon is with us in Atlanta. Hi, Keon. Welcome to the Ramsay show.

Hi there. Yeah, thanks for taking my call.

Sure. What's up?

So for some context, I'm 21 years old, about to be 22. I'm a student at Georgia Tech. I'm going to graduate this May in a couple of months with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering.

Good for you. Awesome. Great school. Great degree. Well done.

I appreciate it. The kicker is that that's going to come with about $80,000 of student loan debt.

Okay. You graduate this May. Did you say? Yes. You already got your job lined up?

Yeah. So I had an internship last summer at Texas Instruments. I'll be returning for another internship this summer and from there, likely getting a full time offer.

Why are you doing an internship after graduation?

Well, so I have an internship lined up right now because my plan was to go to grad school and get a master's degree. But after thinking about it for a while and seeing how much more debt I'd have to go into, I'm starting to think that might not be a smart idea.

Well, you can always do an adult MBA later. That's not a big deal. And if you're not going to do that, then you need to change that internship into, like, a job.

Yeah.

Because you should be making six figures, shouldn't you?

Absolutely. Yeah. I think in a city with a lower cost of living, I'd be looking at maybe one hundred k. And then in somewhere in California with a higher cost of living, probably 100 and 3140 starting.

Yeah. With their taxes, you only net out on that. You're better off to take the 100 yeah. And stay, be in Texas or Georgia or whatever.

What are your possibilities to join with Texas instruments as an actual employee with the relationship you already have?

Well, I think it's a strong chance that I'd get a full time offer if I asked for one. I performed pretty well during my last internship and built good relationships.

Okay, so you got 80k. You're used to making nothing, and you're going to be making 100, so you're going to pay that off really fast. Agreed?

Yeah, I agree. Absolutely. Now, my question is, my parents are not great with money. They're in a boatload of debt themselves. My grandma is not great with money, and she is, I think, 76 or 77, and she still works full time. Actually, she puts in overtime almost every week, and she's a chauffeur driver in California. So I'm kind of worried about the rest of my family, that they're in a much deeper hole than I'll be, and they don't have, really, the income to support themselves. So I'm just worried about how anything that might happen to them will affect or will affect my goals, my financial goals, if I need to help them out or anything.

Wow. You are an honorable, kind young man, Keon. And I would urge you to not take responsibility for your grandmother or your parents. They're grown people.

Yeah.

I think it's good to love them. And if they need a little bit of help and you've got a little bit of money, that's fine. And later on, if you're extremely wealthy and you want to give them a lot of help, that'll be your choice. It'd be something you choose to do, but it should not be top of mind for you right now of how you're going to take care of these grown people who have misbehaved.

Sure. Yeah. I mean, my mom and dad, they came to this country when they were in their 20s. They're from Iran. I was the first of my family that was born here, so they kind of came in and succumbed to the credit card craze. And they have a lot of credit card debt, and my mom has student loan debt from the 80s, so it's kind of a mess over there.

Yeah. I mean, George Campbell's parents are immigrants. He's first generation. George is a millionaire. To my knowledge. He does not support them, but they embraced all the american ridiculous debt, just like your mom and dad did, Keon. And he's talked about that, and they've talked about not, I'm not throwing them under the bus. Or him under the bus. But George doesn't take them to raise either. They're grown ups. And, oh, by the way, I've got a good friend who's iranian. That came about the time your parents did. He's now a billionaire because he made different choices, because he is one driven son of a gun, I'll tell you that. Because you face some of that kind of oppression and then you see american freedom, you feel like you're set free. This guy goes, so you have options. They're not doomed to these choices just because they're first generation immigrants. Agreed?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, when I think about my future, I get really excited. And I agree. The student loan debt is not insurmountable. I have a good shot at it.

Oh, yeah. I think you clean it up in probably 18 months.

Here's the thing, Keon. If you feel this pressure from them or if it's self imposed, it doesn't matter. And that excitement about your future is going to turn into resentment for the very people that you love and care about. This is not your problem to fix. Can you help? Can you assist in multiple ways that doesn't limit you or hurt you financially? Sure. Share your heart with them.

