Transcript of You Can’t Hack Your Way Out of Debt

Brought to you by the Every Dollar app. Start budgeting for free today. Normal is broke and common sense is weird. So we're here to help you transform your life. From the Ramsey Network and the Fairwinds Credit Union Studio, this is The Ramsey Show. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author and host of The Ramsey Network. Dr. John Deloney Show, is my co-host today. Open phones here at 888-825-5225. Joan is in Florida. Hi, Joan. How are you?

I'm How are you? We're good. How are you?

Better than I deserve. What's up?

I have a question. I would like to know if it's okay if I lock my husband out of my savings account.

Wow. Tell me more.

Sounds pretty dramatic.

Yeah, it is. We've been married for 45 years. Probably 20 some years ago, we got into some credit card debt, a lot of credit card debt to the point where we had to take out a second mortgage. I also borrowed against my 401k, and it took probably 10 years to claw out of that debt. We were really good about budgeting, and now we have our home off, all our cars are paid off. We had absolutely no debt until probably the last year. I picked up a second job before to help get this debt out. Well, I've since left my second job, and we are just spending. I say we, it's not really we, it's him. He's just spending way more than what we're bringing in.

On what?

Oh, just... He bought a boat, he bought a to pull the boat. He's bought road bikes. He's bought mountain bikes. He has gone through $40,000 in savings in the last year buying these things.

What is your all's net worth?

Networth? Our home is worth probably 650,000. I have 650 in my 401k. I had 50,000 in savings, and now I have, I guess there's about eight in there now.

You keep using the word I.

How much does he have in his 401k?

Nothing.

Okay, so you have a net worth of a million and a half dollars, give or take. Correct. And your household income is what?

It's 82. Between the two of us, it's 82,000 a year.

And you guys are in your 60s?

Yes. Okay.

And so what midlife crisis is this dude having? He's 60.

He's saying that he wants to get all these things bought before he retires, and he plans on retiring next year. So he wants to enjoy his life. We had a significant event happen in our family. We had a family member of ours who just worked himself to death and died in his 40s and didn't enjoy life at all, didn't enjoy any of the money that he made. So my husband was like, Well, he's not going to do that. He's not going to be like that.

It doesn't sound like the problem is the boat or the truck. It sounds like you come home from working your second job, and all of a sudden, there's a new boat in the driveway.

Oh, I hate it. I look out there and I see it, and I hate it.

No, him doing crap without you guys being in an agreement in it.

That's the problem.

I agree. You didn't go along with these purchases. They just occurred.

No. Well, I did go along with the boat, but I didn't realize he was going to spend as much as he did on it. I didn't realize that... I mean, he just keeps putting more money into it.

For people that have been married 45 years, you all suck at communication. Yeah, not good.

Yeah, I agree.

Or did he just change it on you? Have you all been communicating well for a decade, and then all of a sudden this went sideways?

No, no. This It wasn't new. We've never really agreed on finances. I'm more of, let's save, let's put it aside, and he's more of, let's enjoy it. It's just gotten bad in the probably last year and a half.

So, Joan, I I appreciate your frustration and even your anger, and those are justified. But the problem is not the savings account. That's the symptom. Okay. The problem is you all are not aligned.

I agree 100%.

You're not unified. I don't think I'm hearing you say, because you said, I went along with the boat. I don't think I'm hearing you say that you're opposed to enjoying sum of the money. What I do hear you say is you don't like being surprised and people running roughshod over your hard work while you're working two jobs. Yes. And that's fair. Second job. Yeah, that's fair.

I gave up a second job.

But to compare your all's life in any stretch of the imagination to the 40-year-old workaholic, he's not even on the same planet. So you can't use that as a justification to do something stupid and lie to your wife.

It's the dishonest.

Yeah. Yeah. So you really do, for the sake of... I mean, if you're in your 60s and you guys are healthy, you may have to be fighting with this old man for another 30 years. You all need to really work on this and get on the same stinking page. I agree. Yeah, Sharon and I make more money and have more money, and I don't buy any boats without Sharon knowing what the boat costs, and we make the decision together beforehand. If the boat involved a truck to pull the boat, we would be talking about that, too. We don't just make this up as we go. When I come home and go, See what I did, honey? We've been married 43 years, and I'm 65 years old. We're right in the same camp with you, kiddo.

Okay. Here's the other side of it. He's not on the phone, so just you are. Yes. The Gottmans are the goats when it comes to marriage research. Okay? Okay. They created this thing called the Four Horsemen of the Relationship Apocalypse. They can tell with 90 plus % accuracy after watching a couple communicate just for a little bit Whether they're going to make it or not. The relational dynamic of contempt, where one person thinks they are better than the other person, is the number one predictor that this thing is not going to... It's going to fall apart. And listening to your language, this is mine. I put this in my account. He has nothing. I'm wondering if there's not a dynamic in your marriage that has established itself over the years of, you're the good one and he's the bad one. You're the smart one, you're the one who saves, and he's the child. And these dynamics have a way of self-reinforcing themselves. It doesn't give a pass. It doesn't give an excuse for his dishonesty, his lying to his wife, his- Impulsiveness. Yeah, acting like a child. But it creates a context for where if you're going to treat me like a child for 40 years, I'm going to act like a child.

Then excuse it. And if he was on the phone with me, Dave and I would be letting him have it. But you have to say this is a dynamic that we have co-created for 40 years where I think I'm better than him because I make more money, or I had a second job, or I have a retirement account.

The quality of his soul would be greatly increased if the two of you could mutually respect each other, dignify each other with being in agreement before we make major decisions. There you go. That usually starts- That also concludes combining ownership of everything. You don't have a 401(k), we have a 401(k), you don't have a house, we have a house. We have an income. We are doing this. We have a boat now, and that stuff.

When you sit down to have conversations about feeling dishonest, whatever, if you sit down and say, You went out and did this again, and you did this, He's going to fight you. He has to. You've declared war. If you sit down and say, Hey, I'm hurt. I'm scared. I feel this way. Start the conversation with I statements, and that can be an invitation. Then if he continues to act like a child, then we're going to have to respond to in different ways. But you got to reset this whole communication pattern.

Yeah. You guys got to work on your skills. That's it. Your skills are low. That may mean sitting down with a marriage counselor who's teaching you how to develop these skills.

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Brooklyn is in Pennsylvania. Hi, Brooklyn. How are you? I'm okay. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up?

Hi, Dave. I appreciate you taking my call. Sure. Just a little backstory, I'm 27 years old. I'm a single mom finishing my MBA. I work full-time and I raise my three-year-old son, mainly on my I live with my Nana, but I would like to move out sooner rather than later due to differences and just wanting to move forward in life. I do have some student loans and a little credit card debt, but I feel like I'm in a constant cycle of just trying to keep up because my income is not very high. What's your income? I'm just honestly not... Right now, I make $20. 19 an hour.

Okay. And you're finishing an MBA when?

March 2026.

So six or eight months. Okay.

Yeah. I do currently have my Bachelors in Computer Science.

Why are you making $20 an hour then?

Because I only work as a customer service representative. Why?

You have a You have a four-year degree in computer science.

Oh, I mean, I know. I apply to jobs constantly, and I graduated in August of 2024. So I've been out of school for quite some time.

Yeah. Okay, so your career search process is not working. Thus, you have a horrible income compared to your education. Your MBA is not going to make this any better. Yeah, you If we don't fix the career search process. Agreed?

I definitely agreed.

Let me promise you that they're not going to suddenly start calling you just because you got an MBA.

There's a weird moment where the MBA might be a liability because they don't want to pay somebody an MBA salary who doesn't have the experience that that MBA salary would require. Does that make sense? Oh, no, it actually makes sense. You might find yourself in a leadership gap.

Yeah. We got to get your career moving, kiddo. That's the issue.

What challenges have you had?

I think the main challenge is just that I have to work from home because I have no help with my son.

Oh.

And That's what's a major- Yeah, that's an issue.

What about child care? Is that not something you want to do?

It's not something I necessarily want to do. I did recently try it. My son had a hard time adjusting, plus it's just so expensive. With just my income, it's just hard to make it.

If you suddenly start making $80,000 a year and you put him in daycare, this whole thing changes, and he's going to adjust. Kids do every day, and there will be a tough adjustment period.

He's been with you every day since he was born, and there will be a tough adjustment period.

But yeah, I think the problem is you put- I'm just not sure where to go from here because I probably have applied I need a 3,000 jobs from being honest, that sounds like a lot. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Here's the thing. Applying for jobs never works. You can't get jobs that way. I'm going to walk you through what to do, and we're going to give you some help on that part. But part of the problem was, as you to work from home and be a full-time mom while people were paying you for working, and they didn't want to do that. I'm not shocked by that. I wouldn't hire you either under those circumstances, okay? Because I know what you're doing. You're changing diapers, you're not working. That's the employer's viewpoint. Work from home, productivity sucks. Corporate America and people that hire people know that, including me. This idea that you get a full day's work out of somebody when they work from home, no one is under the illusion that's happening. It's all in the name of work-life balance, and I want to be with my child. All of that's great. You just got to decide some options here.

If you want to work from home, you are limiting the quality and the number of positions you can get making $70, $80, $100,000 a year by 90%.

Okay? Yeah.

This is not an option for you in this situation. You have too many competing goals. I want to be home full-time with the kid, and I want to make a lot of money. These are competing goals. I don't blame you for that. Those are all legitimate feelings and legitimate goals. But as you said, I'm a single mom, so I'm boxed in this corner. There's a period of time here that we're going to pay a price to get this family, this little tiny two-person family, stabilized and sustainable. Now, back to the other thing, the practical parts of looking for a job. We hired at Ramsey, we have 1,100 team members. Last year, we hired just under 200 people. We had 15,000 applications. That's what you're putting your name in. It's known as a needle in a haystack. You don't get through to good positions simply by filling out things on LinkedIn and on whatever other automated resume posting process you're using is to get 3,000 applications in. 3,000 applications tells me you had absolutely no contact. You just filled out the stuff and it went and it went right in there. No one saw it. It's one of the 15,000 that came in here, and we only hired 200.

But I'll also tell you, every person, when I've called HR and said, I I know this person, Steve, or I know this person, Susan, and she's applying for a job here, 100% of them have gotten an interview.

Not all of them get hired.

They don't all get hired, but they at least put them through the stack.

