Normal Money Habits Don’t Build Wealth

Normal is broken, common sense is weird, so we're here to help you transform your life. From the Ramsey network and the Fair Wins Credit Union Studios, this is the Ramsey show. George Campbell, number one bestselling author, Ramsey Personality is my co-host today. Open phones here, triple eight, eight, two, five, two, two, five. Dave is in Philadelphia, high-dave, how are you?

Very good, Dave and George, how are you doing? Better than we deserve, what's up?

So, I have my identity stolen, and someone took out a student loan in my name, so I never

tended to school, authorize the loan, and already tried contact in the loan company, physically going to the college, filing a literature tour, and disputing it, look at that showing still showing up in my name. I was wondering if you had any recommendations for situations like this. Wow.

Okay. Well, to start with, you're aware that if someone falsely uses your name, you're not liable for the debt. You know that, right? Yes.

Yeah. Any circumstances do you pay this debt, period? Okay. Typically, what happens in an identity theft situation is, in order for the lender to do away with the false account, they need some proof that it's a false account, and they're

going to have to have some interaction with them.

Most of the time, you're going to file a police report, and you can send them a copy of the police report that says this occurred, it's identity theft, it's fraudulent criminal activity, and, but you're going to have to figure out who to get in touch with, who's holding the loan. It's called Ed Financial, it's the name of the company.

Okay. So is that a federal loan? I think, yeah, for the private federal loan organization. Okay. 'Cause it's a separate parallel loan.

“If it's a federal loan, you should be able to go to studentaid.gov, and I've seen this”

happen before, and there's something called a false certification ID theft discharge, and you can file for that on studentaid.gov, and that might help the process to kind of bridge the gap between a police report and what you're dealing with. Yeah, I would do that, and I would get a police report, and I would be in touch with the

people holding the loan, and badger the crud out of 'em until they get this thing fixed.

I'm hoping you've frozen your credit since then with all three bureaus. I did treat the credit, and I already took all the steps that you all recommended. So I was just curious that there's anything else you would put suggest in doing it. I had to go back as far as, you might think it's great, but they made me pull my high school diploma to prove that I am who I say, and even though someone else was able to easily get

the loan in my name. Wow. How much was it for? So why are they not taking it off? If you did all that.

It was for $4,000, and it was for about $5,000. Okay. Are they giving you any reason that they haven't done away with the loans? They just say, "No, it's fraudulent." No.

They haven't given me any reason that they haven't done away with it other than, you know, incompetent. You can get them to see paperwork. It's the same paperwork I've already sent you, you know, kind of kind of thing. And how long has this been going on?

About six months. Six months since I found out about it. And you do not have, you do not have a Sanders identity theft insurance, I'm sure, because

“you would have told me they were already handling it, right?”

No. No, I don't have any identity theft insurance. Okay. Well, this is the exact reason we endorse Sanders identity theft. It's not the notification.

The identity theft product that they have assigns a counselor to the case, a case worker, and they do all the crap. And they pound the lender until the lender removes the debt from your name and removes it from your credit report. And that's the follow-through is, it's not that identity theft costs you any money, because

you don't owe any money. It's all the hours lost of your life that you can't get back dealing with morons that work for a student loan company and can't get their head out of the debt. That's the problem. That's where I'm at with it too, right?

You know, it's been hours and hours ago. Oh, yeah. You're going to break it.

“Why you product like that retroactively, a key buy it?”

No. You can't buy retroactively, but I've sold millions and millions of them, and so they'll give me one occasionally retroactively for someone on the air, and we'll take care of you. Okay? We'll see if Zander will pick up and attach, see if they can do it.

They usually can do it, and attach to your situation and have their identity theft team address this with a counselor with a coach with somebody, a case worker to work the fake case through and try to maybe they can put some pressure on that you hadn't been able to as an individual. We'll give that a shot.

And there are a couple of things for anyone else out there going, I don't want this to happen to me.

is a great thing to have. And Dave, you covered it for every one of our team members. And I've had to actually use it. But back when I started here, I had to try. I forgot about that.

I had the pleasure of working with a victim. That's right. And someone opened two AT&T accounts, Verizon accounts in my name across the country, and I was on the cell phone king for a minute.

“I was like, how do you rack up $2,000 on a cell phone account?”

I have no idea, but Zander, they handed it all for me, they just kept me up to date.

Hey, here's what's going on.

All right. It's gone now. Hold the credit report. It was gone. So you're going to stay on top of this, Dave, to make sure that you pull the credit

report, make sure it's gone, contact lender, get everything in writing document, who you talk to, when you talk to them, what they said, and that's the kind of hassle that ID theft causes. And this is happening more and more today. These student loan scams, especially.

I haven't run into other student loans as much. I didn't know that. I knew it happened with everything else. And here's a weird statistic, a large percentage of identity theft is from someone you know. Like here's the gross ones, like a kid turns 21, he's trying to get married and buy a house

and finds out that when he was 12 his mother took out three credit cards in his name. That's gross. The closer it is to your own family, if that's you, by the way, you're a criminal. That's called fraud, not to mention you're scum because you did this to your own kid, but you're a criminal if you're doing this.

And say, if your mommy did this, your mommy is a criminal, yeah, that's just because it's fraud. It's bank fraud. You're taking out a loan under false pretenses. It's go to jail time if somebody actually wanted to push it, but they usually don't.

They usually just write it off and call it a day. Here's the sad thing. If you don't have somebody like Xander in these situations with the credit card companies, you call City Bank and go, this is not my card, I didn't open it up.

The first thing they assume is you did take it out and you just don't want to pay the

bill. And so they treat you as a victim like you are a predator.

“Like you have to prove to them that you were not guilty as charged.”

Exactly. You are guilty until proven innocent when you're dealing with city bank or chase or fifth third or these guys because they're just scumming credit card departments are horrible on this stuff. Well, I'm sure they get people who pay it anyways because do they just don't want to deal

with it? They're scared. Yeah, it's typically someone that is elderly will pay it anyway because they don't want to fight, they don't want to get into the argument or someone that's young or immature and they just don't have the strength to push back and fight it through because you

pretty much got to get pissed off and go out. I'm like a cat on their face scratching the ground. It's a large time job to do it. That's why we recommend Xander so you just turn Xander loose on the rock while they're loose on them.

They take care of it. So that's what you've got to do is something like that. And I'm thought about George, but you brought it up.

“We haven't talked about it in a long time.”

If you're not borrowing money because you listen to this show and you're through borrowing money because you're smart, then freezing your credit bureau report on all three of them today is like essential. The first time they passed that law, so I'm 25 years ago, about three days later, I froze

mine, my wife, and all my kids and they've never been unfrozen since.

You won't need to. That thing's going on in the ice age, baby. Yep. It's better than putting your credit cards in the freezer, I'll just tell you. So because this one actually works and doesn't prevent all, I don't think that because

some credit card companies issue a card without checking your credit and if they don't check your credit then the frozen credit doesn't come up. If it comes up it'll stop the whole thing. When you're trying to hire, you don't have time to dig through stacks of resumes, hoping someone halfway decent floats to the top.

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I was just looking at the photos from the last one and it got me hyped again. Oh, man. That was a fun trip.

“The ramsy live like no one else, cruise is a blast.”

We take over the entire ship, only ramsy people on there doing baby step four and beyond. If you're in baby steps one, two and three, you're getting out of debt, do not come. But if you're out of debt, everything but your house, you're moving from intense to intentional.

That's when we've always told you to go on vacation and live like no one else.

So that's what we call it. The live like no one else cruise. So it's a whole bunch of like-minded people all working on the same kind of stuff, thinking the same way, doing the world's largest debt free, scream, George is going to be doing nerd events on investing, I'm going to help.

We're going to do some well planning sessions and Rachel will be speaking, Jade will be speaking, Deloni will be speaking, they're going to y'all are going to do smart money happy out there. That's right. Live shit, podcast live.

But even live ramsy show. We'll see. Yeah. Well, there's a look at that. That could happen.

No, it was some Deloni after dark. That was a hit last time. It has my money.

It's always after dark, man.

People stayed up for that one. That was fun. It really is a blast. They're the friendliest, nicest, most generous people.

“Even the crew on the boat was like, who are these people?”

Yeah. We love them. So official, you have our permission and encouragement to join us, March 14th through the 21st. We're going to go Western Caribbean, which is Jamaica, Grand Cayman, Bahamas, Kazumel.

It's great. I tend to rates on a great ship. It's on Holland, America, which is one of the top end high-end ships. This is not the cheap stuff. This is the good stuff.

Dave, don't do Walmart on the seas. I'll just tell you. I don't do that. This stuff makes me gag. So no, this is like acid food, good, service, good people.

You're going to like the whole thing. While they just put up a picture of the ship, it's not useful. There's going to be like 2,500 of us on there. There was at the last one of sold out. This one will be sold out.

It's not yet. March 14th through 21 coming up. After Labor Day, this is going to be here in 20 seconds. We had a blast. We had so much fun.

We did pop up. We just be walking along and a stage was empty. A couple of us are going to get up there and answer questions and hang it out. We ended up having dinner with the bunch of you. We ended up doing all these things on the stage.

We had church services that blew up. They were fabulous. Couldn't get in. That's on top of all the normal cruise entertainment, which was fantastic. So we brought our own thing to it.

All their stuff is there. It's your board. That's your fault. Yeah, it's a bull. Yeah, for sure.

We just had a blast. Sharon and I'll be there. All the Ramsay personalities will be there.