So what I love for you to do is to be debt free in 18 months, and in another 18 months, have 50,000, $60,000 set aside, have a decent car, start to build your life, and in another five years, you're probably going to be close to being a millionaire because your income is going to go up and you are going to be very key and responsible. The number one category of career that becomes a millionaire in our studies is engineer. I'm excited for your. You and I know Georgia Tech, and I know the quality of the education you've gotten. So you are going to do well if you'll keep your nose clean and lean in. And so I'm really excited for your future, and I want you to be in a place where you can love them well, but I don't want you to carry them on your back the rest of your life. That is not a moral or an ethical obligation of your part. So be kind and loving and compassionate and generous when you can be, but it's not your first and foremost. It's not your number one.

Hey, guys, are you ready for the secret to help you reach those money goals that you've been dreaming about? It's simple. You got to get on a budget. With our budgeting app, every dollar you'll get intentional with your money and build the habits that will make those dreams a reality. And we'll be with you every step of the way, from your first budget to that retirement home on the beach. Download every dollar for free on the App Store or Google Play. Remember today, download every dollar for free on the App Store or Google Play. Today.

Well, thank you, guys. A couple months ago, we landed number one on the Apple podcast charts. And a few minutes ago, apparently we're number five right now. That's another great milestone. And that's out of, I think, 2 million podcasts or so. Good grief in the world. And so we were number one for a little while. We've been number 1012 1415 hovering in there for several years. And then we jumped up in the top ten, and a few minutes ago, we're number five again. So very nice. Thank you, guys. So if you guys want to help us out there, we would appreciate it. We can use your help. Here's how you can help us. Subscribe to the show. And so if you're an Apple podcaster, just hit subscribe. Or youtuber, hit subscribe. Or I don't care. I mean, Spotify. Whatever it is, subscribe for it. Share the show. If the platform that you're on has a share function, just use the Share or clip the link and send it to somebody or something along those lines. Or you can just tell somebody, I don't care, whatever it is. But share us. That makes a big difference.

You guys are our number one marketing arm because we don't have a football stadium named after us. We didn't pay 300 million, like so high or something like that. But we're just out here doing it. So you can leave us a nice review with five stars. And if you got something nice to say, say it. If you don't, don't say nothing. That's what mama said. Number three.

Oh, we need a tote board in here. While Dave's talking about it, I'm over here doing the. All right, I'm doing the Jerry Lewis telephone.

Let's see, we're in the last few moments as I was talking, so I'm really good at this because I just moved us single handedly.

You keep talking about it.

I need one of those. That's not true, because it's a podcast and they can't possibly know I'm saying it yet.

Well, we're going to see the bump after they hear it.

You know what?

We need one of those number one foam fingers Ramsey show. Number one every time we hit it.

Well, we could get one that just says five little foam glove. That'd be okay. I'm good with that. I don't have to be number one. I mean, the NPR death of a thousand people murder thing or whatever is always number one, right?

Yeah, it's hard to beat those.

Yeah, it's hard to beat that.

True crime people love your crime.

The bloody true crimes. We could do crime on here.

We could do some credit card crime.

Oh, yeah.

Cut stuff up.

We'll get firearms and just turn this.

Into people want violence, Dave, let's give them ar.

That would get.

There we go. That get the clicks?

That would get clicks. I could accidentally shoot the tv right here. That'd be irresponsible use of firearms. No, folks, I think we're doing okay without that, though. So maybe we don't need to resort to violence. I agree.

We don't need cheap trucks and we.

Don'T need to upset the gun people either. The anti gun people. We are gun people because the gun.

People love to see you shoot more things.

Yeah, well, that's true. They love to see anybody shoot anything for any a.

We could have a recurring YouTube segment called Dave shoots things. It's just something could be.

Can you imagine the hate mail? Can you even imagine as long as.

They were inanimate objects?

Well, now, see, we just flew. Now we went from number three down to seven just like that.