You got to know someone or know someone that knows someone that knows someone that says, Hey, my friend's friend, Brooklyn, is solid. She's finishing up her MBA. She put in an app over there the other day. Would you guys at least give her a look? You got to work the phones that way. You got to work the emails that way. It could be somebody down the street. It could be somebody your granny plays bridge with, their grandkid works over there. I don't care. But some connection, and it doesn't have to necessarily be a professional connection. It's just my wife, The other day, a lady that she was playing bridge with, the grandkid applied here at Ramsey. Then the grandkid gets a look. I don't think we hired that one, but they get a look, and they wouldn't have got a look otherwise. You're not getting a look. That's the problem. So Ken Coleman calls this the proximity principle, to get in proximity of the people doing what you want to do. What field are you wanting to go into other than IT?

I I mean, I mainly look at positions for software developers, but again, it's.

You have the ability to write code?

Yeah, I do.

Current code?

Maybe not up to Sure. I mean, I definitely could learn it if it was something that they would give me the ability to do.

Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, your information systems, your four-year degree, would give you the ability to do more than just write code. If you're going to simply crunch code, You're going to have to really be cutting edge on that to get that position. Anyway, I'm going to put you on hold. We're going to send you Ken Coleman's book, Proximity Principle. I'm also going to send you a book called Finding the Work You're Wired to Do. But my advice to you would be to decide what it is that's most important and become comfortable with the discomfort of that decision. If it's most important that I go make $80,000 to $100,000 a year moving towards my MBA, otherwise there's no point getting this MBA. You're just collecting degrees. You're not a thermometer. You just keep going along, going along, going along. And so decide where it is I'm going to go. And then what I've got... Earl Nightingale used to say that the impediments to success This is not what you're willing to do to get there. It's what you're willing to give up to get there. If I'm going to be out in my own apartment and we're going to have a sustainable income, it's not making $20 a target to grow our life together with this baby, it's going to involve some daycare, and it's going to involve being at the workplace.

Or the other trade-off is- You're going to be at Nana's. I'm going to be at Nana's for seven more months until this little one goes to preschool, and then I'll make that move. But it's all going to come with a choice. I think, Dave, the challenge that people in her demographic, they went and got the degree everybody told them to get, and they said, At the college, you're going to make this much money when you graduate. People thought, A, that means I can live wherever I want to have this stuff all right when I walk out the door. You got a third challenge, which is you're a single mom. I want to be at home. You're going to have to make some sacrifices short term and really get on the phone, start calling everybody you know and every friend of everyone you know. That's going to be your way in the door right now.

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David is in Pennsylvania. Hi, David. How are you? Good afternoon. Fine. How are you guys? Better than I deserve. How can we help?

Hey, I just wanted to call in. The company is switching a little bit of staffing model. Currently, we have company cars and company paid gas cars affiliated with that. We're going to switch that over, and I have to turn that in by the end of the calendar year here. We're going to get a tax free stipend in mileage pay from the company going forward into next year. So I just wanted to talk through that with you guys and see what some of the best ideas would be. Some of the guys I work with are talking about leasing or getting something brand new. My wife and I, we've been on your program for a while, so we know where you stand with taking loans out on cars. We haven't had a car payment since 2018. Good. So we're in there. I just feel a little up and down here.

Number one, it's obvious, and we'll just say it out loud to make sure everyone knows, the reason the company is doing this is it saves them money. Translation, it's going to cost you money. The net, net, net effect of this whole thing is you're going to... It's a pay cut. Because by the time you operate a vehicle, the stipend doesn't cover it. They know that or they wouldn't be doing this. There's no other reason to do this, and that's why they're doing it. But that's neither here nor there. It's still happening, and that's where we are. How many miles a year do you drive?

I'm pretty fortunate. I would say 15,000.

So you're not a road warrior then? Okay, good. No. They're going to give you the stipend, whether you have a car payment or not, right?

Yes.

Do they have guidelines on the age of the vehicle or anything?

Yes. It's got to be less than eight years old.

Okay, cool. All right. Do you have any money?

Yes.

Okay. So go buy a car. Wait a minute. Oh, you don't have a car because you're only running... You don't have a second car now, right? You already. We do.

We have two other cars, but the one my wife uses to run around with the kids. The other car I have is 12 years old.

Okay. Take some money in the 12-year-old car and upgrade to a five-year-old car with cash and then take the stipend.

Okay.

No payments.

Just pay myself back out of the stipend then.

Yeah. Because here's the thing. If something happens, God forbid, and the company goes broke or they lay you off or fire you, or you decide that they're unethical and you have to walk out one day, you still got a car payment.

Yeah. Or here's what's going to happen. They start by not letting people go, and they get rid of the everyone gets a car program to a stipend program. The next cut they make, they're going to couch it as, We didn't have to lay anybody off, but we had to make some sacrifices, and it's going to be the removal of the car stipend. That's what's going to happen.

But you got the car payment independent of whatever they do, and so don't take a car payment. No. I think you probably upgrade your car a little bit anyway. If you got the cash to do it. I'll put a little bit with a 12-year-old car and get a five-year-old car or whatever, and then collect that money, put it in your pocket, get your mileage, put it in your pocket, and know that the good news is with you, because you're not driving any miles, You're just driving back and forth to work. I mean, 15,000 is nothing. A little bit more than that. But I mean, that's not like high miles. Road warriors are putting 40, 50,000 miles on a car. I The good news is with you, I might be wrong, you might actually net out on this. It could be, yeah. But the more miles you put on it, the worse this is going to be for the other people in the company, they're going to lose their butts.

I give this program 18 months. I'm willing to bet that this is a phase out of we're taking care of our employees' vehicles, and this is a way they're going to phase this out.

Or even if it's not a planned phase out, 36 months from now, you got a new CFO, and they're looking at the whole thing again. We're trying to beat stock price. And whatever the thing is. Whatever it is. I don't know. We can let go 25 people. It doesn't have to necessarily be with malice or forethought or evil, but it's just corporate America. They're going to look out for one thing, and it ain't you. But either way, take the stipend and put the money in your pocket and upgrade with cash.

Don't count on it. Don't start budgeting it. Budget it, but don't start pretending it's forever.

Which is what people do when they take a car payment. That's exactly right. Well, a company gives me $500, and that means I need to go get a $550 car payment. Right. Nope, that's not what it means. Mary's in Louisiana. Hi, Mary.

Hi. Thank you for taking my call.

Sure. How can we help?

I am wondering if it is a wise decision to be paying for life insurance on my mom to protect myself financially from my parents' financial irresponsability when she passes away.

You're not responsible for their irresponsability when she passes away.

Right. That is what my husband has recently been trying to- Not only morally, but legally, you're not.

Okay. If your mom... Tell me about your mom's situation. How much debt does she have?

It's got to be over $100,000.

Okay. Do they own anything?

Not outright.

No, but that means they have a house?

Yes.

They have cars with car payments.

They have no car payments. They still owe on their house. My mom is 66. My dad is 61.

If you were to guess, if you added up all of their debts, do they even own enough to cover their debts? No. No. That's called a negative networth, right?

Yeah.

And so what happens when someone passes away? When you die, what you own stands good for what you owe. Okay. There's no generational debt in America.

It doesn't get passed down to me. No.

Zero.

The other half of the reason on why I did it is because if my dad passes away first, my mom is going to be okay. And then, I guess with what you just explained, I wouldn't inherit any of the debt. I would just have to clean up the mess and close it out.

Oh, yeah. You just send them all a death certificate with a letter that says you're screwed.

And they'll go away.

Okay. They may have to sell this home if you had your eyes on this house.

Yeah, you don't get to keep anything of theirs.

They're going to sell the house.

I'm not expecting anything at this point.

Okay, that's what I mean. But if you wanted to keep the house, now you got to go clean up the mess because the house is standing good for the debt, even if it's not a direct lien on the house. What you own down one column versus what you owe down the other column, assets minus liabilities, that's how it stacks out. You have to sell all the assets to pay all the liabilities. If there's anything left, it's called an inheritance. If there's nothing left, then it's in the hole, the bank is screwed. They shouldn't loan these people money.

They get what they deserve. Mary, I'm going to ask Dave a question on your behalf, okay? Okay. Dave, let's say there's a house worth 350 grand. It's got $100,000 left on the mortgage. There's $250 in equity, and this family owes $270,000 in 401(k) loans and whatever. Who is responsible for selling the house? Would she, as the trustee or the beneficiary or the person, the executor of the will, would she have to sell the house and then disperse the equity of that house, or does she just hand the keys over and say, Merry Christmas, you all duke it out?

You could do either one. Even if you're the executor, you could do either one. You could just say, I choose not to invest a year of my I have to get you people all paid, and I get nothing.

The credit card companies and the car dealerships would have to sue the mortgage company?

They'd have to put liens on the house. Then after the foreclosure, if there was anything left on the house, then they would get that. But yeah, it just depends on how much trouble you want to, and how much of your life you want to invest in, quote, sweeping up the mess after the garage sale. But you're not obligated to. A simple one is, I had one the other day that was a friend of a friend, and the guy died with 14 credit cards, and he was in an apartment, and he had nothing. That's a simple one, right? You really did just send them a copy of the death certificate and a note that says you're screwed. Credit card companies got what they deserve, which is nothing because they shouldn't have been loaning that guy money. He's a pauper. That's an easy one to clean up. It doesn't take much time. Don't call me.

They're probably going to try to chase down their money, call you, threaten you, whatever.

Just jump in the creek. I don't owe you anything. You ain't got my signature, buddy. That's the deal. But much better thing would be if you could get mom and dad to actually work on this. I know you probably tried, Wow, that's so sad. Statistics show that half of Americans don't have enough life insurance, or they don't have any at all. I don't understand this, John. Why don't people want to take care of their family? They think they're going to die or something?

Well, I used to be one of those guys. I didn't even think about it. One of my buddies said, Hey, the only reason to not have life insurance is if you hate your wife and kids. I immediately went and got term life insurance.

That's a gut punch.

You're telling me for decades Dave, I've sat across people who've lost a spouse. They've lost somebody important to them. Me, too. They don't know what to do next. Me, too.

It's terrifying. You're going to have a crisis here. You got two options while you're sitting and talking to a young widow. She's concerned about how she's going to invest all this money properly and not mess this up, or she's concerned how she's going to eat tomorrow. That's exactly right. These are the two options. Take care of your dadgum family, man.

Term life insurance can replace income, pay off debts, cover funeral expenses, so your family can actually have the opportunity to just be sad, to just miss you.

