Yesterday’s Choices Don’t Define You — Change Starts Today

Summary

The Ramsey Show Podcast Summary

Episode: Yesterday’s Choices Don’t Define You — Change Starts Today
Date: September 23, 2025
Hosts: Dave Ramsey & Jade Washall
Theme: Building wealth and gaining control of your life, regardless of past financial mistakes. Dave and Jade help callers address debt, housing, life-altering decisions, and more, emphasizing that real change starts by facing fears and taking wise, incremental action.

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Main Themes & Purpose

• Redemption After Financial Mistakes: The show’s core belief is that anyone—even those who’ve made “stupid” money decisions—can transform their financial future by making new choices.
• Practical Advice Meets Tough Love: Callers receive clear, actionable steps, as well as a dose of reality and encouragement.
• Emphasis on Intentionality: Every major financial victory starts with focus, hard work, and living by healthy principles, not by chasing quick fixes or “normal” behaviors.

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Key Segment Summaries & Insights

1. Caller: Sarah in Alabama — Should We Get Married Now?

[00:43–08:20]

• Background: Sarah’s been with her fiancé for 13 years (two kids, moved, house fire, religious awakening). Now struggling with cost of a wedding and past relationship trauma (including infidelity).
• Advice & Insights:
  • Dave: “Ship has sailed on little 18-year-old Sarah walking down the aisle in an expensive white dress. That was a decade ago. It’s gone. So go get married like today, tomorrow.” (03:20)
  • Jade: Suggests courthouse wedding now, maybe a celebration later. The legal part comes first anyway.
  • Both: Focus on the commitment, not the event cost. Seek premarital (or marital) counseling—even after 13 years together.
  • Quote: “You guys have been doing this for 13 freaking years. I mean, this is not, it’s not like… yeah, it’s, that’s in the rearview mirror.” —Dave (05:25)

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2. Caller: Michael in Canada — Restructuring Mortgages

[10:37–14:27]

• Situation: Owns two properties, considers cash-out refinance on cabin (lower interest rate) to speed up paying off main home.
• Advice:
  • Both Dave and Jade agree: OK to move equity if it makes sense risk-wise, but “not life changing.”
  • Dave: “If you get sideways and you got no money, you’re gonna lose both of them.” (13:11)
  • Pay off main home first; overall risk remains until that mortgage is gone.
  • Notable: Canadian mortgage structure differs from U.S.—in this context, Dave’s advice adapts.

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3. Caller: Toby in Ohio — Bankruptcy While Homeless?

[15:56–20:23]

• Background: 27, $14k in debt (car and other), homeless and jobless after eviction/management issues, past DUI.
• Advice & Insights:
  • Dave: Financial problems are symptoms of bigger life issues—lack of stability, substance decisions, job trouble. “If you kept a job steady, got you a little apartment...these financial problems are gonna go away.” (18:04)
  • No to Bankruptcy: “You’re not bankrupt, you’re broke and homeless and don’t have a job. Bankruptcy does not solve one stinking problem you have. Not one.” (19:43)
  • Seek mentorship and community (church, mentors). Focus entirely on rebuilding stability.

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4. Caller: Daniel in Kentucky — Sitting on Cash or Invest?

[23:01–30:43]

• Background: Early retiree (56), $400k sitting in the bank, $70k emergency fund, $30k in 401k—but not investing. Fearful, conservative.
• Dave’s Response:
  • “You’ve lost $100,000 by having that $400k sitting on its butt in a bank account.” (24:59)
  • Explains difference between fear for safety (valid) vs. fear from ignorance (must be conquered).
  • Action Plan: Move money into indext funds and mutual funds with a Smartvestor Pro. Stay engaged, learn, don’t let inertia or fear waste future growth.
  • Quote: “It’s not rocket surgery. You can do it. Everybody can understand this.” —Dave (26:01)

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5. Caller: Alyssa in Chicago — Is $60k Too Much for a Wedding?

[43:43–51:12]

• Key Points:
  • Combine income nearly $280k, no debt, plan to cash-flow $60k for wedding.
  • Dave: “You’re below 50% of your annual income… on a ratio basis, you are half of the national average.”
  • “You can spend more if you want, as long as you pay cash.”
  • Advice: Set a strict budget, treat wedding like a project—avoid scope creep and prioritizing romance over responsibility.
  • Jade emphasizes building in a 10% contingency fund.
  • Memorable moment: Jade’s regret about not having an open bar at her own wedding—“Listen, it was a mistake!”

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6. Caller: Richard in Oklahoma — 72, Recovering from Total Loss

[53:13–60:03]

• Story: 72, lost everything in the mortgage crisis at age 55, spent years driving trucks, helping elderly mom.
• Dave and Jade:
  • “You’re not a lost cause. But if you don’t change your ways, you are. But it’s not because the math is killing you. It’s because you’re killing you.” —Dave (59:09)
  • Pay off remaining debts ($2,500), aggressively save into mutual funds, keep grinding active work years. No time for adventures, only for rebuilding.

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7. Debt-Free Scream Segment: Dave and Roxanne (Calgary, Canada)

[62:16–71:02]

• Victory: Paid off $703,000 in 7 years, increased income from $30k to $700k via affiliate marketing.
• Story: Started with $86k in consumer debt, financial advisors but no habits; focused by taking “total surrender” of Dave’s system, extreme hustle (second jobs, selling everything, AirBNB, side hustles).
• Quote: “Feels amazing. At peace knowing that, you know, we’re taking care of God’s resources. We learned that it’s not our money, it’s God’s money.” —Roxanne (69:18)
• They changed their entire family tree—first millionaires in their line.

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8. Rapid-Fire Callers: Variety of Financial Challenges

• Retirement Planning: Pay off debt with cash on hand, keep investing in mutual funds, keep it simple (Tracy, VA, [114:26–123:17])
• Medical Debt vs. Health: Short-term, spend for life-improving treatment (Ryan, ID, [74:03–80:09])
• Wedding Costs (Again): Set project-style budget, strictly manage scope (Alyssa, Chicago, [43:43–51:12])
• Family & Elder Care: Prioritize parent’s needs, not pets/homes for dogs, consider local assisted living over extensive home additions (Barbara, Dallas, [83:52–91:40])
• Vehicles Gone Wrong: Avoid over-leveraging, don’t finance depreciating assets via gig work (Joseph, CA, [94:11–103:43])
• Debt-Free Segment: Working overtime and sacrifice pays massive dividends—focus, budget, work extra if needed (Zach & McKenna, Seattle, [104:04–112:20])
• General Advice: “There’s a great place to go when you’re broke—to work. It works. This work thing.” —Dave

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Normal is broke and common sense is weird. So we’re here to help you transform your life.” —Dave Ramsey [00:17]
• “The only question is now we’re formalizing this because we have a better spiritual understanding of how life works.” —Dave (06:12)
• “Financial problems are not the problem. They’re the symptom of other things that are going on.” —Dave (18:03)
• “There is no easy button. And while all things are possible to Gen Z, you better, you better buckle up, buttercup, because you’re going to have to learn some maturity.” —Dave (41:44)
• “You get to choose which discomfort you have. Do you want the short-term discomfort of not having your latte, or the long-term discomfort of being in debt and that stress?” —Zach, debt-free screamer (109:22)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Time | Segment/Caller | Topics/Advice | |------------|----------------------------------------------|----------------------------------------------------| | 00:43–08:20 | Sarah, AL: 13-year engagement | Skip big wedding, focus on commitment/counseling | | 10:37–14:27 | Michael, Canada: Property refinance | Weigh risk, transfer equity, focus on main home | | 15:56–20:23 | Toby, OH: Homeless, considering bankruptcy | Reject bankruptcy, life change needed, mentorship | | 23:01–30:43 | Daniel, KY: Early retirement, cash inertia | Invest, overcome fear, use Smartvestor Pro | | 43:43–51:12 | Alyssa, Chicago: Wedding budgeting | Set/hold budget, spend in cash, control scope | | 53:13–60:03 | Richard, OK: Rebuilding at 72 | Grind, pay debts, invest, no adventures—just work | | 62:16–71:02 | Dave & Roxanne: Debt-Free Scream | $703,000 paid off, massive income growth | | 74:03–80:09 | Ryan, ID: Medical debt vs. health | Health before debt, be sure procedure is helpful | | 83:52–91:40 | Barbara, Dallas: Elder care/home additions | Sell, assisted living, don’t build for pets | | 94:11–103:43| Joseph, CA: Car debt from Uber driving | Sell cars, stop gig mistakes, focus on full employment| |104:04–112:20| Zach & McKenna: Debt-Free Scream | Sacrifice, overtime, teamwork pays off | |114:26–123:17| Tracy, VA: Retirement planning | Pay off debts, invest steadily, avoid complexity |

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Closing Notes

• Tone: Friendly, down-to-earth, humorous, and direct (“tough love”).
• Takeaway: No matter how dire past mistakes, new choices lead to a new future—if you’re willing to do the work, stay focused, and stay weird.

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For More:
Visit www.ramseysolutions.com
Or call in live weekdays, 2–5 p.m. ET: 888-825-5225

“Normal is broke. Weird wins.” —Dave Ramsey

Transcript

[Dave Ramsey]

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. Jade Washall, Ramsey personality number one best selling author is my co host today as we take your questions at 888-255-2225. Sarah is in Alabama. Hi Sarah, how are you?

[Caller or Guest]

Hi. I'm good. How are you?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than I deserve. What's up?

[Caller or Guest]

Okay, so my fiance and I have been together for 13 years off and on. We have two daughters, five and 10. And a year ago or two years ago we uprooted and moved to his hometown in the middle of nowhere Alabama. We bought a home. We have since had a house fire a year later and right now we're renting. We decided that we were going to get married at the beginning of next year in March and we decided that at the beginning of this year. Right. Slow down, pump the brakes. But well, he got re baptized. He got baptized for the first time. He has always been a, a complete non believer. Totally was against it. And after the fire he got baptized. I got saved again. My daughter's been saved again. And it was definitely something that as a family we were moving towards in the holy, trying to live life right in God's eyes.

[Jade Washall]

And so the fire was kind of the catalyst for all of you, is that what you're saying?

[Caller or Guest]

Oh, absolutely. And we're all still on that page. We're devout in Bible study and church and all that good stuff. But we just realized that we're not going to be able to afford the wedding. And there have been other things, infidelity, stuff like that that has happened throughout our past. Trauma that's just kind of carried over.

[Jade Washall]

And have done any counseling?

[Caller or Guest]

We have not. We've talked about it plenty of times. And honestly where we're at right now, there's not very many resources.

[Jade Washall]

What do you mean by that?

[Caller or Guest]

In our church there are not very mental health reasons. Not very many mental health resour.

[Dave Ramsey]

I come from in the middle of nowhere, Alabama.

[Jade Washall]

Okay. So. Okay. Well there are, I mean there are really great online.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Like better help, like better help those guys. So. Okay, let's play pretend for a second. Are you, you, you've been doing this a long time.

[Caller or Guest]

Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

You have two kids that if we keep this up much more they're going to be in college.

[Caller or Guest]

Right.

[Dave Ramsey]

I mean this is just going on a long time. Your spiritual awakening is wonderful that you met God and I want to start living by the book and so the ship has sailed on little 18 year old Sarah walking down the aisle in an expensive wedding in a white dress. That was like a decade ago. It's gone. So go get married like today, tomorrow.

[Caller or Guest]

What if everything isn't where it should be?

[Jade Washall]

Honey, you've been going this long.

[Dave Ramsey]

You've been going this long. You know where everything, what is not in the right place. My God. I mean, if it's, if it's not where it should be, you should have been gone like five years ago.

[Jade Washall]

Yeah. And Sarah, with the life changes that you guys are making, I'd like to think that the worst is behind you guys and that you're going to start going in another direction. And to Dave's point. Yeah. Today or next week, when you get married and you go down to the courthouse and you just fill out the papers and legalize it for all of your benefit, there could be a day in the future where you renew your vows and you do the white dress and you walk down the aisle and you do that big party that you wanted. But, but just because that's not going to be today or next week when you get married doesn't mean it can't happen ever.

[Dave Ramsey]

I just want to break this idea that you need to save up for a big wedding. I was like, that was a decade ago. Just go get married.

[Caller or Guest]

But I don't even want a big wedding.

[Dave Ramsey]

Then why do you need money for a wedding then? You don't need money for a wedding. I mean, just go down the call your preacher and say, can you marry us? And he'll say yes. We met God and we know that now we need to be married in order to sleep together. And so we're going to get married. Will you marry us? We want to be right. We want to do this right. And preacher's going to say yes. And then you go get your license and you go get married.

[Jade Washall]

And if it makes you feel any better, this is a small technicality, but it could make you feel better. You know, you go, everybody gets married and gets the license before they walk down the aisle in the dress. Everybody. Because you have to have that first. And the legal part's done first anyway. So for you, you're going to be delaying the part where you walk down the aisle, but everybody gets the certificate first.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Have you a celebration. But I mean, you guys have been doing this for 13 freaking years. I mean, this is not, it's not like. Yeah, it's, it's, that's in the rearview mirror. But the only question I'VE got is you do want to make sure that you're saying, okay, now that we're in this headspace of we're welcome with God now, and both of us are there, and we've been through the trauma of a house fire, which is very traumatic now that we've done all that. I'm looking in the eyes of my two kids that the two of you made together, and you're going, okay, is there anything that's so broken here that we can't work through it? Because to me, it's almost as if you've been married 13 years and you're calling me, asking me if you need to get a divorce. And I didn't hear anything in this discussion that called for that.

[Jade Washall]

That's a good way to look at it, Dave.

[Dave Ramsey]

And so, you know, the only question is, now we're formalizing this because we have a better spiritual understanding of how life works. And we're going to plug into that, and you're just going to formalize it. And. And here's what's. Then what you're saying is for better, for worse, baby.

[Jade Washall]

Yep.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Jade Washall]

It does hit different, though, when you put that. When you put the ring on it, because then there's no. There's no escape valve. You know what I mean? But they do need to do premarital counseling, even though they've been together 13 years.

