This Is How You Set Yourself Up for Success!
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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 amazing relationships. I'm George Campbell, joined by best-selling author and great dad, Dr. John Deloney. And we are here for you, America, taking your calls about whatever you want to talk about. Mental health, wellness, money, relationships. It all happens right here on The Ramsey Show.

Well, John, we had a really great live stream last night. Hundreds of thousands of people tuned in to break free from the cycles of stress and money. And I hope they felt helped last night. And you did a great job. Yeah. And you did a good job, too. Thank you. It's fantastic, man. Hey, and more importantly, you got my text about, hey, bro, let's both wear green shirts on the show so we look exactly the same. It's what we do. And my barber said that he saw you yesterday. I like how you've...

Taking ownership over the guy who cuts my hair, too. There you go.

Well, before we get to the calls, John, I want to remind people it is their last chance to pre-order my new book, Breaking Free from Broke. This is the last weekend. It's launching. It is actually launching next week. It's the ultimate guide to more money and less stress. And if you order by January 15th at midnight, you'll get all of the $100 in bonus items. The e-book, the audio book, a video talk I did, exclusive access to an online event, and more. So $20 to pre-order and you get $100 worth of stuff. I saw it last night. People were...

One of our managers was watching our different book sales, and your Breaking Free from Broke was far outpacing mine. Well, you know, the event is called Break the Cycle, so I think people thought, this has got to have to do something with this. No, I think everybody got done with Christmas, and they realized...

I can't keep doing this. The financial hangover is here. Right. So I think this book's going to help you reach those money goals. So check it out, ramsaysolutions.com slash store. Pre-order by January 15th. Guys, this is your last weekend to do it. Appreciate everyone who's done it so far. Kelly kicks us off in Raleigh, North Carolina. Kelly, what's going on? Hi, how are you guys doing today? Doing great. How are you?

Hmm.

I have developed a rule that I'm still working on, meaning I've got a rule and it's a rule of life, but I break it often and 2024 is going to be my year. Okay. But here's my rule. I don't ask questions. I mean, I don't provide answers to questions I have not been asked.

Okay. And here's why that's become important. The moment you launch into somebody to try to solve a problem in their life that they have not invited you in to help, often that problem that you see is some sort of coping strategy that they have adapted. It's maladaption is what they call it, but they're using to get through their day. And...

When you go after somebody's coping strategy, they have to fight you. It's what's keeping them alive, right? And so whenever you start fighting, nobody's listening, nobody's learning. That's why these pundit shows are so useless because when people start yelling at each other, there's no learning that can happen, right? There's just a grenade being thrown back and forth and everybody ends up in ash. So...

I do think there's two ways I approach this. Number one, I am honest about myself and my boundaries. What does that mean? Instead of saying at a restaurant, hey, honey, you put everything on a credit card. You don't even have the money to be doing it, right? All those statements begin with you. And now she's got to fight you back. She's got to defend herself.

It's different than, hey, I have this thing where I don't use credit cards. I can't even be associated with them. I'm going to pick this meal up. I know I'm weird. I have a whole thing about it. And then if she wants to ask you, tell me about that. Now she's invited you. Now like the vampire, like you've invited the vampire in the door and now it's game on. You see the difference there?

Yes. Yes. So just wait and be patient. Partially. Partially. But I think you're saying you go first, too. And you say, hey, I don't know what your goals are, but I've got a bunch around money. And if you want to do this thing together, like I know this great class called Financial Peace University. Would you go through it with me? That's a very different sentence than, hey, I can tell you're broke. What can I do?

You know, that's, so I think obviously you have a great heart about it, but you living your life and her seeing that and her noticing and going, wait, you paid off your, how did, we make like the same amount of money. How did you do that? And you just sharing your story with her, she's naturally going to open up and hopefully start asking questions over time. And hear what George said. One is an invitation. One is a lecture. And so if you want to do something really hard,

say, hey, I'm getting, I'm recommitting myself to my financial goals this year. I just feel dumb doing this by myself. Would you join me? And that whole conversation is about you. Well, can she help you? And then she's going to learn something along the way.

It's different than, yeah, like George said, you got some real problems. And so, you know, you can come to me and I'll save you. Is that see the difference? And we talk about this on the show a lot, particularly when it comes to how elderly parents spend money and, you know, like their kids are like, what are you doing? Um,

It's one of the hardest things a person can do is to watch somebody they love make decisions as adults that they are by law, they're allowed to, I mean, they're allowed to do it. And we know that a train is coming on that road they've chosen to drive on.

Okay. Right. Yeah. I have explained to her the whole Ramsey solution, the walking through the baby steps, because my husband and I, we just got through with baby step two and explaining back to her, but it just didn't seem like she opened up to it. Here's what she's going to open up to. How much you laugh and smile, how much joy you have and how much, how you tip and how generous you are showing up and showing up and showing up and showing up.

Okay. Does that make sense? Well, yes, that makes perfect sense. It might take weeks or months. It may never happen. Yeah. You sound sad. Tell me why you sound sad. Well, I just, you know, I got another text message from her last night of just like how she had spent, you know, more money. And, you know, I wanted to be the hero and jump in and just, you know, try to explain to her why that was a bad decision, even though she can't take it back. Yeah.

And so it just, it really breaks my heart. And I know that she's struggling. But if you sent her a link to the EveryDollar app and said, hey, this app's really helped me take control of my money. It's a free download. You know, check it out if you want. But George, she's not asking for money help. She's actually asking you to celebrate with her, right? Yeah. So maybe a response like, wow, like, yikes, expensive. Sounds expensive. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. But if it's a true friend, like I, it wouldn't hurt John's feelings if I went up to him to address a real problem I saw in his life. So it just depends on the relationship and the trust that you guys have built. Yeah. And I think that's, it's an important call out, George, and I'll end the call with this. There is moments in my friend's lives where,

And they have done it to me when I step in very directly. And I have to know that I might burn the relationship for a season, but I can't continue to watch somebody hurt themselves. So if somebody's struggling with alcohol, if somebody's struggling with self-harm or they're considering dying by suicide, I get square in the middle of that. One of my buddies was actively cheating on his spouse. I'm getting right in the middle of that. So similarly, if you feel this is the moment and it might burn everything, at least you'll know I did the best I could to save your life.

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Find out more at chministries.org slash budget. That's chministries.org slash budget. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Camel, joined by Dr. John Deloney. It's a free call at 888-825-5225. Be brave, tap on those numbers, and jump on the line, and we'll talk about your life, your money, and your relationships. Next up, we've got Marshall in Oklahoma City. Marshall, what's going on?

Hey George. Hey John. Excited to join the show. I had a question about, uh, just one of the things that I'm going through right now. Uh, before this, I was paid off on all the consumer debt that we had student loans, cars, bought a house. Everything was great. Didn't really know the Ramsey show that much heard about it. We bought her new car in cash. And then my car, I thought I got the deal of the century at 0% in 2022, but

But as you know, it depreciates immediately, just like John points out the alarm bell sound. Now that I'm back in debt, didn't want to be back in debt. Basically, we're about three months away from paying off the car. So excited, excited to say that. But the real question is, do I wipe out the entire cash that we have?

and throw that at the car in three months when we're able to do that? Or with it being at 0%, can we wait a few months so that way we build up that cushion so when we do wipe it out, we're already starting baby step three? So what's left on the car loan? The loan is $42,000, and we currently have about $36,000 in the bank. $42,000 or $4,200? Correct. Correct.

$42,000. But you're going to earn $42,000 in three months to pay it off? No, we'd have $36,000 in the bank. I know, but you just said you're about three months away from paying it off. Right, so we would be earning about $6,000 to pay that off probably by late March, April-ish. You're saying if you wiped out all of your savings, then you'd only have about three months left. Right.

Right. Yeah, like if I did it today or if I even did it three months from now, you know, I have the $1,000. But with it being 0% interest, I was curious your thoughts of maybe waiting until June or July. I want it gone. The alarm bells are sounding, but I also don't want to have that alarm bell sounding. What's your household income? Why don't you sell it, dude? It is $100K after taxes. After taxes. Okay. Yeah.

I mean, that's a lot of car. What's your other car worth? The other car is worth about $55,000. Sell it. Goodness gracious. Sell it. You guys have way too much car. Yeah. Are you guys just car obsessed? Is this a luxury vehicle? For me, it is. For her, it's the 10-year plan. For her car, 15-year plan. There's no such thing as that. Marshall, sell the car. Yeah. Today. Okay.

Give me a reason why you wouldn't. Just because it would be... That's not a good reason. Sell it. Whatever you're about to say wasn't a good reason. Sell it. It was a trick question, apparently, from John. Sell it. Here's our parameter on cars, Marshall. If the total value of all things with wheels and motors is more than half of your annual income, you have too much of your world and net worth and wealth tied up in depreciating assets.

Okay. So you guys would be over that mark. And so one or both of these cars has to go. And if I'm going to be the husband in this situation, it's your car. Right. No, and I, yeah. What's your car worth? It would be worth, I think last I checked, it'd be worth like $36,000 or $37,000. So you're underwater by about $6,000? Yeah.

Yeah, five or six grand, yeah. So you could take six grand from savings and then cover the difference and get rid of this loan, and then you've got 30 grand left to now go get you a reasonable used car right now. Right. But that gets you debt-free tomorrow and frees up your income, which will allow you to then leapfrog into Baby Step 3 immediately. And if I'm you, I'd go get a $5,000 to $10,000 Camry. You're not impressing anybody.

And then you still have $20,000 in the bank. Then you're basically done with baby step three. This whole thing catapults you if you will suck up your ego for a minute and flush it down the toilet. See what I'm saying? We say that as two guys who just as of recently have driven really crappy cars, Marshall. So we are not sitting on our high towers. I drove a $6,000 Civic up until two years ago. There's no way my car's worth $6,000.

I think cars are one of the worst purchases we can make as a society. And so only do it when it's a toy that is such a tiny part of your world that it really doesn't matter. Cars are utility up until the part where you have that much wealth. So what is your net worth right now? And do you have any other debt?

No other debt. Like I said, the alarm bell sounded when I thought I was getting the deal of the century. Come to find out I'm paying payments again. So that's... Well, let me tell you how 0% works. The way they are able to do that is by screwing you over on the price. Because when you get a 0% car loan, you get zero incentives, zero deals. You are paying top dollar for that car. That is how the car dealerships are able to do those.