That's exactly what it's supposed to be. It's saying I love you to your family. Term life insurance. Jeff Zander and the team at Zander Insurance makes it easy and affordable. I've used them personally for 25 years. They're the only people I trust. Go to zander. Com or call 800-356-4282. If you died tomorrow, how would your family keep up with a mortgage and pay groceries and feed the kiddos? If anyone in your life depends on your income, you need life That's just basic adult responsibility. How do you choose from all the options out there? Well, we have told people for 30 plus years, the only thing to do is just buy term life insurance. It's very inexpensive. 15 to 20 year level term, 10 to 12 times your income. If you make $50,000 a year, you need $500 to $600,000. That's simple. It's really not that expensive. If you're in your 20s and 30s, it's about the cost of a pizza. You got to take care of your family. If you want to know more about this, just go to the term life Insurance Guide. It's free. You can get it at ramsey solutions. Com/termlifeguide, or click the link in the description, and we'll take you straight there.

John is in Arizona. Hey, John, how are you?

Hey, John. Sorry, hey, Dr. John, indeed.

Can you call me John? That's what my mama calls me. That's perfect. What's up? Perfect.

Thanks for taking some time. Hey, so we just, a family, we just finished building a home. We moved in last month. During the construction, we were able to cash for a good amount, and the remaining mortgage is $600,000. We're still working to sell our old home. It's paid for. We should be getting around $500,000 from that sale. We have about $880,000 between investments and retirement and $100,000 in cash that has our emergency fund and some earmarked funds to landscape our new home. The question is with the $500,000 from the sale of the old home. I'm wrestling with not wanting my network to be so top heavy with home equity versus investments, which is what it would be if I put it all towards that mortgage. Just wanted to get your advice.

What's your household income?

It's right around between 300 and 400, depending on the year.

Okay, good. Way to go. And what's the new home worth?

We cash flow at about a million, so it would be about 1. 6.

Okay. All right. Yeah, your house is a high percentage of your net worth, and you're not going to get away from that. You made that decision when you decided to build a $1. 6 million house.

It got away from us there?

Yeah, that doesn't change. Scope creep is what got you. The networth situation doesn't change. You can't hide from it now by not paying off the mortgage. It doesn't accomplish what you're trying to accomplish. What I would do is I'd get that mortgage paid off as quick as I could. You got 500 to throw at 600 when the other house sells, and then I'm going to take a chunk of my other money and knock out that last 100. Might use some of that emergency fund instead of putting the bushes in for right now. Let's get the stinking thing paid off, and I'm going to get it paid for. Then I'm going to start moving in that direction. What we've discovered, to answer your overall question, philosophically, so to speak, not really philosophically, but practically, that's your tactical answer that I just gave you. Now, strategically, your answer is this. That's a better way of saying this. As we were working with wealthy people, what we find is the The larger their net worth, the smaller the percentage of their net worth is on personal things: home, cars, vacation homes, toys, whatever. The smaller your networth, the higher the percentage is on your home.

For instance, if your networth is a half a million dollars and you had 300,000 of the half a million in a paid-for house, that's not disturbing. That would be fairly normal. But that's about your ratios, and you're sitting there with about a $4 million networth. Three and a half, right? You got half your networth right now sitting in your house. That's starting to be disturbing. It's not anything to panic about, but we're not buying any more personal crap on the net-worth column side for a while. You just did it. You're house poor. Not technically house poor, but you see what I'm saying. You need to get the balance back, rebalance your networth, because by dumping everything into other investments that are non-personal investments over the next whatever number of years to where when we look up in a few years, you have a $10 million networth, and of that, the house has doubled, and It's 3 million. Now, that starts to be pretty comfortable. But I talked to a guy the other day that we were looking at his numbers, he's got $100 million networth and a $10 million house. His house is only 10% of his networth at that, and yours is over 50%.

But again, that follows with the line of thinking of the higher your networth, the smaller the percentage of your networth is going to be in personal home cars, vacation homes, toys, so on. You take a billionaire and they've got an $8 million jet, and the billionaire has a couple of homes, it doesn't add up to even 6% of their networth in personal consumption. That, again, validates the concept of the higher the net worth, the smaller the percentage. But as high as your networth is, I don't disagree with you, John. It's a little bit unnerving to be there, but being in debt doesn't change it.

Well, and you called it out This call should have happened before we decided what size house we were going to build. Yeah, it's too late. You've already committed it.

Cows out of the barn.

I want to take that risk off of my risk profile. I'm going to pay that sucker off.

Yeah, that helps the situation. It does. Helps It's a sleep at night factor. Right. That's right. Just get it paid off. Then let's just, okay, we have made our personal consumption pledge for the next six years. That's it. We're sleeping in it.

In reality, that means we're going to be aggressive. We're going to put 15% in these mutual funds. Are we going to up a little bit?

Yeah, we're going to up it because everything's paid off. You're a baby step seven. We're going to start doing investments out here big time, and there's not going to be much more personal. If you go to the beach and your friend has a nice condo at the beach, you can't have one. Right.

Because you, instead of buying a $700,000 house and a Beach condo, put some sand in the bedroom.

I mean, that's what we're doing here. That's where you are now. So you're just a little beach there in the second master suite of the 1. 6 million. Yeah, No. Mama wants a Bentley? No. Mama isn't getting a Bentley. It's not happening here.

We got a one and a half million dollar house. Here's the beautiful thing. You make $300, $400, $400, $1 a year.

You clean it up real fast. This is two or three years. You're okay. It's not your stupid discussion or you've done something extremely dumb discussion. It's just like, I'm with you, John. I'm a little nervous about it. I would, based on that, start making the moves to not be nervous. First one, pay off the debt. Second one, redistribute most of your investing away from personal issues for the next five, six years, and then you'll get it balanced back again. You'll be okay. Cool. Victoria is in Columbus, Ohio. Hi, Victoria. How are you?

Hi, guys. I'm Had better years.

Uh-oh. How can we help?

I'm calling because... Sorry, I promised myself I wasn't going to get a mobile, but I feel like my life is a mistake.

It's okay, Dawn. You're good.

I really don't know what to do. We have a business. It's a trucking company. My husband is one of the drivers, and we currently have another one.

Do you have two trucks you're running in the trucking company?

Correct. We had more, but we've had really bad luck with drivers that really did some bad things for us. We are selling some things to try and liquidate the assets to pay off some of the debt. But essentially, we're probably about $400,000 in debt.

How much of that is the two trucks?

One of the trucks we own outright. The other truck, we still owe probably about $75,000 $1,000 on.

What is the truck you own outright worth?

It's probably worth about $100,000.

What about the other one that you owe $75 on?

It's probably worth about 40.

Okay, so that's 140 of the 400 in debt if you sold both those and went and got a job.

Correct.

Okay, I'm just catching up. All right. Do you own a home?

We actually own We have three mortgages, and all three of them are rented.

Do any of them have any equity?

One of them has equity. How much? One of them, we owe 267 on it, and it's probably worth about $450,000.

Sell it.

Today. Put it up on the market today.

Okay.

I'm a little short on time. I'm going to I'll give you a Ramsey Coach as my gift to sit down with you, okay? But you call me up emotional and thinking you're bankrupt. When I sell everything, which is what's going to happen in a bankruptcy, I don't think you're bankrupt. But you're going to have to turn loose to some things. You can't be the monkey with the hand in the bottle holding on to the jelly beans because you can't get away from the bottle. You got to let go of the jelly beans, pull your hand out of the bottle. And that's how it works. I think you can get out, though. I I wish I had more time with you. I'm sorry. Hang on. We'll get you some help, though, kiddo. If you ever googled yourself, here's the two worst things you can find. Photo evidence of your worst haircut and your personal data floating around on some sketchy website. I mean, the bangs were regrettable, but your info being bought, sold, and reposted all over the worldwide web, even worse. And trust me, it happens all the time. And that's why I use delete me.

You guys, over 20 billion records have been leaked in recent years, and that info gets pulled into these people search sites. So stuff like your name, number, address, even your kids' names is out there for anyone to see. But if you're trying to clean up your personal data yourself, good luck. It can be a part-time job just submitting these opt-out requests. So if you don't want your personal info out there, you should be using delete me, too. Delete me has real people who track down your data, remove it from these shady sites, and make sure it stays removed. Plus, you get a report from delete me showing exactly what was found and what's been deleted. So take back your privacy with delete me. Right now, Ramsey listeners get 20% off at joindeleteme. Com/ramsey with code Ramsey at checkout. So do that today. Joindeleteme. Com/ramsey. Code Ramsey. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fairwinds Credit Union Studio. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, number one best-selling author, PhD in counseling, is my co-host today. Todd is with us in Texas. Hey, Todd, how are you?

Hey, guys. I had a question about... I'm going to be 59 and a half in about six more months. I just had a birthday. And my Roth IRA at my work, I'll be able to cash that out without any penalties. And it's the one where you pay your taxes in advance, so I'll be able to get the whole amount out.

Yeah, I know about. And we on a small...

Yeah, we want to build a small cabin. And it looks like I'm going to have about $140,000 to work with. And we've talked to a couple of builders, and we can get about 900 to 1,000 square foot place built for that. My question is, would it be more prudent to pull that cash out because it will take all of it and go ahead and build the cabin and be debt free as far as any a mortgage? Or would it be more prudent to actually I'm going to literally borrow the money and leave that in there? Because I think it's getting to the point where the compound interest is really starting to build over the years.

Honey, that's not how compound interest works. Is it not? No. Compound interest is not get a running start. You just make interest on whatever's there. Over time, you make interest on whatever's there, and whatever's there is larger over time, but it doesn't mathematically get a running start. Do you have any other money?

I have a little bit. I have about 8,000 in my savings account.

What about your wife? Are you married?

Yes. My wife probably has four or five. Then we have a household account that we I have about probably another four or five.

Because you're 59, you quit work, you're going to retire.

Oh, no, no, no.

And you're going to be broke.

No, no, no. I'm not going to retire.

You can't take your money out of a 401k unless you don't work there anymore.

That's not what they told me. This is a TSP, and I work for the federal government.

Okay. All right.

No, they told me when I told 50- Let me tell you what you just did.

You have absolutely no investments now.

No, I would not, but we would both still be working.

Yeah? How does that make it smart?

Well, I mean, that's why I'm calling you, buddy. That's why I'm looking for an answer, my friend.

The answer You're not going to do my answer, okay? My answer is you can't afford a cabin. Oh, really? You don't have enough money. I told you you weren't going to do it.

But now, that's not my only... I do I'll have the Social Security, and I have a FURS retirement account with the government.