Natalie Grant, an absolute incredible Christian artist, will be our musical guest and others

as well. So you just don't want to miss this. It's going to be incredible. If you're baby step four and beyond, be there. If you're not, you shouldn't be there.

“You need to be working on your stuff or not hypocrites.”

So RamsaySolutions.com/avancer, click the link in the show notes. Stacey is in Des Moines, High Stacey, how are you? Good. How are you guys? Better than we deserve.

What's up? So I just wanted to talk to you guys about how do we stop living, paycheck to paycheck when it seems like every time we turn around, something's wrong, and we have to spend money. So to give you a little bit more context on that. My husband had to have an urgent, tonsillectomy back in January of this year.

Before that, we had our emergency fund, but we had to use part of that to pay for a surgeon or else they wouldn't do the surgery. Fast forward to April, we finally got our emergency back up $2,000, and then my son got had to get tubes put in his ears because he gets re-current or ear infections. So again, same thing with that, we had to take out of the emergency fund because we just

couldn't afford it, and in our eyes it was for his health. I mean, he's not even to yet that kind of Trump's everything, taking care of my baby. So then felt like we were doing good, and then our car, one of our cars, the brakes went bad on it. We had to replace the brakes, so roaders, that was just $1,200, and it seems like every

time we take a step forward, we take two steps back. Okay. Do you have health insurance? We do. Okay.

What a surgeon with health insurance required pre-payment. I honestly don't know. They did it for my son's tube surgery as well, and we went. We even contacted another surgeon to make sure like it wasn't just this one clinic, and they said the same thing, we had to pay 50% upfront, and then we could do a payment on the

That wasn't even.

You don't pay for the surgeon, the insurance pays for the surgeon.

I don't know. That's just what they told me. Yeah. Well, maybe you just take in everybody's opinion about stuff and find out what the flip really going on.

Maybe that's the emergency. I have health insurance, it pays for surgeons, what's wrong with you people.

“Now if they're talking about out of your deductible, that you need to pay your deductible”

upfront or something, that wouldn't be unusual, and that could be the thousand. And the surgeon should be way more than $2,000 for a tonsillectomy, and the tubes should be way more than $1,000, too. Yeah, it did kick in at some point, but you've got to take control of these situations, and make sure you understand and you're telling people what to do instead of them telling

you what to do.

That helps in a lot of these cases, particularly the medical community, because some of them

are just straight up financially stupid and they will take you places you don't want to go. Okay. So you've got to plug in and understand why these charges are there before they occur. I don't think you've been ripped off, it doesn't sound like it, it sounds like you just

had a run of things coming at you. So I don't think you have a choice, you just keep doing what you're doing, and eventually you're going to get the other side of some of these emergencies. The brake rotors were not an emergency, they were recurring repair.

“Brakes go out and car repair is about it.”

Do what? Yeah, they apparently were bad for a while, and I just kind of kept putting that squeaking thing you would know. Yeah. Yeah.

That's what happens.

And then that makes it twice as expensive when you don't go get it done before you get

into the rotors. Yeah. Yep. But just know that this is normal when you are broke, it's hard to have good luck. And when you've got that emergency fund, all of a sudden you start having less emergencies,

because you start taking care of things, you're a head of things, you're proactive instead of reactive. So this is a normal part of the journey. Now all of these things at once, it sounds like the universe is against you, but just

“know those are in the past, we're not going to have another ton select to me, we're”

not going to need more tubes put in, the brake rotors are fixed. So now let's get ahead of this thing and move even faster so that we can stay ahead instead of moving tubes, two steps back, like you said. Yeah. And what if all these three things had happened and you had no money because you were living

like you used to live? Okay. Yeah. You'd have really been screwed then. So thank God you're on a plan, because it limited the damage it did to your life.

It just damaged your plan and gave you an emotional set back. I keep having to start over, I keep having to start over. But George is right. That is normal. And the more you work on this and the more debt you get rid of, the more room you have in

your budget and the faster you're able to go back to baby step three and finish the emergency fun, the faster you're going to see these emergencies evaporate. George, I'll tell you that our experience with working with thousands and thousands of families, including my own is exactly what you said. Thing one is you get more room in the budget and so a $500 item used to be in emergency

and now there's that much room in the budget. So it's no longer an emergency. So what qualifies as an emergency starts to go down, thing two is you get ahead of things like preventive maintenance on your heating and air system. You come out and have it checked once a year instead of waiting on the whole thing to

freaking blow up or you have the car checked as soon as you hear a squeak and you fix it before the break pads are worn out and you get into the rotors and and you keep your all changed and you do that and you're just thinking fun for and you're starting to have you have the only set aside for this and money set aside for that and you have an emergency fund.

And so once we got to the room in the budget and the fully funded emergency fund, I don't know if we've ever touched the emergency fund again. You just cash flow the one thing we cash flowed the things that came up after that and so that's the future but for right now stay still and it to win it and she can push through.

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AskChapter is in Phoenix Highellissa, how are you? Good, how are you?

Better than I deserve, what's up?

So I just need a little bit of direction with how we can get back on track. Amongst our short, there was a point where my husband and I were at that reach and we purchased the home, then we went back into the cycle of getting back into debt, so the last few years we have been trying to catch up to that on top of some medical expenses that have come up throughout that time and most recently we just had a baby so that kind

of added more to the medical expenses. So try to figure out what priorities, what should we prioritize when it comes to debt and how do we organize our finances that way?

“I'm curious, when you guys bought this house, were you debt-free with an emergency fund?”

Um, we actually had leftover money, we both told each property that we owned and we did like a 20% down payment, we had like a leftover like $15,000 and then it just kind of went away in less than six months, we didn't really manage it properly. Okay, I'm trying to figure out why you guys backslid because I don't want to happen again, even if we get out of this pile of debt, so lay out the debts that you guys currently have.

So currently we have about 26K in credit card and then two vehicle loans, one that we're almost done with at $2,500 and another at $20,000 that we just purchased. And then about $60,000 didn't do it once. I don't think you're going to get out of debt because I think you like debt. I think you're like buying stuff you can't afford.

You just went out and bought $26,000 worth of crap on plastic after you bought a house, went through $15,000 and bought two cars and added since then till when you want to get out of debt, you don't want to get out of debt, you love it. Hey, perspective does change once you do have a child, so now we're going to be a grown-up. Okay.

To show that one, I will take that one. I will take that one. Good answer. Okay, so where the student loans there before the all this, because you said you were debt free, said did you add the student loans into the mix after the house?

Yes, no, actually that was before that, so I kind of-- See, you weren't dead free. I just did it. Okay. I'm not trying to get the full picture.

I'm just trying to get the full picture. You don't have to get that. Dave's there. That's my job. Okay.

What's your household income? So I bring in about $6K a month and then I have spent it very since he's like his own boss in a way. So he's a contractor and it can vary anywhere between two grants and six grants per month for him, but it's variable.

Okay. What does he make most months? Most months. So at least six months out of the year, he would make anywhere between four, maybe $4,000,000. Okay.

All right. Good. I like that. Okay. So you're making $10,000 a month and you had a baby and you want to clean this mess up.

Good for you. Yes. And then set up maybe future for a baby because we're not necessarily spring chickens. We are about in our 30s, late 30s, early 40s. Yeah.

I just heard Dave's feelings. Yeah. All right. It's okay. Dave's a winter chicken, I guess, at that point.

“But the key is here, if you want to set your kids up, you've got to set yourselves up first.”

You know, when you get on that airplane, they say put your own mask on first because

you can't help anybody if you're out for the down for the count. So you have to clean this dead up before you save a dime for that child and there's plenty of time to build wealth for that child and change that family tree. No reason to panic.

List your debts. Smallest to large. Just get on a budget.

Never go out to eat again until you're 100% dead free except your house.

Never go on vacation again until you're 100% dead free except your house. All of the whining you're getting ready to do when I said that, you just need to look at your little baby and say, now I'm a grown up, I have to take care of this baby. And so I have to sacrifice living like I'm in Congress and spending money I don't have.

“You're broke and you need to clean up the freaking mess and you need to concentrate on it”

like it matters because it does. And then you promise yourself and each other that if anyone mentions dead in this house we're going to punch each other. Never again, you can't wander back into dead again. If you go through all this struggle and this sacrifice to get out and it's going to be hard.

But if you're making $10,000 a month with a debt you gave me, you can be dead free in a year and a half. But you're not doing nothing else, beans and rice, rice and beans and whatever you were going to spend on the nursery that the little kid doesn't even know is there you can't spend.

They have a place to sleep shut up. You need to get out of debt.

Cut up the credit cards too tonight.

Have you got them with you? Yeah, we already got rid of those. So we've been working on this a couple of months. Where did they go when you got rid of them? You chop 'em up.

Chop 'em up in the trash. Good. Good. Good. Good.

“Because being in the freezer doesn't count, chopping 'em up is the only way they're”

gone. And then you get an intact mode. What's your smallest debt? Out of all the debts you're talking about, you listed, you got $2,500 on a car, $2,000 on a car, you got $26,000 in miscellaneous credit cards, give me your smallest credit card.

About $1,600? Good. I want you to do that next month. Should be gone. Do you guys have $1,000 a month saved right now?

Yes. How much do you have saved? We got about $2,000 saved right now. Okay. Well, then what's your next smallest debt after the $1,600?

I've probably saved the car just looking at my list. The $2,500. The $2,500. That's excellent. Okay.