And so what happens is your car depreciates immediately and goes to the real actual value. Now you're underwater on the car while thinking we're winning because we have 0% interest. Yep. See how they get you? It's disgusting. So Marshall, you got real quiet when George and I were telling you to sell your car. Why are you so quiet? Honestly, I was wanting to sell it a couple months after I got it, and...

just friends and family, you know, saying that. So it's, it's dropping my ego. That's it. Are your friends and family broke too? Not all family, but yeah. I mean, everyone else. Yeah. Yeah. They don't get a vote, dude. I know that. Think about this. I want you to, I'm going to do like a cheesy thing with you. Are you in? Say that again? I'm going to do something real cheesy with you. Is that cool? Yeah. Okay. Well you take a huge deep breath as deep as you can real quick and hold it for like a count of three. Okay. Okay.

One, two, and then exhale. Three. Close your eyes real quick and imagine in one calendar week, this time next week, you owe nobody anything. You have a $10,000 Camry in the driveway. Nope. You're not going to press one of your friends. Not one. You and your wife are now out to dinner talking about saving up for a house. There will not be a single alarm bell ringing in your body. Yeah. Yeah.

We currently have a house and that's kind of what, I mean, our net worth is probably around 400K. But yeah. This was a brand new vehicle, I assume. Brand new. Both vehicles brand new. We paid hers in cash. And then, like I said, this was 0%. Thought I was getting a deal, just like you mentioned. You're immediately underwater the moment you drive it off. And guess what it became the moment you drove it off the lot? A used car.

That's right. So I'm just going to buy used and let someone else take the hit on depreciation next time until you're a net worth millionaire. Then you can stomach the hit of depreciation. It's going to feel like a pinch more than a punch. So I'm sorry you had to learn this lesson this way, man, but I'm getting rid of that car. And you're going to have a $42,000 car one day when you can afford it in cash and it's not derailing your other financial goals. Or you're going to drive a $10,000 car and be like, oh, I never needed one in the first place. Either way, either way.

Either way. Or maybe you'll get a Tesla and it will run out of batteries and your friend John Delaney will have to push it down the highway for you while you're steering it. You know what we did with my wife's last car, John? George Camel. What? We bought her an $8,000 car. It was very reasonable. And then I got Apple CarPlay installed for about 500 bucks. It felt like a luxury new car. That's all you really want. When people show up to the car lot, all they're really wanting is CarPlay.

And some heated seats would be like, wow, I'm living in luxury. Yeah, and brakes that work. Goodness. I opened the, so the car loans chapter in my book, Breaking Free from Broke, John, here's the quote I open with. You'll love this. If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments. It's from Earl Wilson. I just love that quote. They'll come get you. They care. They care as soon as you don't make the payments. But I walk through to the depreciation of cars, John. Get this. New car purchase price, 40 grand. New car value after one minute drops 10% down.

down to 36. One year, down to 32. Two years, down to 27. Three years, down to 23. Four years, it's only worth 19 grand. Five years later, 60% loss in value. $40,000 car is now worth 16 grand. You paid 50 for it after interest, and you're thinking the car dealerships, you're going to stick it to the man with your 0% interest? They beat you every time. It's exhausting. Goodness gracious, America, we got to choose freedom over our egos.

We are driving our retirement plans. This is a problem. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Camel, joined by Dr. John Deloney. If you didn't know, The Ramsey Network has a ton of great shows, including The Dr. John Deloney Show. We've got the George Camel channel on YouTube and on Spotify. So if you enjoy this show, you're going to love the other ones we've got for you. And you can jump on to RamseySolutions.com and check out all of the sweet shows we are rocking.

The number to call is 888-825-5225 if you want to jump on the phones. Our question of the day is brought to you by Neighborly, your hub for home services. Winter is rougher in some areas of the country than others, but there are things that make sense to do no matter where you live. And that's why Neighborly has a helpful winter checklist you can download for free. You can get it at Neighborly.com slash Ramsey. All right, today's question comes from Jackie in Ohio. She writes...

I've been married to my husband for 30 years. He earns a six-figure salary, and I've been a stay-at-home mom. He wanted to manage our finances because working together stressed him out, and he didn't want to argue. Oh, geez. Maybe if... Oh, God. He wasn't a brat. I thought we lived a good life, but on a recent vacation, I overheard him checking account balances on our credit cards and became concerned. So I started quietly researching...

I discovered he was tearing up financial documents and throwing them away so I couldn't see them. He has depleted 95% of a job buyout and taken loans on what little retirement savings he had, less than $100,000.

He refinanced our homes multiple times. So we still owe two-thirds of our mortgage after paying on it for 20 years. He also has over $130,000 in debt outside of the mortgage. I now realize we've been living paycheck to paycheck on a six-figure salary just to avoid confrontation. I'm going to stop you there, Jackie. You haven't. You have been living paycheck to paycheck because your husband's got something else going on.

There's some significant deceit, whether it's an addiction, it's somebody else he's in love with, or he's got other pet projects he's trying to work through. This is not just to avoid confrontation. It's because he has a different life.

when we should be living and enjoying retirement together. I now work full-time, and he does contract work. There are so many things wrong here. How do we move forward? So they're in their 50s, 60s. There's been a long pattern where he's, quote, handled the money, and by handled, I mean mishandled. They're deeply in debt, and she's trying to go, like, how do I even begin to address this? Yeah. Um...

I'm going to assume here, George, that there's no abuse. Okay. There's no emotional abuse. There's no physical abuse. Okay. If there is, that of course changes the dynamic. With that said, both people are at fault for here. One, the husband saying, no, I just, I'm just going to do it. I don't want to argue with you. And two, her going, okay, fine.

And then 30 years later, 20 years later, acting surprised. Oh my gosh. It's all gone sideways in bed. Right? I'd be shocked if this marriage has been great this whole time. I assure you it has not. And this strategy never works to be like, well, let me just handle this. We don't fight about it. And somehow you're going to have a great marriage with that lack of communication.

with no financial infidelity. Like this is exactly why we tell people combine bank accounts and have full communication over what's going on and full transparency about what's going on in the finances. Even if you're not the nerd, you don't want to have to be the one whittling the budget down. John needs to know what's happening in their budget. Correct. And so this has to be called out for what it is. He has been lying and cheating on you for 30 years.

Anything less than that bold of a statement is watering it down and patting you on the head and saying, oh, sweetie, you'll be fine. Because, honey, you are not fine. The numbers you just laid out here are terrifying. He has been lying and cheating on you for 30 years. And...

You have played your part by looking the other way and never asking a question because the vacation time just showed up and the presence just showed up and the bills just magically got whatever. There's no way this has happened that you haven't had some inkling that things were off. Things were off. Now, again, outside of if he's abusive, emotionally abusive, this has been unsafe. It's not a matter of you turning at your head. It's a matter of you laying low so you don't get your head knocked off. Okay, totally different situation.

But if you both have just been puttering along, then you both have to be part of the ownership here. Your husband's going to have to get down on both knees and say, I'm sorry. I have lied to you. I have stolen from our future. I have cheated you. Will you still keep me around? And you're going to have to say, I'm sorry that I let this thing go on for 30 freaking years.

Anything short of that, George, is them playing patty cake. They're playing clean up, and there's not going to be any way to get out of this thing. Their marriage isn't going to survive it. Their finances sure aren't going to survive it.

They are broke, broke, broke, broke, broke, broke. Scary broke for their age. Yeah, that's step one. If and when you get to that point where you've had that conversation, they come to Jesus meeting and it goes well, then we can start attacking the debt and pay down this $130,000 with a six-figure salary. You should be able to do that in two to three years if you're not doing anything else. Oh, there's no six-figure salary anymore.

he got bought out and then he blew it. So now she works full time and he does contract work. Contract works over. Now he's going to work three jobs. That's right. He's going to work three jobs.

We need to get back to a six-figure salary if we're going to have any hope of cleaning this up and retiring one day. Because he also depleted the retirement account down to almost nothing. So you're going to have to rebuild that. And so retirement, it's not even in your vocabulary for the next decade. You guys are going to be working, working, working. And I hope one day you get the mortgage paid off and you can retire and this marriage can be saved. But it starts with those hard conversations. Yeah, and this might be a situation where you've got to sell your house and you've got to downsize and you've got to go to an apartment. Yeah.

that's of much less value. I mean, it costs a lot less money to run and on a monthly basis because y'all are, y'all are in a mess. Y'all are in a mess. Um, I would reach out to one of our Ramsey financial coaches and talk through the particulars here, Jackie, but this is a scary, scary mess. And here's the deal. Um, George, you and I talked about this privately, um,

You can, when you're facing a scary mess, you can say that is really scary and do what you've done for this person, Jackie's done for 30 years and just look the other way. Or you can stare a scary mess in the face and turn all the lights on and say, we're going after it. We're going to figure this thing out. Get the gloves on. We're going to work. Oh, that sucks. This makes my stomach sink. Yep.

Don't let that be you guys. Address the stuff. Never brush it under the rug to avoid conflict. That never works out. If you are married to someone and they say, don't worry, I'll just take care of it. Do not accept that. And if you're a person of integrity, and I'll go this far. If you're a quote unquote, I'm the head of the household. I'm the man around here. And you're so much of a coward that you won't sit down with your wife and say, this is how our money works. This is where we put our bills. And you don't bring somebody in on it. Shame on you.

This is both of you doing this together. Enough is enough is enough, man. All right. Let's go to Andrew in San Jose. Andrew, we're up against the clock. How can we help today? So I have a question in regards to I'm going to start investing my 15% income into retirement. And I'm wondering, should I be using just my work-based plans or should I also consider using IRAs?

Okay, so you have access to a 401k. Is there a Roth option at work for a Roth 401k? Technically speaking, I have access to a 457, which is a Roth account. I also have access to a 401A, which is a Roth account. Is one more of a deferred comp and one is more traditional? They're both deferred comps, technically speaking. One just has other options you can do with it. Got it.

Well, the way we look at it here is if 15% of your income filtered through match beats Roth beats traditional. So if you have a match, you start there. If you have Roth options, let's move to that. Then we move to traditional as a last way to finish off the 15. So if you have great options in those Roth accounts and great mutual funds to choose from all of that, you can do all 15% in there. The Roth IRA will give you unlimited options when it comes to investing. So we're big fans of that. And so if you... I have a question. What's

What's that? On the Roth IRA side. Is it like my concern that I may not be able to actually use it based on my income? Oh, you might need to do a backdoor Roth. Correct. And my thought was...

Is that more complicated or should I just do the 401k that I have access to, which has, I'd say, decent fund options? I wouldn't say they're amazing, but they're decent overall. Yeah, I mean, you could, the backdoor Roth really isn't that complicated. All you're doing is funding a traditional IRA account with post-tax money and then doing a quick conversion. And if you need help with that, contact a SmartVestor pro. You can access that whole network at RamseySolutions.com and click on the trusted pros there and they can help

with that process, but it really is simpler than you're making it out to be. But if you get good options, you can do all 15% in there. But I love the Roth IRA as an option because it's, you get to choose instead of being beholden to the 10 or 15 you have through your employer. So thanks for the question. Love that you're building wealth. You sound like a young guy. I have full faith you'll be a baby steps millionaire in no time.