I know.

Are you familiar with those?

Yeah, I am very. But I mean, dude, you have no money in a cabin.

Yeah.

There's no way that this makes sense.

Here's the thing. If I wait until I'm 70 years old to when I can retire, and then I build a cabin, what How good is a cabin going to do me? I'm going to be 70 years old.

Well, you won't have to eat the logs.

Well, my thought was, go ahead and we have a home, we'll build the cabin. And in a year or so, if it's looking like it's not working out, I could either sell our home, our primary residence, and move to the cabin, or I could sell the cabin. I guess what I'm saying is- What's the thing beneath the thing, dude?

What's the thing beneath the thing? You've wanted a cabin a long, long time, and you haven't saved up enough money to buy a cabin.

Well, it would be in the TSP account.

I know. You haven't saved up enough money to buy a cabin because you're going to have to your tire broke with a cabin. And that just doesn't... I can't tell you to do that. I'm not going to... I like you too much to tell you to do something that's going to bring you harm, sir. And this is harmful to you. In your mind, you're not I'm not worried about having no money in a cabin. I'm really worried about you having no money.

Too many calls from '65 and '68 and 72-year-olds.

If you want to go stay in a cabin, rent one for the weekend, and keep your money and your investments. You have not saved enough money. You've not done a good enough job with your investments to be able to afford to have a second home. You just don't have the I mean, it's like, call me up and going, Dave, I want to buy a $2 million yacht, and I've always wanted one. Well, you don't have the money. I'm sorry if you always wanted one. It breaks my heart. You can't get your $2 million yacht, but you don't have $2 million to buy a yacht. It's the same thing. You don't have the money to do this. You think you've got the money, but when you go do this and you use up all your money, you're going to be living on social insecurity broke with a cabin. I'm sorry. I can't tell you to do that because I like you too much. I think you're a good guy. You're going to do it anyway because you've got it all figured out. But I can't stop you. But you did call and ask, and so I'm duty bound to tell you the truth because I care about you.

I'm speechless, Dave, and that's a rare moment for me. I get really, really wanting something. But the thought of relying on the government 20 years from now, like, No, they'll take care of me. They'll write that check. That That seems infinitely more foolish than, I don't know. I can't wrap my head around it. It doesn't make any sense to me.

Here's an interesting thing, folks, everybody, everyone falls for this, and I have in the past, too, and some of you are doing it right now, that if you borrow the money, it's as if there's no... That doesn't count.

I still got my money in my account.

I still got my money because I borrowed the money. It's like it allows It drives you to be in denial. Yes. You're participating in denial when you borrow money because you're not admitting that you don't have the money when you borrow money. There you go. Okay. I bought this car that I didn't have the money to buy. I didn't have the money to buy the car, but I bought the car anyway because I'm in denial about the fact that I don't have the money, and I wanted the car anyway. I work really hard.

There's that old saying, whatever you're looking for in the world, you're going to find it. If you really want a cabin, You're going to figure out a way that this somehow makes sense to you, which is why it's good to have wise counsel. But wise counsel doesn't do you any good if you don't listen to wise counsel. So I guess my promise to you, brother, is if you buy the cabin, I'll be here in 10 years, and you can call me when you're trying to figure out what you got to sell, and I'll help you with that. But we'll be talking again. I can't wrap my head around that. And by the way, I really, really want a hunting place with a big cabin on it. I really do. With all my heart, I want that. I just don't have the money for it right now.

No, you really do. Personally, you're not kidding.

I personally, really, really want that.

If he builds it and it gets in trouble, would you buy it from him?

It depends on what county it's in. How many deer it's got on it, but yeah, I'm happy, too. I'm sure.

I got a feeling there's some deer around it. He's in Texas. Oh, man. The Proverb says that the wise sees trouble and takes refuge huge.

The simple moves forward anyway and is punished for it.

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Today's question comes from Andrea in Ohio. Andrea writes, My partner and I have been together for over 25 years, and we have four children together. I've been asking him to marry me since we had our first child. He recently stated that we can get married if I sign a prenup. He had nothing at the start of our relationship, and his business has grown significantly. He has over 300 employees, and his networth is in the millions. I gave up my career 20 years ago to raise our children. We are financially well off, and he has taken very good care of the children and me. Dave is so sick. I don't want to finish this. Is he wrong to ask for a prenup? I love him, but wonder if I should just let go the idea of marriage. I don't really know how I can help you. I think you let go of the idea of marriage 25 years ago when you started having kids.

Andrea, you made a really terrible bargain. Yeah. You gave up everything, and he gave up nothing. You raised his kids and helped him build a business, and he owns it. You made a terrible bargain 25 years ago.

That's what it breaks my heart, man.

The ship has sailed. By the way, he- Here's another. I mean, I'd call this bluff, but I don't think you will, because I think this guy's a jerk. Yeah.

I think the reality that you feel very, very exposed. You felt exposed for 25 years.

It's because you've been exposed.

You've been exposed. I also think if this was to go to court, I think you would have some claim to a lot of this stuff, but it's going to be a mess.

I have no idea what Ohio law is on this stuff. You certainly got child support coming out your ears.

The thing beneath the thing here is- You're not going to do anything.

I can tell. No. You're so codependent. It's unbelievable.

He's such a jerk. He's such a man who lacks any integrity in any way, shape, form, or fashion. The thought of even taking care of his common law wife of a quarter decade and the mother of his four kids, he's thinking of his networth protecting this- His answer is, All this money I made while I was sleeping with you is all mine. It's mine. I mean, I wouldn't want to be in the same room with that guy, personally.

Yeah, he's slimy.

He's a terrible human being, but here we are. My guess is you've got... Dave, my guess is she's got bigger issues, and she's either unsafe, he either has people on the side, she is recognizing how completely exposed she is, and I think she needs to go see a professional counselor, but she also probably needs to sit down with an attorney because I think this type of question tells me this is just what's right above the waterline. Tip of the eye. There's a big mess underneath this.

Yeah, that's true. This is so... You know what it is, though? I can't help Andrea, but you know what we can do? We can read the email. Here's the point, all right? You're 24 years old. And your boyfriend wants to move in together. I hope you read this email and realize how stupid that is.

I mean, that's just-Just how unsafe it is.

How unsafe it is and how exposed you are. It's just straight up stupid. I hope some of you get pissed off about me saying this. I hope you say, I'll never listen to Dave Ramsey again, because some of the most smart things I've ever done in my life is when somebody made me mad. I'm trying to make some of you mad right now because this is If you're 24 and you have a 24-year-old daughter and her boyfriend wants to move in with her, you need to grab both of them up and box her stupid butt little ears. Because this is what it sets up. This is what it sets up. We've got all the data, not just the feelings and the research to go with it. Here's some data for you. If you're 35 and you're married, your networth is somewhere around 10 six if you're shacked up and you're 35. Married men live seven to nine years longer than shacked up men. Hello? Cancer survivors. A much higher percentage of people survive cancer than are married than those who are shacked up in a toxic soup bowl like this woman's in.

We talk about this all the time, Dave.

What if this woman gets cancer?

Exactly.

Because this is $300 million business. He may or may not want to help you out.

Here's the thing. We talk about this a lot, Dave. Success money makes you more of who you are. If you're dating somebody who's a jerk to you, and maybe you accidentally wind up pregnant, and you say, Okay, well, maybe down the road, if... This is how this plays out. Somebody becomes very successful. They were a jerk before they had anything. They were a jerk when you gave up your entire career and your safety.

Why?

And then they become worth millions on your back, and they stay a jerk. That is not love. They get an extra The longest jerk. Yeah, this is a mess.

Love involves serving each other. There's no love in this whole equation right here. This just burns my belly.

Yeah, it breaks my heart for Andrew. I'm sorry, man.

Andrew, you have made some really bad choices 25 years ago, and now you are sitting in the poop. It's unbelievable. I mean, you don't have any options. Your option are stay in the poop or demand that we get married with no Clean up or I'm leaving and taking the kids, which is actually about the only healthy thing to do in this situation. Load up and leave.

You are with somebody who is not a person of- More concerned about them than they are you or the kids.

It hasn't been for decades.

For years, yeah.

For decades. If he was, he would have committed to you, and you'd be taking care of you right now, and you would have been taking care of him. You gave up. Wow. Okay, but the point is this. Sometimes, some of you in your decision-making framework, you think about Friday, thank God it's Friday. How's it feel in the moment? Well, that's what a child does. Adults devise and plan and have a plan. Children do what feels good. Children move in together at 24. It starts, then if you extrapolate that decision-making paradigm, if you use your decision framework and say, Okay, how's this going to work out 25 years from now? Well, Andrea just told you. Then that tells you if it's a good decision or not. It might be an okay decision by Friday. You might get away with stupidity between now and Friday. But when you extrapolate your decision making out and with a long term decision horizon, vision horizon, then you end up with Andrea, and you could tell the decision is a bad idea.

But this isn't just about the money and the kids. I guarantee this is an abusive relationship.

Oh, I promise you it is. It is abusive just with what we know.

Psychological, financial.

With what we know, it's already abusive, but there's got to be more to it. Like you said, tip of the iceberg.

So, yeah, this guy- Andrew, hear from us, man. You're not crazy.

You're not crazy. I will bet you dollars to donuts. He's got a couple on the side.

That's what I mean. At some point, you got to sit down with an attorney and walk through and figure out this mess. Yeah, but she's not going to.

No. I love him.

I don't. Also, I want to... I don't. Being in an abusive relationship, man. You can get trapped, and it's a scary proposition. Quarter century being told you're useless, you're worthless, you're nothing seeps into your nervous system over time. Maybe this is her first reaching out saying, Am I nuts?

The answer is no. You're not nuts. You've done some stuff that's really damaging to yourself by allowing this to go on way too long. Our encouragement will be to stop it now. Stop it now.

You're worth more than this.

I was going to say, tell him the only way you're sticking around is if you marry him. I don't think you marry him. I think you just let him go.

Yeah.

And take half his money.

I don't want to be married to a man who treats-Who does this? A woman and kids like this.