I'm sorry, America. We're still loving you and we're going to help.

Thank you guys for sharing and subscribing and leaving five star reviews. We appreciate you. Thank you very much. Neelo's with us in Las Vegas. Hi, Neelo. Welcome to the Ramsey show.

Hey, how are you guys doing?

Better than we deserve. We're goofballs. What's up?

So I'm almost close to paying off my debt. I got a couple of thousand, like four and a half thousand.

Good for you.

I don't have any hard debt. I don't have a car payment. I don't have a house. It's just loans and stuff I need to pay off. So right now in Las Vegas, the housing is ridiculous. I want to buy a house. That's my goal. As soon as I get off debt, I want to plan for my future. So the way the market is just so bad right now. So I was trying to talk to my girlfriend. I think it's a good idea for us just to invest into a trailer home. Like not an old rv on wheels you pull with a pickup, but like a good stationary mobile home. I've been looking in the market, there's some for like, 20,000, 30,000.

So if you buy a $20,000 mobile home in five years, what do you think that's worth?

I know it's going to depreciate.

So why is that an investment? Investments are supposed to go up, nelo.

Right? I guess it's not an investment.

So if you turn $20,000 into $10,000, how's that help you get a house?

Because I was thinking if I could pay it off quick enough, I'll be able to live there long enough so I could save a good chunk. Down payment to get my forever home.

Yeah, run that math out for us. If I pay it off quick enough, I'll be able to save money. So you would be adding debt, and.

You'Re almost, you're going to turn $20,000 into $10,000 so that you can have a little bit of time with no payments. That's not working, dude, mathematically. Okay, so I appreciate your thought pattern, but. Yeah. What I love is your motivation. I want to be in the game. That's what you're saying. And I love that about you.

What's your income? What are you doing?

I'm a union carpenter. I make 42 an hour.

Come on.

Last year, but it's off and on. Sometimes I'll work a good solid eight months, and then I have, like, two months off. Last year I did about seventy k.

Neelo, listen to me.

If you're making 70k, why aren't you saving money?

Yeah, well, I've been trying to pay off debt.

Oh, that's true. You got the $4,500. How much debt have you paid off and how long?

I paid off about 15. My main debt was 15.

And how long, how long it took you to pay off? 15.

It took me about a year and a half, almost a year.

Why? You make 70, right? What are you doing?

Not being smart with my money.

Well, you're not working twelve months. You're working eight months. Can I just tell you something? I want to challenge you. Neelo, listen to me.

Yeah. Because construction is off and on.

Listen, hold on a second. I want to challenge you. Okay, so you need more money right now. Yes or yes. Yes, you do. You need more money. More money to get out of debt, more money to get an emergency fund, more money to save for a house. Now, listen to me. There is a shortage of carpenters in the United States. So if you can't get some work related to being a carpenter and you're a good one. You're making really good money. If you can't get that in Vegas, which I'm challenging you on that.

Oh, he can't. He just can't get union work.

I get it. But my point is, what else can you do outside of union work if they're not working?

You can work outside the union, can't you?

Yeah. I have a non union company. My rate goes down significantly. I get paid only 23 over there.

Oh, darn.

Every time they're short of work.

That's better than zero. Four months a year. Yeah.

And not to mention, let's just talk about, my father in law is 72 years of age, and he is busier than he's ever been in his life in a neighborhood here in Williamson county doing rental stuff. There's all kinds of money in Vegas. You should be making huge money. Twelve months a year, that's my challenge.

How old are you again?

I am 24.

Okay, cool. Well, listen, the good news is you have a desire and an ambition. That's good news. The good news is you've already been working to get out of debt. That's the good news. The other good news is you ain't afraid of hard work and you know how to make some money. I think you can dial this in and make a whole lot more. I believe you guys, if you're really careful, could double your income. But you're going to have to really focus on it to get there. And then you got to quit partying. You are drinking.

I know what I'm.

You're drinking all weekend, man. I mean, you're going every happy hour.