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Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Camel, joined by Dr. John Deloney. If you missed it last night, we did a really fun live stream, our biggest ever, called Break the Cycle. And if you did miss it, don't feel too bad, because you can actually go to ramseysolutions.com slash break the cycle and watch the replay for free. It's a little over an hour long, and it was a killer night with Jade Warshaw, Rachel Cruz, Dave Ramsey, myself, Dr. John Deloney, helping people...

you know, kind of lose the Eeyore spirit animal and go like, yeah, I'm going to do it this year, regardless of the cycle I've been in for how long I've been in it and what I'm feeling. Things are going to be different this year. And we gave you guys some tactical, hope-filled advice. And so go check it out. RamseySolutions.com slash break the cycle if you want to watch back that live stream. Sean is in Jacksonville up next. Sean, how can we help? Hey, how's it going? Great. How are you?

Uh, I'm a little anxious. I got just the guy for you. Yeah. Doc, um, I was hoping to be able to talk with you. Uh, so my wife and I got a year ago, did FPU and we're making progress. We're, we got the car almost paid off. We got a personal loan that we're going to start working on real hard, uh, beginning of this year, but we still have the student loans and that's 90 K. And what would you get them in?

My wife got pursuing a degree in speech language pathology. Okay. Is she doing speech pathology now? Yeah. So she's working... So we got a kid at home. He's almost two, and we got another one on the way. And, well, so my...

The way it's working now, we're working, she's working now to help pay off these two smaller debts. And then I'm going to be the only one working after the new baby comes, which I'm fine with because someone's got to take care of the kids. We can't afford childcare. And my question really sits on this. As a father, as the head of the household,

I'm working 40 plus hours a week, Monday through Friday. I'm trying to be very available on the weekends, but I don't want to sit in this forever. I want this debt gone. I want to be free. I want our family free of this. I don't want to be a bad father. I don't want to be a bad husband. Should I be working extra on Saturdays and in a second job?

I mean, just to give you some context, I'm a structural engineer and I make north of 90 K a year. So, um, one dude, thank you for your heart, man. I can tell this is weighing on you heavy and you want to be a good dad and you want to be a good husband. And, um, I wish everybody came to the table with your spirit. Okay. Well, I'm going to tell you, it's pretty hard thinking. I mean, it's just pretty hard. And, um, so I'm just going to be as direct as I can. Cause we don't have a ton of time. Is that cool?

That's cool. All right. Number one, I'm always very hesitant or avoidant of either or situations. You have backed yourself into a corner and you've created a bunch of truths for your home. We cannot afford childcare. My wife will not work. I am the head. So either I work 40 hours a week and I'm a crummy dad and husband, or I work a whole, whole bunch to get the stuff paid off and I'm a bad, crummy husband.

Here's the truth, or to use my language, here's you choosing reality. Together, you and your wife have created a financial reality for your home that your bodies cannot accept, cannot exist in. Y'all are broke. You owe $90,000, and she has a graduate degree, and you're a structural engineer. You're two very brilliant, very successful people, and yet you can't breathe financially. True or false? That's pretty true. True. Okay. Okay.

So when we make declarative statements like, I'm not going to X, Y, and Z, the math doesn't care what you declare. It's a good rhyme. I should probably write that down on a t-shirt. That sounds very George Camel-y. So if me and my wife were in a similar situation, I would reframe our language. She wants to stay home. You want her to stay home.

Yes. But you make $90,000 and she can make $65,000 to $85,000 and together in 12 months of scorched earth living, you could have most of this paid off. All of it. And that means somebody's watching the baby. Or you can figure out X, Y, and Z. See what I'm saying? Yeah. But you're leaving one of your huge weapons, financial weapons at home heading off into a war that y'all started.

which is going to leave just dad to get shot at and beat up the whole time. And you're placed in an impossible position, which is I have to work 90 hours a week, which by the way, 40 is not going to cut it here. Yes. You got to work Saturdays. You got to work Sundays. Y'all owe six figures in debt. Y'all are broke. Okay. You got to do what you got to do, what you got to do, what you got to do. And man, it's going to be tough to be a whole present dad

And it's going to be tough for her to be a whole present stay-at-home mom with no support and assistance from you, right? So y'all doing this together and taking a hard, it's going to suck for everybody on the front end, but man, y'all get through this thing faster. It's the buffalo running through the storm. Y'all both link arms. Y'all run straight into the middle of this thing. No, it's not how we wanted it. This is the world we created for ourselves by borrowing all this money. And now we're going to get through it together as fast as humanly possible. And we're going to work our way out the backside. So how does that sound?

Sounds tough. I feel like I'm the stronger one in the relationship. What does that mean? It means that when it's late, I'm willing to keep going.

I'm willing to, I mean, she's got her talent. She's great with our son. She's a wonderful mother. She's an excellent wife. When it comes to buckling down to spend the extra hours to keep working the wee hours of the night, to keep going, to push, I mean, maybe I do it unhelpfully. I push myself too much and too hard sometimes.

I feel like I'm more capable of it. I would disagree with that. You might be able to push forward. You might be able to push forward without a goal. But I mean, if she gets through graduate school and speech path, that's a tough program. And working with those kids and families or with the geriatrics every single day is tough. She's tough. She's delivered a baby. Yeah, she's met a human, dude. Goodness gracious. She's making a second one. But here's where it often, people often run out of gas when there is not an end in sight.

Yeah. The question is, you want to struggle for the next two years or 15? And so that's what we're trying to help you with is it's going to be stressful either way. We just want you to solve for freedom a whole lot faster. Yeah. The phrase we use around here is choose your heart. It's not an easy path here. Here's what we see all the time, though. One of you goes all in.

And you work 75 hours a week. You're a structural engineer. And then you're driving Uber to the airports on Saturday mornings at 5 a.m. You get some side hustle gig and then you deliver pizzas on Sundays and you do that and you're a grinder. And so you'll do it for 18 months.

And you'll get little gulps of air with your kids. And your wife will start to resent the fact that she's doing all of this by herself. That her husband hasn't changed a single diaper. You're going to start resenting her and this whole situation. Because you haven't got to change one single diaper. And you miss your family. And then the air conditioner breaks. And then you put it on the credit card. Because you have to. You've got two babies in your house. And you see how this thing just keeps going and going. That's why we tell everybody, run as fast as you freaking can through this.

Sean, what's left on the car loan? $3,000. And what in the personal loan? $10,000. Okay. So $103,000 is what you owe. You make $90,000. She works for a year. You guys can clean this up fairly quickly. And that might mean we got to do the math and go, listen, even after daycare, we'll still make an extra $500 a month. Great. That's $6,000 a year to clean this mess up faster. So I'd sit down with her and have these hard conversations and know that you guys are a team. You're not going at each other.

But yes, you're going to have to work multiple jobs over the next couple of years to get this knocked out. That does not make you a bad dad. Doing what you have to do is for your family to be safe. That makes you a good man. That puts this hour of The Ramsey Show in the books.

Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create amazing relationships. I'm George Campbell, joined by the one and only Dr. John Deloney, and we're taking your calls at 888-825-5225. John, you ready to do this? I am ready to do this. Just saying if you're paying attention. Always. Here we go. We're kicking it off with Ben in Atlanta, Georgia. Ben, how can we help today?

Hey, I was hoping for some advice. So I'm in law school right now and I'll graduate this May. And I've got this kind of impending awkward financial situation where after I graduate, I have to take a few months to study for the bar and then take the bar exam. And that's pretty much full time. So I'm not going to have much or any money coming in, but I'm still going to have expenses.

and talking to people about how they pay for that. Some people take up student loans, some people put it on credit card. I also have some Roth IRA contributions, I think, that may be pulling from, but I was just wondering what your advice is to deal with that sort of situation. Oh, man. One, I would tell you, it's not... I was a dean of students at a law school for years. It's not...

Kind of a part, a full-time job? It's a thousand percent. It's two full-time jobs and then a nighttime job. Studying for the bar, right? What kind of law are you going to do, man? Public finance, municipal bonds. Good for you, man. Cool. Very cool. Way to go. Are you in any debt right now? Probably a billion dollars. I have no student debt. I've got a little over $3,000 in credit card debt.

How'd you get through law school with no student debt? My undergrad tuition was free. The state of Georgia lottery paid for it. And then my law school has been cheap, a little less than $3,000 a semester after scholarships. And I worked in the summers and I worked part-time. Awesome. Dude, that's amazing. So you got three grand in credit card debt. Anything else? No.

No, and I'll say, so $2,500 of that $3,000 is interest-free until 2025. So I was kind of just putting off paying that until after I graduated. But that's, no, no other debt. How much do you have in the bank? I have in cash savings $1,000.

I think $1,200, and then I've got my IRA. Okay. So until you have to quit working, how much could you save up? If you just did nothing else but save up, stack up cash. Yeah. Right now, after tax, I make, and after rent, I'm bringing home about $500 a month. Oof. How many hours is that? That's after rent and everything. Okay.

Yeah, I work about 15 hours a week. What was your other question? You're saying your net income is 500 bucks? You're saying after all your bills, you have 500 bucks? After running utilities. So I get paid 30 bucks an hour.

I'm able to work about 15 hours a week, so it's around $1,800. But then I'm a contractor. I have to pay self-employment taxes, and then my rent is like $1,300. Let's flip it around this way. Between graduation, are you going to take the summer bar? I am, yeah. Okay, so you need two to three months living expenses, right? Right. You basically have a five-month runway. Okay.

depending on how difficult your 3L year is going to be. Some folks set their second semester 3L year up to go ahead and do clinics, and it's easier. Some of y'all wait and pile everything up on that last semester, and it is a nightmare. What have you done?

It's fairly light. I have two classes, a clinic and a mini course. Okay. So I don't want to over-dramatize it, but it's really a math problem that you have four to five months to solve. And you're $30 an hour. Are you clerking right now somewhere? Yeah, at a law firm. Okay. You may have to, for five months, swallow your pride and deliver pizzas at night.

Okay. Which sucks. But I would put a dollar amount. What is it going to take you to survive for two and a half months? Is that six grand? Yeah, four grand. What's your rent, expenses, utilities? And then can you put that money in a bank by the time you graduate? Okay. I think this is very doable. You got five months to save up a few grand, you know, say another five grand on top of the money you have.