I don't either. Period. I don't want you. We like you, and we don't want you to do that. We love you. We want you to win. So, yeah, I think you're done. But you're not going to do it. We've told you for years, debt is dumb, cash is king, and the borrower is slave to the lender. So when we find a bank that actually gets that, we shout it from the rooftops. That's why we've partnered with Fairwinds Credit Union. These guys aren't pushing credit cards or auto loans like your current bank is. Fairwinds is on your side, and now they've taken it to the next level. They worked with us to create a high yield savings account that gives you a great rate without the junk. No bait and switch rates, no credit score games, just a simple power powerful way to help you build your emergency fund fast. It's part of what Fairwinds calls the Smart Bundle made for Ramsey fans. You get high yield savings, a no fee checking account, and zero gimmicks. It's just common sense banking that works with the baby steps, not against them. Coming soon, they're launching a brand new Ramsey debit card.

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If you're tired of living paycheck to paycheck and feeling like you can't get ahead, join one of our free Every Dollar trainings. They're hosted by one of the Ramsey personalities, and we're doing one every week. We're going to show you how to stick to a budget, find thousands of dollars worth of margin to get out of debt and start building wealth. Plus, you can ask us any question during the live Q&A. Sign up for free at ramsey solutions. Com/webinar. Marie is in Denver Hi, Marie. How are you?

Hi. I am going to tell you my story. I am recently divorced. I'm 73 years old and I'm debt-free, and I have a total of $100,000 in a money market, and I have to withdraw a thousand or two each month for living expenses. Because my Social Security pays all but $100 for my one bedroom apartment. I do have a trustworthy car, and it's fine. It's paid for. I haven't worked in a while, but maybe I can get a part-time job at some point. But my question is, If I'm doing the right thing by just keeping all the money I have.

We just lost you, hon.

Oh, no.

I'm sorry.

She just dropped. Kelly, see if you can get her back, and we'll catch back up because that lady needs some help. Jordan is in Oregon. Hey, Jordan, how are you? Good, Dave.

How are you?

Better than I deserve. What's up?

Good. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. Okay, my question is, we did a family deal mortgage before we found you. My wife and I are huge fans. We've been paying it like a 15. We have five years left. It was all done by a lawyer, so it's legit. But the interesting This is only 1%. I would like to pay it off early, but everyone around me is saying, Don't do that. It's stupid because the money is making more just sitting in high-yield savings.

You don't have the money in high-yield savings?

We do.

Oh, you have the money to pay it off?

We do.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Well, who cares what everyone says? Everyone's broke. Well, I know.

That's why I'm calling you.

I know, but everyone's broke. Don't take financial advice from broke people, man.

Yeah. No, I know.

Or indebted people.

Well, our CPA is even saying not to do it.

Fire him. Yeah. He can't add. Yeah.

Who's the family member that owns this loan?

It was my grandpa, and that's part of the funny equation is that he recently passed away. So his wife, who's not my grandmother, is now the bank. Everything is still okay, but something in my gut just wants to pay her off.

Your gut is correct.

You have a good gut. So here's the thing. Okay. The borrower is slave to the lender. Absolutely. Period. No exceptions. Correct. 100 % of the time that you loan money to someone, you change the relationship. 100% of the time you borrow money from someone, you change the relationship. It is impossible for your step grandmother to treat you the same as if you didn't owe her money. It is impossible for you to treat your step grandmother with the exact same honor or dignity as the former wife of your grandfather when you owe her money, because we now have this transaction involved. The way we say it around here, it apply to this situation, probably, but Thanksgiving dinner tastes different when you eat with your master, the borrower is slave to the lender. If you're a slave, you have, by definition, a master. Even if it's a sweet, kind little white-haired master, you still have a master.

Correct.

You probably have her kids. How many kids does she have?

Yeah, she's got three, and one of them is fairly involved now with her, since my graph has passed.

That's where you start getting this idea that, well, that's actually... They would be better siblings than most if one, if not several of them, don't think, Well, that's our money, or, We want to get our money settled, et cetera. Yeah, absolutely. You're asking what Dave and I would do? Both of us would clear this today.

I paid off by the end of the day. Today. Yeah. You know what's going to happen? You're going to feel like you took a good shower. You're going to feel clean. Yeah.

Not to mention you won't have a house payment forever.

Yeah, exactly.

There is a financial calculation, and you're right. No. Well, there's a math problem to be made. No.

Not when you adjust for risk. That's fair. Not when you adjust for relationship damage. That's what I'm saying. Not when you adjust for the actual realities of what actually happens. That's true. Because these people who say, Oh, you're making 4% and they're only charging you 1%, so you're making a net three. This is the most naive financial formula on the planet. I'm with you. You're leaving out risk, you're leaving out the strain on your body, you're leaving out the strain on your relationships, and all of those have an actual dollar cost to them over time that no one has ever been able to calculate accurately, except God says the borrower You're a slave for the lender, and he meant it. There you go. Obviously, he knows I do math better than your broke friends. That's it. That's what it comes down to to me. I quit borrowing money, period. The last time I'm going to loan anybody I love money happened about 40 years ago. If somebody needs money that I've got in my family or friends, and I've got the money, and I decide they need my money, I'm going to give it to them.

There will not be a loan. That's simple. All right, we were talking with Marie. I think we got her back 73. She's got $100,000. She's trying to live on her Social Security, but it barely pays her one bedroom worth of rent in Denver, Colorado. Marie, why are you in Denver?

I moved there from the south, and I have a daughter and grandson there. I've been there for 17, 18 years, and it's hard to go back to the south.

I wasn't trying to get you to go back to the south. It's just a very expensive real estate market. Well, it is.

I'm really north of there, but that's the main area.

It's 60 miles north. Where are your kids? Are you up in Aurora?

No, in Winsor. Okay. All right.

How close to your kids are you? Physically. You mean physical?

I'm close to my daughter, real close to my daughter and grandson.

Can you move a little bit further away and get a much cheaper apartment?

Well, it's 1390, and that includes they started charging for water and all that. That's about as cheap as I even saw when I was looking.

Yeah, I know, but I'm just asking because you can't afford the apartment. That's what's killing me here. Okay. I don't know, because if you burn $1,000 a month and you don't make anything on the 100, then you would burn it up in 100 months, correct?

Yes.

And so you're 80.

Right.

81. 81 at that point.

With no assets, no dollars, no nothing.

And now you're homeless. Right. Okay. We don't That's not a plan. If we invest the 100 and we made 10% on it, that'd be $10,000 a year, $833 a month. That'd help, but you then have to live within that. Otherwise, you're going to burn it up still.

Yes.

Okay.

If I can make enough working inside.

Yeah. You're going to have to add something to it and you're going to have to manage your expenses. That includes the investigation of cheaper rent somewhere, somehow. Okay. I don't know what that is. I don't have a magic wand to wave. I just know that Denver is very expensive. It's a beautiful city. It's very expensive. Do you move 30 miles out in the country somewhere and rent a little garage apartment from some little couple that's sweet? I I don't know. I don't know. But you're close enough to family, but you cut your costs in half. You need to get with a smart investor pro at ramsey solutions. Com and get the majority of the $100,000 invested. So it starts making something. Making 4% versus 10% is a deal breaker for you. So you've got to get up there, get the money in some mutual funds and get to making some money.

This is a heartbreaking thing to say. It's one of the hardest things I ever have to say on this show. For a 73-year-old recently divorced woman, that tells me you've been through a a lot, but you might have to go get a part-time job.

She said that.

Yeah, if you have to go get some money coming in somehow.

I would twist three knobs on this and try to get it to where it runs sustainable because the math you're giving me is not sustainable. It's going to burn up. Knob number one, get the money invested so it makes some more money. Nob number two, get your expenses down by considering different rent, and knob number three, create some income by doing some work while you can. And let's try to get this where you create a thing where not burning through the money and end up in a really horrible situation. Blake is in Minnesota. Hey, Blake, how are you? Hey, Dave, how are you doing? Better than I deserve. How can I help?

All right. So I'm 39 years old. The only debt I have right now is a personal loan for $30,000. It's a 10. 9 % interest rate.

I have about 140 in my Roth IRA.

Over 50 of that is what I put in. I'm just curious if it's worth taking the money out to pay off the personal loan to free up some cash.

How old did you say you are?

Thirty-nine.

Oh, no, you can't do that. No, you're going to get hit with a penalty of 10% plus your tax rate. And so you're going to get hit with like a 35% or 40% hit. So it's like saying, Dave, I want to borrow money at 40% interest to pay off a loan. No, we're not doing that.

Okay. I thought what I put in, I could take out.

On your Roth, you can, but I wouldn't unplug your Roth. What's your household income, sir?

Between me and my wife, almost 100.

Okay. And how much do you owe in your cars?

My wife's car, she has about 12,000 left, and I have 14,000 left.

Is that the 30?

No. The 30 was about a year ago, we consolidated all of our credit cards and everything into one.

Okay.

So you actually owe 60?

Yes, besides with the cars in the personal loan.

Yeah. All right. Now, what we'll have you to do, and you've got two Two years of pretty extreme discomfort coming. You're going to live on beans and rice, rice and beans. You're not going to see the inside of a restaurant unless you're working there as your extra job and you're not going on vacation. Scorched earth on your lifestyle. Get on a detailed written budget on the Every Dollar app, lay out your budget and live on nothing. With your extra income that you create and the stuff you sell around the house and the tight budget, you pay off $30,000 a year for two years and you're 100% debt free, You got your home. Now you got your life back. But you guys have chipshotted one little ding at a time, one little thing at a time, one little thing at a time, and then bought a car, and then one little thing at a time, and then bought a car, and then one little thing at a time, all the way into $60,000 worth of debt, making 100, and you can't breathe.

Yeah. I mean, we're not struggling by any means.

Yeah, you are.

But I just figured at such a young age.

Yeah, you're broke. Yeah.

Bro, I've been there. Both of us have.

This is not fun. I mean, you're not bankrupt, but you got no no wiggle room in your budget. It's no fun. That's why you're trying to do something about it. It's uncomfortable.

Yeah.

Yeah. But there's no hack. The hack is hack through it as fast as you can by living on nothing for a short period of time. You and your wife sit down and say, What would it feel like if we had no payments? What would it feel like? How fast could we build some wealth? What generosity could we do? How would we change our whole family How many tree if we had no freaking payments? And then you get in attack mode and knock it out. I don't know if you're ready to do that or not, because you called me looking for an easy way out. You're not quite ready to be disgusted yet. But the people that change their lives, sir, are the ones that say, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. I've had it. And you got to get that thing going in your voice. When you do that, now you're going to start to see some things move, and that'll work.

But don't rob future you because you can't quit consumption.