Maybe we hit the blackjack somewhere.

The money's going because there is no excuse for the kind of money you're making. And you got nothing. It's party time.

Stay out of the.

Yeah, you're going to have to work on some stuff here, man. And you do that, all of a sudden the money's just going to start showing up because you're going to quit blowing it all. Yes, but I mean, you're running around with a wrong crowd. You're running around with broke people on the weekend, and they're helping you join them. So I could be wrong, but I've been there myself, so I might know something. How you lose your hair. I'll just tell you ahead of time. But that's what happened. Who knew? Anyway? There's a correlation between the quality of your personal habits in your life and your ability to build wealth.

That's right.

So you do those things so you and your girlfriend clean up your act and start focusing on your goals and your career goals and your income goals. And then you're going to be able to build up a down payment in 24 months and buy a house. That's right. Without the girlfriend. Unless she's your wife, by the way, never buy a house with somebody you're not married to. And please don't buy a trailer that goes down in value. Get control of the guy in your mirror, buddy. And you do that, you're going to win. You got a lot of potential. You're a good man. Hold on. We're going to put you through financial peace university, our class on how to handle money. We're going to show you how to do this. And you call us back someday and tell us how you're winning, because I jumped on your case. This is ThE Ramsay show, our scripture of the day. One Timothy, two, one and two. I urge then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession, and thanksgiving be made for all people, for kings, and for all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.

Our friend Art Laffer says it's not true that Congress spends money like a drunken sailor. Drunken sailors spend their own money. Congress spends ours.

I saw him on tv the other night and I was just so happy.

Art is just treasure.

He's a gem, isn't he?

Let's face it, taxes are confusing. And if you buy what some tax services out there say, you can never really get a grasp on taxes because you're dumb. Well, you're not dumb. And you can do that. You can take care of your taxes. If you've got a complicated return, go to ramseysolutions.com slash taxpros and connect with one of our tax professionals that we've vetted and have worked with and endorsed. They're Ramsey trusted all over America. And if you've got an easy return, then you can get the Ramsey tax software. And it's very easy to use. People are jumping to it all the time from those other people because we're not trying to sell you credit cards and everything else. We're just going to show you how to do your taxes and not a bunch of hidden fees and not a bunch of gotchas. It's a very simple process to use the Ramsey tax software. So you can do that, or you can go to one of the pros, depending on your situation. Check it all out@ramsaysolutions.com. Mari is with us in Tampa. Hi, Mari. Welcome to the Ramsay show.

Hi, how are you? Thanks for having me.

Sure. How can I help?

So my husband and I have been married 22 years. We've got six awesome children. Lord's really blessed us. We have always kind of lived pretty frugally. He was a teacher for most of our married life, and I stayed home with our kids to homeschool them. So the last four years, though, things have changed. He started having back problems. He wasn't able to do the work he had been doing up until then, and then we got a cancer diagnosis in 2021. So he's been fighting that. We've been going through various treatments. Four years ago, when he had his back surgery, my job kind of took off my part time. I was doing, like, gig work, shopping for people. And when pandemic hit, it just blew up. And so I took advantage of that. He stayed home with the kids to homeschool them. And last year, though, we had to put the kids in school because treatments were pretty rigorous. And I was trying to support us by working as much as I could. So we have a little bit saved. We've got probably about 21,000 in savings. I do have a car note that we took out.

Normally we buy used, but I really needed something more gas friendly because I drive for sometimes up to 100 miles a day with my job. So realistically, getting 20 miles a gallon versus the 60.

So where are you?

Well, we've got just under 14,000 that we owe on it.

Okay.

So we're wondering, do we take that? We're trying to just prepare for worst case scenario. We're really praying that he pulls through, but he really can't work at all with the pain medication he's on.

I'm trying to figure out. I'm so sorry. You guys have been through hell.

Yeah, it's been so sorry.

How old are your babies?

So I have 18 to four, and we currently have my two nieces living with us while their dad gets his life together. So that has been a help.