And you can make, if this is kind of a storm mode, you could pause and make minimum payments on the debt. But I'd rather just get this credit card debt out of my life and have all my income at my disposal. Do you already have a job lined up? Yeah, I have to start by September 1st. I can ask to start early. So probably start sometime in August. Okay. Do you, it's a public service job or is it a billable hour job? Billable hour. What were you billing out at?

I'm not sure exactly what they're going to boo me out of. What hours did you sign up for? Working at the firm? Yeah. How many hours did you agree to? 22? 21? They didn't specify in the contract. Oh, they haven't? Okay. The reason I'm asking that is this. If you signed up for 2,200 hours a year...

You just signed away your life. And so I'm going to tell you, I would get this stuff out of the way as quickly as possible and build in some margins so you can exhale between the bar when you start.

If you signed up for 1700 hours, it's going to be a much slower pace. It's going to be a different kind of life. And man, you can go from the bar to a couple of weeks off to go see your family and then head right into work. See what I'm saying? That's what I'm getting at. But this, I don't overcomplicate this, man. It's a brother. It's a math problem. It's a math problem that you can reverse engineer and you got a pretty good runway and you're working hard and you have done the hard work.

on your first two years of law school so to set yourself up for a perfect position and you're gonna be the nerdy law school kid everyone's gonna be like dude why aren't you and because i'm not gonna go into debt i'm proud of you man good for you good for you you're gonna be in a very different place than your peers by the way george can we just say this the georgia promise i'm making up the name of it i don't know what it is but public school went for free

then went to law school and worked really hard. Has done it all. You can't do that, bro. Less than three grand, did you say? A semester? After scholarships. After scholarships. Yeah, worked real hard. Dude, you've done it the right way. I'm proud of you, man. That's awesome. You're living proof that you don't have to go 400 grand into debt to be a lawyer. Yeah. Yeah. Good for you, man. We believe in you, Ben. You got this, man.

Sorry, that was a lot of nerd speak there. Sorry. No, well, you come from the education world and you were at a law school. So I was excited to have your take because you've seen the inside and seen people make really bad decisions. And a lot of law positions, they don't pay these giant six-figure salaries. Yeah, the average salary of a lawyer has definitely plummeted.

And so the ROI to go to school and spend $300,000 for a law degree and then go and leave and make $60,000, it doesn't make sense. Well, and he's asking a great question, and I think every grad student especially, but every student should ask this question. You get done with law school, and then they tell you, oh, well, you got the bar exam. Everyone knows about the bar exam, but they don't realize, oh, you can't – you're not working –

And so then you people find themselves, how am I going to eat for the next two months? More monopoly money from Sally Mae. Then it's, well, you got to take another loan just to cover that. And then how's, who's going to pay for your bar prep course. All of this is a math problem that you got to solve on the front end if you can. Right. Absolutely. Good for you, Ben. I'm proud of you, brother. This is the Ramsey show.

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Or you call at 888-825-5225. You jump in, we'll talk about your life and your money. Beck is in Denver. Beck, what's going on? Hi. Hey, thanks for taking my call. Absolutely. How can John and I help? Yeah, so my wife and I started a business last year flipping liquidation pallets for major retailers. We generated about $180,000 in just eight months doing that.

And, uh, I, at that time, my wife was working at an insurance company and she quit her job, uh, to focus on the business. Um, but I have a full-time job at a software company working as a consultant and I make about $82,000 there. So, uh, my question is, should I quit my full-time job at the software company and focus my time on our business as well, since we have this great traction going right now?

How consistent has this been month to month? It has been really consistent. Lately, it has been generating about $20,000 to $25,000 a month. Goodness gracious. And that's just net after shipping and all the fees that we pay on the e-commerce side. Wow. And how much time is this taking you guys? How many hours a week?

A week, I would say, well, I usually put in whatever time I have after work, and my wife puts all of her time into that, so I would say about 40 to 45 hours. Okay. And money aside, is this something you want to do? Do you want to get out of the software game and get into liquidation flipping business long term?

Yeah, absolutely. I love doing it. It just almost doesn't feel like work when I do it. We, you know, receive shipments and at the end of the day, I just have like a little bit more satisfaction of doing this job where I actually have labor while in my nine to five job at this software company, it's just Zoom calls, you know, there's really not that labor gratification at the end of the day. Okay. And you're doing this all debt-free, you're buying all these pallets in cash? Yeah.

Yeah, so I, well, both of us had about $15,000 starting off in debt and credit cards. And I started watching Dave Rainsey show and, you know, the debt is, you know, I just came to learn that it's not really good. So I ended up paying all the credit card debt. My wife has about $8,000 in student loans. But apart from that, we are pretty much debt free.

Yeah, I'd pay off all your debt, get an emergency fund, and at that point you've got some financial foundation under you to quit the software gig and go into this full time. But you could pay off this debt today, probably. I'm guessing you've got some money in savings.

Yeah, we have about $80,000. And that's my next question is, should I reinvest it back into the business, right? Buy more pallets or, you know, reinvest it into the stock market?

then we're going to create, you already have a business bank account? You're doing this all through? Yes. Do you have a formal, you know, do you set up an LLC or something? Yes. Yep. Okay. So on that side, you can have some cash reserves. And as you get money in there, you can then go buy more pallets and invest it back into the business and do it all with cash. I think that's really wise.

Well, so you guys can do this. I mean, very soon. You got 80,000 in the bank. I would use that to set up yourselves personally on a good financial standing and then whatever's left over, we can reinvest in the business. What do you think, John? I don't see any red flags here to jump. You guys have done it the right way. You're cash flowing this thing. It's making, you know, multitudes more than your day jobs. Why are you nervous to leave your day job?

What's your hesitancy? It's just I went to college for four years. My dad paid all my tuition so I didn't have to get student loan. It's just quitting my job kind of feels like a slap in my dad's face. Just, you know, saying, hey, I didn't end up using the degree at the end of the day. What did you learn from that degree?

I graduated with a computer science degree, so I have programming skills. Are you making an extraordinary household income on e-commerce? Yes. I would argue that it's connected to your degree. You're honoring your father by saying, Dad, you taught me a lot of skills. You allowed me to go get an education, some of which...

Here's the big fallacy, dude. A lot of people are like, dude, I'm not getting a degree because I don't even use that degree. Bull crap. You learn how to read. You learn how to go do different projects for different professors, which were different bosses in college. You learn how to do different programs, learn how to think for yourself, how to get around and cut corners so you could get an A, even though you didn't want to do all the work, right? You learned a whole, whole bunch through that process.

And so your dad's money's not wasted. In fact, I'm just telling you as a dad, if I paid for my son's school and he went and got a degree and worked really hard in that degree and then hustled and created a business on the side that ended up making exponentially more money. And he came to me and said, dad, I'm going all in on my own business that makes a jillion dollars that me and my wife do together.

I would be so overcome with pride for my son. I'd be so proud of him. I think he was, I would have thought the, the amount of money I put in college that he has ROI to create a life for him that I didn't have for myself, dude, I'm just, I'm just like, I would be beaming for him, but mostly because he took what the small amount I gave him and he's made it so much more. Now he can give in his community. He can be, he can build an amazing business to serve people. See what I'm saying?

Yeah, yeah, I totally understand. And that's what my thinking has been. It's just like I need confirmation on whether what I'm doing is right.

I just want to make sure that your hesitancy isn't, nah, this has been like a fun, cool two years. And then an AI bot is going to come out and do this thing in one second, what it takes us a week to do. And this gig is going to be up. Because if that's the case, dude, you had an awesome, fun ride for a few years. Make a bunch of money, pay off your house. And then it was a cool ride.

If you think, no, no, no, we've stumbled onto something for real, then man, congratulations, dude. Congratulations. Awesome. Thank you. Hope that helps, Beck. Thank you so much for those lines. Yeah, absolutely. And George, I love that Dave tells a story all the time about his, I think it was his grandma, I used to always ask him like, when are you going to get a real job, Dave? Oh, yeah. Right, because he was doing the Dave Ramsey thing, but when are you going to get a real job? Yeah.

Without ever understanding, like, oh, dude, I'm not working for a corporation. I'm creating one. I'm building one. Well, the older generations, they're used to a traditional career. So when you tell them, John's like, I am a YouTuber. They don't know what that means. And so I think that's the hard part is just helping parents understand what the heck this is. If I told my parents I'm running an e-commerce liquidation business, my mom's head would spin. Right.

She would have no clue. My sweet Middle Eastern Arabic mom was like, what did that mean? You know? And so I think that's part of the problem is just explaining to our parents the newfangled career paths that are out there today. Right. Which, you know, that's a fine problem to have. We can solve that in a conversation. I flip things on Amazon, mom. Oh, okay, cool. That's great. I know what that means. Because what they really care about, they're like, I make $250,000 doing this, mom. They're like, oh.

You know how Walmart buys things from the distribution house and then marks it up and sells it to you at their store? I just do that. I just do it at my house. Booyah. And I make a lot of money.

Ta-da. Every parent just wants their kid to be successful. Not every parent. Some parents want them to fail. You will be a lawyer. Oh, yes. Well, see, I come from a Middle Eastern culture. And so when you head into those, you know, Eastern cultures, there's a lot of pressure of like, if you're not a lawyer, an engineer or a doctor, I don't know what you are and I don't care because you've disappointed me. There.

That exists. Let me call that out. But I think a lot of people were forced into that path, hated it, maybe even are successful at it and hate it, which is somehow even worse because they're like, I can't leave this. And that's a hard thing to do for the reputation of the parents because they can't go to their friends and go, what does your kid do? You can't say, he's a doctor. You have to say, he's in the liquidation e-commerce business. He flips half empty pallets.

But then you go, wait, he's making more than a doctor without going to med school? Sounds like he's winning at life, bro. And then they'll high-five you and say, good job, Dad. And then you'll get to beam a little bit of pride. There it is. So drop the reputation, parents. I just want a successful kid with great character at the end of the day. And Beck has proven that. This is The Ramsey Show. We'll be right back.

Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Campbell, joined by Dr. John Deloney. If you want to call in with your question, you can do that at 888-825-5225. Jeremy's up next in Atlanta, Georgia. Jeremy, what is going on? Hey, George, can you hear me? I can. Hey, George.