Last time you tried to borrow your way out, by the way, borrow your way out of debt, it didn't work. Had credit card debt, went and got a consolidation loan. Now we're going to cash out. We're always trying to find an easy pill. There's no easy button on this. You got to get it. That's a hard thing. John, I was being interviewed on one of the podcasts the other day, one of these famous these guys. He was asking me because we've got so many Gen Zs and so many millennials here. I had a thought. I thought I'd run it by you. It came to me in the middle of that. I often get asked because I'm such a proponent of Gen Z and millennials. I love those two generations. He's a huge fan. I've got 600, 700 of them on my payroll that work here, and I love them. They're incredible team members. They do a great job. The guy was going, Why is that? He goes, You got the good ones. Yeah, there's some bad ones, there's some good ones. There isn't every generation. But why is it? It's because they grew up with this magic wand in their hand.

Anything is possible because if I push a button or download an app, anything's possible. I push a button, stuff shows up on my porch. I push a button, I can answer any question. I push a button, I'll write my paper for me. I push a button. I mean, everything is possible. So they're possibility thinkers. Their abundance mentality is unbelievable. What The toxic version of that when it goes too far is its entitlement. Correct. But the other thing I thought, he said, Well, what's the main thing we could teach them? I was actually speaking at a college, too, recently with a bunch of young zeers. And He said, What's the first thing you would tell this generation? I said, Well, what comes with this instantaneous abundance, not only is the positive of it, is you get this thing of anything's possible. You really think positively rather than negatively. Where like some of my generations, it's around with their lips stuck out whining.

My granddad's straight nails, right? Yeah. Exactly.

The world's coming to an end and everything's so bad. Everybody's got a bunch of whiners in the generation. But our generations were negative thinkers, and we had to teach them with Zig Zigler how to be a positive thinker, right? But these guys all think positive already. What they don't have is the patience. That comes out, that lack of patience. When a boomer or somebody's looking in from the outside, they call that entitlement. I don't think it's really entitlement. I think it's I'm used to getting something quickly, and when it doesn't come quickly, I don't know how to act.

It's an expectation. It's not even entitlement. It's just the way it's always worked.

It's the way it's been. Every time I push a button, something happens, and then I pushed a button and nothing happened.

You have to be able to distance food apps from developing a great relationship with somebody. It takes time or getting strong.

Or paying off $60,000 worth of debt, making $100.

Paying off debt, right. There's things that just takes time.

That's two years of grind. You mean I can't push a button?

Yeah.

No, it's two years of grind. You mean I can't? No, it's two years of grind. No, there's not an app. There's not a hack. There's not a shortcut. Tiktok ain't going to help you. It's two years of grind. Then you'll be free forever because you will be changed, not just your money.

The hardest sell for me is people realizing you're going to be out of debt, but you're not even going to recognize yourself. You'll have muscles you didn't understand, you'll have strength you didn't understand. You take that level of discipline and strength and ability to grind and then put that on top of or underneath this endless possibility mindset, and literally the world is yours.

But that only comes from high reps over an extended period of time.

That's it.

This is not I lift two pushes on the bench press. This is high reps, low weight every day.

For years.

Every day. Then you are transformed.

You're transformed.

Then the money is transformed, too. But that's, like you said, it's not the best part. The best part is you are changed. When Sharon and I went through the crucible of losing everything and then having to claw our way back out with our fingernails, it isn't that we went through that, it's that we went through that. I mean, We are so freaking permanently changed from that in such a good way that it makes the strain worth it. If I could inject with a needle a big syringe into a generation that is fabulous, the ability to persevere over an extended period of time, add that to their incredible abundance thinking and possibility thinking. Unstopful. It's going to be the biggest, baddest, coolest generation in history of man.

Ever. That means whereas I remember my granddad, my grandmother, they got a sack of oranges for Christmas one year because there wasn't oranges everywhere. That was a big deal to get oranges in December.

That was huge. Well, you knew somebody in Florida.

You knew somebody who knew somebody who got a sack of oranges. That was a cool thing. They had to inject, go manufacture, go work at Optimism. This group has to... Everything is possible, but it can detach you from reality. So you have to inject hard regular practices on a day in and day out basis.

You have to learn to cook in the crockpot with the microwave. And wait.

You have to learn to be bored and not scroll in a Walmart line. You have to learn to pay off your stuff over time. You have to learn to exercise on a regular basis, and you will be stunned at who you become on the back end of that journey. Hey, what's up? Dr. John Deloney here. The new dates have dropped for the money and marriage getaway over a Valentine's Day weekend in 2026. This is your chance to hit pause on everything in your life and reconnect with your spouse over a long weekend in Nashville, Tennessee. Me and my friend, Rachel Cruz, will be digging into topics like sex, money, communication, and more. This weekend is happening on February 12th through the 14th. An early bird price to start at $749 per couple, but the prices will be going up soon. Get your tickets today at ramsey solutions. Com/events.

Welcome back to The Ramsey Show in the Fairwinds Credit Union studios. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thank you for being with us. Dr. John Deloney, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. The phone number is 888-825-5225. Michael is in Arizona. Hey, Michael, how are you? I'm doing well, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up?

Well, Dave, I'm married. I'm 25 years old. I have a toddler and another baby on the way.

Fun.

A bit of a pickle financially. My job hours are really inconsistent. And so we're about $13,000 in debt. Most of it is medical or dental. And I'm barely working enough to cover the essentials some weeks. Some weeks I'm making overtime. Up until now, I haven't made the best financial choices, but I decided to start school, so I'm going to school for IT. I just don't know if I should try to focus on getting out of debt or try to focus on school to get a better job and then try to get work from there.

What do you do now, sir?

Now, I drive a cement mixer.

And they pay you what when you're driving?

I'm on track to make about 65,000 gross this year.

And you can't live on that?

If on that, I could barely live, there would not be much extra for much of anything.

With $13,000 for the debt, you can't live on $65,000 Well, I haven't made the best financial- Okay. We don't have a system. We don't have a system, so we don't know. Okay. That, I believe. That, I believe. All right. That makes sense.

I need to change my ways, and I'm willing to get it.

So you and your pretty wife sit down the night and open up the EveryDollar app. I'm going to give you the upgrade version of it for free and start laying out a detailed budget of what it takes to live each month. And your income is not as volatile as your behavior. Okay. So when you get that system down, that's going to help you a lot. If you If you want to change careers from cement truck driver to IT, I'm perfectly fine with that. So what are you spending on the IT?

I'm not spending anything. Between scholarships and federal aid, it's all paid for.

That's awesomeness. And what are you studying? A certification program?

It's an accelerated bachelor's and master's program for a bachelor's in IT and a master's in IT management. Okay. My biggest... Oh, sorry.

Are you able to do this in the evenings after you get done driving?

Yes, I've been working on it each day when I get done. The biggest problem that I'm having is my hours are so inconsistent, and with the way the market's been, they've been cutting our hours. So I'm making less and less money, and that could continue to go down. I may not make.

All right, let's- $55,000 this year. Let me reset you for a second. Okay, To be making $200,000 a year, you do not need a four-year degree or a master's degree in IT. You need to have certifications and you need to know how IT works, but you can get all of that a whole lot faster than you can do an online bachelor's, online master's, even if they're accelerated. What you've signed up for is complete overkill for your goal. I've got tons of tech people, like 500 of them working in the building, and I don't know of any of them that have a master's in IT. One or two have four-year degrees. Most of them have industry certifications. They've got Microsoft Certs, they've gone to code school, they've learned to code, they've learned Some of the cybersecurity moves that need to be done. They've learned platform technologies, but they don't have a master's degree in IT. But the time you finish a master's degree in IT, What you have learned will be irrelevant because the market moves that fast. I'm going to ask you not to do what you're doing. I know that's very hard. But if you were my son, I would say, yes, IT is a great path for you.

The good news is you can get a couple of certifications within six or eight weeks and go get a job in that field making $60,000. Be a lot more steady. Oh, and by the way, they'll probably pay from that point forward once you're working for a technology, a company or a company that embraces technology and digital technologies like Ramsey does, they'll probably pay for you to continue to study and get more certifications. We do that here. We teach people new languages, we pay for their certs, we pay for them to go through because we want better and better technology people on the team every day. But a master's degree is 1,000% not necessary to move into that field. I'm the hiring person. I can tell you that. I'm your employer, so I'm sure I know what I'm What are you talking about.

Michael, tell me about the jump from cement mixing to IT. Is that something you want to do? Are you just listening and hearing what people say is the next good job? Or you're just going to try to do that?

When I was in high school, I took a certification, and I really enjoyed it, but I just never did anything with it. Then when I got married and we had our first baby, I was already in the construction construction field, and I just stuck with it because it's what I knew.

Well, you got a job and you were trying to feed your family.

Yeah, good for you. You're a noble man. I'm proud of you. It's awesome.

That's a good thing. What I'm saying is that Number one, I might reset how I'm trying to enter the IT field. With that, let's go ahead and get a different job today. We don't have to stay in the cement business until we get... Cement driving business until we get to a master's degree completed. That's not necessary to do this. You could get a job very quickly in the IT world and be in the proximity of the people that you're going to be working with anyway. They'll give you better advice on how to get tools in your belt, how to get educated to move up through the ranks in the IT section of a company. And a lot of times, they'll pay for it. And so it solves several things at once. It shortens the time between you between the cement mixer and the IT. And it fixes the fact that the cement mixer hours are going down now because we're going to start moving into IT now. And that's what I would tell you to do across the board on this, because you're a good guy, a noble person. You're willing to work hard. You're willing to do whatever it takes to feed your family.

You just hadn't had a good track to run on, and you got to develop a track, and you reached out and got a track. I'm just thinking, and there's a better one than the one you grabbed a hold of.

I'd also recommend sitting down with somebody- You got a PhD in higher Ed.

Does this guy need a master's in IT?

I don't know enough to know about it. I don't know any of the guys that work on the stuff that I'm working on that have master's degrees.

In Nashville, in the building here that work with you. You know more than I do about that stuff. Do you know any I don't know any of them that have- No, I don't know any of them. I don't have a single PhD. Yeah, no. Not a one.

You'd get a PhD in IT if you want to teach IT.

That'd be it.

Right, that'd be it.

Teach people things that we don't use anymore.

I would love to see you go sit down with somebody, not in the university setting, but somebody who's working in IT in your local area and ask-What do I need to do? What do I need to do to get in the door? To stay right. They might say, Why don't you just come work here right now? We have a $40,000 job, but we'll train you in X, Y, and Z, and you and your wife could take a six-month hit and you're back on the road. But go sit down and have coffee with somebody in your area right now. That'd be the path. Don't wait till the cement mixture job just dwindles to nothing.