[Dave Ramsey]

Or just go do marital.

[Jade Washall]

Marital.

[Dave Ramsey]

Get married. Go. You know, okay, we gotta. We kind of dig through this toy box a little bit and see what's going on here. There's stuff going on here and here and, you know, and make sure we've got that kind of stuff cleared out. Because, I mean, it's like we were with some friends this weekend. Have been married 50 years. We've been married 43 years.

[Caller or Guest]

Wow.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's how old we are. We had to shoot dinosaurs out of the yard to get married. And so you know what? They were laughing. I said, sharon, they said, what's the secret? And Sharon said, david says, if I leave, he's going with me.

[Jade Washall]

There you go.

[Dave Ramsey]

And that's the secret.

[Jade Washall]

You're not getting away.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's about how it sounded, too. She dropped into that southern hillbilly mountain twang and went all down in it. I'm just saying. But, yeah. Wow, that's great. That's the truth. I told her it's an old Zig Ziglar line I've been telling her for years. I said, if you leave, I'm going with you. So just, you know, Go ahead and pack both suitcases because I'll be following you right along. Otherwise, I'll go hungry. Not good. You know, so.

[Jade Washall]

Oh, that's.

[Dave Ramsey]

Hey, kiddo. I'm proud for where you guys are, and I'm proud for where you're going. The best is in front of you. The worst is behind you. You start walking with Jesus, and both of you do that, you'll learn things that you never learned before. You'll see things you've never seen before then. And it won't be without its problems. It won't be without bumps in the road, but you will get there. And you're setting those kids up for a much better life. You're setting yourselves up for a much better life. And I'm proud for where you're going.

[Jade Washall]

Three most important decisions I ever made. Number one, following Jesus. Number two, who I married, Sam Warshaw. Number three, choosing to get on a plan for money and get out of debt and build wealth. Three most important.

[Dave Ramsey]

There we go. Boom. Big list. Big list. 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.

[Caller or Guest]

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

[Dave Ramsey]

That's a gut punch.

[Caller or Guest]

And. Oh, you're telling me. And for decades, Dave, I've sat across people who've lost a spouse, they've lost somebody important to them.

[Dave Ramsey]

Me, too.

[Caller or Guest]

They don't know what to do next.

[Dave Ramsey]

Me, too. I mean, you're going to have a crisis here, and, you know, you got two options. While you're sitting. 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.

[Caller or Guest]

That's exactly.

[Dave Ramsey]

These are the two options. And take care of your dadgum family, man.

[Caller or Guest]

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

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Caller or Guest]

To just miss you.

[Dave Ramsey]

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 Xander Insurance makes it easy and affordable. I've used them personally, for 25 years, they're the only people I trust. Go to Xander.com or call 800-356-4282. Michael is in Canada. Hey, Michael, how are you?

[Caller or Guest]

I'm fantastic. I always told myself if I ever got through, I'd have to hear you say it. So how you doing, Dave?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than I deserve.

[Caller or Guest]

That's fantastic. Jade, I actually asked you this question on IG Live a couple months ago and you wanted more details. You wanted the numbers for it. So my wife and I are both 38. Today's actually my birthday. We are on baby steps four, five and six and we own two properties. Our primary house, which is valued at both 650 and we owe 265 on it. And then we have a cabin, recreational property that we bought for 325. It's worth about 425 and we owe about 214 on it. Now in Canada we have these weird mortgages where they amortize over 15, 20 or 25 years. But the interest rate comes up for renewal every five years. So the cabin is coming up in the spring where we're going to renew that, which gives me the opportunity, if I wanted to, to take equity out of the cabin and then I could transfer that equity into our primary residence. This would just help us pay off our house sooner, maybe provide us with that financial piece a little bit earlier of owning our own home. And I was curious what your opinions were on that.

[Dave Ramsey]

Do the interest rates compare?

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah. So actually the house is a little bit more. The house is at 4.5 right now it's looking like the cabin with renew around 3.9, so about a half percent difference.

[Dave Ramsey]

So they treat your cabin as a personal residence in terms of interest rate, Correct.

[Caller or Guest]

Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

Because in the states your, your, your second homes and rental properties have a higher interest rate.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah. Here we can still take advantage of the same mortgage rates.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay.

[Caller or Guest]

Again, we just get stuck with this thing every five years so it can var.

[Jade Washall]

So your idea is to take out a HELOC on the cabin?

[Dave Ramsey]

No, it's just extra. Do a cash out refinance.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah. So we can do.

[Jade Washall]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

Not a heloc. They're going to redo the mortgage at the mortgage and take another 200 out, I guess or so, right?

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah. Be about 100 probably. I could get out of the cabin. We have to leave 25% in there.

[Dave Ramsey]

What's your household income?

[Caller or Guest]

About 240.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. So if you owe 165 on your house because you move 100 over to the cabin. How fast do you pay that off?

[Caller or Guest]

Well, so right now I'm forecasted about five years out something, and this would probably speed up to about three. That's really where our focus is, paying off our house and then we move to the cabin after that. So it would move up that goal of paying off the house, but overall paying off the house in the cabin. I'm still looking at probably the same time frame of maybe closer to eight years.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, that sounds right.

[Jade Washall]

Hmm.

[Dave Ramsey]

Maybe, maybe sooner, but yeah, depending on how, how tight you pull that budget down. But yeah. Okay. All right. Well, it's just a risk analysis thing of, you know, if you could pay off one or the other completely, we would talk about that. This one is still no change because if you get sideways and you got no money, you're gonna lose both of them.

[Jade Washall]

Right.

[Dave Ramsey]

Either way, because you can't pay the.

[Jade Washall]

Bill, it doesn't make enough of a dent.

[Dave Ramsey]

So the, you know, and until, so until you get your home paid off in the next two to three years, your risk, your risk situation does not really change. But I like your idea. There's nothing wrong with it. Nothing hugely wrong with it. I think I would move that way. And again, I would not do it in the States because you'd be jacking your rate up.

[Caller or Guest]

Right.

[Dave Ramsey]

And I wouldn't do it with a HELOC in the states either because HELOCs have horrible terms. But, but you know, but because you're looking at a traditional first mortgage, primary residence, the same type of mortgage on both things. And you know you're going to go through one more cycle before you, you know, one more five year cycle before you get them paid off and you're going to be done. Yeah, that's good.

[Jade Washall]

Do you rent the cabin when you're not in it, or does it just sit vacant?

[Dave Ramsey]

No.

[Caller or Guest]

So it's actually in a national park where we're not allowed to, but my wife is a teacher, so we're out there basically all summer with the kids.

[Jade Washall]

And does carrying these cut into your. Does it cut into your investing at all, your 15%?

[Caller or Guest]

No. So we actually passed the baby steps millionaire threshold. I guess in Canadian dollars it's not quite the same.

[Jade Washall]

That's great.

[Caller or Guest]

Just a couple months ago.

[Dave Ramsey]

Good for you. Yeah, I like it, Michael. I think you're thinking it through. It's not a, it's not, it's not dumb. It's not in the stupid column or anything like that. I don't think it's a lifesaver either. By the way it's not like, whoa, that changes everything. No, it doesn't. It's just kind of yawn a little bit and, yeah, it's okay. Move it over there. But then let's lean in and get the stinking house paid off. I want that first mortgage on your personal residence gone because you're gonna. That's gonna change your life. If the only thing you got hanging over there is the cabin and you owe 400 on it or 300 on it by then, and you're cranking on it with a $260,000 income, I'm a lot less worried about you at that point. So, yeah, I think you're. I would do it, but not because it's like, life changing. It's just okay to do nothing. It helps a little. I see your point. I see why you're doing it. While you're at it, you got to recast the mortgage anyway. Then why not? Yeah, reset it. Let's do it. Toby's in Ohio. Hi, Toby. How are you?

[Caller or Guest]

Hey. I'm good. How are you?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than I deserve. What's up?

[Caller or Guest]

Hey. So I had a question. I'm 27, trying to navigate life a little bit here about bankruptcy. I've got about $14,000 in debt, and part of that is car loan. That's about 6,500. And that car is broke down now. And I'm also homeless. So I'm just trying to figure out if that's a smart move or not or if it's something that I should live a cash life for the next seven years or not.

[Jade Washall]

How'd you find yourself homeless?

[Caller or Guest]

Well, I originally tried to get into a place, and they ended up switching over management. I never got my application. I ended up dropping a deposit and first month, but they. The new management returned that back to me because they ended up moving somebody in. And that kind of saluted the effect of couch surfing and then making it harder to get in somewhere prolonging that.

[Dave Ramsey]

So how long has this been going on?

[Caller or Guest]

About eight months.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. So when are you getting a place?

[Caller or Guest]

I don't know yet.

[Dave Ramsey]

Are you working?

[Caller or Guest]

Trying to figure that out. As of two weeks ago, I wasn't, or I'm not. But I am applying currently and waiting for pending.

[Jade Washall]

Explain what's going on with the work. Why aren't you able to keep a job?

[Caller or Guest]

Well, a lot of times it was unwillingness at first, and then here in the last year, it was just. I think. I don't know if it was an excuse or not, but mentally I just wasn't really enjoying being in my truck or couch surfing. And everything I was doing was going towards expenses. Like, you know, I screwed up, had a DUI last year, so I had some fees I had to be paying, so.

[Dave Ramsey]

Toby, you got a lot going on, man.

[Caller or Guest]

I do have a lot going on.

[Dave Ramsey]

So my friend, years ago that taught me some of this stuff, used to say that financial problems, including when I went bankrupt. Sir, financial problems are not the problem. They're the symptom of other things that are going on.

[Caller or Guest]

Symptom?

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. And so your money issues are the symptom of all the other crap that's going on in your life. Not keeping a job, DUIs, all this other stuff are the causing the money problems. If you kept a job steady, you got you a little apartment to live in steady, you kept it clean, you kept yourself clean, you stayed out of the alcohol, you stayed out of the drugs, you kept working, working, working, working, working. All of a sudden these financial problems are gonna go away. Is it? You agree with that?

[Caller or Guest]

I do, I do. It's just. Why do I find it so difficult then?

[Dave Ramsey]

Then it's because it's the same thing I had to face and all of us have to face. The problem with your money is the guy in your mirror. And he's difficult, by the way. When I look in the mirror, I get the same thing. He's difficult. If I can get that guy to behave, he'd be skinny and rich, but he likes donuts. You know what I'm saying? So, you know, I mean, controlling the guy in our mirror is every one of us. It's the thing we struggle with the most. Okay. And so are you plugged in at all to a good church in the area?

[Caller or Guest]

I am good. I definitely am good.

[Dave Ramsey]

You know, if I were you, I would call up the pastor and say, hey, would you put two or three guys in my life to walk inside me and help me become the kind of man I want to be instead of the kind of man I have been.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah. You know, and I. I've just recently been finding that this kind of mentorship with some people.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Caller or Guest]

And that, that mentorship kind of guided me with the self reflection and that's.

[Dave Ramsey]

Why I was like, good.

[Caller or Guest]

Else should I call and find out.

[Dave Ramsey]

Good.

[Caller or Guest]

Am I, Should I file bankrupt?

[Dave Ramsey]

No, no, Toby, you're not bankrupt. You're broke and homeless and don't have a job.

[Caller or Guest]

You're not bankrupt, broke, homeless and don't have a job.

[Dave Ramsey]

You get a job, you're not homeless and you're making some money. You can straighten up this car debt someday. Maybe, but I'm not worried about that car debt. They ain't got anything to chase down. If they come find you, they can't get nothing. So you're what we call judgment proof. But I want you to go have a life so then you can go deal with it. But bankruptcy does not solve one stinking problem you have. Not one.

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[Dave Ramsey]

Hey, this is so fun. The all new Every Dollar is coming and it's more than just a budgeting app now. It's a complete financial game changer. We're releasing a ton of advanced features to help you make progress with your money. If you've tried Every Dollar before, you definitely want to check in on these changes. Boom. People are finding thousands of dollars of margin in just 15 minutes. Watch the premiere of the all new EveryDollar September 25th to see real success stories and how you can be next. Turn on your YouTube notifications to get notified when the premiere drops. So George and Rachel Jade are going to be doing that on the 25th. That's about a week away and they're going to be unpacking a lot of these advanced features. You're going to be. Your mind's gonna be blown. It's pretty stinking incredible. I've been doing this a long time, and we've come out with some really good things over the last three decades that have helped a lot of people. This probably is the best thing we've ever done. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. It's. It's this beautiful mixture of proper use of technology and human beings. Yeah. It's gonna change everything. All right. Daniel's in Kentucky. Hi, Daniel. How are you? Good.

[Caller or Guest]

How you doing, sir?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than I deserve. What's up?

[Caller or Guest]

Hey. I'm 56 year old. My wife is 55. We have a son that's 16. And my wife's been retired about two years. I retired about two months ago. And we, we bring in enough for all of our expenses on a pension. You know, we're. Our pension does that. And I've got 30,000 in a 401k at my company previously and 70,000 in an emergency fund and about 400,000 just sitting in the bank like a dummy. I just didn't invest anything. Everything knows, well, we're fine right now, but inflation and any kind of buying a vehicle, we're going to have to go into that nest egg.

[Dave Ramsey]

You're 56. You're probably going to live to 96. You plan on sitting on your butt for 40 years?

[Caller or Guest]

Well, no, I'm going to do. I wanted to do something I wanted to do because I'm away from home about two weeks, two days a week with the job I had. So.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Okay. So what you want to do?

[Caller or Guest]

I don't know yet.

[Dave Ramsey]

I'd be a good thing to figure out yesterday.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Let's get with it. I'm 65. I can't believe you're sitting on your butt at 56. Yeah. You need to go do something, man. Make some money. And that solves a lot of these problems. The second thing solves a lot of these problems is investing the 400k, please. So in 2023, if you had it in an index mutual fund called an S and P that reflected exactly what the stock market did in 2024, you would have made 23% and 26% those two years. Now, that's not normal, but just to point out, okay, here's what that means. That's $50,000 a year. You've lost $100,000 by having that 400 sitting on its butt in a bank account instead of invested, well, 100 grand.