I'm nervous, so bear with me. Dude, it's just me and John. I'm sitting next to George Campbell, dude. I'm nervous. I'm at both of you in October. I came to Dr. Jones' book signing, and I already bought your book for me and all my siblings, George. Oh, that's so kind. Thanks for being a fan of ours, man. We're a fan of you. Thanks, brother. What's up, man? So I'll get to my question, and then I'll give you some backstory. So how do I help my dad, who is...

dying in front of my eyes. Um, me and my mom watched the live stream last night and instead of watching it, we basically, I'm, I'm a Ramsey, we're both Ramsey followers. And so instead of watching it, we actually just ended up talking about life and I found out some stuff I'd never found out about my dad. Um, and, uh,

I am my dad, so I understand who he is. And he's in a really dark place. He's 59, retired military. And my mom has tried to help him for decades. And she asked me if I would, I guess, take on the burden to help him. He has that...

Yeah, that's kind of the back story. So dude, I just want to hop right in here, dude. Two important things for you to hold very tightly to your chest, okay? Okay. Number one, you are not your dad. Part of him is inside of you, right? But you're not him. Y'all are different people, different experiences, different life and all that kind of stuff. So you can feel like, no, I know what he's going through.

You don't. Okay. That's number one. And hold that very loosely because if something happens to him and you start trying to get into his head inside of his body and say, no, I know, I know. It really shuts off a dialogue between two people. Okay. So he's his own man and you are too. You have very, you might have some similar traits. Y'all might have some very similar, whatever. Half of him is you, but, but there we go. Here's number two. I'm going to walk you through like how you can love your old man right now.

But quote unquote, handling the burden is not your job. You're his son. Okay. And if you walk into this as he's a project, he'll smell it a hundred thousand miles away and you'll never get close. If you decide dad, you're 59 years old and I want to start spending some time with you. I love you. And I don't even know you that well.

Could we start going to coffee once a month? Could we start fill in the blank? Could we do this? I want you in my life. If you have that conversation with him, now we've got a whole different ballgame. But if you go into it as he's a project and I've got to go save him, unless he is going to hurt himself, right? If he is suicidal, then yeah, I'm getting all in that mess, right? But short of that... It's more he goes to the motions and he mopes around and he

And he commits financial infidelity, stuff like that, is what he's struggling with. So if you come after your dad with, hey, I heard you're cheating on mom with your money and stuff like that, that's not going to go well. Okay. When's the last time you said, hey, man, I'd love to just start doing something regular with you? Probably never. Exactly. And hey, here's what's really scary about this. He might look at you and tell you no.

That's a possibility. Hey, Dad, I'd love to have like a weekly coffee with you. I'll go into work late and I just want to hang out. What? Why? Why? Dad, because you're my dad and I miss hanging out. And I don't even I want to hear some stories. I want to get your take on what's happening in the world. And I just need to get out of the house. Mom needs a break from you. And you pay for the coffee every time you pay for the breakfast every time. You know, I meet once a week and you might tell, you know.

And then maybe at that point you say, I love you. And I want you to be around for a long time. And I sure would love to hang out with you. Yeah. I don't, I don't think I've ever heard him tell anyone he loves them. When's the last time anybody told him that? Yeah, that's, I don't know. I mean, I've never done it either. Okay. Today's going to be the day. Tomorrow's going to be the day.

Can I give you a suggestion? So I'm not... I'm better at writing my feelings down. Is that okay if I write him a letter and read that letter to him? You can. It's very, very effective, but it's not as effective. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I'm just...

I'm worried about him. Yeah. And his decline. Does he have any hobbies, Jeremy? Like, what is he doing all day? Yeah, okay. So right now he... So he owns a small business that's a hobby store. So, like, miniatures and, like...

Magic gathering Pokemon cards or this is George Camel Paradise. Yes. And, but the, I think his, um, his passion project that turned into business has turned into a nightmare. Yeah. And that's turned into more shame and guilt.

And then he just makes bad decisions, asks family and friends for money, doesn't pay back, and then he just cycles into more shaming. And then I don't even know if he enjoys it anymore. He works 50 hours a week, doesn't pay himself a dime because he can't afford it.

What has the conversations been with your mom and your dad? What are they talking to with each other? Like, is she addressing this with him going, hey, honey, we can't keep spending like this? Yeah. Does she have a vote? So I think she has given up on him and that she's tried her whole life from her perspective. And now she doesn't.

I think he, in her mind, has lost his vote because he makes bad decisions and she has felt the burden of being a working mom and raising three children. And she's still working full-time?

Yeah, yeah. She's working full-time, getting her PhD. She's a boss woman, and he kind of just—I mean, she's even told me she's thought about divorcing him when we were teenagers. Here's the part that's hard, and I don't want to cut you off, but here's the part that's hard as a son, okay? All of the things that you're hearing might be 100% true. Mm-hmm.

And if your dad was to really open up with you, he might tell you, son, 20 years with a woman that wouldn't let me breathe. You see what I'm saying? So there's always going to be another side to this. And that's why I wouldn't get into the, I'm trying to save you because you've got one side of a story. I'm not getting into the dad. You've got to just ship up and get right. I would get into the, you're my dad. I would like to spend some time with you. You see the difference here? Yeah, for sure.

And, like, Dad, with my dad, we're funny. Like, we were pretty sarcastic with each other, and we always have been. But I would tell my dad, Dad, you're old, and you're not going to be here forever. And I'd like to still be able to talk to you before you don't even know what I'm saying. So let's set up a weekly conversation. I got a lot to learn from you. And then maybe you can look him in the eye and slip in there, and I love you.

Okay. I mean, I've lived at home for health reasons as an adult, and I don't even know him. And I've been at home for 29 years, and I don't know him. And it just broke my heart last night that I don't even know my own dad. Yeah. And maybe there's some shame that his 29-year-old son still lives at home, and he wishes that he didn't have health problems. He wishes he was able to afford for him to have his own. There's so much here, man.

I'm just going to suggest to you, brother, stay out of it. Stay out of it and just tell your dad I love you and I'd love to spend some time with you. And over time, that's the shot you've got. That's the shot you got.

It reminds me, I was watching Mike Birbiglia's special. He's a comedian. Yeah, one of my favorites. Netflix special. One of my favorites. And he talks about how his family never says, I love you. And they say, take care. That's their line. It's like, it's different. He's like, I say, I love you. And they say, take care. Yeah. And there's, I think, how much would that solve in America if we all just said, I love you and hugged each other? A lot.

Three simple words that are so hard for us to say that cause so much discord and cause so much chaos. Yeah. Man. It's tough. You talk about this a lot, just this lack of connection that we have. Here's what I can tell you. I've sat with a lot of people who would do anything for 30 more seconds before their person passed to just say, I love you. So say it. Say it. Say it. Say it. Say it. I love you, John. I love you too, George. This is The Ramsey Show.

Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Camel, joined by Dr. John Deloney, host of The Dr. John Deloney Show. We're taking your calls at 888-825-5225. Jack is up next in Hartford, Connecticut. Jack, what's going on? Good afternoon, gentlemen. How are you both? We're doing great. How can we help?

Fantastic. I'm a fairly new listener, but I've already picked up one pretty key piece of wisdom, which is to pay down debt. I'm very fortunate to be working a well-paying government job that I really enjoy. I have some cash and some investments, but I also have some student loans, and I'm looking at the interest rates on everything and weighing whether to pay them off aggressively now or

or to make minimum payments, save more aggressively, and wait for that public service student loan forgiveness program at 10 years to wipe away the debt. How far are you into this 10-year program? Yeah, I'm about two years in. How old are you? 24. Okay. So let's fast forward to 32-year-old Jack. Where is he? What is he doing?

You know, if things go well, probably about what I'm doing now. I'm making good money. I like the work and it's government, so I can't really be laid off, which is nice in times of economic stress. And what do you make? I'm making about $120,000 now, and that goes up somewhere between 5% and 10% a year. Awesome. So, hey, hold on. You said a bunch of awesome things. You're 24, right? Yes, sir. All right. I got two decades on you. You 100% can get laid off.

And you can get furloughed when the government starts throwing tennis balls at each other in the sandbox and they won't pass a budget. And so they let things default and they keep getting paid, but you guys don't. It feels like, ah, I got security. Not necessarily. More security than most. And that's why you make less money because you could probably make a lot more money out in the open market. And the perception is you'd have less security, but...

Yeah, dude. Hold on with all of your heart to your optimism. You'll become disillusioned soon enough. I'm proud of you. Thanks. The other factor in here, Jack, is we're going to have two more presidents before your debts are paid off. Does that not blow your mind? That's kind of crazy. Yes. And who knows what the heck's going to happen between now and eight years and if there's a pandemic. I just want to be free faster. You make $120K. I mean, how much debt do you have?

So that's kind of the mechanics of the question is I have about $27,000 in debt and I have about $30,000 sitting in cash in checking and savings accounts that get about 5% return, which is a higher percent than the interest rate on the debt. It varies between 3% and 4.5%. But doing the math on that, on the spread you're making, I mean, it's pennies compared to your actual income.

Definitely what you're making in savings versus what you're paying in interest. And I'm making forty dollars a month spread. That's four hundred eighty dollars a year I can make from this while carrying the stress and the weight of this decision. I mean, it's the fact you're calling into the show. It's weighing on you.

I think it's more like if I have the cash at any time, I can pay them off. And if I'm making more on the cash than the interest rates on the loans, should I just wait for the 10 years? And if, God forbid, I get laid off next year, I can just pull the trigger and pay the loans off right away. But am I crazy to kind of sit and wait and see if I can hit that 10-year mark? You're not crazy. You're just normal.

Which is crazy to us in here because everyone says we're crazy because we're like, oh, how would you want debt, dude? You have the money. Pay it off. Be free. And I know some of these things have changed. But depending on who's in office next year is depending on whatever promise they're going to make to you.

And I had, I mean, I was the dean of students at a public law school and had a lot of really brilliant students who decided to not go do big firm work and decided to be a public servant to help out their communities because the government's going to pay their loans back. And yes, it's some of them have ended up coming through.

But for a long, long time, none of them got it. They'd apply. They'd apply. They'd apply. You promised. You said, hey, where is it? And they're like, yeah, we're not doing that anymore. And so here's what I'm telling you. Just for me and my family, I put zero, none in the hands of the government 10 years from now solving whatever mess that I made for myself, which is borrow a bunch of money.

Very reasonable. I appreciate that. Listen, I'm also looking at a pension plan and I've got a Roth and everything, but any parting words to a 24 year old who's still figuring out the world of personal finance?

Well, number one, run the other way. You're so glad you called us, aren't you, Jack? Here's the I opened the book with this quote, my new book, Breaking Free from Broke. It's from C.S. Lewis. When the whole world is running toward a cliff, he who is running in the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind.