So that's gone next month, because the $1,000 is coming out of this account, and $600 coming out of your checking account, paying off the credit card to night. That's your smallest debt. And then we're going to attack the car next month, and it should be gone next month. That's two payments you just freed up.

And every time you do that, you're going to feel like I can do this. I can do this, because you can do this. But it's just a matter of focus, and you just say the future of our family tree. We want to change our family tree. We now have a noble motivation, as you said, perspective has changed.

We'll lean into that, kiddo. You can do it. And here's the thing. If you add up what you're paying out in payments, not counting your house payment, if you just put that in a mutual fund from your age, until retirement, you're going to be

a multi-millionaire.

“That's how aggravating what you've done is.”

So you've got to undo it and get your life back. And when you do that, you're going to win with millions of dollars. I mean, it's these two car payments, a loan, I'll be millions of dollars, at their age.

But you never borrow, I can't, ever, which means we don't own a credit card anymore.

We freeze our credit. We don't ask them. Someone says something about a car, you just go, we've got one. When we have the money to buy a better one, we will buy a better one with cash, or we will not buy a better one.

Once I understood how much the car payment is worth when I turned, when I, you know, if I'm 30 to 65, I decided I'd rather buy a sickle for I don't know the car payment. Because that car isn't costing you 40 grand, it's costing you four million dollars. Exactly. Over your lifetime, if not investing that payment.

And most people go must be nice, Dave, to be able to invest 500 bucks and I go, what's your car payment? You go $5.50. I go, oh, okay. Looks like you just prioritized, must be nice to invest something, invest $500 a month

and something that's going down in value. Well, that's dumb, welcome to America. So the rule is this, if you want to be normal, it's easy to be normal in America. It's two car payments, a student loan and credit card you can't afford, and you're looking at your baby wondering how they're going to go to college.

That's normal. In order to be wealthy in America, you have to be unusual, you have to be weird. So be weird, don't be normal, normal sucks. That's everybody. Not just you will listen.

That's all of us. And so, the matter of fact, on most things in life, you can say that. Figure out what everyone else is doing and look at their results. You're like, I don't think I want to look like that. I'm not eating that.

I don't think I want to marriage. It looks like that. I'm not going to treat my wife that way. I don't think I want my children to act that way.

I mean, it's a weird thing.

But unusual is a good thing.

“In a culture, this lost its dad gum mind.”

So yeah, be weird, be weird, be weird. We're in everything. Successful is what? Success is weird. Normal is not successful.

Normal is just I got by and it's okay, you know, kind of made it through. And that's not, that's not successful, though. If you're successful, you're weird. But you did the hard things to become successful. And the hard things are what we just told Alyssa to do.

And I think she might do it, George.

I have hope. I was kind of picking on her there. It was kind of fun. And she, I good for her. She came back at me.

That's what it takes. That's why she called you. Zippy. That's good.

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Start your free trial at Shopify.com/Ramsy, that's Shopify.com/Ramsy, Shopify.com/Ramsy. Zack is in Shadanooga, high-zack, how are you? How are you guys? How are you? How are you?

I am a young business owner with a young business, that's starting to bring in more money than I expected it would.

“How do I know what to allocate towards my business versus what to keep and invest in myself?”

It's a great question. You've got to do a little bit of forecasting, and that's not even complicated, just look into the future. What kind of business are you in? I still use jewelry online.

What are you making? What's your income per month? It was $7,000, and then the month before it was $5,000, and that includes the cost of the item. That's profit after item costs, shipping costs.

If you sold $7,000 for the profit, what was the total sales price of everything? Last month, I did $12,000 revenue. Okay. A7K crosses. Okay, so you're doubling your money on what you put into the product when you can find

it. Correct. Okay, so you buy something for $5,000 and you're selling it for $12. Work. Okay, so when you sell it for $12, obviously you don't take $12 home, you've got to put

five back out there to do it again. Yes. That's your minimum, okay. And then you can look at it and say if I want to go a little bit more, do I want to go seven and increase my inventory, as long as I'm making a profit on the inventory every

time, we can have a gradual thing to increase the inventory.

What I've always done and what I've recommended to small business owners is to use a percentage

and say, okay, I made $7,000 of profit. 20% would be $1400, 30% would be $2100, so if we said something like, I'm going to take 30% of my profits plus my cost to good sold. In other words, you take 12,000 minus the five plus 30% of your profit would be another two.

You follow me and put that in and I'm taking everything else home. And then you're always raising your inventory.

What you're probably going to run into, though, is finding cheap inventory that you can

make that kind of margin on, you may not be able to do that as $70,000, but you can do it as $7,000, right? And so, but anyway, until you hit that curve, until you hit a point of diminishing returns, I'd run just a percentage of it, I'll reinvesting and take everything else home. Okay.

Okay. Because that was my biggest, like, worry was by investing too much of my money back and to inventory right now. Only if you're buying inventory that doesn't sell, that's true. How much is sitting out there right now?

Um, I have about 30,000 in the country revenue. Okay. In revenue. And so the inventory cost on that's about 15 or 14, right? Yeah, I'd give her take.

Yeah. The margins are pretty. How long, how old is some of that inventory?

What's your turn rate on it?

I don't know. I feel like oldest piece of inventory is less than a year. That's a long time in that world. Yeah. You got too much tied up in that one.

You wouldn't buy that one again. You don't buy that one again, right? Correct. Yeah.

“And that's what it's kind of one or two, should I, like, because it's process metal, should”

I just take like all that old inventory and just go melt it. Whichever way you can get the most money for at the fastest, if you just either discount it and sell it or melt it, which way do I get the most money? And I wouldn't be sitting on stuff for a year in your world. About a 90-day turn rate, you need to be in and out of that stuff.

And then you need to very carefully be a nerd analytical about what types of inventory you're not turning and stay away from that like the plague. Okay. Because you might think I can get a deal on this, and I can flip it for a double. But if it sits for a year, now your funds gone.

Yeah. Correct. That money. Exactly. I'm just sitting there waiting to be melted.

And so, yeah, that's the thing. So, you're not going to get burned on it, but the trick is the turn rate or the flip rate of your money, your inventory turn over rate. That's where your money is. I mean, so if you can do this every single month, if you can do it on a 30-day rotation

and make the margins you made on 12/7, you know, our 12/5, then that's incredible margins. But when you start holding stuff for a year, that was margins start to disappear. Their average margins starts to go way down. And so, you've got to hit, you've got to pick hits and not be such.

“So, that's what we're looking for and get that stuff rolled over.”

That's a cool question, Zach. And congratulations. It sounds like you're doing it really well.

If you never even grow it, you're making pretty good money.

That's not bad at all. And, you know, and it didn't cost you a lot to start up just that you're from your initial proming of the pump, so to speak. So, hey, I'm going to give you a copy of the latest best seller I did called "Building a Business You Love" and it'll help you with some of the other questions you're going

to have as you grow this. Trevor's in Orlando, hot Trevor. How are you doing? Better than I deserve, what's up. So, I'm currently living with my parents.

I just actually paid off my last student loan today. Congratulations. Thank you. You're a great man. I'm only, and I'm trying to figure out if it's worth me staying here for a little bit

to get my emergency fund up and then go running an apartment. Or should I get my emergency fund up and then see for a house? How old are you? I'm 34. How much do you make?

I think about 71,000 years. Cool.

“How long would it take to save up a full emergency fund?”

Wow. Very little expenses. Six months, even while living at home, do you make? Yeah. I'm sorry.

What do you make? So, I bring home $5,700. Where is my slip? Is all that going? So, it's been thing I've built up until now.

So, every two weeks, I'm married, I have three kids. Oh, wow. Let me stop. Stop. Stop.

Okay. There's 34. You make $71,000 a year, and you're married and have two kids or three kids? Okay. Three kids.

And you live with your parents? Yes, sir. Why? So, I didn't only live with my parents. I'm guessing that.

Yeah. I'm off sitting, and I decided that I needed to career change, so I quit my job, moved in with my parents, so I got a school full time on that nurse. And so, they were nice enough to let me stay here or I got through school. That's a good story.

I like that story, and I like where you got to.

It's time to leave. Mommy's house.

Yes, go, go, go, go, go, go, get an apartment now.

Okay.

“What's an apartment going to cost you in your area?”

And I can get a town house for about just under 1,500 a month. Perfect. There's your wife work outside the home. No, she just got a home. Okay.

When was the last time she worked outside the home? Back in 19. What does she do then? I'm sure there's a receptionist for a multimodalist. Okay.

I want her to find a side hustle that she can do from home while taking care of her kids, to add some money to this equation, so you guys can save up a really big down payment, really quickly and get out of that apartment.

So, oh, and by the way, you're a nurse.

You passed your boss? Yes, so I'm a registered nurse, so I've been doing this for a little bit. You're going to make so much money, but you're going to be working all that time. I mean, you pick up ER shifts on the weekend on triple time. I'm actually still going to sweat.

Let's go back to my bachelor's. So I'm doing that right now as well. Why? It's a contract for the hospital. Your bachelor's is a contract with the hospital?

Yeah, when I signed on, it's a requirement to get it within three years. Okay, and you can work overtime, because nursing is everywhere. There's a shortage. You can make all so much money as a nurse. Our end is a, it's a, you can ratchet your ticket, man.

Take a limited money. Wonderful play.