How's the 18 year old?

She's amazing. Her and her dad are really close, and she has really stepped up to help with anything we need.

I think I hear you saying he's not doing well.

He's not doing well in the capacity that there's lots of treatments going on. They're all clinical trials because traditional. His is so rare that lots. He actually has a doctor in Pennsylvania calling him, like, every month.

Short of God stepping in, you're telling me that he's going to be in heaven?

Yes. Yeah. Praise God, we know where he's so.

I'm so sorry. I'm sorry to be blunt, but I was trying to make sure I knew where you are so I can try to help you because you guys have just been brutalized by this whole thing. I'm so sorry.

It's okay.

I mean, we have a lot of hope and we have a great church family. They've stepped in. My family is amazing.

Well, you've got incredible character and faith trying.

He's still working on it.

Yeah. And you do, too. Everything you've described, you guys have reacted to everything that's been dealt to you perfectly. As perfectly as you could in a horrible situation. It's just a tragedy. I'm so sorry. So the shopping thing is, the income from that is a blessing. How are you doing? What's your income these days?

This last year was pretty low. I hit right at 50 the year before when I was really going at it, working mindlessly, I made more like 80. So the potential is there and it's, again, just directly the time that I put into it.

Well, you have to do something. Feed babies. So this is not a bad thing.

Yes. No. And the flexibility. Like I said, if my husband's having a really hard day or has to go to the emergency room, I don't have to work and I don't have anyone counting on me to do anything. And again, we're set up with family and church, and it has been a blessing. But my fear is moving forward. How do I continue? We have a mortgage and it's not a large one. We have the money to pay off the car, but basically at this point, I'm just now wrapping my head around your podcast the last couple of weeks, which is why I called in. So right now we've got our four walls covered.

Here's what we're going to do. Okay. Number one, we're going to put our arms around you and walk with you.

Thank you.

So we've got financial coaches that have been trained by us in every city in America. They're independent from us, but they've been trained by us. And we will furnish you guys a financial coach at no charge. We're going to walk with you. Okay.

Oh, wow.

And I'm going to put you guys through financial peace University and get you on the every dollar budget app right now as our gift as well. Doesn't cost you a thing. Okay.

Awesome.

Then our strategy is going to be continue doing what you're doing. We don't need to pay off a bunch of debt. We need to stay in survival mode and continue to fight cancer. If the end result of this is that your husband's in heaven, then we change strategies after we grieve that and grieve this whole thing. Okay. And the strategy at that point will change to, how can we prosper going forward, and what's our new life look like? And then we're going to start taking some of that money and paying off the debt. Then we're going to take some of that money and build your emergency fund, and we're going to start working the baby steps that we talk about here. But right now, you got six mouths to feed. Well, eight mouths to feed and 910 counting two adults. I'm not worried about your stinking car payment. When your husband's in the final stages of fighting something and he's down to experimental treatments, does that make sense? I want you to just fight right now. I want to do everything we can to keep gas in your tank, because emotionally, you got to be wrung out.

Yeah, it's been sustained by the Lord, but it is hard.

He does hold you up, but the whole process is just wrenching. What you got now is you got some more people that love you and are in your corner. And we know something about this subject, so we can help you with this subject, and we will. Okay?

Okay. Thank you.

You call me back. Anytime you've got a question, you call me back right here on the air, and I'll talk to you, okay? Regardless of what's going on, you call me back, and we'll also have the coach in your corner, and we'll guys put you through everything. So hold on. Christian's gonna pick up, and we're gonna take care of you, because that's what we do here. That puts this hour of the Ramsey show in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the prince of peace. Christ Jesus. Hey, folks, Dave Ramsay here. You know, budgeting doesn't have to be boring. You just need a budgeting app that's made with you in mind, and that's everydollar. The everydollar app has helped millions of people work the baby steps and take the stress out of planning and managing their money. Start budgeting with everydollar for free. Right now. Just go to ramsesolutions.com everydollar and download the app today. That's ramsaysolutions.com, com, everydollar.