I think the hardest part about the Ramsey plan is this gnawing feeling that you're going a weird direction that no one else is going, and it's so much harder to swim upstream, and everyone's making fun of you, going like, dude, you could make a spread in your savings account. Why would you pay off that low-interest debt? You're an idiot. That's what most of culture's telling you on TikTok, right? That's right. And we're telling you, what if you could just have peace and freedom today, and every dollar you make stays with you instead of going back out to a lender, and you make different decisions when you don't owe anyone anything?

And you're not worried about the spread and an interest rate. And instead, you're just focused on your life and your family and your career. That's the life I want for you. It's way beyond math, which is hard to explain on paper. I'm getting a vague sense of it. It does sound pretty nice. In a more concrete way, because you're a very, very smart guy. Brilliant. Like a brilliant guy. George and I will never, we were just talking about personal finance conversation that we're having both in our lives off air.

interest rate never came up because neither of us care about it. Neither of us care about it. I may have to move or I may end up moving and I may have to take a mortgage out on a house. So we're talking about the rate part. I don't care about it. I could care less about it because I'm not trying to play a rate game as though somehow I can win a completely rigged system.

If I put my toe back in that world and I get a mortgage for me and my family to move to a different community, then I will put, I mean, I'll hit the gas with all I got to not have that mortgage. I could care less because it's not about the interest rate for me. It's not about the math win or loss. It's about freedom for me. Nobody will own me and my family.

And right now, I want you to think about it this way. You are in indentured servitude, servanthood to the government for a decade. For all of human history, that was a catastrophic punishment. And this is one that you are really trying to work hard to talk yourself into leaving. You see what I'm saying?

I do. Yeah, I know. I see where I've kind of gone astray. The government owns you for the next decade under this plan. Otherwise, you got the money right now. You could be free this weekend. Nobody owns you. And then you're going to save up some money because you make 120 grand. You're going to save up some money and you're going to get that 30 grand back filled up. And you're your own bank. So you don't care what the interest rates are because you don't borrow money because you're your own bank. If you have an emergency, you just pay for yourself. Who cares?

And now you're off to the races, building real wealth. Phenomenal. Well, thank you both so much for your time. I'll have to look into that book. Really appreciate it. Yeah, Jack, I'm going to read you this as we close this hour. This is from the student loans chapter of my book. June of 2022, the PSLF forms submitted were more than a million and a half, and 12,500 were approved. That is a failure rate of 99.26%.

Put another way, it's a success rate of 0.74%. Not even 1% were approved. And I saw one teacher post this really depressing viral video, John. He said, I didn't get approved because I used a slash instead of a dash for the date on the application. And they said, nope, you didn't fill it out according to our terms, so we're not going to forgive the debt.

This is the bureaucratic game we're playing. We're waiting 10 years all to find out a Slash or Dash was the game changer. And by the way, those 10 years, they're making money on the interest, right? If you're paying these things in the meantime. Yeah, so people's loans are ballooning. The balances are going up over time because they're making minimum payments, doing income-driven plans, thinking this is the path.

Someone's going to figure this out. I'm telling you, you've got to solve for freedom, man. Be free, dude. Be free. And you can be free today. There's no sacrifice involved here. Hang on the line, Jack. We're going to send you George's new book, Breaking Free from Broke, and you'll get it when it releases next week. Love that. That puts this hour of The Ramsey Show in the books. I'm George Campbell. He's John Deloney. Thanks for listening.

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 amazing relationships. I'm Ramsey personality, George Campbell, joined by author of the new book, Building a Non-Anxious Life, Dr. John Deloney. And we are taking your calls at 888-825-5225. Jump in.

And let's talk about your money, your life, your relationships, whatever ails you, whatever you're excited about, whatever conundrum you find yourself in. We're here to help you take the right next step. Grayson is in Ontario, Canada. Grayson, what's going on in Canada? It's cold here. I figured. So...

Yeah, it's cold here. So I'm 25 years old. My take home last year was roughly $67,000 gross. I still live at home. I'm a single guy. The only debt I have is my truck.

I made it this year my commitment to stop spending money on dumb things. So far, it's worked out all right. I haven't spent any dumb things today this year yet. It's payday today. And I want to how do I stop the urge of spending my money on dumb things? Number one.

And number two is that I'm getting a pretty big settlement within the next two to three months tax free between 130,000 and $140,000.

And I want that money to work for me. I really want to move out of my parents' house and buy myself a house right now. So that's my question to you. I have zero emergency fund, by the way. I have like $5,000 in the bank. So I want to make my financial situation secure.

So George is going to walk you through the money stuff. I wanted to give you two bits of wisdom, okay? Number one, that's actually one of my New Year's resolutions too. Stop buying dumb things. Should be all of America's resolution and Canada too. Even when I budget, I just buy dumb stuff. So I am a thousand percent with you. Here's where you're going to get yourself into a lot of trouble. This word you use, urge. How do I get rid of the urge? You don't.

You be disciplined and a grown-up in spite of the urge. Hopefully over time with month after month, week after week, day after day, year after year of new habits and practicing doing something differently, the urge just kind of goes away. If I cannot eat gummy candies for two weeks, I've done the data on myself. Two weeks, I don't even feel the urge to eat them anymore.

But dude, that first two weeks is brutal. So the goal here isn't like, because here's what you're looking for. You're looking for motivation. You're looking for feelings. It's not going to happen. You're going to have to choose discipline. The next right action. The next right thing. Does that make sense? Okay. Yeah, that totally does make sense. So that means you have to set up systems that are going to help you be successful.

And one of those systems is a budget to where you go, nope, that wasn't in the plan. Not doing that this month. If I really want it, I'll put it in the budget for next month and see if I still want it. And usually you go, yeah, I don't even care about it a month from now. It was that urgency and that impulse. I have a note card with me that I write down things I want to buy that I get an urge to buy.

Okay. I have the same thing too, now that you're speaking of that. If I want it in a month, like George just said, if I want it next time I come around to budget cycle time, I'll budget for it. I'm almost positive that of like the seven things I've written down in the first 12 days of January, I'm going to get one of them. And it's a replacement. It's something that got lost during travel. Yeah.

I understand. I try to spend my money. I try to look for decent deals when I do want to buy something dumb, but still, I just want to completely stop wasting money on things that I don't need.

So part of the way I grappled with this, Grayson, because I remember living at home, I had a full-time job, I was making 16 bucks an hour at the Apple store, and I was, I legitimately was like, I am wealthy. I'm crushing the game, and I would blow every paycheck on more music gear and more discounted stuff through Apple. And I realized later on, I needed some problems at 18 years old. And that looked a lot like moving across the country, renting and having bills to pay. Yeah.

And I think you heading into adult life, don't wait. Just move out. And then you're going to go, crap, I got to come up with $1,200 in rent. I can't go blow $1,000 on random crap. Or if you're Ontario, you have to come up with $185,000 a month for rent, right? Yeah. So if you can't save money while at home with no bills, you're going to be screwed if you keep that up in the real world.

Yeah. So I'm going to gift you a few things that will help. Like Deloney said, you need some systems in your life. One of those is a budget. So I'm going to gift you every dollar premium so you can get on a plan and go, all right, I made $5,000. I need to spend less than $5,000 in order to keep up my life.

And that's going to mean saying no to a lot of things. And if it's not in the budget, then you just don't buy it. And again, that comes down to discipline like John talked about. And John and I actually, we co-hosted a lesson in Financial Peace University called Why Spending. So I'm going to gift you that as well to go watch.

And that's going to help you understand how your brain is causing you to spend money, how marketers and companies are coming after your money and get you on a plan to get control of your life again when it comes to spending. And the last thing I'm going to send you is a copy of my new book, Breaking Free from Broke, because I wrote a whole chapter called Spending is Self-Control.

And in that, I walk you through a smart spender plan. And there's five questions. Here's the spark notes of those questions. It spells out the word smart. Self-awareness is the first one. Ask yourself this. Is this going to add real value to my life? Will it add real utility to my life? If you answer yes, move on to M for motive. Am I buying this for the right reason? Is this just emotional, impulsive, urgency, retail therapy?

And if the answer is yes, then we got to pause to that. But if you can say, yes, I'm buying it for the right reason, move on to the A for affordability. Is this in my budget? Can I afford this in full in cash right now?

If America answered that correctly, Grayson, we would be $0 in debt. And same for Canada. Right? So if you can say, yes, I can afford it. It's in the budget. Move on to the R for research. Is this the best option, the best retailer, the best price? Because I haven't even Googled to find out. We just shopped impulsively and swiped up on the Instagram ad. And so that's going to help you just pause and make a better decision when it comes to that purchase. And if you can say, yes, it's the best option, retailer, and price, you move on to the T for timing. Is now the time to buy it?

This comes down to opportunity cost. Grayson's got a car to pay off. So the right time to spend on dumb stuff is not for a long time until you can stomach it when you're debt free with an emergency fund and you budgeted for it. And then that dumb thing doesn't feel so dumb. It just becomes, oh, I just wanted to buy it and I had the cash. And it's I spent out of my values and with the right motives. Can I tell you this, brother? I have is me being honest. I've really struggled to do this on my own.

And so it really is my wife and I using the EveryDollar app together. So I know when I buy something, she sees it immediately. It pops up on her phone too. I need that accountability. I wish I didn't, but I need that accountability. I like that accountability.

So maybe you find somebody. Maybe I'll have to get my mom to it. I'll have to get my mom to get that. And she'll be like, what the heck are you spending your money on? I told you not to. I mean, you're a grown man. So maybe mommy's not the right person, but somebody in your life who can hold you accountable.

Right? Maybe it's a buddy. Maybe George Campbell. Hang on the line. He'll give you his cell number, and you can just call him anytime. Just kidding. Don't do that. Well, you should hang on the line, Grayson, because we're going to send you Financial Peace University, every dollar premium, and I'm going to send you the e-book of my new book, Breaking Free from Broke, so you can get a head start on that before it comes out. Hang on the line, man. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm joined by Dr. John Deloney. I'm George Campbell, and we are your hosts today. You can give us a call at 888-825-5225, and we'll talk about your money and your life.

Grant is up next in Columbia, South Carolina. Grant, welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hey, George and John. Hey, how can we help? So I've got a question. My wife and I have been renting a house for like 20 years, and the guy was going to do a rent-a-home, and every time I mentioned it to him, he'd never done anything. Well, now he wants to sell the house, and...

Do you have $35,000? No. How much do you have?

I'll have to get a loan. Well, see, we just got started with y'all last week. Cool. Yeah, I'm like 56, and I've only got like 8,000 saved up in 401K. What have y'all been doing? Living life. Hard. How much money do you guys make? Well, I figured between the two of us, we make $75,600 a year. Okay. Okay.