[Caller or Guest]

Yep.

[Jade Washall]

Why didn't you do it, Daniel? Were you risk averse or were you just never got around to it?

[Caller or Guest]

Fearful? I'VE been conservative all my life and conservative.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, that's good. I can, I can work with that one. All right, so here's the answer. There's two kinds of fear, and we've all got them. There's fear of something that will hurt you, and that's a real fear. And you should stay away from something that will hurt you. The other thing that we're afraid of is things we don't understand and don't know about. Okay? You're standing in the middle of the interstate. 18 wheelers coming at you. You should be afraid and you should move. You're going to die. You're going to touch a hot stove. You should be afraid you're going to get a third degree burn. Okay, don't do that. That's a real fear. If your 7 year old son, when he was 7, he's 16, but if he was 7, is learning to ride a bicycle and he's afraid, well, he might fall over and scratch his knee, he isn't going to die and he's going to get the joy of learning to ride a bicycle. So he's afraid of something he hasn't learned to do yet.

[Caller or Guest]

Right?

[Dave Ramsey]

When I drove a car the very first time, I distinctly remember, I was 10 years old, my dad tossed me the keys and gave me no instruction, which was a really dumb idea. And all I can remember is it was a gravel driveway. And when I pushed down on the accelerator all the way to the floor, I just about emptied the driveway with the back tires throwing gravel everywhere until the screaming stopped from all the neighbors, my mother and my dad and I let off the accelerator finally. But now I've learned to drive a car and I'm not afraid of cars anymore. But I was afraid that day of cars. Okay, with good reason, because I didn't know what the heck I was doing, right? So that's where you are with investing. Investing is not the 18 wheeler or the hot stove. It's. You don't understand it, right? And it's not. The good news is it's not rocket surgery. You can do it. Everybody can understand this. It's not that hard. So Jade and I are going to send you to the Smartvestor prosamseolutions.com, click on the website, get one of those. And Jade, I mean, you came at this the very first time I had a finance degree, so I had a. I had a jump start. But you and Sam sit down with a smartvestor pro the very first time you didn't know beans. No, how's that? It's pretty intimidating.

[Jade Washall]

It's intimidating. And I will say, I think it's helpful if you can engage with a show like this or do a little bit of research on your own. So at least you can, because there's lingo and jargon, and you want to feel like you understand that, but if you sit down with the right person, they can help you understand it. It a little bit more.

[Dave Ramsey]

It's really. I mean, because here's the thing. You buy a house. Well, that's an investment. There's no guarantee. The federal government does not get. You know, there's no FDIC for your house. You could lose the house. You could lose the. The neighborhood could go up in a sinkhole. You'd lose everything.

[Jade Washall]

There's always risk.

[Dave Ramsey]

I mean, there's. You know, there's a. But the neighborhood could go bad. Sure. You know, and instead you go, okay, I'm buying a house in an area that has a long track record.

[Jade Washall]

Right.

[Dave Ramsey]

The trees are big enough. I can predict the future based on the past.

[Jade Washall]

That's right.

[Dave Ramsey]

And that's what you do with an investment. You pick out something that's got a long track record, and then you got to understand how to do it. Like you had to understand how to buy that first house.

[Jade Washall]

That's right.

[Dave Ramsey]

And there's 19 moving parts. But they're really not that complicated once you do it. Once you go. Yeah.

[Jade Washall]

You start to figure it out.

[Dave Ramsey]

It's doable. So, you know, I think if you move that 400. Daniel. Into some good investments and then get back to work. Work. And. Because you're gonna have a better life, man, it's just more enjoyable. There's just no. There's no dignity in sitting on your butt.

[Jade Washall]

You got to use your skills in your mind.

[Dave Ramsey]

Go do something big, man. Go do something big. Go make twice as much money as you've ever made in your life, start you a business, and you go, wow, I'm so glad I quit that ugly job.

[Jade Washall]

Act two.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, yeah. Here we go.

[Jade Washall]

Dave, you know, this is my favorite question. If you didn't do finance in real estate, what would you do if you had to make yourself have an Act 2?

[Dave Ramsey]

Finance and Real estate. Well, that's the only things I do.

[Jade Washall]

I know, but I'm saying, if you didn't do that, if tomorrow you had to pick something else, what would you pick?

[Dave Ramsey]

I don't have any idea. But before I decided. Before I decided to not do this, I would have an idea. But now I would go straight to the next thing.

[Jade Washall]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

No, I mean I'm a teacher at heart, but I'm not going to the classroom.

[Jade Washall]

No.

[Dave Ramsey]

So. But I'm gonna teach something. I'm gonna lead. I'm gonna. I love business. I love running a business.

[Jade Washall]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

And so I would open something. Something helping people some way and it would probably involve teaching in some way or another, but teaching is part of leadership too.

[Jade Washall]

Sure, that's true.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. But. Yeah.

[Jade Washall]

I thought you might have something off the wall.

[Dave Ramsey]

No.

[Jade Washall]

A pilot.

[Dave Ramsey]

Never. Never wanted to be a pirate or a secret agent. No. Never did. So. So just don't have any. I don't have any. Busted. Busted Dave dreams none at all. It's all good. So none at all. No. Busted Dave dreams. Yeah, that's it anyway. Yeah, that's what I would do. I'd sit down with a good smartvestor pro and get it going that way. And you know, I think that'll show you begin to teach you. They've got the heart of a teacher.

[Jade Washall]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

And having the heart of a teacher is the big thing.

[Jade Washall]

And I do want to say this because you asked the question. When you first hear and learn about investing the first time, it doesn't sink in. The first time you hear it it's just like. It's like when you turn the it. It's like when you wake up in the middle of the night and you turn the lights on to go to the bathroom and then when you turn the lights off you're like, you can't see anything. That's like what it is. When you hear about investing for the first time, you're like what was that? I don't remember. Where was it? And then when you hear it the second time it sinks in a little bit more. Then the third time it sinks in and before you know it you've heard it several times. Now you're like oh, I get it now. I understand. So it's okay if the first time you hear it you don't fully understand it. That's normal.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, I'll go with that. That's good. The point is learn about it because it's not going to kill you.

[Jade Washall]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

You need to learn about it and get comfortable with it and that'll get you there. Wow, Sam.

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[Dave Ramsey]

Today's question of the day is brought to you by why Refi? If your private student loans are in default, it can feel like nobody will work with you. But why Refi was built for this. They'll help you explore a fresh start. Go to y refi.com Ramsey that's the letter y r e f y.com Ramsey not in all states.

[Jade Washall]

All right, today's question comes from Dean in Iowa. He says if I have debt but also want to invest, why can't I do both and benefit from the compounding interest? I'm 21 and have over 95,000 in college debt. I won't be able to pay that before I turn 30 and I don't want to wait that long to build wealth.

[Dave Ramsey]

Wealth.

[Jade Washall]

Okay, so Dave, we hear this a lot. It's kind of like that age old argument of why can't I invest whilst paying off debt or why do I need to wait till I'm done paying off debt to invest? And the biggest thing, I mean if I go back to the basis of it, it is your income being your biggest wealth building tool. So here's the thing, you have $95,000 in debt, which means a portion of your income is going to be going to paying that off. And the longer you wait, the more of that income is not helping you build wealth. So while you might be able to put, I mean, theoretically, yeah, you could put some money into investing, it's not going to be the full scale of what you could or should put in to build ultimate, ultimate wealth. So why wouldn't you just clear that out? Because here's the thing, the compounding interest.

[Dave Ramsey]

Works on your debt too.

[Jade Washall]

Yeah, that's the thing. That 95,000, that's going to accumulate, that's going to accumulate more and at a quicker rate than when you start from zero investing, you know, your hundred dollars here and there.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. So Dean, you're 21. You can do whatever you want to do, honey. You're like an adult and stuff. But you wrote us an ask. You're full of opinions and the wrong, wrong. And you wrote us an ask. So here's the truth. The probability of you getting out of debt if you don't focus on it exclusively and with great intensity and get your little butt in gear, the probability of you ever paying off that student loan is close to zero. If you think you're going to wander out of this over 10 years like you've kept the flu for 10 years, you're not going to do it. You're simply not going to do it. We've worked with people getting out of debt for way longer than you've been alive. And so tens of millions of people have followed our stuff and gotten out of debt. And one of the keys is for you to get fired up and wired up where you turn it on. Don't talk to me about being 30 years old and still having this debt. How about 24 years old and it's gone three years from now? $30,000 a year. Because all you do is work, young man. You have lots of energy. Go use it. Go get you some money. You have made a mess and you need to clean up your mess. And the faster you put this in your rear view mirror with the faster the intensity, the higher the probability that you ever build wealth and the higher the probability you ever get out of the student loan debt. The number of people who drag out student loan debt and systematically pay it off over 10 years or 20 years is almost zero. They either do nothing and it stacks like cordwood in the backyard, or they get after it and they knock it out fast. There's hardly anybody in the actual data that does the middle ground and goes, I'm going to very slowly and methodic. Nobody does it. They don't do it. So you get fired up and wired up. So your set of assumptions are wrong. It's not going to take you nine years. You'll pay off 9900. I mean, nine, nine thousand dollars a year. Come on, how wussed is that? Come on, don't be a wuss. Do it, man. Come on. $9,000, come on, that's nothing. You need to pay off 30, $35,000 a year because all you do is work. Clean up your mess. And then you're sitting there at 24 years old without this thing hovering over you. Like most broke Americans walking around with their own spare bedroom for freaking Sallie Mae. They've Kept her around so long, she's like a member of the family. The old ugly aunt with a wart on her nose. And she's stuck in the back bedroom and we're paying payments for her all the time. We can't get rid of her because you won't give her an eviction notice. You, dude, roll up your sleeves and punch it in the mouth. Tell Sally she gone, you're out, you're done. You don't get to live here. I don't like you, you're ugly and you're inhibiting my future. You are going away. You have to get mad about it and knock it out fast. It increases the probability of doing it. It destroys your little formula. Because now you're out of debt at 24 or 25. And now you can build wealth really, really fast because you're used to living on very little and paying off a bunch of debt. We can transfer that to living on very little and investing. You probably be a millionaire by the time you're 35. If you do what I tell you to do, what Jade told you to do. But if you don't, you're going to be normal. And if you want to look up the statistics on normal in America, normal sucks really bad. You do not want to be normal. It's a disaster. So your goal is to be weird. That's our thing around here.

[Jade Washall]

I know that's right. Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's how you do it, man. That's the answer. And so, but yeah, if you make a set of assumptions, you're going to be there. And by the way, compounding interest works on debt. Exact same math works against you and as it does working for you with investment.

[Jade Washall]

Right.

[Dave Ramsey]

The only difference is the rate. The only difference is the rate. If you're saving money at the same rate that you're paying off debt at this not paying off debt at the same rate, you have broken even. Exactly. If you do it at a lesser rate, you still broke even because you're carrying around all this risk and there increased risk that debt represents. So the answer, folks. The way you know, Jay, when I was growing up, bunch of us little hillbilly kids, we were running in out of the house and back door be open and closing, open and closing all day. You know, your mother says stuff like where you raised in a barn and that kind of stuff. And finally the heat of the summer, she would have it, she'd be done with these kids running in and out, the neighbor kids, me, everybody else. And she would just go, that's it, the worm has turned. Now, we had no idea what that meant except that the beatings were getting ready to begin. Right? That's all we knew, but found out later it's actually from Shakespeare. Who knew? Mom knew Shakespeare. But yeah, there you go. So, but all, all I knew was she was sick and tired of being sick and tired. Yeah, she had had it up to here with these kids and putting all the air conditioning in the outside and running up the bill. She'd had it. And when you kind of got to get that thing going like, mama, the worm has turned. I've had it. I'm not living like this anymore. I make too much money to be this freaking broke. I live in the most prosperous time in the most prosperous country in the history of mankind and I'm broke. This is stupid. I'm gonn get that thing going like that little, little preaching going on then, then you can, you can turn it, you can turn it around. But Dean, it's not, it's not a compound interest problem, honey. It's a Dean problem. Just like when I went broke, it was a Dave problem.

[Jade Washall]

Listen, I think it's about him wanting to take the easy way out. That's all I think. I think you look at 95, 000, you go, that seems like a lot of work. It seems a lot easier to go over here and put my little hundred dollars over here. I'm taking the easy route. And I think it literally just boils down to that. You can either do the work and get the full, the fullness of what you're supposed to have, or you can punk out and take the easy route.

[Dave Ramsey]

You know, I said that this on the show last week. I was being interviewed in a leadership situation the other day and a guy said, you've got all these Gen Z's working for you. And I said, yeah, I love that generation. They're incredible. They're an incredible generation because they've grown up with a magic wand in their hand. And if you push a button, stuff happens. Things show up on your front porch, man.

[Jade Washall]

That's right.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, anything's possible for this generation. They're a possibility generation and it's fast. They think anything can happen, but it all happens fast. That's the downside. And he said, well, what about being entitled? I said, they're not entitled, they're just impatient. Yeah, that's good because they're used to everything coming fast. It comes easy, comes fast. You just push a button and crap happens. You can't even have an argument because Somebody's got the answer for the argument's done. It's like, good gosh. And so, you know, it's, you know, but, but it's, you know, but here's the thing, guys. There's no such thing as good microwave barbecue. That's an oxymoron. There's only one way to get barbecue. You cook it long. The neighbor's dog is howling. That's how good barbecue is made, okay? And it's like a long cook, long slow cook. And guess what? Money's the same way, baby. And so you can't push a button. There is no easy button. And while all things are possible to Gen Z, you better, you better buckle up, buttercup, because you're going to have to learn some maturity. And one definition of maturity is learning to delay pleasure to get something better. That's an emotional maturity. That's psychological maturity. Spiritual maturity right there. You delay pleasure to get something better.