It's going to.

The boat has a hole in it. Go ahead and get off the boat if you can. Yeah.

Hang on. We're going to send you a copy of Proximity Principle from Ken Coleman and help you get going. We've all done dumb things with money. I've done them with zeros on the end. One of the biggest mistakes I see people make with money is not having a plan for it. You got to have a plan. You got to be intentional and you need to get a budget. You have to tell your money where to go so you're not wondering where it went. Our budgeting app, Every Dollar, helps you do just It's the easiest and fastest way to make a monthly plan for every dollar you've got coming in and going out. Now is the best time to get started before the ridiculous holiday spending season gets here and sucks you in because you didn't have a plan. Don't let that If you're going to make a mistake, you're done making that mistake. Go download every dollar for free in the App Store or Google Play today. Only one smart way to do a real estate transaction, especially in a world like we live in today. Have a high quality, high octane, high protein, Ramsey trusted agent that you can trust, make your home a blessing, not a burden in your corner.

You can compare agent profiles, you can interview them, choose the right one to work with, all at Ramsey Trusted. So find a local Ramsey Trusted real estate pro for free, ramseysolutions. Com/agent, or click the link in the show notes. Steven is in Michigan. Hey, Steven, how are you?

Doing good, Dave. How are you doing?

Better than I deserve. What's up?

I got a question that I think I know the answer to, but I'm going to see what you're going to say about it. So I bought a house last year, and my interest rate is 7. 375, and my mortgage was sold, and the new mortgage lender is saying, Hey, we can save you some money if you refinance. Now, we're on the back half of Baby Step 2, my wife and I, and I have the money to pay off our car, it's approximately 6,600. And the mortgage lender says, I would strike now while rates are a little lower, because if you pay that car off, that's the last piece of debt in my name. You said your credit is going to start to drop off and that'll start hurt you. So I guess my question is, do I pay off the car or do I refinance and then pay off the car? What should I do?

Yeah. Well, your mortgage lender only makes a commission when they sell you a mortgage.

Right.

So we know their advice is tainted in this case. This guy's pitching pretty hard.

He is. They are pretty aggressive with the calls. Yeah.

So that right there tells you that something's up, right? Correct. I'm paying off the car, and I'll get around to the mortgage later. Why did you take such a high interest rate loan?

Well, we were living in- I know, but that's above market.

Did you have bad credit?

No. Credit score is up for seven.

Yeah, 737 is ridiculous. I mean, the market for a year has been at six.

That's weird. Yeah. So I don't know a whole lot about finance. I've recently started learning everything and going through the financial piece and the baby steps. I am making up for lost time.

All right, let's do two things. Let's answer your question in two parts, and so we get the whole thing, and that'll help you. It'll help some people that are listening, too. Okay. Number one, if the only choice is between paying off your car or refinancing, we'll pay off your car. Okay, so that part's answered. Number two, the mortgage lender They're being aggressive is your hint that he's self-serving, not you serving. That's why they're calling back all the time and trying to make a commission. Number three, here's how you calculate when you refinance a mortgage. You do a break-even analysis. All right, let's use an example. All right, let's pretend that you had 737, and you could get 637. That's a spread of one. If you refinanced, right? Mm-hmm. And your loan balance is currently what?

$380,000.

Okay. So 1% is $3,800 a year.

Correct.

That is your savings. Okay. So if it costs you $15,000 to refinance and you recoup at the rate of $3,800, it's going to take five years to get your money back. You follow that? Mm-hmm. That's called a break-even analysis. How long before I break even with a savings of 3,800 versus a cost of 15,000? If your cost was 7,600, you break even in two years. Everything after two years, you're putting 3,800 in your pocket. That one starts to make sense. But 15 years doesn't make sense. And so what we've got to do is we have to figure out the closing costs and divide the annual interest rate savings into the closing costs. And that number should be two maximum of three years, 2-3 years or less. What that ends up telling us is the lower the closing costs and the greater the difference in interest rate when you refinance, the more likely you are going to be to do it mathematically because the faster you're going to break even. I agree. Okay. If these rates drop on down, if we see some continued movement, and we've seen a little bit of movement in the last few weeks, the 15 year right now is 5.

86 on a 15 year. Okay? It's 5. 99 Nine, five. It's only a 10th of a point. It's just barely moving. It's just hanging around. But there's all this discussion around the Fed and all these other things right now. There seems to be some downward pressure. I disagree with your guy that now is the time. I probably would wait a little bit. But if you could save 2% right now and you could make your money back in two years, I'd refinance it right now, but not with your car money. Okay, yeah. The way you do the analysis is divide your interest rate dollars saved, interest dollars saved into your closing cost dollars, and that's your number of years to break even. And that number of years needs to be 2-3 years maximum. Just to throw a few more stats at you guys listening out there and hearing this, the average home in America for the past 25 years is sold every 6. 5 years, and the average mortgage only lasts 5. 5 years. And so if you have a seven-year break even on your refinance, you got screwed. Because on average, you're not going to be there that long.

Oh, it's my forever. Oh, shut up. I'm giving you the averages. I don't hear about your forever, nothing. The deal is that your refinance needs to break even in two years, maybe three. But as we see these rates slide down, and some of you are sitting in some six, even some 7% interest rates, and we see them slide down towards five again, you're going to see that 2% margin and that 2% margin is going to take a whole bunch of you to make this formula work to refinance.

Why would I, I'm asking for a friend, why would I pay off that car with that $6,000 versus pay this thing off and lower that rate substantially?

Because we've got to clear the cash first. The cash flow on the car payment is much greater than the $3,800.

Good call. I'm probably paying five, 600 bucks a month on that car versus- Maybe seven.

The average is $780 right now.

Then the $3,800 A hundred bucks divided by 12. Yeah. Okay.

The mortgage is going to be sitting there, and the car, it's like an impediment in this whole thing. It's like the fly in the ointment. I love that. The mortgage is sitting there. I got to clean up the mess so I can go work on and fine tune the stuff that's not as big a mess. We don't mess with the fine-tuning while we still got baseballs being thrown through the window.

If somebody clears the cars and they've got $35,000 in student loan debt-They need to clear the student loans. Before you go refinance your-Yeah, unless if you want to roll your refinance costs into the mortgage, you could do that.

But you don't need to drain cash to do it. Because again, but only if you're breaking even, then. Because you now owe more on the house by $7,000, but You're going to save 3,800 a month or 3,800 a year. So that's two years. Two years, you come out ahead on doing that, even though you owe more, but you'll owe less when you're done. So all that works out mathematically. But wow, a little bit of a barrel of fish hooks. But yeah, that's guys and gals, how you work your refinance calculator. And Churchill Mortgage can help you with all that. We've endorsed them through all the ups and downs of interest rates over all these 30-something years they've been on the air with Ramsey. They can help you. They'll tell you the truth, they're not going to do what this mortgage lender is doing to Steven and just hounds you to buy something you don't need to buy.

I'll tell you my favorite thing. When I called Churchill and said, This is several years ago, I'm going to refinance my house. The first thing the guy had said to me was, I need you to hear me say, I'm not going to take your money unless this works out for you in the end. So let me run the math on it and I'll holler back at you. Then he called back and said, Oh, yeah, this is a great deal X, Y, or Z. But that was the first thing is, I'm not going to just make a sale on your back. I'm not going to take your money if this isn't going to work out for you and your family. I was like, Man, I'm all in. I appreciate that.

Just a little inside baseball, guys. Mortgage companies have been dying for the last three years because they existed for the previous 10 years, 20 years on refinances, and refinances have disappeared as some of you are sitting on 2. 37, and you're not going to refinance at a 5. 8. You'd be dumb to do that. The refinance market has dried up, and they were living off of refinances, so a lot of mortgage companies have gone broke. And so that's where some of this pressure is coming from. And then you got people like, Rock it. You spend hours researching before making a major purchase like a home or car, but it's also a good idea to put in the work searching for the right insurance coverage. To protect your biggest assets, I recommend using Ramsey Trusted Pros. Whether you're looking for car, home, or any other type of insurance, Ramsey trusted providers have been coached and vetted to serve you like we would. Find what you need at ramseysolutions. Com/insurance. Are you on track with the Baby Steps? You can take a quick quiz to check your progress and receive a personalized plan just for you. Simply head to the show notes, click the link titled Are You on Track with the Baby Steps?

And the free quick quiz. Eric's in Ohio. Hi, Eric. Hey, Dave. How are you doing? Better than I deserve. What's up?

Well, I'm looking for maybe some advice on a sounding board. I'm 37 years old, married, and I have four young daughters. My oldest is in second grade. My wife and I both have very good jobs. Combined income, gross before retirement taxes is about 310, 315. Wow. So we're doing well, right? So about seven, eight years ago, we had the opportunity to buy from my uncle's estate, the family farm that's been in the family for 150, 60 some years. And it's appreciated more than we would ever thought in that amount of time. So we bought it for 7,700 bucks an acre. The neighbors just sold for over 18,000 an acre. So we're thinking like, I know, great. Those things don't happen. That's what I'm saying. This is in real life. Should we just get out now? So we still have a note on the farm. We didn't buy it in cash. We didn't have that cash, but it's relatively cheap money because that was back in 2019. Then we refinanced. It's about a 4. 1 $2. 5 is what we have on it. So 80 acres, it would probably 1. 4-ish. It's hard to say. It's worth what somebody will pay for it.

And you owe what?

About Four hundred, just shy 400, I think 395.

All right. And you have a mortgage on your home?

We do have a mortgage on our home, yeah.

What do you owe on your home? $2.

35.

Okay. And you make three fifteen. Do you have any other debts?

No, none.

How much in your nest egg in retirement and so forth?

So I was just looking this afternoon. I think mine has 205. And my wife, she started a little bit later. She has about 100, 105, somewhere in there.

So how old are you guys?

We're both 37. Okay.

Well, if you hadn't called us, what normal people would do would be just continue to service the 400 and let this thing continue to skyrocket in value.

Right.

I'm not as happy with the 400,000 as most people would be in debt. You got a million dollars equity laying there. I started asking myself, if I'm you and I've got a million dollars piled in the middle of the table and I don't own this farm, would I go buy this farm or would I do something else with a million dollars? You would only buy the farm if you thought it was going to continue to go up in value pretty rapidly. It's an investment. It's why you would buy it. In this case, it's actually got another added element. It's been in the family for 150 years. That's emotional.