That's a little higher than the average income in America, so that's good. But I'm wondering what the heck's been going on with that income for the last 20 years. Well, I sat here figuring that up earlier because, you know, y'all talk about budget and everything, so I tried figuring out a budget. And I was coming up with that we spend $3,100 a month on our budget, you know, on our bills. And that leaves me bleeding out somewhere around $2,000 every month.

That's America right there, baby. You should run for Congress, man. So how much debt do you have? That's what we're talking about. We need to change. Yeah. Hey, I'm proud of you, brother. That's big. We're right at $27,000 in debt. What kind of debt is that? We had two vehicles and a building, a storage building that we bought, and a student loan from where my son was in college. Okay. What's the storage unit for?

for me to keep my tools and stuff in. Do you do that for a living right now? Yes, I'm a maintenance technician. Okay. All right, so what's left on these cars? It's the only building that we have at home. You know, it's a building that we're buying. We only owe $1,300 on it, so we're fixing to pay it off. Okay. And these cars, are any of them worth selling, or are they not worth much? You don't know much. Well, I owe $3,000 on a van. Okay.

And we just got a Jeep a couple months back, and we owe $18,000 on it. Ooh. Okay. That's half your mortgage, man. Yeah, I'm confused how this house is $34,000. Half of America, or 99% is going, where do they make $30,000? Is it a trailer? No, it's a house. It was built in 1945. See, we live in a really low economic area. Yeah. And so, yeah, our house is cheap. Good for you guys.

The good news is you guys can get out of this consumer debt fairly quickly making $75,000. The bad news is you're not in a place to buy this house. Okay. It's just going to compound the problem. So we just need to continue renting until we get all of our debt paid out.

Yeah, I mean, you're making $75,000. You really get on that every dollar budget. You could pay off $27,000 using the debt snowball method where you list your debts out smallest to largest, make minimum payments on all of them except that smallest one. Is that the storage facility for you guys? Yeah, that's the storage building. We figured we'd have it paid off at the end of next month. Hold on. If you have $23,000 and you have an $18,000 Jeep, if you sold that Jeep, does that knock off most of your debt?

Yeah, that would be most of his debt. I would do that, man. I would do that tomorrow. This is between you and a house. If the car is worth half of the house you're renting, I think you've got too much car. So you could downgrade to a $5,000, $10,000 car, right? And you're in the maintenance business. I bet you're pretty handy. All right, so I'm going to ask George a question, Grant, on your behalf, but I'm going to ask him, okay? So I want you to eavesdrop this conversation. George, we've got real clear principles when it comes to ratios to buying houses.

This house is $35,000. It's less than most people's cars. Exactly. And so if Grant went and sold his Jeep and ended up with $5,000, he pays his thing off next month. If he was to go down and get a mortgage for a $35,000 house with a $75,000 income, I mean, he could have this whole thing paid off. I'm wondering, I'm asking you, is there a, because this is such an, like, so far outside the bell curve situation. Hmm.

Is there a moment where you don't normally get a $35,000 house? And so if he'll have the courage to go sell that Jeep and knock his debt all the way down there, can he go and just buy a $35,000 house? Well, the other issue is there's no emergency fund here. You guys don't have anything in savings?

Just like $500. So that's the part that worries me. On a 1940s house, one thing goes wrong. You guys are broke, and you're going to go back into debt to solve this. So I would see if you can work out a deal with this guy and say, hey, listen, give us six to nine months. We're going to pay off our debt, get an emergency fund, and then we're going to buy this house off you. Okay. How urgent is this sale for him? I'm not sure. I mean, he said he wanted to sell it, but he would. I mean, he's been hanging on to it for two decades now while you guys rent it, right?

Yeah, it originally started to be ours. This is the sad part about it. It originally started to be ours. We had it, we were buying it, and I lost my job, and we were getting foreclosed on. And I was doing work for the man, and he saw that I was in a conundrum, and he asked me what was wrong, and I told him, so he offered to buy the house, and he was going to sell it back to us. Well, 20 years later...

Yeah, I'm glad you have hope that you can turn this thing around because John and I believe you do and you're going to get there. But I would clean this mess up first, man. Get your sell the Jeep, get rid of the debt, get an emergency fund real quick. Then if you want to take on, I mean, that that loan to cover the house, you're going to be paying that off.

real quick as well. So within a few years, you're completely debt-free, no house payment. No more payments. And George, I love the idea of Grant sitting down with his landlord and saying, okay, in nine months, I'm going to buy this house from you. So we're going to shake hands on it. And Grant and his wife get together and just...

Just hammer out. This payoff is dead. Get rid of this dumb Jeep. Pay this thing off. There's a carrot dangling here. I'm going to take some extra shifts. I'm going to take my old van. I'm going to deliver pizzas with it. Whatever I got to do in my community. It sounds like it's a very low-income community, a $35,000 house. I'm going to do whatever I have to do to get this thing knocked out.

and they get some money in the bank so that I can buy this house. Yeah, I truly see a world in two and a half, three years, they don't have a house payment. No debt, no house payment, emergency fund. I love it. Let's take a quick one here from Danielle in Charlotte. What's going on, Danielle?

Hey, thanks for taking my call. Sure. My question is, what is the best way to pay extra on a mortgage to pay it off quicker? It's like to make an extra payment mid-month or just pay that extra amount on the principal with my regular monthly payment. I love this question. I'll tell you the way I did it, and that was just to make an extra payment along with my normal payment toward the principal every single month.

and try to keep it consistent set a goal and say hey every month we're going to do an extra thousand we're going to do a double the mortgage payment every month and try to beat your personal best every single month but there's a lot of tick tocks out there about the strategy and if you do you know 14 extra dollars by the end of the year you'll have done an extra payment don't over complicate it just throw as much as you can along with your normal payment if that's on the first just go ahead and do it on the first you're not gonna you know hack the system by doing a you

you know, the extra payment strategies that you see on social media. Okay. How close are you? We only owe a little under 73. Actually, it's about 72.5 is what we owe on it. Amazing. And 11 years left on a 15-year mortgage, so I was hoping to get it off sooner. Oh, yeah, dude, crush it. You will get there so much sooner. That's what I love about the 15-year, Danielle. Worst case, it's under 15, but then you're like, dang, we could do it in 11. You're like, dang, we could do this in 7.

But the 30-year, you go, well, we got wiggle room. We paid off in 15. That'll be a huge win. So I love this aggressive strategy you have to have total freedom. And most people following the Baby Steps, John, we find they do it in seven years on average. It's amazing. You get tired of having it just hovering over you, right? You got a taste of freedom in Baby Step 2, and you're like, let's just keep going. That's right. Love it. Thanks, Danielle. This is The Ramsey Show.

Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Cantwell, joined by Dr. John Deloney, and we've got some guests on the debt-free stage. Bo and Sarah join us. How are you guys? So good. We needed some pep in our step, and you guys are bringing it. Not nervous at all, right? We are stoked. We're so excited to be here. We're just excited to talk to you. Yeah, it's an honor. Where are you guys from?

Lakeland, Florida. Yeah, Lakeland near Tampa. Near Tampa. Sweet. And here to do your debt-free scream, how much did you guys pay off? We paid off $30,000 in 11 months. What was your range of income during that time?

49,000 to 104,000. Okay. Did someone get a job or raise? What happened? Yeah. You want to explain that? Yeah. Sarah got a job. So when we got married, she still had a year of school left of her undergrad. And so she worked two to three part-time jobs. And then I worked full-time and I was doing school at night. Wow. All right. And...

So what did you guys study and what are you doing now?

Oh, so I work for a nonprofit organization. I'm basically like a guidance counselor for high schoolers and a couple of years out of high school. Cool. But it's in our inner city of our city that we're from. But I studied biblical ministry and counseling and creative writing. Cool. Yeah. And how about you, Bo? John, this one's for you. I work in residence life at a college in Lakeland. So I'm on call. I know you talk about being on call. That's me.

I'm also in the Army Reserves. I did ROTC in college. I studied the Bible. I'm in school to become a chaplain in the Army, so that's what I'm working on right now. Very cool. So they flashed your wedding pictures up here. You went all white shoes. It's a bold choice. I'm actually wearing those shoes today, you guys. Oh, yeah, that's right. I thought it was a special occasion. Are you guys the same size? Y'all share shoes? No.

oh she had her own pair oh you had your own pair i was talking about bow but yeah way to make it weird way to make it weird so what kind of debt was this 30k student loan debt yeah student loan debt car debt and a little bit of credit card debt just sprinkled on top and medical and medical debt yeah oh my goodness wow and 11 months ago how long you guys been married

A year and a half. Year and a half, yeah. So soon into this marriage, the honeymoon phase is over and you guys are like, we actually did it. No, they're still in it because see, they're holding hands with two hands. They're still super in love. And we plan to be. For the rest of our lives. We plan to be indefinitely. We all did, bro. We all did. I'm just kidding. Of course you will. Of course you will. All right, all right. Of course you will. But what happened 11 months ago that changed things? Yeah, so we were gifted Financial Peace University as a wedding gift. So awesome. We definitely had...

We had dreams and goals, but to be rich and all that kind of stuff, but we didn't really know how that was going to happen. But we were gifted financial peace from a former boss of mine, Heather Root. I told her I would shout her out. And we're so thankful that she did. So we went to a church once a week.

and took the class and we were sitting there. We were so, we're kind of young compared to a lot of the people that take the class and we were sitting there hearing these stories of people who have gone through so much and they're in a really deep hole and they were right there alongside us trying to pay off this debt. And so we were encouraged hearing their stories and Sarah and I, we want to be ridiculously generous and

And to be, you know, just like everyone talks about here, to be a blessing to those around us or our family. And we saw this as our path. So during that time, we started off, you know, cutting up the one credit card that I had that I was building credit with. You know, I thought that's what I had to do to...

make strides in life and Sarah had money set aside she was much more prudent than I and during that class we paid off my car she had about nine thousand dollars saved up and and we paid it off right then can I use your story as a really important message for everybody especially younger folks who are just getting married just entering into the workforce yeah

on one hand you have this picture, we're gonna be wealthy, we're gonna do these kind of vacations, we're gonna live in this kind of home. And on the other hand, you work in a nonprofit and you wanna be a chaplain, right? And so there's this picture of these are the jobs we wanna do and this is what we want the end result to look like. And it's not until you sit down in a class

And you're surrounded by people who are 20, 30 years into this and they've been making great money and they're broke. And you realize, oh, my passion, this thing I love doing is not going to get me to this end result unless we do something drastically different. It's just choosing, oh, this is what reality is, right? And that's a hard thing for most people. Most people don't get it until they're 30 or 40 or 50 calling us desperate. Y'all figured it out really early. Good for y'all, man. It's awesome. Yeah. I mean, we listen to the show all the time.