[Jade Washall]

It's perseverance.

[Dave Ramsey]

And you'll get a callus while you're doing that because you'll be working all the time. And calluses are good for you and patience is good for you. It's called growing up. But I tell you man, this is a great generation. If we dropped a little bit of that in the soup, they're going to be the best generation we've ever seen. Because they believe anything's possible and they go after it like it's possible. Yeah, but quit looking for the stinking easy button. You're right, Jake. You're absolutely right. If you were gone tomorrow, would your family know where your important stuff is? That's where Knockbox comes in. The things you've done to protect your family, like term life insurance, a will and a security system aren't much help if your loved ones can't access them. Knockbox, N o K as in next of kin box is a simple physical system that holds all your important documents, account info, passwords, policies and plans in one place so your family isn't left digging for them. Knockbox helps your family breathe in the middle of heartbreak and say, okay, we know what to do next. Love your family well by leaving them clarity, not chaos. Go to knockbox.comramsey to get started. That's n o k box.comramsey welcome back to welcome back to the Ramsey show in the Fair Winds Credit Union Studio. Jade Washaw Ramsey, personality number one best selling author is my co host. Today Alyssa is with us in Chicago. Hi Alyssa, how are you?

[Caller or Guest]

I'm good. How are you?

[Dave Ramsey]

Better than I deserve. What's up.

[Caller or Guest]

My question is, how much is too much to spend on a wedding?

[Jade Washall]

Okay, that's cool.

[Dave Ramsey]

How much are you thinking about spending?

[Caller or Guest]

60,000.

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, nice wedding. Good. Okay.

[Jade Washall]

Do you have 60,000?

[Caller or Guest]

So we're actively saving to get to. We have about half right now. So by next September, when the wedding would be, we would have that.

[Dave Ramsey]

So mom and dad aren't chipping in. That's you and him paying for it.

[Caller or Guest]

We are going with the intention that we're paying for it. They've briefly mentioned that they might contribute, but no hard numbers have been given or anything like that.

[Jade Washall]

Okay. So you're assuming it's all on you.

[Dave Ramsey]

So what do you make?

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah, I make 90 before.

[Dave Ramsey]

What's he making?

[Caller or Guest]

190.

[Dave Ramsey]

Cool.

[Jade Washall]

Do you guys have any debt?

[Caller or Guest]

No debt.

[Dave Ramsey]

Wow. It's not too much.

[Caller or Guest]

It's not too much. Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

Not if you pay cash.

[Jade Washall]

That's exciting.

[Caller or Guest]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

You wanna know how I did that?

[Caller or Guest]

Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

Here's fun. Okay. Average household income in America right Now is about $75,000. The average wedding in America is about $36,000. It's about half of the average income. So if you spend more than half your annual income on your wedding, and if you're paying for all of it, which just sounds like you are, okay, then you're spending too much on a wedding because you're more than half the average. Now, here's the thing. Keep in mind, average kind of sucks in America. We don't necessarily want to be average, but you're below 50% of your. Way below 50% of your $270,000 income. And so you're. On a ratio basis, you are half of the national average, which is half. Weird way to say that, but yeah. So, I mean, the national average would put. If you. If you spent 50% of your all's income, it'd be 135.

[Jade Washall]

So you're well below what the average person.

[Dave Ramsey]

And you're about half of that at 60. And so you're. You're very conservative as a ratio. But now for somebody makes 100 grand, it sounds like that, you know, Alyssa's lost her mind. You know, but that's what people say that don't have any money and you've got some money. So. Yeah.

[Jade Washall]

When you have more money, you can spend more.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Of it without it being a problem.

[Jade Washall]

Yeah.

[Caller or Guest]

So that doesn't include the honeymoon. And we added, I don't know, 10 or 15 on top of that.

[Dave Ramsey]

Honeymoon's a different story.

[Jade Washall]

I think that'd be fine.

[Dave Ramsey]

And the engagement rings, Another story. Okay.

[Jade Washall]

But, yeah, that's a good differential, though. When we're talking about. Talking about the wedding, there are those three components. There's the rings, then there's the actual party, and then there's your honeymoon.

[Dave Ramsey]

What do y' all do for a living?

[Caller or Guest]

I do medical sales, and he does product management.

[Dave Ramsey]

Cool. Okay, well, he's gonna really like this last suggestion. We've done three weddings at the Ramsey's. I've got three kids that are all married and been married many, many years. Okay. And Ramsey's, we like a big party. We like to celebrate stuff like that. And so we threw major parties on each of these weddings. It was a lot of fun, but we learned. And. And we did it from the first one. We introduced this idea that for your fiance, will love me. Your wedding is a project. So let's lay out a budget.

[Jade Washall]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

In detail. If we're gonna spend 60, how much of that's the dress? How much of that's the reception? How much of that's the videographer? How much of that's the preacher? How much is the venue? And you lay out a budget, and then, guess what, you stick to the budget.

[Jade Washall]

And that would be my word of wise for you, Alyssa, because when you. When you hear what Dave says. Yeah. Which is, technically, you could be spending more if you were being, quote, average. So for you, the hard part is going to say, even though we could spend more, we're going to stick to what we said in the beginning of 60,000.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. I would pretend like that. That you work for someone and your job was to manage a $60,000 budget and bring the event in on budget, on schedule. Because your manager. Project. It's an event project. I mean, we manage events here. It's what it is. And so this, you get fired if.

[Jade Washall]

You went over someone else's budget.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. If you. If you work for somebody, you get fired if you screwed it up. Right. So just treat it like it's serious business. And. And I know that doesn't sound very romantic, but people use romance as a way to do a lot of stupid butt stuff. So. No, we're not doing that. So. No. Just lay it out. Exactly. And you say this is. And you can pull up some percentages. There's some good guidelines online for how much to spend on the dress. I will go and tell you, if you're going to have a nice reception, to have the big party, it's going to be your biggest line item by far. Like how many people you think I mean, 60,000. You're thinking about inviting a decent number of people, aren't you?

[Caller or Guest]

It's not huge. So we've already booked the venue and we're going through that process. But I'm more of the saver and he's more of the spender. And so thinking of kind of the rough estimate that we put together with all the, you know, videographer, photographer and all of that, it just sounds like a lot of money.

[Dave Ramsey]

So I. Yeah, I would. But here's the thing.

[Caller or Guest]

Hesitant and not.

[Dave Ramsey]

You know what I say? You know what I mean when I say scope, Creep.

[Caller or Guest]

Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. This project. This thing will creep up and the 60 will turn into 80 if you do not. If you do not line item this. No rough estimates is freaking what we're going to do. And then when you're meeting with the caterer and they go, we can add Devil Lake. No, no, that's all we got. This is what we're doing. And, well, you know, we could spend, you know, freaking $85,000 on flowers. Who's getting married here? Princess Di? I mean, seriously. So, you know, we're gonna go in the field, pick some wildflowers so that we stay on budget. Rachel actually did that one. Well, if nothing, she was over budget on other stuff, and the only way she could get it back in budget was to get the flowers down.

[Jade Washall]

If nothing else, planned for 54. So at least you've got 10% set aside just as contingent sales. That's what I do.

[Dave Ramsey]

A little slush fund in the Little just in case. A little just in case. Fun. I'd have something in there for that. I don't know if I get away with that, but. Wow. Wow. Yeah. That's exactly how I would do it. And listen, I think you're approaching it very wisely. You're not counting on the people who have been vague about their possible input. That way you're not under their control. Matter of fact, whatever they come forth with, I'd probably just use that for the honeymoon. And I just lock this baby down on sickness 60 and just go. We're doing it. And you and the fiance sit down, agree to that. Go. This is a project like you manage at work. We're going to manage this. We're going to come in on budget. We're going to get the details out. Because there's always something that you can go higher. You can always go one bigger, one better on everything.

[Jade Washall]

You get the extra large shrimp instead of the large shrimp.

[Dave Ramsey]

What was the thing on Father of the Bride. Cheaper chicken.

[Jade Washall]

Oh, yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Cheaper chicken. Yeah.

[Jade Washall]

You get ice sculptures.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, that's it. And so, yeah, you can do it. And you can do that on a $10,000 budget. You can do it on a $60,000 budget. You can do it on whatever. You just manage the budget. Budget. That's right. This is what we're doing. And so it's just, we're going to get super creative and we're going to do this for 7, 800 bucks. We had a lady here on the team that got married and had a really nice little wedding for 7,000 bucks and she just slammed. You know, they were trying to get out of debt and that's the most they weren't going to spend. And it was, it was really very nice.

[Jade Washall]

Can I tell you the. Okay. Sam and I paid for our wedding out of pocket. Oh, it was like 10,000.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay.

[Jade Washall]

It was a little bit more. But I. My biggest regret to this day, and it was in the name of doing it debt free. We didn't have an open bar. No open bar.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's your, that's your regret that you didn't booze up everybody else?

[Jade Washall]

I mean, we were on a yacht. We were. It just made sense. You should have had. There should have been some drinks on board.

[Dave Ramsey]

You didn't have a. Oh, there was no open bar. There was no bar?

[Jade Washall]

No.

[Dave Ramsey]

No. What? Not. They couldn't even pay. No open bar would be like you paid.

[Jade Washall]

No. Well, I felt it was tacky to have people pay. So there just was no bar.

[Dave Ramsey]

Just no. Oh, well, okay, I'll go with that. Okay.

[Jade Washall]

But yeah, listen, it was a mistake.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's okay. You know what? They don't remember it. You're the only one that don't.

[Jade Washall]

I guess so. I don't know about that, but Sam.

[Dave Ramsey]

Doesn'T even remember it.

[Caller or Guest]

Foreign.

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[Dave Ramsey]

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[Dave Ramsey]

Richard's in Oklahoma. Hi, Richard. Welcome to the Ramsey Show.

[Caller or Guest]

Hey, thanks. Boy, I don't know. I don't really know where to start.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay.

[Caller or Guest]

I'm beginning to think. I'm thinking I'm a lost cause. I went through. I went through a very similar situation, actually an identical situation that you did, but it was much later in life. I was 55 when the banking. I was in the mortgage business for 10 years. When everything crashed, I lost everything. I was completely ruined. My confidence was kicked out the door. So I went through. I went through a few years of trying to get my act together and went to. Went to Florida. Basically. I went back to the one place that you never want to go, but the one place it's got to take you in. So my mom was very elderly at the time, and so I went down. I was taking care of her in Florida. And then it got to a point where I was going to need somebody to help. So I got to drive in a truck. And it was something that was kind of conducive because it was like I'd be in the truck and they'd say, okay, where am I going now? And it was only going to be for a couple of years. I was going to drive for a couple of years and then join the merchant marines. I wasn't married. I lost everything. I had no children. And then I was going to join the merchant marines. I figured, okay, I'll drive the country for a couple of years, then go sail the world for a couple years. But then I had to put my mom into assisted living. So in order to handle that, I stayed on the truck and was paying for that. And I also figured, well, you know, something came down. I'm a day or two days away versus a month to two months away.

[Dave Ramsey]

I'm sorry, Richard. So how can we best help?

[Caller or Guest]

Well, it's. Well, it's, you know, I never. I never sailed, you know, I never really planned, you know, based upon a previous caller. I was always totally ignorant and intimidated and not knowing anything about investing, afraid of missing out at this, afraid of losing. And then.

[Dave Ramsey]

How old are you?

[Caller or Guest]

Out? All right. Now I'm 72.

[Dave Ramsey]

And how much money do you have now?

[Caller or Guest]

Right Now I've got $40,000 in a. In a savings account, 5%. Okay, out of. Out of what? Because then in after a couple years, then I got involved with something else, and it was looked like it was going well and put good money after bad when Covid hit.

[Jade Washall]

Are you still driving? Are you still driving trucks? Are you still working Richard?

[Caller or Guest]

Yes, I'm still driving. Now. What my plan was, I wanted to have more of a nest egg. I wanted say nest egg. I wanted to have, you know, my goal was to have $50,000 in the bank for me to get off the truck, get back to. Get back to Texas, where there was a community there of people with common interests, and then really research what I could do without. Without having to try it.

[Jade Washall]

What's going on with your. What happened to the house your mom was living in before she went in? Assisted living?

[Caller or Guest]

Well, when she died, it was a. At one point, she had taken a reverse mortgage on it, so it went to the bank.

[Jade Washall]

Oh, shoot.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah. And it was a condominium there in. In.

[Dave Ramsey]

In Florida, so it was worth nothing, right? Yeah.

[Caller or Guest]

So there. Were you living.

[Jade Washall]

Are you just living in your cab? Where are you living?

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah, I'm living on the truck. Technically, I'm homeless. I was living in. I was living in Florida. I had a room. I was ready.

[Dave Ramsey]

What are you making?

[Caller or Guest]

Well, you know, I was just figuring that out because fortunately for the company I drive for that I've been with for a while now, a number of years, they have a minimum of 1250 a week because you don't always. You can go out and get with the way it is with driving, they pay by the mile, but they can pay a dollar a mile. But if you're only getting 300 miles a week, that's. That doesn't really do it.

[Dave Ramsey]

What do you make rich?

[Caller or Guest]

With my Social Security, it comes to about 80,000 gross.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. And you don't have any overhead because you're living in the truck. How much of that can you save? Can you say $40,000 a year?

[Caller or Guest]

Well, I've been. I had credit card debt and I've been paying that down. And then.

[Dave Ramsey]

Is it gone?

[Caller or Guest]

It was a thought.

[Dave Ramsey]

You said you were debt free.

[Caller or Guest]

Well, no, I didn't mean debt free. I'm sorry, I don't.

[Jade Washall]

How much credit card debt do you have now? Today?

[Caller or Guest]

2500 out of what was at one time, 60,000.

[Dave Ramsey]

Good for you.

[Jade Washall]

Good.

[Dave Ramsey]

And how much other debt do you have on.

[Caller or Guest]

Really? Really? I. I owe the irs, but I'm getting with an account in the beginning next week.

[Jade Washall]

How much?

[Caller or Guest]

I filed an extension. Only 2500 25.

[Dave Ramsey]

All right, so 4500 and 2500 makes you debt free. And then you start stacking cash as fast and as hard as you can for as long as you can.

[Caller or Guest]

Drive.

[Dave Ramsey]

Drive. And you start stacking it to the tune of $4,000, $3,000 a month into a good growth stock mutual fund and you sit down with a SmartVestor Pro. If you can do that for five years, you could build a good nest egg. I don't know if you got five years left, but in terms of passing your exams and everything to stay on the road and be safe and all that.

[Jade Washall]

But you got to do this today. You've got to start today. Get online, find that, don't put it off, because if you do, you're going to fall back in your same habit and you're just going to put it in a savings account and it's not going to do any of what Dave is saying it's going to do. So you've got to do it today.

[Dave Ramsey]

I want to set up $3,000 a month automatically coming out of your checking account. And then I want you to add more in addition to that going straight into mutual funds for your investing. That's $36,000 a year. You do that for three years, it's 100 grand. It'll be 100 and a half by the time you get done with it with growth, it'll be 300 before you know it. After that in terms of more growth. So you can actually build a nest egg. But you're going to have to lean on it. And your adventures are over yet now you're just grinding. We ain't no more time for adventures. We're just going to grind. And no more interferences. We have to grind. Whatever comes up, we got to grind. Whatever it is, we got to shift the gears and go. Shift gears and go. Shift gears and go. Got to make it. You got to make that money and you take all the runs you can take and you pile the cash as high as you can pilot, as quick as you can pilot, because you are in emergency mode. You're not a lost cause. But if you don't change your ways, you are. But it's not because the math is killing you. It's because you're killing you.

[Jade Washall]

Do you think he owns you?

[Dave Ramsey]

You got to get that those two little debts cleaned up right now as soon as possible. Go ahead and write a check. If you've listened to me for more than five minutes, you know that being normal with your money is not a good thing. Because normal is broke. And I want you to be where. That's why I love what we're doing with Fairwinds Credit Union. Our friends at Fairwinds just launched a brand new Ramsey debit card and it says debt is normal. Be weird, right? On the front. I love that because every time you swipe it, you're choosing to live differently with no credit card payments and no debt. You see, Fairwinds has been helping people like you ditch debt faster and build wealth for years. They're not trying to shove credit cards or auto loans in your face like the big banks do. And they've worked with us to create the smart bundle for Ramsey fans. It includes a no fee checking account, a high yield savings account to supercharge your emergency fund, and now the Ramsey debit card to help you stay focused on the baby steps. We're excited for you to try it. So check them out [e-mail] Ramsey that's Fairwinds.org Ramsey insured by the NCUA. If you're ever around the Nashville area, stop by and see us. We do the show on the glass live from 1 to 4 central time every day. And there's usually 50 to 200 people out here, partly to watch the show, but partly because the coffee and the homemade cookies are free. So there's that. And come by and hang out with us. We do pictures at the commercial breaks and all that kind of stuff. And you might have the opportunity to see someone stand on the debt free stage right here in the lobby to do their debt free scream. Dave and Roxanne are with us. Hey, guys. How are you?

[Caller or Guest]

Hi, Dave.

[Dave Ramsey]

Welcome, welcome. Where do you live?

[Caller or Guest]

We're from Calgary, Canada.

[Dave Ramsey]

Fun. And how much debt have you two paid off?

[Caller or Guest]

702,970.

Wow.

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh. How long did this take?

[Caller or Guest]

About seven years and four months.

[Jade Washall]

Dave, I. I smell a home payoff.

[Caller or Guest]

Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yes. Good for you. We're looking at weird people. I love it. What's this house worth?

[Caller or Guest]

About 800,000 right now.

Wow.

[Dave Ramsey]

Very cool. And how much in your nest egg these days?

[Caller or Guest]

About 320.

[Dave Ramsey]

So you're millionaires? Baby steps. Millionaires. How old are you two?

[Caller or Guest]

I'm 37.

I'm 45.

[Dave Ramsey]

And you're baby steps millionaires in Calgary, Canada. I'm so proud of y'. All.

[Caller or Guest]

Thank you.

[Dave Ramsey]

Way to go. How's that feel?

[Caller or Guest]

Feels amazing.

Amazing. Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

How many millionaires in your. In your line, your parents, your grandparents, all that kind of thing?

[Caller or Guest]

No one.

No one.

[Dave Ramsey]

You're the first one. You broke it.

[Caller or Guest]

And my brother's here with me. I think he's gonna. He's a millionaire.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. All right. So both of you made it. All right, good. So a whole new line to the family tree coming with you too?

[Caller or Guest]

Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

Way to go. Guys, I'm proud of you. Excellent job. All right. And your range of income during that seven years.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah, it's really interesting. We started at 30,000, only made nothing. And by the end of the journey, seven year journey, we make about 700,000 right now.

[Jade Washall]

Amazing.

[Dave Ramsey]

700.

[Jade Washall]

Amazing.

[Dave Ramsey]

What do y' all do?

[Caller or Guest]

We started. I was a general manager of cleaning company and a facility company.

And I used to work in finance in a government.

And along the way we started an online business and in affiliate marketing. And it started. The sales started to pick up and that's what we do full time now.

[Dave Ramsey]

In freight marketing?

[Caller or Guest]

No, no. Affiliate marketing.

[Dave Ramsey]

Affiliate marketing. Oh, I take it.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, wow. Good for you.

[Jade Washall]

Awesome.

[Dave Ramsey]

Pretty cool. Well, congratulations, you two. Zoom, zoom. What a wonderful income this is. Very cool. All right. How did a power couple like you guys get plugged into the Ramsey stuff?

[Caller or Guest]

It started, actually. I was listening to Joyce Mayer sermon and she talks about Financial Peace University, Total money makeover by Dave Ramsey. So I started searching about you. I got so excited about baby steps. And I showed it to him and he's very skeptical.

I was skeptical. I used to be a financial advisor. I wasn't a big fan of Dave Ramsey at the time, but our turning point was that it was February 2018. At that point, we had about 86,000 hours of consumer debt, 24 failed businesses.

[Dave Ramsey]

Wow.

[Caller or Guest]

And the only thing that was left for us was that we were managing a. An apartment and we were living for free again. Our income was about 30,000. We got home and we got an eviction letter saying, we don't need you anymore. And that kind of almost broke us. And I remember that day, we were afraid. You know, we were mad at each other for, you know, saving nothing and living for free. And I remember Roxanne prayed this very powerful prayer.

[Dave Ramsey]

Right?

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah. I asked God to heal our finances, to lead us to a solution and to lead us to the right opportunity. And. And that's when Dave finally became open about looking into more about the fpu.

Yeah. And that's when we. For me, it's like total surrender. I said, you know what, I may be a financial advisor, but as Dave would say, I don't have a six pack. Right. So I'm a fat financial advisor, so I need to have total surrender. And we went all in after that.

[Dave Ramsey]

Wow. Wow. So you just plugged in all in.

[Caller or Guest]

Yes.

Yeah. Online. Because it doesn't. They don't. From what I know, they don't have it right.

[Dave Ramsey]

Canada doesn't like the word university.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

When it's not like a real university, so they won't let us in there, but yeah. Wow. So cool, man. I'm proud of you.

[Caller or Guest]

Thank you.

[Dave Ramsey]

Very neat. So what was the first thing you did to get the income up?

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

So you're sitting there homeless. Almost. Almost.

[Caller or Guest]

So we started, you know, I started, started to apply on, I mean full time and you know, like we're employable. So I got full time job. And then you get a full time job.

We started going back to actual work because we had this mentality of, look, we're, you know, we want to be entrepreneurs, but we didn't want to have a full time job because we have a wrong mindset about hard work. So we all actually went back to full time work. Roxanne and I. And then we went intense. We had cleaning jobs. We had, you know, the best side hustle for us was like we had a. We rented our apartment that we were living in, right?

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Caller or Guest]

And because we were living in a two bedroom apartment and we started to rent the second bedroom to international students and that. I think it gave us like $500 extra. And then we sold our Mercedes Benz. It took us like three months to really think about it. So we sold, sold at Mercedes Benz. That free us more cash flow for us. And then we sold some stuff in Facebook Marketplace as well. And cleaning jobs.

Yeah. Everything that we saw that wasn't, you know, we had like three iPads for some reason, we sold two of them. I had an old golf club. We sold it, you know, had an old suit. We put it in FB Marketplace.

[Jade Washall]

Everything, everything must go.

[Caller or Guest]

You know, there was a, there was a.

[Dave Ramsey]

So where did you grow, Grow up?

[Caller or Guest]

I grew up in the Philippines and grew up in the Philippines too.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. All right. And so you're in. You moved to Canada. Whole new opportunity.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Whole new set of things. A bunch of failed businesses. Take the full time jobs, plus all the side hustles start scratching and digging. And one of those side hustles became the affiliate marketing that blew up. Yeah.

[Caller or Guest]

Along the way, you know, I was, I was, I wanted to come here to thank you, Dave, because I. We used talk about that. This journey healed us because on those businesses, it wasn't the business per se. It was, you know, our inpatients, you know, we had a sickness called abd. I call it Attention Business Disorder.

[Dave Ramsey]

Right.

[Caller or Guest]

When the business became.

[Dave Ramsey]

Sounds like an entrepreneur to me.

[Caller or Guest]

When the business became challenging, we said, maybe there's something easier out there. But baby step two really taught us to be patient of you. Know, have spirit of contentment, you know, be creative, be resourceful. Everything an entrepreneur needs. Right. And when we hit our, you know, the business along the way, it was February, started October 2018 is when we started affiliate marketing. That's it took off because, you know, God blessed that business because we now have the character, the foundation that sits on it. So something.

[Jade Washall]

You guys are incredible.

[Caller or Guest]

Thank you.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's amazing.

[Jade Washall]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Wow. Preach it, Preach it. I love it. Well done. So proud of you. Way to go. How's it feel now to be this age and, you know, I mean, you go through all of that and now you're millionaires already. And it was not a smooth journey. It was a. It was a gut wrenching journey. But rich. Rich. And so how's it feel now that you're there?

[Caller or Guest]

Feels weird to be weird.

Feels amazing. At peace knowing that, you know, we're taking care of God's resources. We learned that it's not our money, it's God's money. And we realize that if God bless us earlier, we would lose it. But now, because God knows that we're prepared so we can handle more.

[Dave Ramsey]

When you're faithful in the little things, you'll be given more to manage. Yeah. Pretty much in his scripture, scriptures. Love it. Proud of y'. All. Very, very well done. And you brought your son with you, right? Yes, Bring him up. Do you want to introduce him? Having part of this? Yes. How old is he and what's his name?

[Caller or Guest]

He's 4 years old. His name is Caleb.

[Dave Ramsey]

Hey, Caleb. Well done, brother. He just made the handoff here.

[Jade Washall]

Yeah, right.

[Dave Ramsey]

I love it. Very cool. Good looking guy. Fun, fun, fun. He has no idea how much of a hero his mom and dad are. They've changed their entire lives. Very cool. Their entire family tree is completely shaken up. Way to go, Caleb. Pretty cool. You selected good parents, brother. So cool job. All right, Dave and roxanne and Caleb. $703,000 paid off in seven years and four months, making from 30,000 to 700,000. Count it down. Let's hear a debt free scream.

[Caller or Guest]

3, 3, 2, 1.

[Dave Ramsey]

To God be the glory.

[Caller or Guest]

We're debt free.

[Dave Ramsey]

I love it. That's about as good as it gets right there, man. How fun. Way to go, you guys.

[Caller or Guest]

Sam.

[Dave Ramsey]

What does the future hold for business? Ask nine experts and you'll get 10 different answers. Economic growth or a recession. Business taxes will go up or down. AI will help us work or it will replace us all. But there's no such thing as a crystal ball. That's why more than 42,000 businesses have future proofed themselves with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one AI cloud enterprise resource planning system. Ramsey Solutions uses NetSuite and you should too. Whether your company's earning millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and seize your biggest opportunities with one unified business management suite. There's one source of truth for the visibility and control you need to make quick decisions. NetSuite's real time insights and forecasting help you see into the future with actionable data. And when you're closing the books in days, not weeks, you spend less time looking backward and more time focusing on what's next. And speaking of what's Next, download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com Ramsey it's free. [e-mail] Ramsey if you died tomorrow, how would your family keep the lights on? How would they pay the mortgage? Afford groceries? If anyone in your life depends on your income, you need life insurance. But how do you choose from all the options that are out there? Well, it's actually simple. Life insurance is one job and that's to replace your income if you die. Term life insurance is the only thing that does only that. The others, like whole life or permanent life, try to add in investing. They end up doing a bad job at everything. You only need life insurance while someone depends on you financially. So if you're like most people, you need a policy worth 10 to 12 times your income for 15 to 20 years years. And it should be a level policy, meaning the premium stays the same. To find more info and resources, use our free term life insurance guide, go to ramseysolutions.com termlifeguide or click the link in the description. If you're listening on YouTube or podcast, Ryan is in Idaho. Hey Ryan, what's up?

[Caller or Guest]

Well, thanks to technology, I'm calling you from the tractor seats, so that's kind of neat. So I guess the the main reason for my call is you always say, if you woke up in my shoes, what would you do? So I guess I I'm just looking for a little advice. So me and my wife have been married about five years. We've had a couple of little kids and I pursued a degree in diesel mechanics and then move to a commercial potato farm as a diesel mechanic. So this time of year I make a very large substantial amount of money during the harvest and then kind of tapers off during the rest of the year as we do maintenance and other things. So I kind of Live on a boom and a bust cycle. And we've kind of been working the big steps, trying to get stuff paid off while we have the money to do so. And I've kind of just been trying to figure out what to do. My, My wife's been very sick. A lot of our, our debt is actually medical debt. And we found kind of a, I guess like a hormonal therapy. It's, it's kind of an extensive program to help her feel better. And I'm kind of in a, in a weird place where I'm making a lot of money and I'm like, well, well, do I take the money and start paying off debt or do I take some money and help her feel better? So we don't have as much metal. Good. In the future, you help your wife.

[Dave Ramsey]

You help your wife, sir, before you do, before you do anything, what's the nature of, what's the nature of her illness?

[Caller or Guest]

It's, it's more hormonal. All the doctors have kind of said after she had babies, it just kind of messed with her hormones and she. So we kind of been to a bunch of different doctors and, and really the biggest issue is that it's not, it's not covered under any kind of insurance. It's not anything we can, we can just take care of. And so we've, we've sought out a lot of.

[Dave Ramsey]

So is she, is she struggling with depression after the postpartum?

[Caller or Guest]

Oh, all sorts of different things. Depression on top of just actual illness. I mean, she's sick all the time. She doesn't feel good. Good. And trying to take care of two little kids while, you know, I'm out in the field, gone all day. It's just.

[Jade Washall]

What's it costing you? What's it costing you to do the treatments? Are you just. You're hitting your max every year? Is that what it is?

[Caller or Guest]

No, it's, it's completely, it's got to be completely out of pocket. So the doctors have said it's about a six thousand dollar procedure, but I just have to come up with cash.

[Dave Ramsey]

6,000, which I can do.

[Caller or Guest]

Obviously. I make, I make a lot of money right now.

[Dave Ramsey]

What's a lot of money?

[Caller or Guest]

Anything on my cash at.

[Dave Ramsey]

What's a lot of money?

[Caller or Guest]

I make about 20 grand a month during harvest.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. And so for thrift a month?

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah, I can stockpile a lot of money right now.

[Dave Ramsey]

So you make 60 grand in three months, but then you don't make much the rest of the year. Yeah.

[Jade Washall]

What do you make the Rest of.

[Dave Ramsey]

The year.

[Caller or Guest]

I average. I make about 80 a year.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay.

[Caller or Guest]

And so I'd say probably half. It's probably closer to 30 or 40 grand during harvest. And then the rest of the year kind of evens out. So I still have a consistent paycheck.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. All right. And. Okay. So I don't know anything medically about where you are, but if you have a high probability in your mind and you've solved for that, that, that this. I mean, you work on engines, and so if the doctors have convinced you that this will work on your wife. Wife, you know, you're trying. Is this a high probability of a fix? I don't want to throw $6,000 on something that they just hope it might work. You know, it's a 10% probability. No, thank you. I'll figure out something else. But if there's a high. A high healing rate for whatever it is she's struggling with, with this particular procedure, and you can do it for $6,000. I just put that at the top of the list.

[Caller or Guest]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

Everything's. Everything's paying minimum payments, and you're living on a budget, and you come up with six grand in. And then we go back to we're living on a budget, and we start paying down the smallest debt to largest debt.

[Caller or Guest]

Okay. And that's kind of what was kind of hard because it's not. It's one of those things where it's like, I feel like we should pay it, but even my wife's in here. Like, we need the money for other things. We're trying to pay off debts. We're trying to get well.

[Dave Ramsey]

I mean, you're probably spending $6,000 on medical bills, though, right?

[Jade Washall]

That's the thing. If you don't do this, you're going to spend the same money coming in and out of the hospital, Right. On other things, I guess.

[Dave Ramsey]

I don't know. I don't know what you're dealing with. And I'm not a medical doctor. If, you know, I couldn't tell you if I did know, but it's a fairly. The way you've explained, it's pretty vague. I have no idea what she's facing. But, you know, I. I don't know. It sounds like it's an immune disorder of some kind.

[Jade Washall]

I don't know. But I do know. I think the hard part is when you're wanting to go, you know, hard on the baby steps. It's. It's hard to let other things go in front of that. But the truth is, yeah, health Health. When you have a health concern or something that's very seriously affecting your health, that does need to jump in.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Caller or Guest]

Well, not.

[Dave Ramsey]

Not only do we not want to be sick and not want to hurt, but on top of that, just the mathematics are you come out ahead.

[Jade Washall]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

If you don't have the medical bills because you paid the money to get the hippo healing.

[Jade Washall]

That's right. That's right.

[Dave Ramsey]

Get the treatment. You know, assuming it works. And that's. That's the thing you've got to understand. Y' all know, need to be your own advocate with these very true off insurance procedures and make sure you've got a high probability of this stuff. And it's not some witch doctor thing. I don't have any idea what you're getting into here, but. But I truly know nothing about it, and I can't tell any. I couldn't tell based on what you told me anyway. So. Yeah, if you think it's going to help your wife, then it gets first. But I'm going to want a high degree of due diligence to really know that. I know that. I know that this is going to have a. You know that nine out of 10 patients, they do this, then they quit having the ongoing illnesses, right?

[Jade Washall]

Yeah, that's right.

[Dave Ramsey]

Whatever it is we're trying to accomplish here, let's. Let's see some cause and effect to this, not just, oh, well, I think this will work. Let's try her as our next guinea pig. No, I don't want to do that either. Thank you, Kermit. That's okay. We'll pass. Jay's with us in Arizona. Hey, Jay. What. What's up?

[Caller or Guest]

Hey, so I got a question for you. My. I don't really know where to start. My. My little sister was killed in an accident a couple years back.

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, my God.

[Caller or Guest]

The company responsible for it basically just failed to meet a whole bunch of safety regulations. We have 22.

[Dave Ramsey]

Wow.

[Jade Washall]

So sorry.

[Caller or Guest]

We have. We have received a wrongful death payout. The grand total, I don't know about. I have requested that. I have no interest in knowing. I just want to know what affects me. And basically what affects me is that my parents have set up trust accounts for everybody with enough in them under the management of a financial advisor that I'm told that we'll set up generational wealth. I will not have to worry about retirement. My kids will not. My grandkids will not. And we are being given. On top of that, all of our debts outside of four walls are being wiped Out.

[Dave Ramsey]

Wow.

[Caller or Guest]

And then a one time financial gift of 38,000. And.

[Jade Washall]

That part sounds weird.

[Caller or Guest]

My parents financial.

[Dave Ramsey]

Where did that money, what did that amount come from? From.

[Caller or Guest]

In Arizona. The maximum amount that a married couple can give their kids is 38,000 before Uncle Sam wants his house.

[Jade Washall]

Got it. Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

Uncle Sam lives in Washington, not in Arizona.

[Caller or Guest]

That's fair. But they've. I mean they've ransied the crap out of their finances. They're almost debt free and they weren't five years.

[Dave Ramsey]

So your mom and dad are receiving this money.

[Caller or Guest]

Correct.

[Jade Washall]

And you don't know how much it is?

[Caller or Guest]

I don't know how much. The grand total is no high.

[Dave Ramsey]

What I would do is operate my life as if it wasn't there. And I would save for retirement and I would say for my kids college. And then if any of this money does come your way as a result of all this trust funds and all these things they're doing then it's just gravy on the biscuit. It's just extra money. But I would continue to operate my life normally as. As if this wasn't there. And then if it comes, fine. If it doesn't come, fine.

[Jade Washall]

Hey guys. I'm so excited to tell you that our new 2026 Ramsey Gold Planner is available right now.

[Caller or Guest]

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[Jade Washall]

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[Dave Ramsey]

Welcome back to the Ramsey show in the Fair Winds Credit Union Studios. Jade Washall Ramsey, personality number one best selling author is my co host today. Barbara is in Dallas. Hey Barbara, how are you?

[Caller or Guest]

I'm good. Thank you for taking my call.

[Dave Ramsey]

Sure. What's up?

[Caller or Guest]

I'm very nervous.

[Dave Ramsey]

That's okay darling. We've never lost a patient. How can we help?

[Caller or Guest]

I'm calling because I'm going to try to get through this without crying. My mom recently suffered a series of strokes and since then she. She had some short term memory loss and the medical staff basically said that she should not be by herself anymore until she does live alone. And I'm. She lives about four hours from me. She used to live with me. Wanting to her to come back to live with me. But I'd have to build onto My house to do that. I'm recently debt free following the baby steps and I just don't know what to do because I don't have the money to build saved. So I was hoping I could help.

[Dave Ramsey]

How old is your she?

[Caller or Guest]

75.

[Dave Ramsey]

And you said she's had a series of strokes?

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah, she had a seven mini strokes.

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, wow. So is she mobile?

[Caller or Guest]

Yes. Physically she's strong. It's more her memory that's been affected.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, that, that, yeah, that sounds right. All right, what is her financial condition?

[Caller or Guest]

She. No savings, no retirement, nothing.

Basically she has no money.

[Dave Ramsey]

No, she own her house.

[Caller or Guest]

She has a mortgage, but yeah, she has her house.

[Dave Ramsey]

What's it worth?

[Caller or Guest]

Probably about 150.

[Dave Ramsey]

And what is owed on it?

[Caller or Guest]

50.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. All right. Are you the. Are you the only child?

[Caller or Guest]

No, I have two siblings.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. Are they going to take care of her?

[Caller or Guest]

They are. Right now my sister lives about an hour. They go. She goes on the weekends and then my brother lives is about 30 minutes and. But they work in town so they go during the week, but she's by herself for the rest of the day.

So that's probably what that would look.

Like if she stayed there.

[Dave Ramsey]

Sounds like that she needs to sell her house and be moved into assisted living to me. I don't think you need to build on. Okay, number one, your brother and sister are in town where she is. You're the one that's four hours away. You're going to move her four hours away from them and you need their help. And you need their help and they're willing to help and they're good people. They've been trying to help as best they could with their schedule. Okay.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

And number two, if I'm 77 and I've had a series of strokes, I don't know what my probability is to live five more years. What do you think?

[Caller or Guest]

I have no idea.

[Dave Ramsey]

I don't know, but I don't. It doesn't sound good. You know, I don't think this is a. Most people that are in that situation don't live 15 years. Would you agree with that?

[Caller or Guest]

Sure.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. I mean, we're all going to go sometime. I'm not trying to be cold. I know it's your mom, but I'm just trying to say, you know, you don't need to go spend 50 or 60 thousand dollars for something that's going to be for four or five years. Even if she did live longer than that, it's probably going to get past your ability to care for her.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah.

[Jade Washall]

Because Even if you. Even if you took. Let's just say. Look, let's say you did sell her house and take the money and use it to build onto your house, it still doesn't cover the fact that you wouldn't be working because you'd be home taking care of her. Right. Because somebody. The fact remains that someone still has to take care of her during the day.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Listen, I love your heart and I. I hope my kids want to take care of me as badly as you want to take care of her. I think that's awesome and that's an act of love and that's a good heart thing. I'm just trying to help you through the actual. The realities of your desire. What is your desire? What's the reality of your desire to do this wonderful thing? And then what's best for mom? What's going to give her the best quality of care? I think she's got those two kids right next to her. I would find some kind of assisted living there and I'd sell the house and put her in that. And if she outlives that, if she outlives that money there, then we'll work on something else.

[Caller or Guest]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

But I suspect that you could probably get, you know, reasonable care in that area. I don't know. You just have to shop around and find out what's available and what can be done and so forth. Does either your brother or your sister have room for her if they had someone there to care for her in their home?

[Caller or Guest]

They do, but. And they've offered for her to go live with them, but she keeps saying she doesn't want to. She wants to come here.

[Jade Washall]

Why? Why? Is there something with that? Because whenever we've mentioned your siblings, you kind of have a bit of a pause. Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

And yet they're both doing their thing. They're helping.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah, they are. They are. They definitely are.

[Jade Washall]

Do you just have the closest relationship?

[Dave Ramsey]

Say it again.

[Caller or Guest]

Huh?

She used to live here with me and when my dad was here. My dad passed away in 2018.

[Dave Ramsey]

Are you single?

[Caller or Guest]

Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. Okay. All right. Well, I mean, how many bedrooms do you have?

[Caller or Guest]

I have a three bedroom house.

[Dave Ramsey]

Why would you need to build on.

[Caller or Guest]

The problem is, is that she's got three dogs and I have three dogs.

[Dave Ramsey]

No, she doesn't.

[Jade Washall]

This is not. This can't be about dogs.

[Dave Ramsey]

We're not building onto a house for dogs. Yeah, no, no. Different discussion. Sorry. Mom. You wanna live here? We don't have three dogs. I can help you with that. I love dogs. I love my Dog more than I do most humans. But no way. No way. Dogs don't make this decision. This is too important, too big a decision. We're trying to figure out how to care for a lady who's had a series of strokes and now dogs enter the discussion. New new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new. So now she can move in with you, the dogs can't. She sells her house and you put her in one of the bedrooms and you hire somebody to care for her there. If you don't want to put her in assisted living. It's actually a better economic. Better economic value anyway. So, yeah, that's easy. Okay. Let the dogs go stay with somebody. Re home them. Is that what they call it now?

[Jade Washall]

I don't even care. I just. Now I know what the real deal is with the situation.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, the kid. The brother and sister said no dogs. And now you're gonna go into debt. You called us to go into debt to build a wing for the dogs. Come on, girl. Seriously. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Now we've gone cr. No, no. You take care of your mom. That does not include taking care of her pets. This is a lady who has no money, has saved no money her whole life, and now her family is going to have to care for her. They are not obligated to take care of her dogs. Not. I'm sorry. Dave's so cold. He's so mean to animals. He doesn't like animals. I love animals.

[Jade Washall]

Yeah, but this is.

[Dave Ramsey]

This is just way off the chart.

[Caller or Guest]

Sam. Foreign. Hey, what's up? Dr. John Deloney here. The new dates have dropped for the money and marriage getaway over 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 and early bird prices start at 749. Doll a couple, but the prices will be going up soon. Get your tickets [e-mail] events.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, big news. The Fed cut rates for the first time all year and the 15 year fixed rate mortgages have dropped to the lowest we've seen in 11 months. If you're financially ready, now's a great time to buy or sell. Lower rates could save you thousands over the life of your loan. But if you sit on the sidelines waiting for the perfect moment, you could miss the Window. And you might end up paying more in home price for the exact same house. So buying an affordable home you love is possible when you work with a Ramsey trusted real estate agent. These are pros that are handpicked by us to guide you through the market and keep your financial goals in mind. They're the top agents in your area. Find a trusted local pro for [e-mail] agents or click the link in the show notes. Joseph's in California. Hi, Joseph, how are you?

[Caller or Guest]

Hey, I'm doing great, sir. I got a question about a few problems I'm facing currently.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah, so I. Okay, so I've been a full time gig worker. I've been driving for Uber and Lyft and I finally financed two vehicles. The first one I financed was the Honda crv. And when I bought it, I bought it at the, at the peak when prices were so inflated, you know, dealerships were marking up prices and there was low inventory and you know, the car prices were much higher.

[Jade Washall]

So what'd you pay?

[Caller or Guest]

I bought it in 20. I financed it for 60, 60K. This was in 2020, like the beginning of 2022.

[Dave Ramsey]

You financed a Honda, Honda for 60K to drive Uber.

[Caller or Guest]

It was, it was. Okay, so it was like 59 out the door.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, I mean, you financed a Honda for 50 or 60 thousand dollars to drive Uber and CRV.

[Caller or Guest]

Correct. Because I, I got. So the thing is, I got advice from other drivers that, hey, you can really make good money.

[Dave Ramsey]

You got financial advice from other Uber drivers? Yeah, because you just said that out loud.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah. Wow.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay.

[Jade Washall]

Okay, so you got the $60,000 car. What else?

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah, and so it was just a regular suv. And so I was making decent money at first. I was making about 2700 a week easily. And then I started seeing my earnings go down because then Uber, you know, they got rid of this one program called Uber Green, which most hybrid vehicles qualified at the time. And you know, Uber Green is like that feature that gives passengers the option to ride in a vehicle that's eco friendly. Right. And so a lot of them think that, you know, a clean hybrid vehicle or Tesla is going to show up to pick them up. So they got rid of that feature. So all hybrid vehicles don't qualify for that. So then my, I would say my earnings dropped by like five or six hundred dollars. Then I was like, shoot, I was talking to other drivers, they were like, hey, you might need to level up, get an XL vehicle, which is like a three row seat suv. Right. So then what I did.

[Jade Washall]

Did you trade in the CRV for.

[Caller or Guest]

No, no, no. I, I went to the, I went to the dealership. I put down because I had savings of 50,000. I put down 30,000 to get the. It was an Acura MDX.

[Jade Washall]

So you kept the Honda CRV and then got an accurate mdx?

[Dave Ramsey]

Why?

[Caller or Guest]

They didn't want to. The dealership was like, hey, if you take it, there's like a lot of negative equity data. So I was like, maybe I should take, Maybe you should just keep this car.

[Jade Washall]

So would you pay for the MD.

[Caller or Guest]

Disperse the miles, about 54,000.

[Jade Washall]

Oh, Lord.

[Caller or Guest]

And I got this. But I got this a little later. I, I bought this one in like 20. 24.

[Jade Washall]

Do. You financed 54. So you put down 30 and financed 54. So you paid 84 for it.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah.

Exactly.

[Dave Ramsey]

And how.

[Caller or Guest]

I'm really pissed off at my.

[Dave Ramsey]

Joseph. How old are you, Joseph?

[Caller or Guest]

29, sir.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. All right. Do you have a real job yet?

[Caller or Guest]

And I did it at the moment, but I was just, I wasn't making the kind of money that I was making doing Uber and Lyft.

[Dave Ramsey]

No, honey, you weren't making any money doing Uber and Lyft because you haven't been smart enough to factor in all the losses on your vehicles.

[Caller or Guest]

You're right.

[Dave Ramsey]

When you factor that in, you didn't even break even. And by the way, you didn't take out gas and, and repairs either, did, did you? No.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah, and I was going to get to that. Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

By the time you do all of that, you didn't even make, you didn't make money on all this. You've been working for free for Uber.

[Caller or Guest]

That's true. Because I, at first I saw the money was great, you know, like when I got.

[Dave Ramsey]

The gross revenue was great. The net profit was not great.

[Caller or Guest]

3, 500, right?

[Dave Ramsey]

There's a difference. Yeah. Okay, so now you're stuck in these two cars, honey. What a mess. And, and do you have a job now, currently?

[Caller or Guest]

Yes, I do have a job.

[Dave Ramsey]

What do you make?

[Caller or Guest]

Unfortunately, about 22 an hour. Not a lot.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. What were you doing?

[Caller or Guest]

I don't have any, I don't have, I don't have a lot of skills.

[Dave Ramsey]

What were you doing before your Uber escapades?

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah, I was just, I was working as an, you know, I was just doing regular minimum wage jobs, you know, like working in customer service industry, like fast food restaurants, restaurants, you know, service industry. And then, you know, security.

[Jade Washall]

The acura. You put 30,000 down. You should not be upside down. You should be Able to sell this vehicle. What's it worth.

[Caller or Guest]

There? Okay, so if I were to sell it to a dealership.

[Jade Washall]

Private sale, please.

[Dave Ramsey]

Private sale. Not.

[Caller or Guest]

Private sale. I mean, it's worth. On Kelly blue book, about 48. And you owe what, 54. A little over 54, so. And. But the problem is I don't have any money left over, so I wouldn't even be able to pay the difference.

[Dave Ramsey]

I understand that. I'm just trying to. You put down $30,000. You've driven it one year and you're already upside down.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah.

[Jade Washall]

Oh, my gosh.

[Dave Ramsey]

Are you sure? Women. That is. That. That's what the dealer.

[Jade Washall]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

I mean, how many miles? How many miles you put on it?

[Caller or Guest]

About 30,000.

[Jade Washall]

Oh, something doesn't add. Is that. Does that sound right? No, I was gonna say that doesn't add up to me.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, so, well, here's the deal.

[Caller or Guest]

Well, no, because it's a newer. It's a 20. 24. That's why the value is not so low.

[Jade Washall]

That's why I dropped so much. Still.

[Caller or Guest]

Oh, no, wait, I'm confused. Were you guys expecting a lower number than.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, well, expecting a higher number?

[Jade Washall]

Yeah, because you put 30,000 down, which means there's that much room.

[Dave Ramsey]

You had to lose $30,000 in value before you got upside down.

[Caller or Guest]

Right, right. But when I bought it, it was brand new, had zero miles. I put 30,000 miles on it, which.

[Jade Washall]

Is not a lot.

[Dave Ramsey]

It is in one year, but it's not enough to devalue it that far. All right. And they're rough. Miles we bring.

[Jade Washall]

Is your. Is. Is your. Your. Is your credit. Terrible. Can you go to the. Get down to the bank and get a loan for the difference?

[Caller or Guest]

It's. Yeah, it's kind of bad because I'm late. I've been late for a month.

[Jade Washall]

Okay.

[Caller or Guest]

On one vehicle.

[Dave Ramsey]

And I assume both of these loans are with the car companies, right?

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah, both with the same.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, no, they're with the same. Who are they with?

[Caller or Guest]

You know Honda, we call it finance. Yeah. They have, like, their own financing. Yeah, yeah. Got it from the same dealership.

And so.

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

Well, what I'm going to do is try to scramble and get out of these cars with car loans and extra work. I want you to work a bazillion hours and not at Uber. Actually. Actually, you got two cars sitting there. You could go make some money with Uber now and pile up some cash really, really fast. I mean, how fast can you make $6,000 and just put that aside and get rid of this One car driving, the other one drive the Honda.

[Caller or Guest]

That's what I was trying to tell my family members, that maybe I should move to a different market where I can make that money because my earnings drop.

[Jade Washall]

Listen, you can make $6,000 make doing anything. I don't care if you get a job at Target.

[Caller or Guest]

Ma'. Am. I get that it's not simple, you know, especially with, like, I got to pay for, like, groceries I got to.

[Dave Ramsey]

Pay for, you know, what market are you in?

[Caller or Guest]

That's very California.

[Dave Ramsey]

I know. We're in California.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah. San Francisco.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. Yeah, you probably do need to move to a different market. You're in one of the most expensive markets in the world. The only good thing is there. The Uber's expensive, but other than that, your cost of living is killing you.

[Jade Washall]

That's gonna.

[Dave Ramsey]

So, yeah, drive, you know, but. But I do want you to do something to earn a bunch of money as fast as you possibly can. And yeah, if you move, that's fine, but you've, you know, you've got to reverse the things that are killing you and that the first thing is to not be driving the Honda or the. The second car because we've got to get out of it. It's the one you have a chance of getting out of, the other one, you're neck deep in it. And if you just turn these cars in, they're going to sell them for 50% of what you think they're going to sell them for, and they're going to sue you for the difference. And you're going to find yourself in bankruptcy, and you're going to find out that Uber, your Uber career bankrupted you along with some really stupid decisions. But that's where you're going to end up if you don't fight your way through these. So voluntary repossession or straight up repossession are really, really bad for you, Joseph. So your best thing to do is to control the price of the sale, the sale price of the car, and the hole that you're in that corresponds that by getting these sold, by covering the differences. Foreign, you work your butt off for your money, but your money's never going to return the favor if all you do is hope for the best. If you're ready to learn how to make your money work for you, check out the SmartVestor program. SmartVestor can help you find advisors who specialize in retirement planning, charitable giving, advanced investing strategies, and more. Whatever your goals, your pro will take the time to explain your options so you never have to Invest in anything you don't understand. Head to ramseysolutions.com smartvestor to get connected. Ramsey Solutions is a paid non client promoter of participating pros.

[Caller or Guest]

Learn [e-mail] SmartVestor.

[Dave Ramsey]

In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt free stage. Zach and McKenna are with us. Hey, guys. How are you?

[Caller or Guest]

Good.

We're doing well.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. Well to be here. Where do you guys live?

[Caller or Guest]

We're out in the Seattle area in Washington state.

[Dave Ramsey]

Cool. Welcome to Nashville. Good to have you. And how much debt have you two pet paid off?

[Caller or Guest]

A whopping just north of $68,000.

[Jade Washall]

Nice.

[Dave Ramsey]

Good for you. And how long did that take?

[Caller or Guest]

Took about two and a half years.

[Dave Ramsey]

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

[Caller or Guest]

Started off at about 117,000, took a dip to zero, and now we're looking at finishing off at about 150this year.

[Dave Ramsey]

Good. What do you guys do for a living?

[Caller or Guest]

I'm a police officer.

[Dave Ramsey]

Cool. Yep.

[Caller or Guest]

And then I stay home with our four kiddos.

[Dave Ramsey]

Love it. Love it. Congratulations. And what kind of debt was the 68,000?

[Caller or Guest]

Well, it was a little bit of everything. A big chunk of it was medical debt. We had car debt, we had credit card debt. And I think that was about it.

[Dave Ramsey]

Oh, yeah.

[Caller or Guest]

Pretty much everything you could have is.

[Dave Ramsey]

What we call the normal, good mix. Normal's no fun. How long y' all been married?

[Caller or Guest]

It'll be almost 10 years.

[Dave Ramsey]

10 years. Okay. That's about the mark. Yeah. Yeah. Not that long to get there.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. And then two and a half years ago, something happened. What happened?

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah, we were kind of. It felt like our paycheck was constantly robbing Peter to pay Paul type of thing. Our credit cards were just about maxed out. And when they just had just enough wiggle room, we'd pull from another account to pay for that bill. And this bill, it just got to a point where we felt like we're on a sinking ship and we just had to change something.

[Dave Ramsey]

So.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah, yeah, it was pretty. I feel like, to our. Just our. I mean, we had always felt fairly stressed out, you know, with finances. And we were always just barely making, you know, to pay our bills. And that was really stressful, obviously. And then you bring four kids into the picture.

[Jade Washall]

Oh, yeah, sure.

[Caller or Guest]

All of a sudden that stress becomes just even more so.

[Jade Washall]

So how'd you find us?

[Caller or Guest]

It's funny. My mom, I was a missionary for my church way back in the day, and she gave me a book, the I forget which one we've read A whole bunch of them. But she gave it to me and I read it. And for whatever reason, I didn't think we had to go past the first baby step of a thousand dollar emergency fund. We did that forever. And then it was like, oh, yeah, we're not supposed to have debt, so we've always been around and exposed to it. And then my little pea brain finally figured out that we're supposed to get past that, that first baby step. And that's kind of where we just. When we hit that head of we can't really pay for anything anymore and we got to make a change. And that's kind of when we got back into things. So.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Jade Washall]

Wow.

[Dave Ramsey]

What's the story on the 117 to 0?

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah. So I got. I worked in the tech industry and it was during COVID Covid. The market was real hot. It was really easy to get a job. And that's when I got up to 117. And then as Covid kind of died down, I got laid off for about five months. And so that was. Went down to zero. And that was in the midst of us trying to pay off our debt. So that, that was a really big hurdle in the whole middle of that. And that's why I made the career change from working in tech to now being a police officer.

[Dave Ramsey]

Wow.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Very cool. And in Seattle proper.

[Caller or Guest]

Just outside of Seattle.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Caller or Guest]

Real close.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, good for you.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

Wow. Well done.

[Jade Washall]

That's a big deal, you know, paying off $68,000 with four kids at home, middle of a career change. I mean, what. I have some guesses, but what was the hardest part?

[Caller or Guest]

It's just the. I think we were talking about this earlier and for us it's just the time away. Being the sole provider, it was. I was putting in 60 to 80 hour weeks for almost two and a half years. And so it was. It just the time away from the family and the kids was a really, really hard.

Yeah, we had a lot of conversation with the kids because he went from being a work at home dad, you know, he was at home with his tech job. And so it was really hard all of a sudden to have him at home 24 7, basically. And then he lost his job for a few months he was home extra. And then he. And then, you know, we made our goals and we're like, we got it. We just got to work really hard. Especially with his job. He was able to work overtime. And so, I mean, he. He's been gone a lot and he still is because we've Got some goals we're working towards. And so, yeah, it was. We had lots of hard conversations with the kids and luckily though, they've been on board with us, which we've been grateful for. And we'd rather do it now while they're little than, you know, later.

[Dave Ramsey]

And gosh, yeah, yeah, you're changing your whole family tree. It's worth it. They'll be better off, you'll be better off. Everybody will be. Yeah.

[Caller or Guest]

The whole, whole mindset change too is huge. I remember the first time when we first were like, okay, we're actually sticking to a budget and we're in the, I think it was Walmart self checkout and we were like a dollar over and it was for some stupid poster board and I had to do the walk of shame all the way back to the back of the store.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yes.

[Caller or Guest]

Can't afford this. Like, yeah, it's a dollar and I can't have it.

[Jade Washall]

Right. But it's a principle.

[Caller or Guest]

It is. And that's what made that change was just snapshot. We had to change a lot of habits of, you know, the immediate gratification and delaying that was huge.

A lot of peace with that too. I mean, even though we were still in debt, you know, working towards getting out of it, it was amazing the peace that came because we actually were reaching the whole.

[Jade Washall]

Yeah.

[Caller or Guest]

And it was just, there's a light at the end of the tunnel finally.

[Jade Washall]

Yeah, I want to ask more about that because a lot of people will say, you know, when we're telling people to be gazelle, intense and just really go hard and baby step two, you know, the pushback is. But, you know, I got to pick up my coffee and I just, you know, I got to do my rock run through Chick Fil A, whatever. But what you said about the poster board, it is true. You know, how you do anything's how you do everything. So talk to that person who says, jade, my latte doesn't matter, or, you know, just this one thing. Talk to that person.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah, I mean, it's you. You get to choose which discomfort you have. Right. Do you want the short term discomfort of not having your latte or the long term discomfort of being in debt and that stress. And for us, it was an easy choice when we put it in that perspective, that lens. Lens of what would I rather have now or in the future? And it's, it makes it real simple when you look at it in a bigger perspective.

[Jade Washall]

I agree.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, it shuts down the need for it then. I mean, what feels like A need just becomes a want. You go, yeah, I don't have to have it. Yeah. I'm in control. Yeah. I'm gonna live like no one else so that later I can live and give like no one else. Yeah. And these kids whole lives are changed because of you. Way to go, hero. Proud of y'.

[Caller or Guest]

All.

[Dave Ramsey]

Really well, well done. Very, very well done. What do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is, man?

[Caller or Guest]

Just make a plan and stick to it. It's. It's just like working out, losing weight. It's the. The answer is really, really simple. You just got to stick to it. Just make that choice and. And whatever that reason why is, make it bigger than the discomfort.

Yeah. And I think being okay having to do a little bit of extra, you know, on the side or whatever, I mean, we had to get real creative the past couple years, and there were times we were doing plasma, we were doing, you know, selling things.

[Dave Ramsey]

We were.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah, it was just whatever we could do, we were trying to find because every little bit just, again, got us closer to the end.

So it's not forever. It's just a short period of time if you do it right. And it's not that. It's not that once you're done, you're like, oh, that wasn't that bad. That's. I can handle that.

[Jade Washall]

Who cheered you on?

[Caller or Guest]

Family. Yeah, it's her side of the family. Our family that's right over here. They were cheering us on the whole time.

[Jade Washall]

That's great to have.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Caller or Guest]

We've got a lot of family that's debt free, so they're all. A lot of them are out of debt, and so they. They were great because they all knew what it felt like, and so they were there encouraging us kind of along the way. So.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, I love that.

[Jade Washall]

It feels good.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah. They knew what it felt like, so.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, that does make a difference. And. And it's worth it. It's worth it. You know, I know it's hard, but it's worth it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's. That's the kind of cheerleaders you need, Ones that are knowledgeable. Very good. Good stuff. All right. And you brought a couple of the four kids, right? We did, yep.

[Caller or Guest]

We left two at home. They're little babies, but we bring them.

[Dave Ramsey]

Up for the debt free scream here. Introduce these fellows to us, their names and ages.

[Caller or Guest]

So this is Oliver, our oldest. He is seven years old. And this is Everett, five.

[Jade Washall]

All right.

[Caller or Guest]

And our two little ones are Lucy, who is almost three, and then Asher who is almost one.

[Dave Ramsey]

Wow.

[Caller or Guest]

Nice little grown family. Yep.

[Dave Ramsey]

Very fun. Beautiful. Well done, guys. Proud of you guys. Congratulations. Congratulations.

[Caller or Guest]

Thank you.

[Dave Ramsey]

You paid a price to win and you win. Yep. Very well done and a great example today on the on the air. Thank you for being with us.

[Caller or Guest]

Thank you.

[Dave Ramsey]

All right, It's Zach and McKenna, Oliver and Everett. 68, 000 paid off in two and a half years making 117 to 0 to 150. Lots of overtime, baby. That was the solution. But now they're free, so count it down. Let's hear a debt free scream.

[Caller or Guest]

Ready? Three, two, one. We're debt free.

[Dave Ramsey]

Love it. You know, those little guys don't look unhappy. They don't look like they've been deprived. No, I think they're in good shape and. But they didn't see their dad a lot for the last couple years. And so we do get a lot of questions about work, life, balance. And the truth is there is no balance in life. You're going to concentrate what you concentrate on. Some of you have been concentrating so much on hitting the submit button after you filled your cart on Amazon. And you've been concentrating so much on going on vacations that you couldn't afford and buying cars you couldn't afford and living a life you couldn't afford that now you're gonna have to concentrate on something else called work. And work is what's gonna get you out. My grandmother used to say there's a great place to go when you're broke to work. It works, this work thing. Look at this guy. What a. What a stud, man. Pretty incredible. Very well done. This is the Ramsey Show.

[Caller or Guest]

Sam.

[Dave Ramsey]

Our scripture of the day. 2nd Corinthians 5:17. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone, the new is here. Jordan Peterson says you should be better than you are. But it's not because you're worse than other people. It's because you're not everything you should be. Tracy's in Virginia. Hi, Tracy. How you Are you?

[Caller or Guest]

Hello, how are you? Thank you for taking my call.

[Dave Ramsey]

Sure. What's up?

[Caller or Guest]

So I am looking at retiring in about three years. I currently gross about 130. I'm estimating low because I gross a little more, but I don't like to work with actual high numbers. So I gross about 130. I have about a $10,000 debt right now. 3000 is a loan that my son is paying off because it's his student loan and I told him he had to back 5000. Is from appliances I bought. They're interest free until next year. And then 8,000 is actually on a credit card. I'm looking at whether or not I should. And I have about 12,000 in actual cash.

Cash.

So I'm trying to decide, since I'm close to retirement, is it best for me to pay off my house. I owe about 360 on it.

And the debt.

And that'll be debt free because the other debts are relatively small and I can pay them off fairly quickly. Or if I should look at supplemental income, I have about 45,000 in stocks and mutual funds. I also have IRA and two whole life policies. Or if I should buy a separate, buy another property so that I'll have that as more passive income. I know I'm talking fast. I'm trying to be respectful.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay, you're fine. You're fine, hon. You're doing a good job. So real estate is not passive, okay? It's active. I own several hundred million dollars worth of real estate and it has to be managed. There's nothing passive about real estate. Not even a piece, not even a piece of farmland that you do nothing with except hold the earth together. It's not even passive. My neighbor called and one of my trees fell on his yard. I ended up having to send somebody over there for that. Not even. That's passive. And there's nothing on there but dirt. I can't even get that to be passive. But if you deal with tenants, it's anything but passive. If you deal with water heaters, heat and air and roofs, it's anything but pass. So you're going to be actively involved in real estate and you don't have the money to play in the real estate market.

[Caller or Guest]

Okay?

[Dave Ramsey]

You don't have enough money to fool with it.

[Jade Washall]

You have a good income.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, you have a good income, but you don't have any money. So. So let me get this straight. You have 10,000, 3,000 and 8,000. Is that the three debts?

[Caller or Guest]

No, I'm sorry. Overall, it's about a little more than 10,000. The 8,000 is credit card.

[Dave Ramsey]

The 3,000 is your son's supposed to be paying it.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah, and then I'm very. He calls me the bill collector. I make him pay it every month. So he is paying that. And then 3500 is for appliances. I needed to replace some appliances in my home.

[Dave Ramsey]

You said that was five.

[Jade Washall]

Yeah, I thought you said it was five. Two.

[Caller or Guest]

I'm sorry, that is five. I got it written down. I have 3,000 for my son. 8,000 for credit card, 5,000 for the.

[Dave Ramsey]

So 16. So 16 clears you.

[Caller or Guest]

Yes, but the reason why I said three is because I got my little note under here. It started off at 5. It's now down to about 3,500.

[Jade Washall]

Got it. And then you've got 3,000 in cash.

[Dave Ramsey]

Cash enough out of your mutual funds and your foreign cash.

[Caller or Guest]

I have 30,000.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. You need to write a check today and pay off your debt. Okay, that's step one. That's step one. All right. How old are you?

[Caller or Guest]

56.

[Dave Ramsey]

And how much is in your IRAs.

[Caller or Guest]

And 401Ks in my IRA. I have about 300,000 in. Yes.

[Dave Ramsey]

Okay. Is that in good mutual.

[Caller or Guest]

No, no, that's in my. That's in my 401k. I'm sorry, 401k is 3,000.

[Dave Ramsey]

My 300,000.

[Caller or Guest]

300,000. Thank you.

[Dave Ramsey]

And you're in. That's. Is that in mutual fund funds?

[Caller or Guest]

Well, it's through my job, so I don't know.

[Dave Ramsey]

No, it's a 401k. You do know you had to select it. You just don't remember. Okay, you need to go find out what that's invested in and make sure it's in good growth stock type mutual funds. We recommend a fourth in growth, a fourth in growth and income, a fourth and aggressive growth, and a fourth in international with good long track record. If you're doing that, you should be earning north of 12% in the last several years. Okay.

[Caller or Guest]

Okay. I do know that they, they gave us like these boxes now that you mentioned it, but I don't know what.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah, yeah. I want you to go back and double check all that. After you listen to this back, it'll be on the podcast and on YouTube. You can listen to it back. Okay, so give you all the details. So growth, growth and income, aggressive growth and international, a fourth in each of those long track records that have over over 10% rates of return over the last decade or so. And you ought to be making well more than that. Okay, so if you're doing that, your 300 without adding anything to it will double about every seven years. So you're 56. At 63, it'll be 600. At 70, it'll be 1.2 million if you don't take anything out of it. If it just grows.

[Caller or Guest]

I don't take anything out.

[Dave Ramsey]

I know, but I'm telling you till 7. 70.

[Jade Washall]

Okay, tell us about your whole life policy.

[Caller or Guest]

I have. Well, therefore my. I got them for my kids. I have two of them, one for each My son and one for my daughter. I want to get one. I just qualified. I.

[Dave Ramsey]

What I want you to do is cancel all of them. They're crap.

[Caller or Guest]

Oh, okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

It's the worst financial product on the planet. And use that money to build wealth and leave that to your son and die daughter.

[Caller or Guest]

Okay.

[Dave Ramsey]

But this is not a good place to build wealth and dying is not a good way to create an estate. It doesn't, the math doesn't work out.

[Jade Washall]

You'Re going to have a better rate of return investing that money in the same mutual funds that Dave was just talking about. You're going to have a higher rate of compounding interest.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah.

[Caller or Guest]

So I do, I do dabble and I do use that word loosely. Dabble in stock and mutual funds. And I have about 45,000 in that right now.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. I would tell you to sit down with one of our smartvestor pros and let's make sure that you're getting 15% of your income going into retirement. Canceling the whole life policies. You can use some of that money to beef up your retirement. You're debt free because we told you just now, write a check, pay everything off. You've got a good emergency fund of three to six months of expenses. You're in good shape there. So now all we've got to do is work towards putting 15% of your income away and getting your house paid off. And so if you'll put 15% of your income away and your current nest egg is invested well, you're gonna be in really, really good shape at age 65. And you need to be in a paid for house. So if you move into 65 with a million dollars and a paid for house on top of a paid for house, you're gonna be in great shape. And that is what you leave your kiddos. And that's where you'll be if you do all the stuff we just outlined.

[Jade Washall]

And it's so, it's clean. There's, you know, I'm saying, I'm listening to everything she said in their stocks and whole life and should I do.

[Dave Ramsey]

Real estate and interest free on the appliances?

[Jade Washall]

Oh gosh, it's just so much.

[Dave Ramsey]

Please don't do that stuff.

[Jade Washall]

No payments until the year 30, 39.

[Dave Ramsey]

Yeah. And then we're going to back charge you 38% interest through the whole stinking thing because you didn't send in the check just like we told you to in the form. We told you to send it in. Yeah, it's guys, it's simple. Just keep clean Clean and crisp. Simple as best.

[Jade Washall]

One thing at a time.

[Dave Ramsey]

Couple of rules on investing. As we've studied millionaires, they all use the KISS principle. Keep it simple, stupid. They really do. And they don't put money in things they don't understand. And they're steady and they're not flashy and they don't care what you think.

[Jade Washall]

Yeah.

[Dave Ramsey]

And these are attributes of the typical millionaire. And we've studied 10,000 of them. It's in the book Baby Steps Millionaires. The white paper of the research project is in the back of the book. You can read all the detail and you can also read the conclusions we've drawn from the actual study and from 35 years of sitting at this desk helping people become Baby Steps millionaires. So she's right on track. She's going to be just fine. Yeah. A few little adjustments. A little bit more confidence as she steps out these things. And not confidence in whole life. And not confidence and fooling around with trading stocks and mutual funds. Let's just get in there and start investing. Let's just be that tortoise.

[Jade Washall]

Well, that's where the bulk of her money was.

[Dave Ramsey]

And stay away from. There's no reason for you to do real estate. You're not in a position to. You do not have the cash to do it. Your cash is all in for 401ks and you don't have access to it. Right. That puts us out 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.