It has been in the family for a while, but at the time, nobody else wanted it. My wife and I were like, I mean, we had some money.

We were able to make the payment.

We penciled it out and all that, and it worked out. Knowing that it's a good- Do you have any money that's not in retirement?

Any cash or investments that are not in retirement?

Yeah, we have some savings. We also have a brokerage account. The brokerage account has like 80 some thousand just savings at our bank. It's about 50,000.

Okay. Here's Here's two options, and either one is fine with me. Option one is, you said how much is in the brokerage again? Eighty? No.

Eighty-five.

Eighty-five. You make 315. Then you got 50 in your emergency fund?

Mm-hmm.

Any other money that's not retirement?

No, not really. I mean, some checking account, but that's maybe 20 some thousand. I guess that counts, but I don't look at that as- No, it's not a lot.

I mean, you're making 315,000, so that's a month. So what I'm going to do is look at our budget, you and your wife, and say, All right, I want to pay off our house really fast. I'm going to throw 85 at the house. That leaves 150. And we make 315. We're going to pay off the house in the next 24 months while paying minimum payments on the farm and keep the farm. That's option one. Option two, sell the farm, pay off the house, and invest the money somewhere. Okay. I mean, either one's fine. The question becomes, where do I want to invest a million dollars? Do I want to invest a million dollars in wonderful dirt in wonderful Ohio, which is obviously not a bad investment. It's done really well. It's not a bad investment. One of the guys we studied in the Millionaire study had $24 million worth of dirt. It was just dirt. I mean, it's Kansas I'm a dirt farmer in Kansas. Just straight up, man. Soy beans and corn, baby. Hello. That's what it is. $24 freaking million. It's good. There's nothing What are you doing wrong with it. I'm not mad about dirt at all.

But you just need to ask yourself, the reason you bought this was not because you woke up one morning and said, I want to systematically invest in dirt. No, it was presented to you because of the family connection, and that woke you up and you went, Well, that might be cool. Let's go do it. So you almost backed into it. Definitely. But it wasn't the implementation of a strategic thought. That's true. Okay. Now what I'm saying is I'd back up and look at this through strategic eyes and say, All right, I can keep it. It's no sin. But what I'm doing is I'm investing a million dollars into dirt. If I'm going to If I were to do that, then I'm going to get my house paid off pretty quick, and then we're going to turn our attention to getting the 400 knocked out and be sitting here debt free with by then a piece of ground that's worth 2 million and a house that's worth what? What's it worth today, your house?

No, it's 350-ish, probably 375.

It's going to be 400, 500, 600,000 by then. You're going to have a $2 million worth of dirt, $600,000 worth of house, and then you're going to be loading up your mutual funds in your retirement, and you're going to be looking at five, six, $7 million net worth in about a four to five year period of time by leaning into these things and thinking about it strategically if you keep the farm. If you don't, then you pay off the house, you take the money, you do the exact same thing, but you do it with different investment vehicles. So either one of those is fine. But if you keep it, it comes with the pledge with the two of you to not beans and rice, but to be intentional and systematic about clearing the house pretty quick and then clearing the farm pretty quick after that. No more debt.

Then you can look up in five years.

All this paid for.

Have a couple of million dollars worth of real estate, which is not a good idea.

More like three or four million dollars worth of real estate in five years. Yeah, that's where we're headed. That's if you keep it. It's obviously gone.

I mean, I thought it. It's been a minute, but I thought I read that tech companies are looking at some of these places in the north that were old rust belt places where they can go in and buy dirt cheap and put out big ecosystems of whatever.

It could just be farmlands doing that.

It might just be good dirt for farmland.

I mean, Ohio, I don't know. But I do not have personal knowledge of that marketplace. I don't either. It's just interesting. I'm so happy for you that you made all that money on it and that you have this problem. It's awful.

I have a strange attachment to dirt, so my answers are never rational.

Yeah, mine too. Brett is in Wisconsin. Hey, Brett, what's up?

Hey, Dave. Really great to talk to you. Thanks for chatting with me.

Sure. I came late to the baby steps.

I don't think I've been terribly irresponsible with money, but was running out at the end of each month and thinking, I make too much money to be broke, as you say. I've started doing your program. We've gotten on a budget, stopping credit cards.

Have you, really? Every dollar is written down before the month, and your wife and you agree on it? Yes. Wow. How'd that feel? Well, it felt better for me than for her, I think. But knowing that there's money left over at the end of each month has been a great for my peace of mind. I know that.

So we stopped using credit cards. We never carried credit card balances, but everything came in, went right to them, right?

Where I'm at right now is I've got a lot of retirement savings, and my only debt is probably car loan and home loan.

I'm trying to get on the path.

Is it really okay to stop saving for retirement completely? Yeah, for a short period of time and knock that car out. Absolutely. That's what we teach people, and it works. You're not talking about doing it long. Five, six months and you're clear. You don't have a car payment anymore. No more credit card debt. We now have a plan. Me and my wife are in agreement. Sounds like her vote needs to count a little bit more in this budgeting, like you crammed it down her throat a little bit. But yeah, other than that, it sounds like you got it going. It takes a little while to get the momentum moving off of this, though. Our scripture of the day, John 8: 12, Jesus said, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of the world. Jordan Peterson said, It is my firm belief that the best way to fix the world, a handyman's dream, if there ever was one, is to fix yourself. Most of you are aware that we record this show or do this show live on the glass here at Ramsey from 1: 00 to 4: 00 Central Time Monday through Friday in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions.

And then various platforms pick up what I'm saying right now, Hours from Now. By the time you hear that, it will be old news. But moments ago, Charlie Kirk was shot and killed in Utah, at Utah Valley University. And I don't know a lot of the details at this point, other than apparently it was a long distance shot, and not super long, a couple of hundred yards, but it wasn't up close and personal. But in the days and weeks to come, I'm sure all the sorted issues of mental illness that are associated with the shooter will come out and all those kinds of things. It just takes my breath. I knew Charlie, and I had spoken at some of his events. He's brilliant and a firebrand, for sure, a lightning rod. Brilliant in debate. 31 years old, two little girls. They're like four years old and under. Same as my little grandkids, same age as them. Many, many, many of the people that we speak with in leadership events and pastors across the country, a lot of us run in the same circle. Again, I've been at his events with pastor friends of mine and leadership friends of mine that teach and so forth in that.

I had many, many, many conversations with him. This is just sickening. I can't breathe. I can't think of anything except about a little wife that's 30 years old and a couple of little kids because somebody has decided that their political views are more important than anything else and decided to put a bullet in somebody. It's just simultaneously angry and sad and rage inside my chest right now. I feel just sick. I think I'm going to throw up. But certainly, we will be praying for his family, and we will also be in touch with all of them. Like everybody else in America, we'll be trying to help them out and do anything for them that we can to try to just deal with the results of some animal that is some mentally deranged moron that's out of control. This is just the result of people have lost the ability to have a good argument without losing their minds. You can't argue your political point. You can't argue a point of view. You can't say that someone's right or someone's wrong without somebody losing their dadgum mind in this culture right now. It's plain dangerous. It's not going to end well if we don't get some of these folks under control.

I'm going to get home and hug my daughter.

Yeah.

Amen. My daughter's I got a little girl home. Yeah, that's all I'm going to say.

You can't have enough security to offset this level of crazy. It's impossible. I mean, we're careful with our appearances, places, and do what we can to have reasonable wisdom about the exposure you take when you step into public and have an opinion. But Obviously, he was a lot more controversial than us. We stir up enough controversy and let people hate us, but nothing like he had. The stuff he got was over the top. But it He's sitting there in the middle of a bunch of college students having a discussion. Well, it goes back to-willing to engage today's societal events and cultural arguments.

It just goes back to what we were saying earlier, though, man. There's disagreements and there's vehementate disagreements, and there's anger, and there's frustration. Then when you go home, there's a dad of two little girls. If you can't make that separation, man, you need to go get some help because it's a, I don't know. I got too much experience showing up to that and having to call that wife, and I don't have it.

You've done enough trauma courses. I don't have it.

I need to get home and hug my wife and hug my daughter and be really grateful that I've got that privilege today.

It is interesting what you're talking about, that you go back to the number of relationships, families, and otherwise that were fractured by the argument over nuanced arguments about COVID, and they still don't speak to each other. Still don't see their grandkids because one of them wanted a mask and one of them didn't. They made little things the major things. I can't speak to them because they voted for Trump or they didn't vote for Trump.

30% of the calls into my show are adult kids who were cut off by their parents or parents calling in saying, Our adult kids have cut us off.

Just divided. For whatever reason. For whatever reason. Yeah, it's like cancel culture. Inside homes. Yeah. Inside families and inside neighborhoods and inside whatever. You seem to separate the level of importance between the father of two little kids and your little pissant argument that you've got.

Or even a big argument. But it's- It's pissant in comparison to him being there for his kids.

That's right. Weigh against that, there's not an argument you've got that weighs against that. Zero. No one. No one. I don't care about... You can talk about whatever flag you want to fly. I don't care. But you can't... It's just ridiculous. Because none of your little argument at the end of that trigger is actually valid at that point. You've invalidated the whole thing. It's a really, really sad thing.

I want to I want to talk about that guy. I want to talk about, go home and hug your kids and go home and say a prayer for the Kirk family. I don't care who you are. I don't care what you believe. I don't care what you vote for. Say a prayer for a family that just lost her dad and lost her husband. If you've got nonsense in your family, make the phone call today. It's too short, man. It's too short. Yeah. It's too short.

Make amends.

Make the phone call, man.

I don't disagree. I don't disagree at all. There's some lessons you can take from this. It's just here for a vapor. Violence has struck out again. There it is. Sometimes it's little children in a school, and sometimes it's other things. But in every case, it's somebody that's trying to take power into their own hands. It's really at a really critical time. It's scary. It's heartbreaking. This nation needs prayer, and we surely do. Oh, my gosh. Well, we'll pledge to you guys that we'll be in touch with them. Obviously, anything that we can do, there's nothing we can do. But anything we can do, we will. The thing we all can do is to try to be just a tiny bit better as a result. Of our hearts being broken. And just back up about three steps and reconsider how to manifest some of these opinions without being so dead come violent about it. It's pretty simple. Civil Discourse. Wow, what an idea. Let's just label somebody and then vilify them.

It's just awful.

Just awful. Well, we don't have that thing on this show very often because we don't cover current events. But Charlie was a friend of mine, so pretty much sucks. That puts this hour of the Ramsey Show, in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus.