Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's the Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, number one best-selling author and host of The Ken Coleman Show, Ramsey personality, Ken Coleman. He's my co-host today as we talk about your life, and that includes your job and how you make more money so that you make this whole wealth building thing work. Open phones at 888-825-5225. Lou starts this hour in Fort Myers, Florida. Hi, Lou. How are you?

I'm so good. Thank you so much for taking my call. How are you doing?

Better than I deserve. What's up?

I am 28 years old. My husband and I also have four children, our youngest being almost two. About two years ago, I graduated with my bachelor's degree, started at a job that I love. My husband makes about 55. I bring 50 plus. We've gotten ourselves into some crazy debt. I've been following you for about a month now. I had no idea what to do with my finances. Ask my dad, he gave me your book. But I feel so lost because at the end of the month, we're still short 500. I don't know how to piece this back together. One thought was maybe selling our home. We can probably get about 75 to 100 grand more than it's worth, put it towards a new home and pay off our debt. But I don't know what solutions we have right now. Okay.

Where's your husband? Why are you doing this by yourself?

He's not so great with money.

Neither are you.

I mean, I'm not either. No, I'm Not either, but I'm driven to get this back on track.

Yeah, okay. Well, drive right up into his face and tell him he's going to help. Right. We are going to fix this mess that we made Because part of what you're struggling with here is you're carrying the emotional burden of the financial stress all by yourself. That really causes your brain to get cloudy and you can't see stuff. You've got to be working on this together as a team. I'm not expecting either one of you to become financial geniuses in 22 seconds. That's okay. I wasn't either. When I went broke, I've done stupid. I've got a PhD in D-U-M-B. I know what it looks like, okay? It's okay to not know, but it's not okay to not participate. Right. The two of you together are going to lock arms, and here we go down the yellow brick road. Ready? How much debt do you have?

When I put it all into my little spreadsheet I made, it comes out to almost 42,000 before my student loans, and my student loans are 20,000.

What is the 42? Break it down for me.

We have my vehicle. We owe on a couple of credit cards.

What do you owe on your car?

I owe 20,000 on my car.

We owe 20,000 on the car I drive. Then you have credit card debt of how much?

The credit card debt all comes… It's probably the majority of it, to be completely transparent.

Well, you said you had 42 plus a 20 student loan.

Credit card debt, right? Yeah.

That means another 22 in credit card debt? Have you got anything other than credit card debt, car debt, and a student loan?

No. Just lots of credit cards.

Okay, cool. All right. Well, that's because you've been living crisis to crisis, and every month, credit card saves your butt.

Exactly. If we can't make a payment, goes on the credit card.

You figured out that this is not sustainable. You're going to end up hitting the wall eventually and exploding. That's where we are. That's a very wise observation It's on your part. This is not a sustainable methodology. All right, so $60,000 in debt, including your car, 62, and your student loan and everything, and you make 100, and you have four kids. Okay. Now, How much is your house payment?

That is 1850 a month.

That's okay. All right. Not great, but okay. Okay, so here's what we're going to do. We're going to start fresh. Pretend like you were doing this with a blank yellow pad, and the first thing I want you to do is write the… Have you guys been getting a tax refund?

Minimal, but yeah.

Okay, then that's not the answer. Okay. I would stop All investing. Anybody putting any money in a 401k?

Yes.

Stop. Okay. Temporarily, because you're actually funding that with a credit card right now because you're not You're spending the money home, so you're short. You follow me?

Yes.

Okay. Then what do you do for a living?

I work for a government.

And your degree is in what?

Public safety.

Okay. So you work for law enforcement or in the- In an investigative role. Okay. All right. And your husband does what?

He He does construction.

Good. Okay. Here's the general rule with them. There's three things you can do to get this working. One thing you can do that will help get it… If you will get organized and I'm going to give you a detailed budget on the every dollar app that I'm going to give you for free, okay? I'm going to give you the premium version for free. I'm going to pay for it. You and your husband sit down tonight and you give every dollar that is coming into your house before the month begins and assign agreement, and obviously, we're not going to plan to be 500 in the hole. We're going to plan to break even, and then we're going to stick to the plan. But what's happening is you're living from crisis to crisis rather than by a plan. When you do a detailed plan and both of you are in agreement because he's going to help or I'm going to kill him. He's going to help. He's got to help. That's part of his job. He doesn't have to become a financial genius, but he's got to sit down with you, and the two of you got to look at this.

This is sixth-grade math. Anybody can do it. Now, it's actually fourth-grade math in most schools. It's addition and subtraction. We're going to put the number that we make and take home at the top of the page. We're going to give every one of those dollars a name. Getting organized will make you feel like you got a raise. Getting in front of it instead of trying to catch up from behind it. Telling your money what to do instead of wondering where it went, you'll feel like you got a raise. That's thing one. Thing two is you're going to stop all spending You're not going out to eat ever again. You're not going to be in a restaurant unless you're working there. You're not going on vacation. You ain't got any money. You're a broke people. Broke people don't go on vacation. Broke people work. You got to work to get this mess cleaned up for a while. Then the third thing is, and Ken, this is your turn after 13 minutes, finally. The third thing is your husband has a wonderful career called construction, and he can go make a ton of money right now, extra money, working extra.

She might be able to as well. Could she do some private investigation work? I don't know what your limitations are, but both of you have got to say, what can we do to bring in more money? If you do what Dave said and you pause the 401k, you immediately have a raise. Now we've got margin, but he needs to be working weekends, nights. He's picking up any laboring work that he can do to see if he can generate- You can swing a hammer, you can make $40, $50 an hour. $1,500 extra per month.

He makes serious money right now.

That's how we actually fund going through the baby steps. Let's knock out some of these credit cards. Consider selling the car. We didn't have time to mention that. If you have any equity in that car, I would sell that car as well, and that'll really fast forward this situation.

Yeah, income up, out, go down, and get organized, and this will work for you. Hold on. If current times have shown us anything, it's that the least expected events can and will happen, and We have to deal with it. That's why everyone who has a family counting on them needs term life insurance. For over 25 years, the only insurance company I've recommended is Xander Insurance. Not only because they search all of the top term life plans to find you the best rates, but over the years, they have constantly changed and updated their systems to make the whole process simpler and easier to get the protection needed. You can now apply with a completely touchless experience with everything being done either over the phone or the internet. They also have plans with super competitive rates that don't require an exam, allowing you to skip a step and get the coverage you need faster. Go to zander. Com or call 800-356-4282. Great rates and a simple process mean there's no excuse to not get this done, people. Ken Coleman-Ramsey personality is my co-host, OpenPhones at 888-825-5225. Thank you for joining us, America. We're glad you are here.

Jake is with us in Nashville. Hi, Jake. Welcome to The Ramsey Show.

Hey, guys. How are you?

Better than I deserve. What's up?

Okay, so I am getting married to my fiancée in October.

Congratulations.

Thank you. How old are you? I'm 28.

Cool. How old is she? She's 28. Awesomeness. God.

Yeah. I am marrying into $100,000 in student loan debt.

She is awesome, isn't she? Yeah.

She is awesome. Now, she is. I have a home that has about $100,000 in equity in it, and she has an opportunity to move to Dallas to further and kickstart her career more and It helped build an office there. I don't know if that's the best way to go. Other than that, we only have about 20,000, 21,000 in debt, and that's just two cars. Really, it's just student loans, and we can probably not pay.

So 21 in cars and 80 in student loans?

No, about 100,000 in student loans.

So 120? Yes, sir. Get you out of debt? Yes, sir. And you make what?

I make 55.

What is she making or going to make?

She makes 105 right now, but that can grow. There's a bonus coming up this year, so she'll just grow more from there.

And She does she do?

She's in Dallas. She's in technology consulting.

If she goes to Dallas, what are you going to do in Dallas?

Well, that was the thing. I'm in IT support, so I just got in about two years ago into IT support, so I'm growing still.

Let me get this straight. Your wife is in IT and you're here to support her.

I see what he did there.

Did you see how he did that?

That was impressive. That was great. Are you open to moving to Dallas? That's the question that I'm trying to dig into. Yes. Okay.

Is this settled? Is this the plan?

We're like 9010 on it.

If you don't go to Dallas, what's she going to do?

She's going to keep on doing what she's doing. Dallas would let her be in an office more, and she's fully remote now. Being there, she'd be in an office more and be able to be out and network more.

Will she get a bump? She's very bubbly. Will she get a pay bump?

It wasn't stated that she would exactly, but it would say that she would move progressively faster.

Okay. That's a little weird. She didn't get a job. Did she get a job offer with an actual- No, she's already working for them remote.

But you're saying by being in the office, by moving to the home office and moving into the office, she'll have more opportunity to move up. Is that right?

Exactly. Okay, so you're not changing companies. I'm sorry. I assumed. No. Okay, got you.

All right. Now she's working remote for a company that is in Dallas.

So sell the house if it's here.

Yeah. If you're going to Dallas, the house is sold either way. Even if you weren't broke, I'm not keeping a house in Nashville.

No, exactly. That was a thought where they were like, We could rent this.

No, you're broke. You're $120,000 in debt. You're not a landlord. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Sell the house, pay off a bunch of the debt, finish paying off the debt, raise your right-hand, both of you, and swear we're never borrowing any more money. Then we're going to start saving like crazy for a down payment because we're going to be renting in Dallas.

That was my next question. Renting in Dallas is probably the best thing to do.

It's the only thing to do. You don't have any money and you're in debt.

Exactly. Yeah.

Unless you want to go into some stupid plan or something with these houses. I mean, you can do that, but no. The house won't even clear the student loan and the cars.

No, it won't.

You still got to clean up the cars or whatever is left on the student loan, whichever way you go at this. I'll probably pay off the cars first, and then the rest of the chunk of the student loan, and then that last 20,000 student loan, you push on through it when both of you are in Dallas making $150,000 a year, renting the cheapest possible thing you can find. You're broke newlyweds. It's okay. You got nothing to prove, dude. Go rent a garage apartment out back of some rich old lady's house for 500 a month and you cut her grass. Something like that, right? That deal. Because this is we're getting started with our married life, finishing up, getting out of debt, saving up a big down payment to get us a nice home later. This is what we're doing. We're not trying to rent something. Everybody's like, Oh, this is a really nice place you rented. Translation, you're going to be there a while because you spent all the money on rent instead of saving up for a down payment.

Yeah. I just feel like right now where we should be is we should have more in the bank than we do. We only have our $1,000 emergency fund, and then everything else is getting thrown at this wedding. We're even doing DoorDash and Uber Eats on the side just to try to get more coming.

Good. All that's good. As you approach the wedding of October, I guess first of September or middle August, we put your house on the market. Yeah. You could end up homeless for a short period of time, but you can survive that.

Yeah, we could probably live with family or something here.

Yep, or roll the wedding up or something. I don't know. Probably not. You're probably not everything booked and all that. But yeah, anyway. Yeah, sell the house, get out of debt, restart, and save up. Honestly, the field you all are in, your side hustles ought to be tech, not door-to-ash.

I was just hearing you say, you know how small business people can't afford a tech person? But if you start telling everybody that you know in Nashville and in Dallas, when you get there, that you do contract, buy the job tech support. You can make way more money per hour with your expertise than you can driving around delivering somebody Chilles.

Yeah. Unless we're in the tech field, those of us that are entrepreneurs are what's known as clueless. We have a tech department here at Ramsey. One person's full-time job is fixing stuff I break. That's how bad we entrepreneurs are, okay? It's like, I can't work this thing. There's something broken on my phone. It's because, Dave, you pushed these seven buttons in the wrong order. Well, screw it, fix it. That's what we do around here. Guys like me are everywhere, dude. Ken's right.

That's exactly right. I'd be putting that on Facebook, social media, everybody you know at church. You wouldn't believe. You might have some old farmer go, My grandson stopped doing this for me five years ago. There are small businesses everywhere that need basic tech support and the amount of money.

It's a lot better than delivering chili.

Yeah, that's a no brainer.

Same thing with your life.

While we're preaching about making more money, when you get to Dallas and you get out of debt, I would be looking at BethelTech. Betheltech. Net. I endorse them. They've got a nine on the program, Ramsey listeners, can do it for less than 15 grand. Here's why I'm telling you to consider. Just talk to them. But multiple opportunities for somebody like you to go from tech support to move into coding, data analytics, AI, Cyber security. I just named three fields in technology that have a quick path to six figures.

Yeah, they're all 100 grand and above, entry level.

I would be looking at increasing your income. Now, you two are looking at making 200, 250 pretty quickly, and you've made the oath. Dave had you raise your right-hand. No more. So now you're building wealth quickly.

You did it, man. You can do it. Congratulations on the marriage, man. Hang on. I'm going to put the two of you through financial peace, university. If you promise, Kelly, that you will take the class. I will give it to you for free, along with the every dollar premium. That's our wedding gift to the two of you. All married couples that are listening right now go, God, I wish I had known that we got married. We're going to give it to you so that you know when you get married. So go do it, dude. Seriously, it's free to you. Hang on, Ms. Kelly will pick up and get you signed up and get you going. Good question. A lot of opportunity in front of them. They have a lot upside on those careers.

I want to make sure that young people caught what you said there. It wasn't Dave just being fun. This idea of selling a house and getting a huge chunk of their debt out of the way, we're excited for them, and it makes sense because they're moving. But if you don't change your behavior, all you're doing is just filling up one hole, and before you know it, you'll be digging another. It's very important that you go never again. We're not going to do this again. And not just use the convenience of a house sale to bail you out. You got to be careful with that.

Exactly. The answer changes if you were staying in town. That's correct. Because the last thing I'm going to sell is your house. I'm going to sell everything else you own before we try that. This is the Ramsey Show. Guys, it's no secret that the real estate market is weird right now. So go with a mortgage company you can trust to have your back. Churchill Mortgage. Churchill is Ramsey trusted because they're stable, reliable, and focused on you. At a time when a lot of companies are being bought out or going out of business, count on Churchill Mortgage to stick around. They've been doing things the right way for over 30 years, and they'll keep doing them the right way for 30 more. Get started at churchillmortgage. Com. This is a paid advertisement.

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Ken Coleman-Ramsey personality is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us. Well, the book that we did, The Total Money Makeover, is 20 years old this year. Taylor Swift was starting her career. The iPhone was not yet invented. Some of you weren't born. And this book came out, and wow. Now we've sold over 10 million of them, helping people get of debt and build wealth. And so we're celebrating. The interesting thing is the total money makeover has had several makeovers through the 20 years. I think we're on the fifth or sixth edition now. A couple of years ago, I swore I wasn't going to do another edition, and now we did the 20th anniversary edition, so I lied. But yeah, so a new edition, a brand new edition with cleaned up all the statistics and everything's current now and updated and expanded advice on mortgages and car loans, investing for retirement, paying for College, Buy Now, Pay Later, Traps. If you like audiobooks, I sat down and re-recorded this. It had not been done in 20 years. The audiobook is now current, again, and for the total money makeover, 20th anniversary edition. Every book includes three months of every dollar premium for free.

There's a QR code in it that you can scan. Oops, I just told you a way to get it for free without buying it. Oh, well. If you see it at Barnes & Noble, just flip it open and hit the QR code and you'll get three months free, and then put it back on the shelf. Don't buy the book. No, I'm kidding. That's what I just did, I think. But anyway. Marketing guys are going to love me. Ramseysolutions. Com/store or anywhere. Great books are sold. 20 years worth of success stories are cheering you on. The total money makeover 20th anniversary edition. Katie is in Indianapolis. Hi, Katie. Welcome to The Ramsey Show.

Hi.

Hey, what's up?

I don't know about the baby steps, but I was wondering, what should I do? I'm currently homeless. I have three kids. I'm 27, and my annual income is 28,800.

Okay. You don't need to do anything about the baby steps right now. We've got to get you in housing and get food and lights covered, and then we'll worry about the baby steps. You're drowning right now. Where are you living? In your car or what?

Yes. Yes, it's in my car, and then every now and then, family lets me stay there.

Who's got the three kids?

My grandma does.

Okay. They have a place to live. You're in your car sometimes?

Correct.

Okay. How did you get there?

I was in a very toxic relationship, and it was time for me to leave.

Okay. When When you make 28,000 and you don't have any rent, where's your money going right now?

Well, most of it is to help my grandma out with my three kids.

Why are you not staying with grandmother? Why only the kids?

She feels as if I need to learn a lesson from this.

Say that again.

She feels she needs to learn a lesson. So grandmother said, You need to learn I'm not taking you in.

Correct. Okay.

You have no other family or friends that you can crash with until you get some stability?

No, I don't have friends. But the talk was relationship I wasn't able to talk to nobody. I was always allowed to go to work and come back.

Your grandmother told you not to get involved with this duper, and you did?

No, She didn't really say anything about it.

What lesson is it you're supposed to be learning? I'm confused.

That I need to make better choices.

That's freaking brilliant. Okay. No kidding.

What's your job? Tell us about your job.

I work as a machinist. I do a CNC operator. I've been there for a year now.

For who? Is it local? Excuse me, is it private or is it public sector?

You're a machinist, you said.

Yes, it's a machinist. It's a foreign company. They work out of Japan, but they're locally here. Okay.

What are you making per hour?

$20. Okay.

How many hours are you working a week?

Forty. Okay.

What are you doing with the rest of your time?

The rest of my time, I'm usually just trying to figure out places and programs to help my situation.

Yeah, good for you.

All right.

The first thing is we've got to get you into a little apartment with your kids, and you take your kids' life back over and quit giving your grandmother money who wants you to stay on the street. That's asinine. You need to get your family back together and get in a situation. If she wants to watch them during the day, that's fine while you're at work. But You need a home and a place to land, obviously. We got to get you sustainable and back up on your feet, and we'll help you with that and help you get going. Okay? Okay. Are you associated with a church of any kind there in Indianapolis?

I'm not. Okay. All right.

What I'm going to do when we get through talking in a minute is I'm going to put you on hold, and Kelly's going to pick up. We're going to put you with one of our Ramsey coaches in the area, and it's not going to cost you a thing. We're going to pay for it and help you. Okay? They're going to help you get plugged into a new family called a church because you need some extra family based on the ones you've got. Then if you want to work out with your grandmother to watch your children while you have a place to live, that's fine. Your new family then can come around you and help you get into a new place, have a church come alongside you and help you get a deposit and get started. Because I think if you were in and paying rent, making 30,000 on something cheap you could make a do. Do you?

Yes, I do.

Okay. We just got to get you started. It's just hard to get started because right now everything's just spiraling, right?

Yes, absolutely. It's really hard because I feel like when I feel like I got something figured out or I'm going forward. It's just 10 other things just come at me.

Yeah, that's generally the way it is. You've had a really tough couple of years here dealing with some guy who told you you weren't worth anything.

Yeah.

Yeah, and you are worth it. That's right. Okay. Thank you. Everybody has made bad choices, including your freaking grandmother, including me. We're going to help you, and we'll get you plugged into a church, and them and our coaches will help you get into a little place, some way or another, and help you figure out how you can sustain that then. Then your first goal, Katie, is simply this. I just want you to get in the rhythm of living a sustainable life. What that means is you make enough to buy food, rent, lights, and clothes, and gas in a car. That's all I need you to make for right now. If you can just get the rhythm of doing that, if you simply could exist with a little bit of wiggle room for six months and you had your own place, your own food, your own kids. That would be a huge leap from where we are today. Agreed?

Agreed.

I have to agree. Then later, we'll worry about a total money makeover. That's right. Right now, We need to get back up to survival level.

Katie, the number one thing our coach is going to help you with, and you need to commit to doing what they teach you is budgeting. You're making enough right now to survive. You really are. If you start pulling back on what you're giving grandmother. Really lock in. They're going to teach you how to budget. This is a massive gift. This is also going to give you confidence because right now you're suffering from a lack of confidence because you're kicking yourself in the rear end about the decisions you've made.

Yeah, right alongside your grandmother. You need some confidence. Yeah, and ask the coach when you're meeting with them what a proper amount to allow for grandmother to watch your children. I I'm a little bit afraid grandmother's taking advantage of you on the money. It sounds like she's sucking up all the money which is trapping you, where she ought to be helping you figure out a way to get up on your own after you made some bad choices. That's what she ought to be doing, and she's not. I'm a little worried about the amounts involved here. Hang on, Kelly will pick up and we'll help you get this going, kiddo. You call us back if you need some help.

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Ken Coleman-Ramsey, personality is my co-host. Today's question comes from Jennifer in Georgia.

My husband and I both work outside of the home and have two school-age kids. Prioritizing time together as a family is challenging with our current schedules. We've been alternating picking up the kids from school based on our work schedules. This is not ideal, and our employers are getting tired of it. Together, we earn over $400,000. The only debt is our home. I carry our health insurance through my employer. I was recently offered a position that will give me the flexibility our family needs. However, it is an hourly position with no benefits at $63 an hour. Is it foolish to leave a well-pained job with benefits that I love in order to spend more time with the kids? My heart tells me one thing, my brain tells me another. Well, this is where I wish I had somebody on the phone, Dave. But if we are collectively earning over $400,000 and we like our work, the word love actually is used here, I'm paying somebody to pick up the kids, maybe a college student or a grandmother. I just don't understand the problem here as to why we would leave a job we love when we have no debt except the home and 400K income, and the problem is picking up kids after school.

That's the way this is laid out, Dave. I think there's something more here under the surface, but I It would not take the hourly position in this scenario at all.

She switched gears in the middle of the email. That's the problem. She sets it up as it's a work schedule thing. We have trouble picking up the kids. The employers are aggravated. But then towards the bottom, she says, Is it foolish to leave a well-paying job with benefits that I love in order to spend more time with the kids? Which is it? Because picking them up is not the issue.

It's the second one, which is why she's asking the question. When somebody says, My heart tells me one thing, my brain tells me another, the heart is with the kids wanting flexibility, the brain is going, This is foolish. What you have to do there is you get the head and the heart on the same page by laying out those two voices.

There's two or three possibilities here, but it's always amazing to me that the first thing we do is we figure out the only way to solve the problem is make less. That's not always the way you solve the problem. Let's pretend that there Give us a third option. If things are exactly as you feel like they are, Jennifer, here's a third option. You change jobs to a job where you make more money than you make now and has the flexibility for you to pick up your kids. And thought of that, instead we think we have to take a pay cut. No. Change jobs where you make more money and has the flexibility. But somehow we think, in order to do work that I love or in order to have work-life balance, I have to make less always. That's bull crap. I believe you me, you would trade income with me. And you know what my like balance is? It's amazing. I do whatever the flip I want whenever the flip I want. Because I built a life and built a career in such a way that it does that over a period of time. That's what you can do.

You get to choose these things. You're not trapped. The second thing is you could just simply hire a nanny and or someone to pick up the kids and do some after-school care type thing. You can afford it. The third thing is Every time... Not every time. I always suspect, every time I suspect, when someone questions that they don't have enough time with their family, I always want to put a in their house and see how many hours a month the television is on. Because that's not spending time with your family. That's spending time with Netflix. So throw a brick through your television and then see how your time increases with your children. It'll be amazing. And lay your stupid Facebook down and your stupid Instagram down and your stupid TikTok lockdown and quit going down a YouTube rabbit holes and then saying, I want to spend more time with my children. Meanwhile, I've got a screen stuck to my nose. I know what the numbers are, statistically, nationally, of how many times... The average person looks at their phone 2,500 times a day. Is that bizarre? It's like if you just wash your hands that much, you'd be in the hospital.

The other thing I'd add to this, Dave, is I really want her to define what more time is.

Once we define what more time is, then it may be a situation where she wants to be a stay-at-home mother, and that's the greatest job in the world. Big fan of that. At that point, you are taking a massive pay cut, but it's for a season, and you can always get back into the workforce. This comes down to, what are we prioritizing? What do we mean when we say more time with the kids? If you're saying, I want 10 more hours with them, well, then that's utilizing weekends and nights well, as you're saying. That has to be defined.

Yeah. In 2022, the average, according to Google, who knows everything, so I'm questioning that. But in 2022, the A person that is 18 years old and older spent three hours a day on television. Wow. Ta-da.

I literally think of that when I hear that, Dave. I go, How do you find the time? If I run yesterday's schedule through between my work and my personal life, I don't know how you find time if you go to bed at a decent hour. That's probably part of it. But I go to bed early.

I'm not saying this lady necessarily is, but every time I hear, I'm going to spend more time with my children, so I'm going to take a job making half of what I used to make. Before I do that, I would unplug my television and my Facebook and all social media, detox from the screens, and see how much time you really are missing with your children. Because the average family in America is being destroyed by screens. We know that the data is in. It's out of control. There's just stuff everywhere on it. And yet we're on every one of those platforms talking to you about the stuff we do, so we're trying to help.

Interestingly enough, Dave, I looked it up. This is the 20th anniversary of Total Money Makeover, the best financial book ever written. We talked about earlier. Facebook started in 2004 as well. But came on late. The biggest social media platform in the world in 2004.

It did better than the Total Money Makeover did.

Well, yeah, but it's still two iconic things.

What's the kid's name that did that? What's his name? Mark Zuckerberg. Yeah, I've not got a Zuckerberg level of networth. It didn't... Total money makeover just didn't keep up.

Don't cry for me, Argentina. Nobody's worried about your networth. All right, come on. This guy, this guy, he's done well, folks. Oh, my gosh. Interestingly enough, MySpace was the big platform in 2004. Where's that? Crickets.

Anyway, nobody knows.

Nobody needed that trivia, but I gave it to you.

I did not I didn't realize that Facebook was that young.

I thought it was older than that. Total money makeover in Facebook, same age. Kind of fun to think about.

That means that we sold that book and put it on the best seller list with no social media.

That is correct.

No YouTube. No algorithm. Isn't that amazing? But there used to be bookstores back then. We would go into your town and sign books at these things called bookstores. The television stations had local programs.

People watch TV like 60 Minutes.

They They watched. There were newspapers back then, the actual paper.

Man, I miss the newspaper. I'm getting all nostalgic.

Yeah.

Nothing like black newspaper print on your fingers in the morning with a cup of coffee. All right.

What would life be like without a smartphone or Facebook. Be great, actually.

Make it so.

Well, that's what we're talking about with Ms. Jennifer here. I'm just saying I'm not accusing her necessarily of doing that. Every time I hear a question like this that we can't find the time to spend with our kids, so I need to quit working as much. It could be true, but it could be that if you just never touch social media again and you never watch television more than an hour a week, then or a set movie for a week. Sharon and I watched a movie the other night. I hadn't done that long time. Really? 99% of the time, that's things sitting on the wall dark and we're reading a book. But we're all farts. I mean, no question about it. No comment.

Next question, please.

Yeah, that's it. Take it from there.

Was it on a service or was it cable that you watched the movie?

That movie was on Netflix. Oh, okay. I don't have cable. You don't have cable? I'm disconnected or whatever you call it. I've got that.

Wow, Dave Ramsey is Unplugged, folks.

I'm unplug. Unplugged. Have you ever heard the internet, Ken?

It's amazing. Well, yes. Al Gore, Tennessee, had created it.

Yeah, I heard that. If you don't believe me, ask him.

I got all kinds of random trivia for you today, folks. That's not why you listen to the show. That's just bonus.

But it is about balance, and don't always assume that your only choices are negative choices. If they are, that means you don't have enough choices yet. Go get you some more options, Ms. Jennifer. This is The Ramsey Show. Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing Raising Relationships. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, number one best-selling author of the book Paycheck to Purpose, and host of The Ken Coleman Show. My co-host, Ramsey personality, Ken Coleman today. The phone number is 888-825-5225. Isaac's in Greensboro, North Carolina. Hi, Isaac. How are you?

Hey, Dave. I'm great. How are you doing today?

Better than I deserve. What's up?

Just a quick summary of my situation. I'm 21. I live in Greensboro, of course. I live with my dad currently, and I'm hoping to move in with my lovely girlfriend at the end of this year. I have no debt. My credit is really poor, though. It's about 600, and I have $3,000 in cash saved up. My question is, I just don't really know what would be the best course of action here. I make about $18 an hour. I made my budget just the other day with my friend who was the one who introduced me to your show. He's my best friend. I'm on course to save about $1,300 a month, every month. Good for you. I don't know what it would be best to put a down payment down and try to squeeze myself into a home around the end of this year or- You're not going to be ready. Or if I just focus on renting.

Yeah, you're not going to be ready. And saving up for a down payment that way. Are you getting married at the end of the year?

No, sir, I'm not.

Okay. You don't need to be moving in or buying a house with somebody you're not married to for sure. That's going to get you into a mess. What I would tell you to do is simply get you in an inexpensive place when you're ready to move out and just work like a crazy man. Pick up as many hours as you can pick up and let's pile up as big a pile of cash as we can. Do you have any debt at all, sir?

Technically, I have about 10,000 to 15,000 in medical debt, but I'm very thankful. I think my grandparents are going to cover that for me. I could be wrong. I don't really want to bank on that, but I think that's what they're hoping to do for me.

Obviously, they don't have the money.

Other than that, I have zero debt.

Well, no, you don't have zero debt. You have $15,000 in medical bills. That's right. Okay. Why If they're going to cover it, do they not have the money to cover it?

They do. They just have not done it yet. I need to broach the subject with them, honestly.

Yeah, you need to get clarity on what's going on. If they have the money and they're going to cover it, they need to cover it. It's okay if they want to do that. It's okay if they don't want to do that, too, by the way. It's their money and their choice. But if they're going to do it, they need to do it because otherwise, you need to get to work on Yes, sir.

Okay.

I would get that cleared up, either by grandparents or by extra work, and get you an inexpensive place to rent. Then I would pile up as big a pile of money as I can so that when I get married to this lovely lady, then we can talk about buying a house.

Yes, sir.

That's how I would do it if I was in your shoes. What are you doing making $18 an hour, Isaac? What do you do for a living?

I work as an EMT, actually.

How many hours a week?

I work 40 hours a week.

And you're trained EMT?

That's right.

How old are you again?

21. I'm 21, sir.

Why are you only making $18 as an EMT? That seems very low.

Most of the other gigs actually make less than that. If I were starting an ambulance company, I'd make $14, $15 an hour, which really isn't great at all.

What's the path look like? What's the next level of promotion?

What are you going to do with your life?

If I'm being completely honest, I do have a dream for myself. I'm an artist by trade. I'd love to do something with my art.

What art?

I'm a cartoonist.

Okay. Well, that's a long road. I like that you got the EMT. My question is, what is the next level up of pay being an EMT? Clearly, you're young and you're on the lower rung of the ladder. What's that look like moving up?

Well, I would make a 4% raise every year staying here. But outside of this, unless I was working as a paramedic, there's not really any clear path towards making a hell of a lot more money, quite honestly.

Okay. Well, but the issue is if you're going to- I originally was a firefighter, but I have since switched out of that career.

I had cancer, hence my medical bills, and I just decided that was not the career for me at that point. Sure.

Well, so let's talk short term.

I've been looking at a couple other options as well. What?

What are those options?

Mainly home inspection, actually. But I've had a couple of family members not necessarily steer me away from that, but they've given me some reasons to think twice.

What are their... Hold on a second. Hold on, hold on. Well, first of all, let's start with what you can make. You can do pretty well in home inspection. I'm Are you assuming you've researched that? Yes, I have. Okay, what's the number? Give me the number in your area for a talented and somebody who's getting work. What's that look like?

Working for somebody else?

I don't know on my way to- No, I'm saying as a home inspector, what does that pay look like in your area, Greensboro, North Carolina?

About $80,000 a year. If I were taking the lower average. If I were taking like five inspections a week, taking the lower average.

Exactly. Why is it that your family members think you shouldn't do that instead of $18 an hour?

Well, the one family member, he's my uncle, he's a mortgage lender, and he gave me a couple of reasons. Of course, I told him, I'll think twice about this, but I'll be very much- What did he say? He said, Most people aren't looking to move out of their homes these days because nobody really wants to go from- You're talking to a mortgage broker who's having the worst year he's possibly had in the last 20 years.

Of course, he's going to tell you to stay away from anything having to do with the real estate business. He's starving to death. Your uncle's lost weight. He isn't eating well. Oh, my gosh.

Here's why I like it. Here's why I like that move. Isaac, I don't know how good of a cartoonist you are, but here's what I do know, even if you're really good at it, this is a long haul, and you're going to have to show your work, you're going to have to do stuff on the side, you're going to have to just really be consistent.

It may take you a decade to break out.

That's right. I would take a job like It's low stress. Obviously, you got to be careful getting up on some roofs, getting in some crawl spaces, but you can set your own schedule. This would be a type of gig that would support an artistic endeavor, which you're going to need to just put time into. It's like writing music. I actually like this move in the short term for you because it just gives you a real huge jump financially and gives you some real stability. Let me tell you what I know, and Dave, actually, I'm going to see... I think a home inspector is in a premium demand right now. I know that when we sold recent houses, we were trying to get a good one. It took a while to schedule it.

They're in demand. His uncle is correct. Obviously, real estate volume is down. Well, sure. The number of houses being sold, so the number of houses being inspected is way down. He is correct about that.

But you can do that on the side while being an ENT.

You can do that and you can do your cartooning on the side. Dude, go make some more money somewhere that's reasonable and honest. Pile it up, talk about buying a house, then talk about moving in or talking about getting married and moving in. This is the Ramsey Show. We all need health insurance, but how do you choose? Benefits vary a lot, and the cost can be surprising. Health Trust Financial is the only company Ramsey recommends to find you the right health insurance at the best possible price. Health Trust Financial is reliable, which is why I've trusted them for over 20 years. They work for not the insurance company. Visit healthrustfinancial. Com today. Healthrustfinancial. Com. The countdown is on. Our brand new event is coming up next week. I've never done this before, and really having fun prepping for it. Dave Ramsey's Investing Essentials. Ken, I have gotten the inner nerd out. Oh, boy. The inner financial nerd. That's exciting. The little boy that loved to do math has recovered. Okay. He is doing all these nerd stuff for this investing seminar because it's the nerd stuff I actually do when I'm personally investing. We're going to teach a whole high-end view of actually calculating returns properly on real estate and those kinds of things.

I'm going into how I pick a piece of real estate, how I pick a mutual fund, the principles that we use, that Sharon and I use to invest and have used for 30 plus years.

Is there going to be a whiteboard, big screen that you're touching?

Big screen. Jim Kramer, sleeves rolled up. There's no Jim Kramer involved. I know.

Say, You doing your thing.

No yelling. This is going to be... As a matter of fact, truthfully, I was talking to the guys today. I said, if we add that other one more layer of this, someone's going to be in a coma. It's so boring, but I love it. It's such nerdy stuff. If you want to know Dave Ramsey's in my personal playbook and you want to go to a place on investing, I've never taken you to. Some people think I don't how to do this stuff, of course, which is always humorous to me, too. But anyway, we're doing this thing. Several thousand people have already signed up. It's crazy. It's a virtual event. It's May 21 and 22 in the evening. Tuesday and Wednesday, next Tuesday, next Wednesday. We're going to be doing this event in the evening. It's $199 for a ticket. Go to ramsey solutions. Com/events, and we're going to go all into 401k's mutual funds real estate, what not to do, how not to do investing, how not to view investing, Everything about it, and two whole nights. It's going to be about four hours of material. We're taking a cute live question and answer. George Campbell is going to be in there helping me.

It's going to be fun. George has got out his inner nerd. It's a couple of nerd boys hanging out. If you want to come, We'd love to have you. I know this.

It's going to be relevant. If you got questions like, In an inflation-driven economy, should I buy gold? All that's going to be covered. I know it is. You're just going to cover it all, aren't you?

Yeah, we're going to go in. It's going to be fun.

It's relevant and it's for a long time. It is.

Alex is in Seattle. Hi, Alex. How are you?

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. I'm doing well. I have a question. Speaking of investing, two months ago, I seemed to have defaulted to Baby Step 7. For two months, I've been trying to figure out what to do next, but to become a victim of paralysis by analysis. I'm hoping to get some help.

You paid off your house, now you've got a pile of money and don't know what to do with it. Is that what you just said?

Sure. You can get there that way.

Is that pretty close or not?

My grandpa passed away two months ago, and that allowed me to pay off my house with an inheritance. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry, but I'm sorry. He's smiling about what you did with it. How much money do you have now?

I have about $50,000 in cash. But my main question is, I don't make enough to max out my retirement. If If I did do that, I'd have $100 a month extra, and that doesn't really give much margin in life. I have goals, but they're not immediate.

What is your income, sir?

$70,000 a year.

Okay. Are you putting 15% of your income away in retirement?

I'm putting 20, yes.

Okay. And you don't have a house payment?

No.

Okay. What you're saying is, is you don't have more money to invest other than the 50K. Is that right?

I mean, that includes my emergency fund.

Yeah, so I don't want to- But you don't have any room in your budget to invest is what you're saying?

Correct.

What is it you're asking me?

I'm trying to figure out, do I max it out or do I leave it down?

You can't max it out. You told me that.

Right. I could live on a shoestring budget with it maxed, or I can have a little bit of life.

I'd have a a little bit of life. I mean, if you saved... How old are you?

I'm 32.

Okay. If you save 20% of $75,000, let's call it $15,000 a year, and you do that from 32 to $62,000, you're going to have $10 million.

Right. I don't want to waste a blessing that I got from my grandpa, so I'm overthinking everything, most likely.

Well, yeah, I think you are. It's part of you want to honor him, and that's a wonderful carefully noble sentiment, and I think you are honoring him. You paid off your house. If you can do any more investing, first you would do it in tax-advantaged accounts, meaning tax-free Roths or traditionals, if you can do more. But you're telling me you can't do more and have a reasonable life, and I'm believing you at this point. Let's sit down and run your budget out. I want to put as much in those things as I can put in those things and have a reasonable margin for life.

Then, Dave, I would go back to the give, save, spend to get him out of this paralysis of analysis. Save, like Dave just said, give some of it away. Bless your grandfather. Give something in his name. You get to choose. It doesn't It's going to be an enormous number. We're not trying to impress anybody here. Do something that's meaningful with it, and then do something fun with it. Just don't overthink it. Just be smart. By the way, the way you present, I don't think there's any chance you're going to waste your grandfather's money. I don't think that's possible. Give yourself a break. Think of those three buckets, as Dave said. Write it out and go with what feels good.

Matthew's in Des Moines, Iowa. Hi, Matthew. Welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Hi, guys. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me. Sure. My wife and I have $115,000 in student loans. Oh, my God. She's a first-year resident physician. We currently make $120,000 per year and have $70,000 in savings. Basically, Based off of our income now, we don't have to pay interest on those student loans. I'm wondering, is it irresponsible to prioritize further saving, investing, and retirement planning? Yes. Because my wife isn't intending. Yes. Okay.

You need to clear up a stupid debt. As fast as you can. You need to use a bunch of that 75,000 to do it today.

Should we mobilize that immediately?

Yes, today. Okay. Yeah, I'd take almost all that money and throw it at that student loan today. Let's get rid of it. Here's how I know that. How old are you, Matthew?

We're both 28.

Okay. When you're 48, you don't want to be sitting around looking at this stupid thing because it's zero % interest and call yourself sophisticated. This doesn't age well, this analysis of zero % that you're doing. It feels good in the moment, but when you push it out two decades, it really looks stupid. So clean it up as fast as you can. Does that make sense?

Yes, sir.

It doesn't age well. If you take some of these things you guys are doing with analysis out there on your mathematics, and you'll do two things. One is put actual dollars to the theory that you're screwing around with. Then it's laughable. You can't buy a Big Mac with the spread you're making. For sure, you can't buy a Big Mac. But they're expensive. But The second thing is just think, Okay, if I'm keeping this around because it's wise, am I going to be proud I did that 20 years from now? You look at it and go, No, I feel dirty. Well, yeah, it's because it's dumb. So get rid of it. Get rid of it as fast as you possibly can. It's not a pet. It's not an investment vehicle. It's a student freaking loan. Get rid of it. That's the answer to all your questions out there regarding this stuff. Ken, that same thing comes up of, Dave, I'm going to refinance my credit card, which is $8,000 from 18% to zero. What do you think? I'm thinking, Okay, what is 18% of $8,000? Everybody, help me with this. A Big Mac.

Well, Dave, the special sauce, lettuce cheese, it's a premium these days.

When you actually do the actual math of what you did, it was nothing. That's right. It was bogus. Pay off the $8,000. That's correct.

Well, you're giving yourself an excuse to kick the can down the road.

You're screwing around trying to fix something. That's what happens. If you were doing math, you wouldn't be in this mess.

That's a good point.

It's not a math problem.

But you feel you're doing something good. That's the trap. Everybody thinks they're making a smart decision, and that just allows them to keep extending, extending, extending. Here's the thing, coming out of that income, I mean, out of that internship, when she gets in there and she's full-time, they're going to be crushing it instead of stressed out over that debt. That's the other reason they use that 75 I've been young and I've been old, and I've never seen a government program that made me happy. Amen to that.

Just think about it. If they say, I'm from the government and I'm here to help, run. This is The Ramsey Show. Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Thank you for joining us. Open phones at 888-825-5225. You jump in. We'll talk about your life and your money. Alexander is with us in Raleigh, North Carolina. Hi, Alexander. Welcome to The Ramsey Show.

Hello, gentlemen. How are we doing today?

Better than we deserve, sir. How can we help?

I love to hear. Well, I wish I was calling under better circumstances here, but let me get you with a fax here real quick. I'm 33 years old. I make about $105,000 a year. I just I've only finished paying off $20,000 worth of credit card debt, and I have about $11,000 left on a car payment. I seem to be finding myself incredibly behind in where I thought I was going to be at this stage of my life. I find myself keep wanting to find different ways on how I can increase my networth, different businesses, different jobs, et cetera. I As I'm saying this, I was listening to the ads we're running, and Rachel, she posted an ad about loving her life, this new book she put out. I was laughing to myself about that. My question for you all is, How do I ensure that I'm maximizing my time, my effort, and my money to reach the point of what I personally deem to be financial success? One thing I think that keeps robbing me of this is the comparison that I make towards others that are much further ahead and within my social circle, whether it be friends or family.

It seems to be a vicious cycle of-Alexander, you're 33.

You've already figured out that no matter where you are, there's somebody got a nicer car, a bigger house for the rest of your life. Bill Gates even has that. As soon as Bill Gates thinks he's got something, he meets the Shah or the Saudi Prince. He figures out he's got nothing. There's always somebody that's got you whooped in any of these things you compare to. You know that already.

Question for you, Alexander, is this making you take some silly risks? Are you a little bit more risky, and thus you're reaping what you're selling there because you're trying to catch up so quick?

Are you afraid you're going to? Are you afraid? Yeah.

That's what I'm trying to understand what's happening.

Yeah, I think that's a good statement. I believe this. I think I'm going to. I started two businesses just to tack on to my day job so that I can reach this point of financial success and start, as you guys say, having your money- The fastest way to get rich quick is don't. Yeah.

Get rich quick.

Have you lost money on those ventures, or they fizzled out and they just didn't yield what you wanted to? What is it?

They just haven't yielded what I wanted to yet. What's that number?

Give us the number.

Yes. My day job, I make 94,600.

No, I'm asking you, you started off the call, I'm not where I thought I'd be. What is the number that would have not made this call happen? 33. I have this much networth. Give us a number. I'm curious.

The number I have in mind, it's about 300,000. I think that would support the lifestyle of not just experience- 300,000 dollar income?

Income or net worth? I'm asking the networth question.

That's a great question.

You're not even there. Okay, this helps us. No, this helps Dave and I understand where your head's at. What you're saying, I thought you were thinking networth. You're going, I want to make 300 grand a year, and that's based on a lifestyle you've got in your mind. I think you're doing this the wrong way. I would be looking at not I want to make 300,000 at 33. I'd be looking at what do I want my life to look like in 30 years from now. I love the idea of hanging around really wealthy people who are 30 years ahead of me and learning what they did and paying attention to what worked for them. Like Dave said, this is a patience play. This is activity. But patience is also an activity. I get up and I bust it. I do what I have to do so that later I can do what I want to do. Patience at 33 is really hard. You got to understand that's an active thing, not a sit around and wait. I hustle, I plant, I tend to the crop, if you will, using the farmer analogy, and I wait for the harvest.

In your situation, I would be asking, where do I want to be 30 years from now and then start to back into, okay, What steps do I need to take? I think you'll find that that $300,000 number is the wrong goal. Yeah. Dave, am I saying anything that you think is wrong?

Exactly. Comparison is the thief of joy. The wealthy people that I've met that have high-quality lives and I've built wealth, and I've met a bunch of thousands of them, they really just don't measure themselves themselves against other people at all. They only measure themselves against themselves. I started playing golf six years ago. I still suck, but I'm a lot better than I was six years ago, which is a low bar. But I'm a lot better than I was six years ago. But I have figured out with the people I've gotten the pleasure of playing with around the country, around the world, that I will never reach a point in that game where there is not a bazillion people that are better than me. So I've got to just enjoy my day out in this beautiful green golf course with my friends and occasionally hit a good shot, and I enjoy the shot. But I'm not going to make a living doing that. I'm not going to be that good at 63, I don't think. I don't think it's going to happen, and nor is it the goal. So the secret to happiness there is not comparing myself to PGA players that are half my age or a third my age, for that matter.

It's not why I'm there. What is it that's going to make you happy and fulfilled? If you'll find that and go create a great income doing something that you're passionate about on the Ken Coleman spectrum, you're going to be fine. The good news is you're ambitious, and I want you to keep that. I do not want your ambition to tip over the edge into desperation.

Yes, that's exactly the word.

If it tips over into desperation, that's when you're getting ready to sign up for get rich, quit crap, and lose your butt. That's right. Because you're chasing something too fast, you become the hare rather than the tortus. Every time I read the book, the tortus wins. So You want to be the tortus, and the tortus really wasn't stopping and taking a poll. He wasn't asking his broke friends or his rich friends what he should do. He just kept moving. He just kept moving. He just kept moving. Of course, we all know the story. The Esop's fable. He gets to the end of the race and wins while the hair is distracted and all over the place. Then at the end is desperate to try to catch up. When people say, I'm desperate to catch up, I'm too far behind. That's true. These are phrases that people say right before they lose a lot of money stepping into manure up to their eyeballs. Because some of the dumbest business deals I've ever done were ones I got in a hurry. I thought it was a silver bullet. I thought, If I get this, it's going to be the thing.

It's going to be the breakthrough. It's going to be the one. And I just walked straight into a mess. I haven't done it lately. It's been a while since I've done that. But the dumbest stuff I've done is when I felt like there was scarcity, like I had to rush, like I was desperate, like I was scared, like I goes behind. I had to catch up, I'm scratching and I'm clawing. That's when ambition flips over into desperation and you're getting really to screw yourself then.

Well, when you put a number like $300,000 on being enough, you're going to find out when you get to It's not. That has nothing to do with it. It's not even close. One of the things I'd love to give him, Dave, let's give him the get clear assessment with the new book, Find the Work You're Wired to Do. I think Alexander.

I think give him Rachel's book he heard about, too. That's right. Hey. Love your life, not theirs.

You win a book, and you win a book. It's going to be great, Alexander. Go for it.

We're going to give you a lot to read. This is The Ramsey Show. It's the last call for our two-night virtual event, Dave Ramsey's Investing Essentials. It's set for May 21 and 22, and you do Now, I want to miss this. I'll unpack my personal playbook on investing and real estate, and show you how you can feel confident in your investments, too. Tickets are $1.99. Snag a VIP ticket, and you'll get two sessions with a Ramsey preferred coach. You can join from anywhere. Go to ramseysolutions. Com/events, and get your ticket today. Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, is my co-host. Veronica is in Tucson. Hi, Veronica. Welcome to The Ramsey Show.

Hello. Thanks for taking my question. Sure. What's up? I appreciate it. Sure. This is a question I've had for a few months now. It's been bugging me. It's not really a debt question for me, but rather someone else, if someone else is willing. I'm 37 and have a dog-based business with a lot of services. My husband and I got out of most debt except for a credit card that we use for traveling. It only has 2,500 on it. I'm wanting to know if seller financing is something that people want to do right now. I want to sell my business, but I know that right now a lot of people don't qualify for loans. If seller financing is something I should advertise as an option for selling my business.

Probably not. Okay. Because you could up with the business back, which defeats the point of selling it, if they don't pay. When they don't pay, by the way, it's because they ran your business into the dirt. What used to be a thriving, going concern is now a mess with angry customers and lost customers and lost revenue, and now you're supposed to take it back over and rebuild it. I It's just hard to find the energy to do that.

Okay.

Now, if you're going to do it, there's a guy I used to do. Forty years ago, I did some real estate deals with a guy who used to buy mortgage notes, and he had a saying that applies to this situation. He said, If you're going to carry back a paper on a house you're selling or a piece of land you're selling, same thing, right? Then he said, You want to do it where you're happy- happy? I said, How does happy- happy work? He said, Well, you get a huge down payment, and then you're happy if they don't pay because you're getting that down payment in your pocket and your property back. So you're happy if they default. Okay? You get a huge interest rate, so you're happy if they pay. I'm happy if they pay, and I'm happy if they don't pay. So you got to structure it that way, to where they put so much down, and maybe you... I'll be crazy. What would your business sell for?

I got a quote for... Not a quote, but rather someone came and evaluated everything, and it would go for 350,000. Okay.

All right. So put $100,000 down, and I'll take a quarter of a million dollar lien against your family farm that's worth a million.

Okay.

Then I'll finance your business and hope you don't pay because I get a million dollar farm in the foreclosure. Follow me? Yeah. Sounds brutal, all right? But the problem is if it goes bad and you're not in a position that feels like that, then you're the one that got screwed. You said you're in the doggy business. What do you do?

I have a self-serve dogwash, boarding, boarding, and daycare, and then we transport dogs cross country, too.

So your passion for caring for animals properly and your love of animals, and for that matter, even people that love animals, has caused you to build a customer base that trusts you and the processes that you have put in place. If someone comes in and violates that trust, they will destroy the value of this business, and then you get to take it back. Okay. That's my concern. That's what I'm afraid of for you. I don't know how to protect you from that, except setting up some brutal secondary scenario.

Where they go through the bank, too?

Yeah, they I could go. I don't care where they go, but I would take less money and get all of it. Oh, I see what you're saying. I would rather have $250,000 cash than $20,000 down and pray these people don't screw this up.

Okay. Well, I guess that makes me have to think about that because I was looking to sell, not tomorrow, but in a few years time and just trying to pre-plan.

You're going to have to stay on top of that business as if you still owned it until they pay you.

Okay.

That's what's going to happen in this situation, because What you sell is not dog grooming and transportation. What you sell is my trust in you as your customer that you're going to take care of this dog and not leave it, not harm it, not be mean to it, and still get the grooming done and the transportation done.

Okay.

You sell trust. I know how wickedly ridiculous all the Ramsey's are about our dogs, how crazy we are about our dogs, and if someone were to mistreat that dog or just not simply not give it the appropriate amount of care if we gave them money to do so, we would get really emotional about that as a Ramsey. I bet your customers are the same way.

Absolutely, they are.

This is not I didn't fix your car. This is I messed with one of your children. That's what I mean by trust.

If they go through the bank, I don't have to do anything.

You don't have to do anything. They're going to get their own money however they get their money and hand it to you.

That's the best case scenario because you get your money right away from it.

I would take less and get my money and leave. Okay. I really would because all of the things I just described were not fun. You didn't hear anything fun in there. No, Not at all. You can tell I've been there, and you can tell I've dealt with lots of customers through Entree leadership that have tried to do this. The weird thing is, is you feel like you've sold it and you don't have to worry about it anymore, and And yet, their success is the only way they're going to pay you. So now you still got to worry about them operating properly.

I agree. It's a headache you just don't want. You want to get out of the pet business, not jump into a new business called financing. That's effectively what this is. I'd start talking about it now. If you have a two-year runway, I'd start putting the word out now and let the word know that, Hey, I'm looking to exit in the next couple of years. I wouldn't wait until I'm ready to exit.

Now, the The other thing is this, the shorter the terms, the less the risk. Let's pretend Veronica's business is making 150,000 net, which is not. It would be worth more than 350 if it was. But if they gave her like 100,000 a year for three years or for two years after putting $100,000 down. Two years is harder to screw it up. But if we're financing this over 10 years, you're going to have a problem. You don't want to get in that business. I wouldn't. It's not because I don't like borrowing money. It's just because it's going to end poorly. It's not going to take us to where we need to go. Now, we do talk to in our entre, by the way, if you want to learn about small business stuff. I do a podcast once a week on the Entree Leadership podcast, which is one of the top leadership and small business podcasts out there. I answer questions just like Veronica's there, only I take a little more time because it's not riddled with commercials like this show. But anyway, if you want to learn about that stuff, and we talk a lot about a family member taking over the business and buying out their dad or buying out their mom very, very quickly out of the profits.

That's a little different scenario than just financing your doggy grooming thing for 10 years. And Somebody puts down 20 grand or something. That's just, please don't do that. Please don't do that. All right. That puts this hour of The Ramsey Show in the books. Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions. It's The Ramsey Show, where we help people build wealth, do work that they love, and create actual amazing relationships. Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, number one best author of the book Paycheck to Purpose, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225. It's a free call. Some say the advice is worth exactly what you pay for it. Chelsea's with us. She is in Cincinnati. Hi, Chelsea. Welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Hi. Thanks for taking my call. Sure.

What's up?

I'm married. My husband and I are on the same page with working through the baby steps. Right when we We always tackle step one, there's always some type of an emergency. Is there anything I can do as a mostly stay-at-home mom to help build our income so we can actually get further through these baby steps?

Yeah.

Let's start with, do you have any work experience outside of the home to this point?

I do. I currently work part-time at my church as the Elementary Coordinator, making $11,000 a year. But I am also... I used to be a hair stylist, and I'm still licensed.

Interesting. How much time How much time do you have during a day in a given week with your stay-at-home mom duties being involved there? How much time do you have to be able to put towards making money?

My husband is always home by 5:00. I mean, I've even thought about working somewhere from 5:00 to 11:00 PM or something like that. There is time, and I do have help with the kids.

Here's the answer. You get to choose. I'm not going to tell you what it is, but I would keep it super simple. This is not a career earlier move. This is short term. Let's get some income in the door. I would be looking at experience and skill first. That's why I led with that question. The work you're doing for the church, you could certainly chalk that up as coordinating children's activities There's some administrative work there. You could call it whatever you want. But I would be looking at through my experience and skill, if cutting hair in the evening hours is the best rate you can make based on skill and experience, I'd be doing that. The fact that you're licensed, that feels like that's right for me because you probably can make the most bang for your buck on that, correct? Absolutely. I got to tell you, my wife does the old cut and color, and that takes hours. The other day, she told me how long she was in the chair or wherever they're at.

Finding-whereever this mysterious thing occurred.

Exactly. It's like a long time. I had no idea. Anyway, here's my point. Having what I would call primetime hours in the evening for moms who are really busy during the day, you might be able to have a really nice little business going. If you can do it from home and not have to rent a booth or their home, oh, my goodness, Dave. That's even better. That's like the house calls. I would start that direction there because you are offering now a convenience.

Yeah, and then people pay big for this.

I like the prime-time hair. Here's the point. Anything in your experience and skillset- I pay a lot of money for my hair.

Well, yeah. Can you imagine?

Dave hates using that flowby. He'd love for somebody to cut his hair at night. What is a flowbie? You don't know what a flowbie is? Tell him what a flowbie is, Chelsea. This is going to be great. I don't know what a flowbie is. How many people in the studio audience know what a flowby is? Raise your hands. The bald guys, dude. All the bald guys. So a flowby is, it is essentially a hair cutting device, Dave, that you attach to a vacuum and you adjust the length. It's like a clipper, if you will, but it sucks up the hair and you it yourself. I can't believe it. It's like in the same line of the chia pet, the buy it on TV as seen on TV. Am I right? You're killing me. I know. See, a little bit of joke and no one got it except for the entire audience. Dave and Chelsea didn't get it.

Anyway, Chelsea. Does that help? Chelsea, for God's sake, what's your husband doing?

He is in construction and remodeling. Okay.

So he could do a lot after five and on the weekends also to get your income up. Lastly, the thing that I discovered is… Well, let me guess and say you all have not been doing a hardcore every dollar budget more than two months.

Yes.

True?

It's true.

Okay. Because the longer you have been budgeting, the more things you anticipate that you used to call emergencies. I used to call Christmas an emergency, and then I discovered it's always in December, and that stuff. And you go, Oh, wait a minute. Tires on cars wear out. It's not an emergency. It's an anticipated event. Now, it's a budget item. Kids, school, activity fees. I forgot them in the budget, which made them an emergency, but next time they're in the budget, so they're no longer an emergency. What happened was the better I got at budgeting over the first year of doing a budget once a month, like 12 budgets in, I was like a thousand better at not declaring everything I forgot to put in there as an emergency because I was no longer forgetting to put it in there. Does that make sense? Yeah. As you get better at this, the emergencies are going to subside, and it even gets better than that. Years from now, when you are debt-free and have your emergency fund in place and are starting to really build serious wealth, it takes a really big emergency to actually be qualified as an emergency because you've got so much margin then.

That makes sense?

That sounds great. Yeah. That's where we're headed, but that's years from now. Months from now, you'll just be a lot better budgetter and have gotten your income up. Those two things will solve the emergency problem, and you'll get the other side of this and get moving. Good news is you're not afraid of work, neither is your husband, and works where money comes from, so go get you some. Good news is it's temporary. We're going to work like no one else so that we get this mess cleaned up so that we We no longer have to work like no one else, so we no longer have to do this crap, and you can get out and change everything. It's a big deal.

Chelsea, I love this idea of after a long day, whether you're working outside the house or in the home, I come to you You get to relax and I make you feel pretty. I charge probably 15%. I'm not even kidding.

Oh, yeah, I care more than that. Above 15% to 20%. I would just double it.

Double it? I don't know about that. But what the going rate when people are cutting hair, Double?

They got to get in their car, drive to some stinking place, put up with a bunch of other stuff, including traffic. And otherwise, they make themselves a martini and sit down and she shows up at their own home. I'm telling you, this is double.

Facebook poll. Facebook poll, find out.

Just saying.

Just do some research.

Because I'm an expert on hair, so leave me alone. I was going to say, very bold. Mr. Floby. Kim Floby-Coleman. Look it up.

I'm telling you, if there was ever a haircutting device made for the Dave Ramsey's of the world, it was that.

Oh, man, what is this? Like something. There it is. They got it on. It's an infomercial thing.

This is old school. That's why it was- An infomercial thing. I'm a child of the '80s. That was pretty popular.

It's like a Ronco device.

Yeah, but look, it's attached to the vacuum so there's no mess. That's just- And think about it, Dave, you could go right around the side there.

I do cut my own hair with Sam's Clivers. They came from Sam's Club. They just... It takes about a minute and a half and I'm done.

Yeah, but you got a mess to clean up. Get the flowby, it sucks it right up.

I need a flowby, I guess. Who knew? I woke up this morning and I had no idea of my flowby need, and now you have identified it.

I'm letting the cat out of the bag, folks. That is the Ken and Stacey Coleman Christmas present for Dan Ramsey this year.

We'll have to ask our next guest about this.

I think he'd have a great opinion.

Speaking of chia pets.

Chia face.

This is The Ramsey Show. Hey, folks, the Total Money Makeover, 20th anniversary edition is now here. I believe the success of this book is all about the hero stories. People who felt overwhelmed and stuck until they found the least complicated money book they ever read and learned how to work the plan and actually build wealth. Go to ramseysolutions. Com com/store to get the Total Money Makeover 20th anniversary edition and become one of the new Total Money Makeover heroes. Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today. Stop it in the studio, my good friend, Willie Robertson from Duckdynasty. We've been hanging out this week a little bit, and he's got a brand new book out called Gospeller: Turning darkness into Light, One Conversation at a Time. Welcome, my friend.

What What's up, pal?

We were discussing flow bees and haircuts right before my friend, the chiapet, comes on. You actually had a chia thing. I did. Home Depot, I saw it. Yes, there was a little willy- When Duckdynasty was hot, you were a chiapet.

Yeah, I should have just retired right then. If you get your own chia pet, that's top and out.

You've pretty much arrived. You're top and out. How do you get beyond that? It's so good.

You show up at this thing and be on the show with Dave Ramsey.

And Ken Coleman.

And Ken Coleman.

Now he's really arrived. Talking about Floby's.

That's when you know your career has bottomed out, my friend.

Did you Floby yourself when you were in the '80s?

I had no idea. He didn't know about it. I had no idea.

I thought he got the settings wrong.

Yes. The joke that keeps on giving.

And got Shamwowed or something on that.

That's true. You just wish you were clean, cut, and well-grewmed.

I'm hanging on as long as I can, Dave.

You just wish you were well-grewmed.

I'm hanging on to it.

That's right. You did. You cut most of it off and then grew it back. I mean, we went on a hunting trip and you showed up. I hardly recognized you.

I cut my hair and yeah, I was going through a weird time.

Did Cori not like it shorter or it was not her call at all?

She actually did. No, she liked it shorter. That's what I thought. She wanted me to keep it, but then I just started growing it back out. She goes, What's happening? Are you doing this again? I said, What? People like it. It's the Duckdionasty brand.

They were into it. You're the duck man. So Gospeller, let's change subjects here. Most people associate you and your family, your dad, of course, with hunting and duck calls, and we know the fabulous hit of the duck dynasty, the whole empire that was created there. This is a an extension of who you really are, and for that matter, who your dad really is, and the DNA that runs through your whole family. You and I have had some great talks about God and spreading the word about him. To start with, let's talk about gospeler. What in the world is a gospel?

It's someone who shares the gospel, simply. I had never heard of the word. I was writing this book on Sharing your Faith, and I had some other titles. My wife came in and she said, I found this word. It's an old word that used to be used a lot, even in America. It's just a dinosaur. It's gone. It was people who shared their faith, and not necessarily pastoral. It was like normal people, they were known gospel colors. I thought, That is wild. That's awesome. In a way, I was like, Let's bring that word back, because it's interesting that the word went away. Also, I think people shared the gospel with other people, perhaps has gone away. So, yeah, brought back something that was old, that was new. This is the DNA of the Robertson family. I've never been more proud of a book because this is what we're all about. I was just proud to be able to write it down.

Now we bring back the subtitle, Turning darkness into Light, One Conversation at a Time. You and I have hung out a goat enough together in situations around the public and around somebody we just met and those kinds of things that it is a conversation at a time, isn't it?

It is. Now, that one was, you'll understand this, Dave, it's a mix of business in our life. And so that subtitle, I was trying to figure it out. I was talking to Andy Andrews, and he said, You got to have a subtitle. And I said, I was trying to think of what this was. I was working on another marketing campaign for an optics product for Buck Commander, and it's one that lights up a scope, and it said, Turn dark to light. And I saw the whole marketing pitch, and I went, That's my subtitle. That's That. And so I got that from that, and then it was the one conversation, Turn darkness to light. And I feel like that's probably the melting of the Robertson's. It's the melting of business with our faith altogether, because it's going to be impossible to separate the gospel from really anything we do.

It was at the core of the reason that the whole Duck Donasty thing happened at the level that it did. It was your family's fun anyway and crazy, and so they make great TV, especially when you include Si. But in the mix of all that, we all got to see somebody that we could relate to and someone that we could relate to that was a people. They're people of faith, and they believed it, and they live it. It came through on the TV. I think that was one of the big attractions, one of the big draws.

It was definitely. I mean, the faith part, and I don't know that the network or anyone ever saw that or was like… Because it wasn't a religious show. Phil always wanted it to be. Phil said, We need more preaching on this show. I said, Dad, there's another Robertson family that has a show like that. It's called the 700 Club. Let them do what they do. Let's just have fun, and we'll end with a prayer, and it's something that the whole family can watch. If they want to know more, if they want to go deeper, then we can have that conversation through books and through podcasts. That's the way I am in life. I'm like, Look, I'm not going to shove this down your throat. If you don't want to hear it, you don't want to hear it. But if you do, then we'll have a conversation, and I'll certainly try to be prepared shared to be able to give an answer for the hope that I have.

I want to ask you about that because this is certainly an interesting time for somebody who has faith and wants to share it. There's also this natural fear of rejections we humans have. Just if we ask anybody anything or we go up to somebody and start sharing something, and there's this natural fear of, are they going to be rude? Am I going to upset them? There's a boldness that Phil has modeled, and I've heard you talk about it. What do you share in the book? What would you say to somebody listening going, All right, I'm inspired, Willy. I want to share my faith, but I'm not even sure How to build up that courage to share it and let that conversation go wherever it goes.

I make the case in the book for I really think Jesus, it may be the whole deal is to share it. When he leaves the earth, he gives us the great commission. He says, make disciples, baptize people, teach people. He didn't say, Try to go to church whenever you can, try to be a good person. That's not a mission. He gave us a pretty good mission there, three things. A lot of people I know, they're not anywhere near those three things. I wanted to live my life where I'm like, I want to be around those three things. I have to open my mouth to do any of those three things. That's orders from headquarters. That's what Jesus told us to do. That's why he was here, not for himself. You got to understand, in the Bible, in the New Testament, these were people who were going to most likely lose their lives over sharing their faith. When I think about what we do today in America, it's a whole lot easier than it was then. We're talking about getting the courage. But I think we've bought into perhaps the lie of the world, which is, Hey, why don't you just keep that to yourself?

That's a great deal, right? If you're wanting the gospel not to get spread, you would just create this illusion that we should all just be silent about that. I make different arguments about... It's as natural as I would talking about my spouse or my kids. Those are questions that I ask all the time. People ask them of me. Again, those are relationships that I have. I'm going to talk about my relationship with Jesus. It should be quite obvious and clear how I'm living by how I'm living my life. That should be the natural next thing to talk about.

It should be part of just the rhythm rather than something that's forced or strained or whatever.

It doesn't have to be weird. It doesn't have to be strange. Again, if people don't want it, they're like, Look, I don't want to talk about it. I'm like, Hey, whenever you do, I'll be here.

That's right. How many times have you seen in your own life where you'll mention your faith and somebody didn't really want to receive it, you let it go. You said a moment ago, I don't force it down their throat, but then they come back at a time when they needed it.

They think about it. They're like, Man, you said something. I've had people say, You said something to me a year ago. Yeah, exactly. But that's part of the Holy spirit, right? We were talking about things that live in us, and that's another great testimony, even what we think we can't do, now something else is living in us that certainly has the power to get that message out. Yeah, some of these conversations take... I've been talking to people for 20 years about this, and they're not all stranger and encounters. This can start with your kids, with your spouse, with your aunts, uncles, the people you sit by at work, and just listen to what they say. Oftentimes, you'll hear something come up and you're like, There you go. I just heard something. I had a guy come up to him in the airport the other day in Atlanta. He goes, I know who you are. And I said, Oh, nice to see you. And he goes, I'm not living like I'm, probably should be. And I said, Why would you say that to me? He goes, I don't know. And I said, Well, have a seat.

And so that was obvious. He literally said to I'm not living how I should. And so something was wanting to come out of him, and we had a 30-minute conversation about it.

The book is Gospeller, Willie Robertson, one who spreads the gospel that is not necessarily A preacher, a pastor, a staff preacher, not church staff.

There we go. Out today, wherever books are sold.

Yeah, brand new release. Hey, you want to hang with us? Because this debt free scream has got something to do with you.

I want to hear this one. All right.

This is the Ramsey Show.

Hey, guys. Are you ready for The Secret to help you reach those money goals that you've been dreaming about?

It's simple.

You got to get on a budget.

With our budgeting app, Every Dollar, you'll get intentional with your money and build the habits that will make those dreams a reality. And we'll be with you every step of the way. From your first budget to that retirement home on the beach, download every dollar for free on the App Store or Google Play. Remember, today, download every dollar for free on the App Store or Google Play today. Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today, a brand new co-host for this segment. We let him stay over one. Willy Robertson is with us because Jonathan Lindsay are on the debt-free stage in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions to do their debt-free scream. I know the answer, obviously, but I'm going to ask for the rest of everybody else. Where are you guys from? West Monroe, Louisiana.

I like that place. There we go.

The reason we let Willy hang out is, if I understand correctly, Lindsay, you are Cori's personal assistant? Yes, sir. Cori's. Thank you, Willy. She's Cory's everything. She manages everything. It's good to Lindsay. Yes. Like that. Cool. What do you do, Jonathan?

I work for a rental company in West Monroe, Louisiana.

Excellent. How much debt have you guys paid off?

Around $64,000 in seven months.

Good for you. Way to go. And your range of income during When was that time? 1:35. Cool. Very cool. Excellent. Proud of you all. Yeah. Way to go. What got you started on this Ramsey stuff a year ago? Well, we actually went on a beach trip that we could not afford. I was stressed out the whole time. I was like, We should not be here. We do not need to be doing this. We just looked at each other. I was like, I can't live like this anymore. We've got to do something to change. It just was not fun. I was like, We're supposed to be on vacation, but we were trying to keep up with everybody else's stuff. We've all done on that vacation. We've all done that.

Why didn't you just put on a credit card and pay it later? I'm sorry. No, we did.

That was the problem.

We did. That was the problem. How did you get connected to us?

Through church, really. Nathan and Amanda, shout out to them at our church, got us in financial peace. The pastor really talked about it a couple of weeks before that. Lindsay was preaching on margins and financial margins. Lindsay was like, Look, we got to do something. I could just feel the stress and anxiety she was going through. I was All right, we'll give it a shot. We got to change something.

Yeah, we got into Financial Peace University. After the first class, we were hooked. We were like, We've got to do this. I think this is the way to do it. But actually, we started off that class really bad because two weeks before that, we had just closed on a house. Oh, wow. We were like, Oh, shoot.

Two weeks later, we went to Disney, too.

Yeah. It's like eating chocolate cake the night before you go on a diet. What is this? Yeah. We really started off wrong, but we stuck Once we got back, we just hit paying all the debt as quick as possible, and we stuck to it. What debt was the 64,000? We had Saint Season tickets, we had credit cards, we had a truck loan, and we had a land. You were normal. Yes, we were very normal. Normal sucks. It does.

Did you sell anything? We sold plenty of things.

We sold everything.

The kids even over there, they thought they were next. I love it. Dave Ransy may have been a cussword early on, but- Maybe. But They understand what the future may hold for both of them, so everything's good. Yeah.

We put our camper on the chopping block, and we were just like, We're done.

What about the Saints tickets?

Those were gone, too.

Oh, wow.

We actually held on to them for the season and sold every single game. We did not go to a game, but we made money, and that helped pay towards our debt, too. There you go.

I know they cut their food budget because Lindsay would look like a vulture at my refrigerator. After I would cook a meal, she would be just hanging around I'm like, Willy, what'd you cook today? You got anything to eat?

That's not fair because you actually are a great cook. No, no. You don't have to be vulturing to want to eat your food.

He cooks for 100, and there's 40 people there. He just sits in the fridge, so somebody's got to eat. I texted him.

I'm like, Are you- Because there's no stopping him once he gets gone. No. I'm like, Are you headed out of town? I'll take the leftovers home for us. The entire refrigerator. Well, hey, whatever. It's what you got to do. You scratched and clawed and for seven months, really leaned in, camper on the chopping block, put the tickets up for sale, the whole deal, and resold or however you want to say it, and now you're free. Was it worth it? Oh, every bit of it. Every bit of it. Wouldn't change it. No, it was great. I think you're heroes. I think you changed your family tree, and I think you learned God's and grandma's ways of handling money, and you're like grownups and stuff, and we need more people like you all. Yes. I will shout out to Willy, too, just as this is his book release, but we're hoping to share our faith. God showed up for us more times than we can count. We tithed for the first time, like consistently. That was the first thing your lesson said was to give, and we thought we weren't going to be able to, but we put that in our budget first, and we've done it ever since the very beginning, and that has changed our life.

We have had God show up more times than we can count, and I just think that that's helping us share our faith and be a gospeler to the world. So we're really excited. Yeah. Amen. Amen. That's a good tie in. Very well done. Very, Very well done. What do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is?

She's probably going to say the budget, but communication, because money was a conversation we would never have. I call it swip anxiety. You just swip that credit card, you think about it later, then that anxiety just builds and builds and builds, and you don't even want to talk about it. It was one thing we never, never talked about. Ever since the communication, it's an easy conversation to have. Has that blood over into other issues that are tough to talk about? No.

We can talk about anything. It's really been helpful. Good for you. Thank you. Glad it impacted your marriage. I will say the budget. I love to see it. We got to one point during the week and we hadn't spent any money. I was like, Babe, we got to go grocery shopping. I got to do a budget.

I got to be able to put that. The little bubbles that come up on the premium edition. She likes to put them in places, so she gets upset when there's nothing there that she can't move.

But that's always a good thing when you got the bubbles up there. That's a good thing. The Every Dollar app is part of the rhythm then. Part of rhythm every day. Very cool. All right, let's bring the kiddos up and introduce them. Their names and ages, because they're part of the program here, and they got mom and dad that are hero. You've changed your family tree, guys. I'm proud of you. This is Finley Kate, and this is Douglas. She'll be 11 this month, and he is eight. Okay. Douglas, no more cussing about Dave Ramsey.

He's like, What are you talking about? I never said that.

He's like, Dave, let me see that smile.

Dave Ramsey equalled no for a while. Did they How did they get involved in this? Well, we cut back on some of the things they did, and we actually just taught them, Look, we're doing this for short term. Later in life, it'll be prosperous because we got some great parents of mine that are really good to them and generous to them. I'm saying, Look, let them be generous to you right now, take it all, and then we can be generous to you later with your kids. That's what we've been telling them.

Live like no one else so later you can live like no one else. No doubt. Exactly. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but it yields a harvest of righteousness. They've done a great job to just go with the flow, and they've got to still do their things, so they're happy. They don't look like they're- They're not hurt. I think they're getting by. I think they're getting by. Everything's okay. Good thing Uncle Willy was there to feed them, I'm just saying. There we go. Good stuff, you all. I'm proud of you all.

I'm glad they deducted that and not that their boss is just paying more money.

Hey, there you go.

That's a good way.

If you feed them, you don't have to pay them. Here's your bonus in a turkey leg.

That's There we go. What is the go-to willy item? What's the best thing you cook? Pizza is pretty good. Pizza? Homemade pizza? I have an outdoor pizza.

He made some... We shot those pheasants. He made some pheasant chili that I heard was pretty outrageous. What?

Then pheasant and Dumlins. Remember, I got on that pheasant and Dumlins kick for a while. I love cooking with Crawfish. It's Crawfish season.

You missed that on that the other day, by the way.

Yeah, I missed the Crawfish party. I do all kinds of things.

Yeah. You I never know. The multi-talented dude. I know. Best-selling author. Here we go.

I want the chili and the Dumlins.

Yeah, you do. I promise. My mouth is watering, and I'm not going to be able to finish this segment. All right, Jonathan and Lindsay. Jonathan and Lindsay Douglas and Finley from West Monroe, Louisiana. $64,000 paid off in seven months, making $135. These people are heroes. They change their lives. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt-free. Yeah.

Love it.

Way to go, you guys. That is fun. I think Ms. Cori's got a good one there.

Yeah, she's awesome. Jonathan's great, the whole family, so I see them probably every day. They're over And those kids from when they were little, so they're over all the time. Yeah, great work. And they're hard workers. So this is not about them being not wanting to work because they work hard.

No, no. They obviously leaned in to this. No question about it.

That was a good yell, Dave. Hey. It was like that one time you made a birdie.

You yelled like that. That one time. That one time once.

I'm not going to say it's just grumblings and anger over the bogeys, but- I had the turf one day.

He said, 811, call for your dig. We've all been there. I'm just saying. Thanks for dropping by, Willy. This is the Ramsey Show. Our scripture of the day, 2 Corinthians 9:8, And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. Benjamin Franklin said, It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it. We have seen that, have we not? Yes. One of the pastors that was here the other day said, You don't want the DNF in your column. Did not finish. Yeah, great point. That can happen. Andrew is in Boise. Hi, Andrew. Welcome to the Ramsey Show.

Hi. Thank you for taking my call. Sure.

How can I help?

My wife's student loans are going to enter repayment in February. They a little over $51,000. Based off my current budget for what our income will be then, we should be able to pay them off in about 18 to 20 months.

Good.

My question is, I have the ability to take a zero interest wage advance for my work, where I could take $6,000 that I could pay back in 12 months. Should I take that wage advance to put as a lump sum against those student loans?

No.

Keeping the time frame the same or shorter, hopefully trying to pay them off quicker and save some interest.

No. Because the interest is not that high on the student loan during the period of time and the number of dollars is not worth screwing with, The second reason is that if you, God forbid, die, your student loans are forgiven. Your wage advance is not. If your, God forbid, become disabled, your student loans are forgiven. Wage Wage advance is not. I'm not going to trade the only good features of a student loan debt and lose them for this wage advance. You're thinking right. I like the way you're thinking, but those are two items. I'm not predicting someone's death or disability, please. Believe me, I'm not the last guy to do that. But the idea being If you actually figure out… What's your interest rate on the student loan?

Yeah, the weighted average is about four and a half, but I would be putting it on loans that are about six individual ones.

Okay, so it's $200 in one year. That you would save. You have a $51,000 problem. You don't have it.

I have a little closer to four based off of what I was calculating.

I'm sorry? 4% of $6,000 is $240 on one year. That's what you would I wouldn't screw with it for that because you don't have a $240 problem. You have a $51,000 problem, and you've already addressed that because you're leaning in, you're aggressive, you're focused. But the good news is you're actually paying attention to any possibility that will help me move the needle on this, and this is a possibility, and I'm glad you asked about it. I'm glad your mind is in a place where you would ask about it because you're paying attention. You're not You're trying to drag this out. You want to get it done as fast as you can. All of those are what's going to be the magic sauce, Andrew, not the 0% on 6,000. I wouldn't trade that for the extra risk you're taking on, nor would I go through all the crap and hassle you got to go through to do this and changes the relationship with your employer and all this stuff. I just wouldn't. No, I wouldn't fool with it. Let's just lean in and get her done, man. You're sharp. Get her done. Good question. Magdalene is with us in Detroit Magdalene.

I'm sorry, I can't say it right. I'll get it out eventually. How are you, Magdalene?

Hi. Thanks for taking my call. How are you?

Better than I deserve. What's up?

My question is, I've heard you talk a couple of times When you were talking about how when you guys were budgeting that you would never let your bank account balance go below $1,000. I was wondering, was that like your $1,000 emergency fund, or is that like you just tried to never let your bank balance go below that number?

Does that make sense? That would have been in a different world when if you kept $1,000 in your checking account, they didn't charge you any fees. Today, that's not necessarily true. I would not worry with keeping that much. You want to keep something in there just so you don't accidentally slip into an overdraft or something, so 100 bucks maybe, but I don't know why you would need to keep a thousand. I would keep your $1,000 Baby Step 1 emergency separate from your checking account.

Okay.

Then maybe keep 100 bucks in the checking account today. That's what we're doing today with people using every dollar is recommending they're going that way. Ken, you and Stacy have been doing this a long time. What did you do back in the day?

Well, back then, same deal. I think Stacy was monitoring the minimum we'd have to have in our checking. To get free. To get free. But like a credit union, it's free anyway.

That's right.

Our zero-based budget was based on that number. Zero down, so we budget every dollar to that number.

When we say a zero-based budget, we mean give every dollar of your check that's coming in, folks, a name. We don't mean give every dollar that's in your account a name. You don't take your checking account to a row every month. That's what Magdalene is. She's correct about that. I used to just use, back in the day, I mean, this is 30 years ago. We kept a thousand bucks in there because in those days, bank fees were crazy. Nobody writes checks anymore. We had free checks. Back then, if you did that and you got a free toaster and a not getting, but it was like,.

I was going to say it really quick. I remember when I first started working, I was afraid to let my checking account get below a thousand. This is before any… It was just me as a kid, but it made me feel better to have that.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Dave and Lynn are in Los Angeles. Hey, guys, how are you?

Hi, doing well.

How can we help?

I am actually questioning whether or not we should delay Baby Step number 2 and focus on Baby Step number 3 for a potential job layoff.

No, but you could pause Baby Step 2 and just not be in the total money makeover and pile up cash if you're pretty sure you're going to get laid off. If you're just generally a worrywart, no. Okay. What's the probability you're losing your job?

Well, the company has had three rounds of layoff this year, this last calendar year.

Yeah, but how many employees do they have and how many did they lay off?

They laid off about 10%.

Okay, in three rounds? Yes. So 3% per round? Correct. What would make you think you're on the shopping block?

I've worked there less than two years.

That's one of the criteria that they're using to lay people off that hadn't been there?

That's typically the case. Senior may play a role.

Yeah, it usually does play a role depending on the thing. Now, are you hearing any news or is this just water-cooler gossip?

I follow some threads and things like that, but I do know for a fact those three rounds occurred, and I happened to survive all three.

What is the industry that you're in?

In IT, cybersecurity.

Okay. Why is it Why do you think this company is going to continue going down?

I think the development of new technologies and AI has actually invested more in future technologies and less in employees, and they're trying to do more with less, I think.

Is this a large company?

It's the economy. It is. Public? A public company, yeah.

There's a trend right now when you look at stock price for these companies, when they invest heavily In either talent, they'll overhire. We saw major companies, Dave, lay people off, big technology companies, because they overhire when they think that economy is going to go crazy.

Is she on the line then? She could be. I think it's- Here's the point. Should she stop everything and pile up cash? I would. Okay.

Just for about... Is she still... How long would make you feel comfortable if you were to pile up cash? How many months worth of expenses would make you feel good about it?

I definitely think a solid four or five months would No, that's not the answer.

You don't keep doing this. You only keep doing this until you're not worried anymore about being laid off, that you don't think there's a high probability. There's always a probability, but you don't think there's a high probability. There's a storm. You go inside and you batten up until the storm passes. Then you come back outside. When the storm passes, you push play again, take it back down to $1,000. Yes. Until you're ready to do that, you're not ready to play. If you can't get some stability within a few months out of your company, you probably need to move on. That puts this hour of the Ramsey show in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily. With with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus. If you're a leader, your personal growth matters for your organization because whatever you lead can only grow as much as you do. I know from experience, I've been CEO of Ramsey Solutions for over 30 years, and now I'm sharing that leadership and business coaching experience with you on the Entree Leadership podcast.

I'm taking your calls and helping you figure out how to overcome challenges within your organization. One episode could change your business. Check it out on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or on the Ramsey Network app.