And we hear those stories every day. And we hear Dave and everybody say that a budget is telling your money where to go versus wondering where it went. And I feel like that's been the difference for us. So many of our friends, people that we know, and stories that we heard in that class were just like, I don't know how we ended up here, but we're here. But we started off telling it where to go versus wondering where it was going.

Yeah. That's amazing. What was the most surprising part of these 11 months of sacrifice for you guys? The most surprising part would be how...

well we work together and how like communication really can just be such a, y'all were talking about how we're still in the honeymoon phase. Like I genuinely think that we're going to be in that for the rest of our lives, but it's because we're on the same page, not just about our finances, but along with everything in life. But importantly, our finances, we hear y'all talk about it all the time. Financial problems.

like pressure and stress is a huge reason for divorce, which that's never a plan for us. And so we wanted to get to the root of that at the very beginning of our marriage. And so it was so surprising to just be in communication with each other and see how easy it could be. If we know that we're fighting for each other, we're not fighting against each other. We are for each other. We, we want to give to others and it's all our money. It's no one person's money and things like that. And just being able to see how much better that works.

I think that was something that surprised me. I was just like, wow, if we're just in communication, I've always heard this is supposed to be super difficult, but this is actually fairly easy when we are talking about it every day and we're supportive of each other. And I'm more of the nerd. He's the free spirit, but he lets me lead it sometimes in that. And then I let him lead where he's best. And so communicating about that was surprising to find this is actually easier than people make it out to be.

That's beautiful. And you got some cheerleaders in your life along the way. There's some weird people in the lobby hanging out with you. These are two of our best friends, Ashlyn and Tucker. We're taking a Nashville trip with them this weekend. And so they were super excited to be with us. We love them. Supportive friends. Bo, can I applaud you on one more thing? Sure. Yeah. And you have to be watching this on YouTube to see it or on social media, but

On behalf of all of us who never really understood George Camel and those skinny jeans, thank you for bringing back jeans that Limp Bizkit would be proud of. That's my jam, dude. That's my jam. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for that, John. Had no clue where you were going. Didn't know where you were going. Full JNCO on that one. No, he's JNCO'd out. He looks good. They're styling. Beautiful couple. We're so happy for you guys. What do you tell people the one thing is to become debt-free? What's the key?

I would say, well, every dollar budget is huge. But then also we are believers, as you can probably tell. So just knowing that all of the money that we have is not ours. We are blessed with, you know, bodies to work and this money that we've been given. And when we steward it well, we're able to live with an open hand. And so that's one thing that I would want everybody to know is that being a good steward of your money

money and being a good steward of your finances. Really, you just see the Lord work in amazing ways. And yeah. Wonderful. Anything different? Well, we've got the living give box for you guys is our gift to you. Baby steps, millionaires, total money makeover, financial peace university. Use it, give it away, bless other people with it. Get them on the journey. So proud of you guys. All right.

Here it is, the moment we've been waiting for. Bo and Sarah, $30,000 paid off in 11 months, making $49,000 to $104,000. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one, win! Yeah! That was cathartic. That was visceral, John. They're hugging. They're kissing. Gosh, what a beautiful picture of love. They're wearing clothes that fit. This is an amazing couple.

Oh, they are heroes. We're so proud of them. And that kind of freedom is available for you, America. Whether you're 25 or 55, it's available. And it is so worth going after. This is The Ramsey Show. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Campbell, joined by Dr. John Maloney. Our scripture of the day, Matthew 5, 14, and 15. You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden.

Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead, they put it on a stand and it gives light to everyone in the house. Jordan Peterson said, You should be better than you are, but it's not because you're worse than other people. It's because you're not everything you should be. He's got away with words, John. He's very smart. You were on his show. I was on his show. It's a great interview. Yeah, and hanging out with him in person is one of the most...

The word that comes to mind, people are like, what? It's one of the most delightful human beings. Just a joyful, kind presence. And so all of his clips are always very abrasive. Intense.

Intense but just in person Just a very lovely guy People say that about me too Behind the scenes Hey before we take one more call I want to remind everybody George Campbell's brand new book Coming out January 16th That is Monday This is the last weekend So you're either listening to this live Or you're going to get this podcast Tonight Sometimes Saturday Sometimes Sunday

This is it. Breaking free from broke pre-orders today for only 20 bucks and get a hundred bucks in free bonus items. If you know anything about George, he's always looking for a deal. And so we made one that you can watch four X five X your, your investment here, 20 bucks free.

and you get $100 of stuff for free. The last day to pre-order this is Monday. So go get it right now. Go get it right now. Go get it right now. Go to RamseySolutions.com slash store, S-T-O-R-E. Good spelling there, John. I'm excited about it. People already have the e-book. Some people have the physical book.

They found it in bookstores. It got shipped to them early. And so it's cool to see it out in the world in real life. And people are enjoying it and laughing while learning about money. And it's making it simple versus complex for the first time. And that was my one goal. So I'm excited to see how it helps people. Very, very cool. All right. Let's get to the phones. Crystal joins us in Portland, Oregon. Crystal, welcome to The Ramsey Show.

Hey, thanks gentlemen for taking my call. Sure. How can we help? Um, well, I don't know how much of a backstory you want, but I'll just shoot off my question and then you guys can answer. Love it. Hopefully. Um, it might be a Dr. D question, but I'm really wondering how do I get over a poverty mindset when my family is actually doing financially well? How do you, uh, how would you define poverty mindset?

Well, I guess primarily the fear of not having enough or that my family will be destitute if I lost my job. You know, I don't feel like there's really any dollar amount per year or in the bank that'll actually make me feel better. Oh, I love that. Good for you. You're right. You're right. So I'm going to ask you a couple of like just really simple yes or no questions.

financially speaking, are y'all leveraged to a point where if you did lose your job, y'all would be destitute? No. Okay. So you know that your body feels one way, but data, the facts of the situation are something else.

Yes, we are very fine. Okay. So here's, we don't talk about this very much. So actually what you're talking about, I tend to look at poverty as like an identity, right? It's very reality. It's an economic issue, but it's a way somebody sees the world. What you're talking about is a scarcity mindset. There's never going to be enough. There's no amount that's going to fill the bucket that you're trying to fill as a hole in the bottom, right? Right.

Yeah. And so what we don't often talk about this and it's, that's on me. I don't talk about it is you're experiencing two things. One, this, I'm assuming you grew up in a, and it was things were, were, was, or was chaos.

extreme poverty on all forms of social services and my mother would still give our like food stamps away for drugs. That's right. So you don't have, you don't have, and I'm talking about in your nervous system, your body doesn't know.

relational stability. It doesn't know economic stability. It doesn't know home stability. So all of this stuff is your body is learning in real time. You're changing the oil on the car while you're flying down the highway. Fair? Yes. All right. Here's what we don't talk about enough. You have, after grinding it out, you got out. Fair, Crystal? You got out. Yeah. And I am more than I ever thought I would be. There you are.

And you used that it was jet fuel. It got you here. And then there's a scary thing that you never anticipated. And it's that you don't trust you here. You trusted you when you were running, but now that you're here, you don't trust you because you have a disconnect between how you feel and reality. And you're smart enough to know both of them. And there's a huge gap and you're sitting in the middle of it. And you realize, Oh, when I was a kid, those people had this kind of money, not us, not me.

And it feels like you're wearing somebody else's clothes every day, right? That's a very good description. Yes. Okay. So I want to tell you a couple of things. All right. Number one, I'm so freaking proud of you. If you were here, I would ask everybody to stop the show and I would ask you permission to give you a hug. And I would hold on a little bit past where it was uncomfortable to where it was kind of like, right? And here's why I need you to

understand how you have changed an entire family tree because you said no. And I don't think you fully exhaled yet. Nope. Not yet. Not yet. If you don't exhale, you're going to run past the finish line through the stands into the parking lot and then you're going to run into traffic. You're going to get run over. So the habits that got you here, the grit, determination, the scratching and clawing that got you here is going to be the thing that blows up your marriage.

And has people at work stop wanting to be around you. Okay? That's me just being honest with you because I love you. Okay? So what we have to do here is not beat ourselves up because we don't have the right mindset. Not hate ourselves because we don't have character. We don't quote unquote feel right. We just have to say, all right, sweet. You know what I've never been? A millionaire. And now I am. So I'm going to practice these new things. And I'm going to reverse engineer a new identity. I'm somebody who does really well. I've worked really hard.

And I've been blessed. I'm somebody whose family is okay. I'm somebody whose husband's not going to leave. I'm a mom who's never going to trade my kids food for drugs. And then I'm going to exhale because it feels weird to say that. Is that fair? Absolutely. Why is that hard for you to hear? Pattern, the length of time. It could be a number of things. Okay. This is in your nervous system. Be really graceful with yourself. Really graceful.

You're so amazing. You can't even see it. You can't even see it. Okay. I'm going to tell you something that has helped me transition from growing up in a house where things were really tough to a very different adulthood. And it's something I learned as from not Dave Ramsey, the Dave Ramsey, but my friend Dave, like off air. And it's this idea of ratios. Okay. And when we had nothing,

groceries cost X and there was a ratio there. Now we make this much money and the zeros look huge and the size of the house looks huge and the mortgage looks huge. All these things look huge. We're just going to look at ratios. How much do I make? How much do we have in savings? What are we going to spend on this car? What are we going to spend on this meal? What are we going to spend on this vacation? What are we going to spend on taking care of this family at our local church who has nothing for Christmas? The ratios are going to guide us because the numbers, they set off every alarm that we have. Is that fair?

Yeah, you're right. I'm a little too detail-oriented. There you go. And when you sit down to go, I'm going to buy this car and it's $50,000, your body goes, $50,000! Right? And all we're going to do is we're going to feel that. We're going to go, whew, yep, trying to take care of me again. Appreciate you. And then we're going to look at the ratios. I make $450,000.

I can buy this $50,000 car. I got cash. I'm good. And I gave away $100,000 last year. We're doing great. I'm going to buy this car. See how the ratios will save you as you practice?

Yeah. So, Crystal, practice that in your budget. Force yourself not just to save but to also spend and enjoy and to give. That is going to unlock some magical things if you can learn to be generous and learn that money is not a finite resource. And so I hope that helps. These are skills to practice. Yes. And it's a muscle you have to continually flex in that budget. And I believe you'll get there. I'm proud of you, Crystal. You're amazing. Thank you.

That puts this hour of the Ramsey Show in the books. My thanks to my co-host, Dr. John Deloney, all the folks in the booth keeping the show afloat, and you, America. Until next time, spend wisely, save intentionally, and be wildly generous.

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