“And you don't have to work your, like that the rest of your life, but if you want to get”

out of that apartment and get out of mom's house and get, just get all this stuff in your rear view mirror, it's all of the things we did in the past in order to win. The more you work, the faster you do that. And so if I'm in your shoes, I'm busking it and mama's got a side hustle she's doing from home with the kids and we're stacking cash in the corner and we're going to get

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That's worldwatch.news/ramsy. Welcome back to the Ramsy Show and the Fairwins Credit Union Studio. George Kamal is my co-host today. Lisa is an Arkansas. Hi, Lisa.

How are you? Good. How are you? Lisa? What's up?

So I had a question about budgeting. My husband and I have been married for two years. Yet we have a separate bank account. I was wondering how I could get my husband on the same board of budgeting. Okay.

Why do you have separate bank accounts? If we combine our money, he would spend 80% of it. He's not a type of person to budget, I guess. I'm just trying to ask for advice on that. Okay.

I'm confused about where all this is going. So you're afraid he's going to spend all the money. But you want to combine the accounts. Right. I.

So he has investments. He invests about 80% of his money towards cards specifically Pokemon since that is kind of one of his topics that he likes to work on and stuff. Yeah. How old is this man?

He's around 35 and I am 27 so that he's about seven or eight years apart.

What do you all live on?

We actually work on a money that is very beneficial to us where they pay for all the housing,

utilities, even the card that we drive, and they pay for gas weekly. And what is the job? We work in a real estate company and we work in six houses and I work in the office. And so you don't have a housing expense. You don't have one car expense, but you still have to eat and other things.

And he spends 80% of his money on Pokemon cards and he's 36. Yes sir. Sounds like a 14 year old. How much of Pokemon cards does he have? Oh goodness, on his portfolio is 33,000.

And how long has he been doing this for two years?

So since you've been married and probably before you were married, this was his thing and

he went, "Hey, this is my thing. You don't get to tell me what to do. This is my money." It kind of started when we got married. We went to a store like two weeks after a marriage and we just got a ten because we were

just curious because this makes me very sad for both of you because it sounds very juvenile and you're giggling about it. So it makes me sad too.

“But you guys have you said to him when you need to be grown-ups and start investing in”

grown-up things and we need to actually combine our money and start being humans and adults and that kind of stuff.

What does he say when you have these discussions?

So I'm the person who actually sits down and budgets everything. I have made lists and everything. What's the plan? No, that wasn't what I asked. I asked when you had a conversation with him.

What does he say? Oh, he agrees and... No, he didn't. He'd resubbly but maybe frozen like 102 bucks, maybe every other month. Now this changes today.

Your entire paycheck goes into our checking account. My entire paycheck goes into our checking account and the two of us sit down today and we decide where our money's going to go. Spoiler alert, Pokemon cards are on the list. How's that conversation sound?

I've actually tried that conversation at least three times and have asked friends to encourage him to help me with this. You need marriage counseling. I agree. He's addicted to this card game.

“You need to go get on the phone and talk to your church and talk to your pastor and sit”

up a marriage counseling session. If he won't go go by yourself because you've married poorly and this guy has, you know, the only chance that you guys stay together is that he starts a process by which he becomes an adult. And adult looks at their wife and says, "You are my primary concern.

A wife adult looks at her husband and says, "You are my primary concern. Not my juvenile habit of buying Pokemon cards." That's way down the freaking list of things to do. And it's not an investment and it's not a portfolio, it's a habit. And so, I mean, this is the same people call me in the old days and said, "We're collecting

beanie babies because that princess die beanie babies are going to be worth something someday." And so, we actually got out my son who's 35, we found his Pokemon cards from his 12-year-old days the other day. If he's sitting on a gold market, he had a portfolio when he was 12. What an institute investor he was.

And now his four-year-old has a portfolio and plays with him, which is the appropriate thing to do with $50 Pokemon cards because he looked him up to make sure there wasn't a $50,000 one in there.

“And there was just for the fun of it and there wasn't because that's how this kind”

of thing works. Okay, it's all bullcrap. And so the chances of you being in the collectibles business and actually making good money, whether it's baseball cards, Pokemon cards, gold coins, rare coins, art, all of these things that you think you know something about most people don't and most people simply

break even at best. Beanie babies are not an investment for your kid's college fund. That's a statement I made 30 years ago and it has been proven to be very true. I only think that baby babies are good for these days are for the dog to play with. It came in with Princess Die and it's mouth the other day.

And that was the one that was supposed to be worth $10,000 in the dog is very happy to carry it around the house. We had a call of an 18 year old who had $600,000 worth of Pokemon cards.

“And so John Deloni and I took this call and I told him dude, was it real or was that troll?”

I mean, these people, it's a troll. It was real. I mean, it was real. Kelly, the producer's saying is real. But we clipped it and the subculture of Pokemon people came after us saying, "No way, you

have to push people and the Pokemon people." And the Bitcoin people. They're all cut from the same cloth, which is this is an investment. You can't tell me otherwise and you don't understand it. You haven't studied it enough.

Look at the track record of Pokemon over time and it's better than the S&P 500. Oh my God. It's insufferable. So I realized I got in the right there in the mud with the pig and I got dirty and the pig liked it.

Yeah, that's it. It was a losing battle. Yeah.

Well, so here's the thing.

“You call here for help and we're going to give you the help.”

It is time proven and time-honored. And the number of millionaires that I met became millionaires due to Pokemon cards is really close to the number zero. Like it's there. Zero.

And so I've met millions and thousands, tens of thousands of millionaires and I met hundreds of billionaires and not a single Pokemon billionaire have I run into. Not a one except maybe the guy that invented the whole thing. He might be a billionaire. Yeah.

They're crushing it because they understand the game. They understand. They know the game. They're selling to her leases husband. That's the game.

Target demographic used to be children. Now it's children and adults. Now it's children. I mean, he's still. He's got the Star Wars action figure collectibles too.

That might be what it's something. No George. No. If you're shopping online and these are the ones that I've been doing. Here's shopping online and these days, everybody does.

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Today's question comes from Hudson in Connecticut. I'm getting married soon and we're negotiating a pre-nup. My fiance has over six figures in student loan debt and the agreement would make me responsible for those loans once were married, even requiring me to continue paying the remaining balance if we were to divorce.

In exchange, we've agreed that the assets I bring into the marriage will remain completely separate. Is this the fair trade-off? Should I be willing to take on her pre-marital debt and exchange for protecting my pre-marital assets?

Or are we setting up a marriage or we're keeping score instead of truly becoming financial partners? Well, there's some self-awareness here, so that's good. The last line is the most awful line. Yeah, nothing about this sounds romantic.

I mean, you're saying I'll pay off your debts. I don't know what your assets are for talking millions and millions in real estate or 50 grand or checking account, so it's hard to know exactly where this trade-off is. Or what the balance is on the straight line. Yeah, it just says over six figures, but here's how I see it.

Once you're married, it's our debt. You pay off the debt. The assets are our assets. We build wealth from there.

“That's how I've seen couples win with money.”

I've never seen a where it's tipped for tabling, oh, well, this was mine from before, so I'm

keeping my house, I think that is a losing game in the long run, unless there's a huge

Okay, let's use some pretend figures and try to address an actual tactical thing here.

Let's pretend that he has $2 million in mutual funds.

And she has $100,000 in student loan debt. If I were in that situation on either side, I would not have approached this as we are negotiating a pre-nup. That's a bad phrase to use with your fiance. Okay, it's, I want to design something that makes us both feel great about our future.

That's not negotiating a pre-nup. This is not a business transaction. You've reduced it down to that with the phrasing you're using the word you're using in a really scary and as you said in your last sentence, I'm keeping score. So if I woke up in that situation, George, the pre-nup would simply read that I have $2 million

in mutual funds and if we get divorced, we split everything beyond $2 million and I get $2 million. And the day we're married, I'm going to pay off the student loan period. And then we're going to worry about that would be simpler. You're not on the hook for the student loan. If you have substantial assets and she has well over $100,000 in student loan debt, you

write a check the day after the honeymoon and you pay off your student loan. It's done. So it doesn't need to be part of the pre-nup. You can state that in the pre-nup if you want, that's upon return from the honeymoon who will write a check at day and pay off the student loan.

But that's just a practical thing. Because when you took her on, you took on $100,000 in student loan debt.

“She's not worth that, then you're very transactional and you need to walk away from the whole”

thing. Period. That's the way I feel about it. What are you thinking when you're seeing that? I mean, yeah, we've seen couples who go, hey, this is scary and then we've seen the ones

who go, you know what? I loved her and I wanted to marry her regardless of how much debt it was and I knew there was going to be a little bit of a mountain to climb and it would take me back a couple steps to use my savings to knock out the debt, but it was all worth it. Those are the marriages that I see that will win.

I got that's a couple that's going to stick together. So it's not to say that this marriage can't work, but I think starting off on this foot makes me go, how much else are we going to keep separate? Yeah, even requiring me to continue paying the remaining balance if we were to divorce, which there would not be remaining balance in my scenario because you've got substantial assets

and you pay it off immediately. You don't pay off the student loan, you don't keep it like it's a freaking pet. We destroy the thing immediately. Sally May is an ugly old woman with a ward on her nose, get her out of the house. You do not want her in your house.

You do not want to spare bedroom for this chick. She's not family and she's evil. She's from the government and anybody this from the government is not here to help. So there you go. This is how this works.

“Yeah, but I think you guys have deeper problems in your relationship based on the way this”

is written. Yeah, regardless of the number is the phrasing makes it seem really creepy. You're walking in with arms up with a shield up. Yeah. If my daughter was on the receiving end of this, I would tell her to run away from you because

everything with you is going to be. Not into your arms. Everything is going to be a transaction with you, Hudson. It's what it sounds like. Based on this letter.

You may be overreating it, but the way this is written worded with no town is creepy. Jeremy's in a little rock. I Jeremy, how are you doing? Fine, Dave. George, how y'all doing this place that afternoon?

Better than we deserve, sir. How about you? Yeah, I'll do and well, by God's grace. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

Just a five second back story.

I have many flaws. My wife will back me up on that. But one of my biggest flaws is the fear of running out. You pick it. I'm scared of running out.

So with that said, my wife and I have a mutual, excuse me, IRAs and a brokerage account. Okay. And last week, we had the privilege of attending you and George's investing essentials. And we have watched and re-washing, re-watch that thing. Wow.

We really enjoyed it. Yes, sir. And long story short, our mutual fund or IRAs and our brokerage account for years. That's just been sitting in money market. Wow.

Why? Yeah, we've matched inflation, but that's all it's done. What spooked each other's sidelines? I said, ever invested? No.

No, it's just been a mutual fund.

“I believe the world's in shape by Drunk Barber.”

And I'm always here this.

This chicken little is my nickname.

Yes, but after watching the adventure investing essentials, we've got peace and we're ready to move on into the four categories of the mutual fund. Good. Okay. So we have met with a smart Vester Pro.

I'm not ignorant in all this.

So my wife and I even before the first night was over jumped on the website that holds our IRAs.

And we found four good categories that equal 12.45% with mutual funds that date back to 1981. Good. Okay. Well done.

So my question basically comes down too.

“I think I'm looking for a nickel when it's raining $20 bills.”

I don't, we don't feel comfortable giving five figures to a smart Vester Pro when we can do this ourselves. But when we, when we called, I'll just go ahead and say, when we call Vanguard, who

holds the IRAs, they have a sub-company called a census, who holds the set and the

symbols. That's what we have set and symbols. And they don't offer, they don't offer the mutual funds that we want to invest that match up with y'all's teachings. Charles Swall, who owns our broker to count, will offer those, but they have what we call

a transaction fee. Yep. Yep. So, y'all, who will watch y'all's opinion on paying the transaction fee if everything lines up with what we learned in the investing essentials?

I would use a smart Vester Pro instead and pay the management fee that is there, this

“part of it, and that's what I do, by the way, and what George does.”

And the reason is that you've got somebody in your corner, your DIYing it with personal customized advice while you DIY it. Now you've just walked out into the wild and you've found three mutual funds in the woods that work, but there's a lot of trees in those woods. So, I, you know, there's 8,000 mutual funds.

I know a lot about this, and I don't go through all 8,000 to pick mine. It's turning, I don't want to spend my time doing that. I want my guide to look at it, and I have found that what little I pay them is worth every penny. You've lost way more on the sidelines, the stock market doubled in the last five years.

It's like that money was sitting in the money market. Trust me. Yeah, he's ready to go though. He's ready to get in. So now let's get him in.

Let's trust that I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't, just, you know, Vanguard's great, Charles Schwab's, I don't know, I'm at a Charles Schwab. I personally would get somebody in my corner that I can sit down and talk to regularly just looking at this with me to give me good, strong advice.

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a free service, or click the link in the description if you're listening on podcast or YouTube. Mary is with us in Youngstown, Ohio. Hi, Mary, how are you? Hi, guys. I'm doing really well.

How are you? Better than we deserve. What's up? So, I had a quick question, is it okay to invest more than 15% of your income into retirement? Are you, is your home paid off?

I'm 28 years old actually today, but I still have that home and I have no debt. Happy birthday. You don't own a home, is what you're saying? Exactly. Yeah.

So, yeah, you could invest anything you want to.

At some point, you may want to own a home, so any investing you're doing above the 15%, I might go to something just like an SNP 500, a brokerage account, and let it grow for a down payment on a house. So, you're mark that as down payment fund. Instead of retirement.

Okay.

“Because someday, you're probably going to move out by a house, I hope.”

Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's definitely in the plans. I actually just talked to my financial advisor, who's Ramsey approved, and I am maxing out my 401(k) at 6%, and I was maxing out my Roth IRA, but with both of those together, it came to 23%, so I was wondering if I needed to cut back in one of the expenses.

It's not the end of the world. I just want you to save for a down payment, too. Yeah. That's all. And I want you to get out and get on your own.

Yeah, what do you make? Currently, I make $45,000. Okay. And you're 28 years old, okay? You're 28 years old and you live at home.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You're not maxing out your 401(k) at 45,000 dollars. No.

You're putting up to the match. You're putting up to the match. But you're saying between that 6%, the 401(k) and then maxing out a Roth IRA, it's equivalent to 23% of your... Yeah, that means you're saying it.

Yeah. Got it. Okay. You took the match and then you went and did a Roth. That's good.

I like that. Okay. Well done. And yes, I would move out and start my adult life. You're 28.

It's time to do it. You know?

“Even if you need to get a couple of roommates.”

Yeah, it's good. It's good. It's a... It's an important part of the adult process. And yeah, you can live and start to save for your down payment.

And that kind of stuff. Yes, very good. Tyler is in Houston. Hi, Tyler. How are you?

Good. How are you all doing? Better than we deserve. What's up? Man, I am 21.

I work at a dealership selling cars and I make probably around 160 and I just got married about two months ago. I'm running into the idea that I worked, before we met and we got married, I worked about 80 hours a week and now I probably worked about 65 and it just seems that I'm running into, I want to spend a little bit more time with her.

And we be able to do things but that would be moving jobs and not making as much money. And I think it's hard because I...

This is pretty much my real big more job, first one, and it's doing very well.

So, are you working? I'm working. What days and hours are you working? It is pretty much, I just started taking two days off since we got married, but it is Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, pre-match date date.

Okay. Sunday and Tuesday off. Yes. And you're working 12-hour days, six days, five days a week and that's 60 hours. Okay.

And how long have you been married? Three months. Okay. Hi. You can do what you want to do and the two of you can decide.

There's nothing...there's no...there's no right or wrong or moral answer here. You called us and my wife grew up on a farm and they milked cows and planted tobacco. And so hard work is like her middle name. So the chances of her telling me I need to work less ever in my life has been zero. So I'm having a little bit of trouble figuring out how to process this because even now,

when I turn 60, I start taking Fridays off and she's like, "What are you doing here?

So I kind of have the opposite problem on my end that you have after 45 years of marriage. And so I don't think 60 hours is the end of the world. I will tell you that I know a lot of very, very successful people that have built wonderful marriages, children, lives, businesses, and none of them did it on 40 hour weeks. I can promise you my average through my working lifetime has been more like 60.

And many, many weeks that were 80. And so, you know, because I run my own business and that's the world's worst boss.

“I think I will drive you into the dirt, you know?”

So I'm, the problem is I'm trying to be authentic with you, Tyler, and say that my answer

would be skewed because of who I am. And so, and because of the facts I just gave you, so I think you're fine at 60 hours. If you told me you were working seven days a week, 12 hours a day, which would put you at 80, something hours, then yeah, you probably need to do something different for your new marriage.

That's true. But married couples have had wonderful lives in first years on 60 or a week sometimes it makes much better. Most of human history, absence can make the heart grow fonder. It's, but I mean, you're your home at eight o'clock.

I mean, you know, there's a 20's one and it didn't like your bedtime is not a clock. And if you guys have intense financial goals, this might be a season, eventually you might go, I need something a little bit more flexible or less days or whatever it is, less hours

to where it's 40, 45 hours.

But it's from now. It's up to y'all. Nothing's wrong. There's a trade off, but I just, it doesn't sound like he's burnt out either. No, he just, um, wants to spend time with his new wife and that's a nice thing.

That's, that's sweet. And, um, and she wants that, that's nice, um, and so, well, I wish more of the couples that called here wanted that, you know, it was like, you know, most of them that called here go, how do I get my husband to work more? Yeah, you know, so it's the other way around.

“But yeah, I think you're a great guy, and I think she's a great girl, and I think y'all”

will work it out. There's not a wrong answer. If you choose to do something different, you didn't do something wrong. If you choose to stay there and say, when I come home at eight o'clock, we are not going to turn on Netflix, we're going to spend time together.

Having the same television show together is not spending time together. Okay. Turn off the television and put your phone up and no doom scrolling. Neither one of you have a phone in your hand or a computer and neither one of you have Netflix. And that's a Sunday rule, a Tuesday rule, and an 8 p.m.

All in rule. And then you're going to find plenty of time. It sounds like you just don't like dancing with the star's Dave. That's it. I think you're just anti-streaming shows and dancing with the stars as your bed.

That's the best representation of binge watching. That's it. Why can't you come up with something cool? That's all I'm aware of. A binge watch preacher or something.

Oh, there we go. More manly. Binge watch something that matters. More gunfights. Dancing with the stars.

I was trying to relate to you. I thought for sure Sharon forces you to sit down and watch dancing with the stars. You know Sharon better than that. Here. I don't know what she's into these days.

Sharon would take my man card away if I'm not dancing with the stars. I'm just saying I thought you might be on it one day. There's still time guys. Vote for Dave Ramsey on dancing with the stars. And we might have a real hit on our hands.

Here we go. Just keep it right here, Dave. You ready? Keep it tight. Keep it tight.

Hey, it's Rachel Cruz. I don't know about y'all, but I can build something up in my head until it feels way harder than it really is. I'll convince myself it's going to take forever, be super complicated or cost of fortune.

Then I finally sit down to do it and I wonder why I waited so long.

Making a will might be one of those things for you.

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Go to MamaBearLegalForums.com and use promo code Ramsey to save 20% on your will. That 20% off is exclusive to Ramsey fans only. MamaBearLegalForums.com with promo code Ramsey. Richard's in San Antonio. Hey Richard, what's up? Hi. How are you? Great. How can we help you?

Basically, I always paycheck to paycheck and I'm drowning.

So I just, I don't know how to get out of it. So I guess that's the question. What do I do?

“Okay. So why are you paycheck to paycheck and why are you drowning?”

So my wife and I have been together about 10 years. We have combined student loan debt of about 900k to a million. Our income was until recently around 200k year. But I was recently laid off. So now it's cut in half. What about a grown man?

We're both practicing attorneys. So I just started taking cases on my own just to bring something in. But we always get to the same point whenever we discuss bills.

She wants to pay all the bills whenever we have like a bill meeting.

And I want to save something because I know once we bill the bills for that time period or billing period, we end up with nothing left. So I just walk around like feeling like a fraud. Most of the time and, you know, I'm scared to be invited to any type of dinner or event. Because I'm just looking at the dollar sign calculating.

“Do I have enough for this? Do I have enough for that?”

And that's in our life for, you know. Why are attorneys only making a hundred thousand dollars a year each? So we were both non-profit attorneys. Why, if you have a nine hundred thousand dollars in student loan debt, did you take that stupid job?

The plan was that if you do that for a certain amount of time, you can get the student loans forgiven. If you work in that nonprofit sector. Yeah, not true, because it's not happened for very many people. 5% of the people get through that gauntlet, 95% don't.

So you've been underpaid by a hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand dollars a year for years to try to get through a few hundred thousand student loan debt. Yeah. So where are you guys at in that process? He's now opened his own firm, right?

Yeah, basically just started.

But you're not for non-profit rates anymore, but she still is. Correct. Correct. What I mean, what I charge is completely hours or mine. Yeah.

“What was the original balance of these student loans?”

He was around, you know, three hundred each, but then I think a balloon to around the 450 plus. How long have you been in your house the bar? It's been about 11 years. So they were not forgiven.

I initially worked in private, so I only did about six to seven in the nonprofit sector. I didn't watch her laugh. She's about at eight. She was a nonprofit. So she worked in a private as well for a while.

A little bit. Yeah. All right. Well, our experiences is that very few people get those loans forgiven under that program. It's a, the program is full of holes and problems and loopholes. So we've, we've made a whole lot of disillusioned people after working 10 years

for substandard wages and service to the community and then don't get their loans forgiven. So I don't have a lot of hope in that. And of course, you've started to clock over now. So yours is not relevant. So what would I do if I woke up in your shoes?

I would make student loan reduction. My primary goal. Therefore, my income. Highest possible income. Even if it's in a less than ideal situation,

I want to make the most possible money for a short period of time.

Beans and rice rice and beans and attack these student loans with a vengeance. And no, you don't need to be going to a dinner party.

If somebody invites you, you say, I have a million dollars in student loan debt.

I can't go. And that's what we're working on. And so it's job one. You got one job. It's that.

And you guys get your incomes up as high as you can. And your expenses down as low as you can. Now, as far as being able to eat and so forth, you pulled that off for a decade. So you haven't thrown all the money at the student loans. And then got to the end of the month that had no food.

That's not what you're saying. But no, you don't need to be saving money.

“You need to be getting these debts cleaned up.”

But you guys have not been aggressive on this. Because you've not been aggressive on your incomes. You weren't making it. You're not making a ton of money. I mean, a couple hundred thousands.

Good money, but it's not good money if you owe a million.

Yeah. I mean, it doesn't feel that way. No, it doesn't. It doesn't go. It doesn't move the needle much.

It moves it. But not enough to wear. You don't feel stuck. You felt like a rat in a wheel for a long time. The math's against you.

Unless you're paying more than the interest in principle. That thing's just going to move up and up and up. Yeah. So you've got to get ahead of it by just throwing tens of thousands of this thing every month. Yeah.

That's what it's going to take. Yeah.

“I need you to make in a couple hundred each minimum.”

And as soon as possible. And preferably 250 each or 300 each 80 hours a week. And you just work until you're blind. But you can clear this up in three or four years if you do that. But if not, you're going to be sitting here 10 years from now.

Still looking at this thing. You're going to have to do something pretty dramatic with the math. But if you take 900,000 and you start throwing 2,300,000 out of the year. 300. And a year, it's done in three years.

But that means you're making between the two of you 400 and living on a hundred. Not counting taxes, which means you're living on nothing. Yes. And that's where I'm trying to get you to. Throw 300 a year at it and be done in three years.

That's $25,000 a month, not $25,000 a year. Which is what you've been doing. Because you've not even moved the needle. So I've got great hope, but it's all. You call it the shovel and hole thing Richard.

The hole that your hand's 900, your shovel is your income. You've got a huge hole and a small shovel. I'm telling you get a new shovel. And the hole gets filled up a lot faster than it's. And it's $300,000 a year above my living expenses and taxes to throw it 900,000.

And then I'm done in approximately three years. But otherwise, if you just say it out loud, it takes your breath away.

I have a million dollars and so I can't breathe.

I can't think everything revolves around this. But if you have a clear cut plan, you're making 200 each, 250 each are 250 and 150. And you start and we're knocking this thing out in three years. You've got great hope. Your energy level's going to come up.

The scales are going to fall away from your eyes. Your depression's going to slip away. Your effectiveness as an attorney is going to be better. And everything else. But right now, it's hard to see anything because you've got this huge concrete wall in front of your nose. And it's just it blocks your vision for your life.

And I'm sad, man. I'm so sorry. I'm not fussing at you. I'm fussing with you. But you gave up the opportunity to make no money when you took on all this loans.

“You have to go make as much money as possible now as soon as possible.”

And the more money you make, obviously, the faster you're going to get out. And you know what I'm talking about. And it's going to be a lot of hours. It's going to be a lot of sacrifice. And you're going to put up with some stuff you don't want to put up with.

You're going to be working in a firm that's, you don't necessarily love everything about it. What do you do up to? I don't like anything about my life right now. I need to change something. And you need to change up bunch of stuff right now.

Yeah, the conversation needs to change from what we're going to pay the bills. First or say first, it is. We need to get our income way up and keep our expenses down to nothing so that we have that margin. And you can do this math on paper and go, okay, how much are we willing to, to work? We're both going to work 80 hours a week for the next three, four years and knock this thing out.

Because we've been doing this for a decade and the number went up. So what we've been doing isn't working. We've got to try different plan and the debt snowball. We've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things.

And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things.

And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things.

And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things.

And we've got to do a bunch of things.

And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things.

And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things.

And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things.

And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things.

And we've got to do a bunch of things.

And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things.

And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things.

And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things.

And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things. And we've got to do a bunch of things.

And we've got to do a bunch of things.

“And we've got to come back to the Ramsey Show in the Fair Wins Credit Union Studio.”

George Campbell Ramsey Personality is my co-host. Today Randy is an Albuquerque New Mexico. Hi, Randy, how are you? I'm good. How are you doing?

I enjoy your show. Thank you. And I enjoy your app. It is amazing. Well, thank you.

Thank you. Glad every dollar was a blessing to you. How can we help today? Going through a major remodel at the house and trying to keep my for y'all from causing strife with my life.

It's never really spent any money on myself for 61 years and now.

We're spending a lot of money. I'm just trying to maintain. How far into the project are you? Three days. What's the cost of it total?

Our budget with contractor new appliances, new furniture furnishings, so forth is 550,000. Wow. So we have line item budget and we've agreed to the amounts.

“Where would your fragality kick in as long as she stays under the amount agreed to?”

Are we okay? Yeah. And I've allowed a 10% change order fee with the contractor. I mean, that's typical in today's world. I was a contractor myself at one time.

That's true, but we really shouldn't need any change orders except on this discussion you and I are having. She's got a furnit piece of furniture. She wants to buy and your fragality is causing an argument. But why would that be so if the piece of furniture is within the budget that you are both agreed to before you started the project? Well, that's just it.

And hopefully we can stay within the budget. Hopefully, but this is how we start a project. We both sit down and agree to the numbers. Yes. Are you worried that it's going to go away at a scope?

Or are you just seeing this money leave your bank now? Are you going to oh gosh, I regret agreeing to this. A little bit of everything. You know, I, it's just a, it's actually giving me an example of where you think there might be an argument. Um, going into the flooring that give me the price per square foot to make sure we stay within budget.

And I want to make sure we're not getting the highest in flooring there is. No, I'm not going to let the road should be good. I don't care if it's highest in or not, as long as it's in the budget. You agreed to the budget. Is this a curdle out of the wine as long as it's within budget?

Yes, sir. Is there an actual spreadsheet that says flooring with a line item with the amount we're going to allocate to that?

“Yes, that's how a project like that the budget should be developed that way.”

Yeah, so if you've agreed to it, you should have all that angst behind you. If she's agreed to it, then she's agreed to stay within that. So we were building a house a while back and the flooring came in just to use your example. The decorator and my wife picked flooring when they were all had their wonderful day at the flooring place. And it was $42,000 over the budget.

And I'm like, what were y'all smoking? We had a budget. And everyone agreed to the budget ahead of time, including the decorator until they went to the dead-gum flooring store. And they're like, well, you know, we picked out this thing for the basement for the downstairs. And I'm like, four people will be down there per year.

No. Doesn't need to be the Taj Mahal down there. No, we're going to put the cheapest crap in the basement. So you can put the nice stuff upstairs where we are every day.

And so that's me raining the decorator in, which meant I had to rain my wife in.

But that's not even frugality. That's just sticking to the agreement. Yes, sir. And that's the way the whole thing goes down. I'm in the middle of one of these renovations right now with a house.

And I'm going through the exact same thing. But this is the fifth time we've done it. I've built a custom house or done a large renovation. And so Sharon and I've got this dialed in now. We don't yell at each other anymore.

The first one we almost killed each other. So we had to learn to pre-set it and agree to it.

“And I think about this before you agree to it.”

Because I'm going to, you're going to sign this in blood. You're sticking to this. And when you and the little decorator have your moment, then you're going to have another moment with me because we're not doing it. You know, and then if you do all that, you can come back and go,

oh wait, we got savings over here. If you want to upgrade that one door, thingy, let's do it. And you can loosen up and be sure you spend all the money somewhere that you've agreed to spend.

And it makes it feel like you're being very generous. Cool. Yeah. So I guess there's just a lot of anxiety on my part. Being this is just the very beginning the first week of it.

Yeah, and you've never done this.

So I think that if, if, if the budget is correct, if it's realistic. I mean, if you put four dollars in for lighting, and it's going to be 4,000, that's a problem, right? So, but if the budget is realistic and you're comfortable

that it's a good number where your wife and you can have a nice property when this is completed. Because by God, you've earned it both of you. Then you get comfortable with that. That'll lower your anxiety.

Then the second thing you got to get comfortable with is her commitment to this agreement. And here's how I would phrase it if I were you. I've been in this exact seat.

“That's what except it's not frugality with me.”

It's sticking the freaking plan with me. I'm not really that frugal. Sharon is more naturally frugal.

But I'm just with once there's a plan you guys stick to it.

I'll lose my mind. So, but here's how I learned to do it. Honey, I can stand back and watch you and enjoy these purchases. If I'm comfortable that you're going to do the purchases

within the numbers that we've talked about. Promise me you're going to stay no matter who says what. No matter which of your friends show up or the decorator shows up or anybody that's going to negatively influence your brain that no matter what happens, you're going to continue to use your brain

and you're going to stick with the numbers that we agreed to. If you can promise me that and you do it, I'm going to celebrate cheap Randy. It's going to celebrate these large purchases with you, my wife. Sounds perfect.

And it gives you up. But if you're comfortable, she's going to stick to it and that the number is realistic. Because if she comes back in the numbers not realistic, then she's got a case.

And that's a change order. Right? Right. And so, and that's going to happen in a $550,000 project. You're right.

10% you're going to be off 50 grand. You probably underpriced some things and maybe overpriced some other things. Absolutely. You're going to be something that blows up in the thing. It's not going to come in.

But the last house we built, we did it within 3% of budget and it was 2 months early. Because we managed to the blueprint, we managed to the schedule and we managed to the budget. And everybody on the team knew that Dave is going to be wonderful

to work with and the money is going to keep flowing. And I'm going to be smiling and happy as long as we managed to the schedule, the blueprint and the freaking budget. And if you get off any of those things, you're not going to like me.

Because my whole job is to keep all of you people on those three things. You're going to build a two-blue print, two specs. You're going to build a two budget. And within the allowances that we set in the budget. And guess what?

I didn't even have one episode in that last house. I made 14 months. I didn't have a single episode. We had lots of decisions to make. Things to change.

We made a concession here, raised something there. Lowered something there, lowered something there. But we're within 3% of budget when we get done. It's a Swiss train at this point. It's on time.

We're going to do it on budget.

“I mean, and that's how you build a house.”

And that's how you build a project like this. But Randy, I can completely relate. It's one of the biggest... That's why I tell young couples just getting married. Don't build a house.

You really got to be married a while before you can survive building a house together. [Music]

So you're thinking about buying or selling your home. It's exciting. But there's a lot to think about. And all those decisions can feel overwhelming. Well, here's the good news.

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Start every dollar for free in the App Store or Google Play. Stephanie is in Salt Lake City, Utah. Hi, Stephanie, how are you? Hi, Dave, better than I deserve, how are you? Just the same, how can I help?

Wonderful.

First of all, I'm a huge fan of your show and of your books.

And I'd be pleased to be here on this show. So thanks for having me. We're honored. I do have a two-part question for you. I'm just going to hit you with it.

And then I'd love for you to take it away and tell me what you think. My husband and I, I don't like to think we're in a good spot financially. We only have a mortgage, and our savings account is growing weekly. We're both put 15% into our Roth 401(k)s. And we were approached recently and told about IUL accounts.

And it was selling like the cool unique opportunity at first. But then the more we've thought about it and kind of taken the step back, it kind of just feels like a scam. They're kind of pushing about it. So we wanted to know what you recommend. And then the second part to that is that we are about to be a one-income household.

As we have our first baby on the way.

And obviously staying home to raise our kids. So we also just wanted to know how to adjust the retirement goals. Or how we're saving for retirement when it's just a single income household. Okay. Well, we can start with that last one. The easiest answer is you invest 15% whatever your household income is until the mortgage is paid off. So if a good gets cut in half, you're investing 15% of that.

“Now the question is, can you live off that one income?”

Yeah. Okay. Great. Good for you. Wonderful. Thank you. So let's talk about indexed universal life insurance.

I'm guessing this is somebody that you know or someone a friend of a friend that pushed this on you. Yeah, it was our state attorney. He actually helped this set up our state and everything was great. And then he was like, hey, by the way, you want to tell you about IUO accounts. And kind of turned you back.

You got an insurance agent as an estate attorney, which is scary. Okay. So they're selling you this insurance as a quote. I'm putting this in huge air quotes, a wealth building tool. And it's just a permanent life insurance policy with cash value.

And it's indexed to the S&P 500 in generally. So you don't actually own any stock, but the gains are tied to the stock market.

And here's what they tell you.

Let me guess what the pitch was.

“You'll get market gains with no downside risk.”

You get tax-free income. Right? Yeah. These are the things they pitch you. Here's what they're not telling you.

The agent gets paid, almost your entire first year's premium in commission. Now do you know why they're so pushy about this? Yeah. They get huge commissions. A third of your money vanishes before you even get to see any of it.

Their returns are terrible. Like 3% after all these fees. And they cap. They say, hey, there's no downside. We'll cap it a zero percent.

So you can't lose money, quote unquote. What they don't really tell you is that they also cap the gains. The stock market did 25% in 2024 and 2025. Guess what? You didn't make 25% on that money because they caped it at 10.

So you are way better off investing on your own versus giving this person 500 bucks a month for the rest of your life. To get 3% returns. Just put it in a high yield savings account at that point. And run away from this person. I wouldn't use them as an attorney anymore.

I'm sure the attorneys not actually selling them policy. They referred you to someone. Right? Well, they just recently started working with these. So it's their transmitter because the company.

So you got an insurance agent that has an attorney on staff.

Yeah, you need a different unit.

It's sad. So yeah, the product is absolutely horrendous. It's a horrible product. It's not technically a scam. But it's basically the payday lender of the middle class.

It's not technically a scam, but it's just so bad that it feels like a scam.

“And that's why they're so stinking pushy because they make so much on it.”

And if you're a state planning attorney is willing to give you bad advice like this on this. What else are they giving you bad advice on? That's what scares me. They're probably pushing trusts on you that you don't need. And that point.

Yeah, you're $5,000 to develop this trust that you don't need. And so I think I'm looking for a new state planning attorney. And I'm going to run away from this insurance agent at high speed. Okay. Do you guys have some?

I've been an attorney. Oh, sorry. And no. Well, I do to my company, but where's I'm about to, you know, quit there. I need to, we both need it.

Yeah, you need your own policies. Not tied to your employers. 10 to 12 times your annual income.

And if you stay home, you still need at least a half million dollar policy on you.

Yeah. So go to Zander Insurance and get your term life in place. And if you're going to do investing, you do that with a real investment advisor and not an insurance agent. And insurance agents are not investment advisors. They pose as it quite often when they're selling this crap.

But that's what this is. It's crap.

“So what you do is you get that term life insurance.”

It's going to be a fraction of the cost, like a tenth of the cost of this whole life deal. And then with all the extra margin you now have because you didn't invest in this terrible insurance product. You can use that to build wealth. And that's part of your 15%. So any extra money.

Let's start chunking it towards the mortgage or to the kids' college funds. And you guys can build wealth anywhere these terrible products. So you know from the baby steps, right? That maybe step four, you put 15% of your income in the retirement. Yeah.

Five is kids' college and six is with any other money we reduce the mortgage, right? Correct. Okay. There's no baby step that says within the other money we do other investments. Are you well included?

Okay. So there's not a place for this anyway. I'm not giving you a replacement investment option. Instead, whatever money you would have put toward this, I would put towards your mortgage. And get a good smart investor pro for your investment advice that actually is an actual financial advisor.

They're not an insurance agent. And you know, get what's the answer, get your term insurance in place. And then live on that one income and you're going to be great. So hey, and by the way, congratulations. You have a good nose. You smell the snake.

And you can, you want snake? Snake alert. I think there's a snake here. I'm going to call somebody and see if this is a snake. Oh, it's a snake.

We didn't get bit because we recognized snakes. Yeah, that's good news. You get the call and someone says, hey, I got bit by a snake. I want to trust you.

“You know, if you, if I'm you, you should feel confident in your own sense of smelling for snakes.”

Because you smell that one out beautifully. Well done. And usually if someone approached you, I would run. That's just a general take. You should be in control of the financial decisions you're making.

Personatures approach you. Exactly. You approached me in a dark alleyway. You told me about this great investment opportunity. You told me when you get approached.

I don't trust anyone approaching me. Respect my personal space and boundaries place. Hey, I've got an opportunity for you. Translation. My friend just joined a multi-level.

Yes. And I always know. Someone they know. It's not a random thing.

It's always a family friend told me about this.

And I trusted them. And my state attorneys said I can trust this person. I never heard the estate planning angle. That's interesting. Yeah.

I'm wondering if they get a kickback off of this. Usually there's a flame in you on at the local stake out. Yeah. And that's for the annuities. That's when you get a nice dinner.

Or you can get value wells with that too. And even even even you can get infinite banking with that. Oh, life, you can get all that. I'm tempted to sign up. Similar to signing up for a time share present today.

I saw Charlie's closed up today. Oh, and so I don't know where they're going to hold these fillet. Dinner's now. They're going to have to switch over. Get a cheap fillet and get sold on some not so cheap.

Where are we going now? Bad insurance investment products. Wow. Over to shounies. I'm guessing they closed down too.

Whoa. You just went way off the cliff then. Curvers and over day down boy. Big shounies fan. Down boy.

Man. That's another good indicator. If you get a piece of mail offering you a free dinner for anything, don't take it. Cook your own stake at home. You'll be better off.

Sitting through three hours. You can get a whack goo and you'll save money. Seriously, money. But just cook your own whack goo at home. It's the way it cheaper than getting ripped off with these people.

That's so funny.

You have good instincts. (upbeat music) Listen guys. Listen guys.

I've heard just about every excuse for why folks think they can't get ahead with money.

So let's go ahead and settle this right now. You get the final say on what happens with your money.

“That's why you have to start telling your money where to go.”

So you can stop wondering where it went. So if you're going to start winning with money, you have to get on a budget. And the easiest way to get started and stick to it is with the every dollar budget app. It'll help you make a plan for every single dollar coming in and every single dollar going out. Every single month and guess what?

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Liz is in Orlando. Hi Liz. How are you? Good. How about you? Better than I deserve.

What's up? Um, so I have a situation where my husband let me know last night that in three weeks. Um, instead of living in the RV. Um, I will, we're going to be moving into the house.

That's right next to the RV.

Um, it's double our, uh, what we pay right now.

“And the only way we're going to be able to afford it is if we move in with his brothers.”

They have proven to be financially irresponsible in the past. And we actually have paid the price for it before. And I have no finances. I must stay at home on to an 11 month old. And I just, I feel stuck. You're living in an RV.

Yeah. Why? Um, so when, when I had came back to talking because I was truckable before this, um, we didn't have an apartment, uh, but we did have enough money to buy an RV. And my mother, I'm offered to put the RV right next to their house.

And it would save us money in the long run, which is what I thought. But then I listen to some of your shows.

“And I kind of understand your, uh, your belief on the RVs.”

But by the time I made the decision, it was for our herd information, I, it was too late. How long have you been married? Um, I've been married two years and before that, um, we're dating for two years. How old are you? I am 24 years old.

Where's your family? Um, my family, um, I don't exactly have, um, my family can close to me right now. Uh, they can't really help me. I ask where are they are? Um, uh, they're, um, they're in, uh, continue.

Um, pretty close by. So you mean, relationally, they're not able to, they're not willing to help. You're estranged from them. Yeah. Because they're not pleased with who you chose as a husband.

Um, no, they don't know. I don't really tell them anything about my marriage. Um, well, I never did. Um, but, uh, I just, I don't know. So you lived with his brothers before?

No, um, so, uh, we, we have a path. When I was trucking, uh, one of his brothers, um, that's going to move in with us, um,

And then we give him a list of things that you have to pay and we will be half to follow. And I ended up having to pay a whole bunch of toll on stuff because, he was using my car, which I allowed him to do, which was dumb on my end, but I allowed him to use it.

And he never paid any of the tolls.

How old is your husband? Uh, he was 25. And what does he make a year? Um, he makes 23,000 hours.

Okay. Is he working for the hours? Is he working for the hours? Uh, yes, he works for the hour. He actually works overtime.

Most of the time. Are you working at all within 11 month old? No. No. That's fine.

Okay. Um, well, I, I don't know how to cause this family that is so messed up

to suddenly not be messed up for your sake.

I wish I could because I'm kind of scared for you right now. Um, but, um, you know, your husband gets to decide with the next conversation with you, whether he wants you around or not. And so, um, and he made decide negatively. I don't know.

“But, um, I think you've already decided you're not moving into that house.”

So the only question is, is when you guys sell the RV and go get an apartment, is he going to go? Um, I. I truly don't know. Yeah, I don't either. But I think that's the question he needs to be asked tonight.

Do you want to go with me because I'm leaving? I'm not going to stay here in the shadow of your mother and your dysfunctional brothers. And I'm certainly not moving into their house. And we're selling this RV and we're going to go build a life, a quality life together. And that's the only chance we have, honey.

Otherwise, we're going to end up just like them. Look at them.

Do you want to be them in 20 years?

I don't want to be them in 20 years. I can love them. But I don't want to be them. Cool. And this is when people change their lives.

They change their family tree. They look at the history and the histories and the rear view mirror. And they develop a future out the windshield. And the rear view mirror is smaller for a reason. Because the future is bright.

But only if you're driving away from the mess. And so, which is a pretty good metaphor for a truck driver. But right. But the, so yeah, you know, I'm hoping that your husband's love for his new child and his wife supersedes his love for his dysfunctional mother and brothers.

He's trying to figure out a place to put a roof over your head. He doesn't know how to do it right. And he's getting ready to do it wrong. And you know that. And that's why you called.

So, you know, you, you guys are at a turning point. And something, something dramatic is going to happen.

“And you guys, just, you need to decide what it is.”

You need to decide what it is. It doesn't need to happen to you. You need to happen to it. And if you need some help, just call a local church. There's wonderful churches all over Orlando, Florida.

And tell them you're 24 years old with an 11 month old. And your husband just kicked you out of the RV and you need some help. And they'll, they'll help you. They'll help you get started. And you're going to have to get a job and build life if he doesn't go with you.

But your other choice is move in with the crazies over there. And I don't blame you. I think you're probably onto something there. Yeah. There's no good.

There's no good short term story here. The best possible short term story is he says, Oh, yes. I want to be with my wife and child. And we're going to load up the clothing out of the RV. And we're going to go get us an apartment.

But I don't feel like that's a high probability answer. Yeah. He says that. I already talked to him about that. And he says that.

About curtains that currently are 1,500. And they'll be cheaper either way to live this. The brothers. Another option is pick the RV up and move away 20 miles away and get a place to park the RV temporarily until you can get us sold and get you an apartment.

But you cannot continue down this path because you know what's going to happen. You can see it. And we can see it. And we don't even know everybody involved here. It's just sadness.

It's just sadness. And you know you're about to get dragged into it even further.

“So you need to realize you have agency in this marriage so far.”

You have an out of vote because you haven't given yourself the ability to actually speak up and do something about it. And so for the sake of that baby. Create a safe environment that actually you can thrive in. And that might mean some deep sacrifices for now where life looks hard.

Now you fast forward the move that you're outlining it doesn't sound good.

“And that's why you're calling because you know that.”

You know, we're not telling you anything you didn't know. You already knew all that honey. But hey, reach out in the community. Get in touch with a pastor or two in the local area and some of them will help you. I promise you they will.

We know a lot of good churches in Orlando. A lot of good people down there that will help you. Even a good local women shelter. You need to be some resources.

Matter of fact, I'll put you on hold.

I'll pick up and we'll hook up with some of the pastors we know down there. And we'll get some people on your corner.

“And that's with him with your husband or without him.”

If he wants to help too, we'll help you guys. We'll see if we get some people around you that love you well. [Music] You spend hours researching before making a major purchase like a home or car. But it's also a good idea to put in the work searching for the right insurance coverage.

To protect your biggest assets, I recommend using Ramsey Trusted Pros. Whether you're looking for car home or any other type of insurance, Ramsey Trusted Providers have been coached and vetted to serve you like we would. Find what you need at RamseySolutions.com/insurance. [Music]

Our scripture of the day, ecclesiasties, four, nine and ten. Two are better than one because they have a good return for their work. If either of them falls down one can help the other up, but pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them. Jeff Parnus says about 9/11. When Americans lend a hand to one another, nothing is impossible.

We're not about what happened on 9/11, we're about what happened on 9/12. Like that. Yeah. And we're also about what happened on 9/11. I'm not going to forget it.

Either. I'm not confused about what happened there. And I'm not going to forget that, but also we want to talk about how we can help and how we can gather around. And the thing that we all wish at the time and we all knew all of us the role, especially knew at the time, was that the unity, all the political divisiveness, all the stuff dropped for a short period of time, everybody was an American.

And we knew it wouldn't last. We knew the trash and the filth and nastiness and the crazies on each side would raise up eventually. And they have and now they're back in full control again. But that moment and time when there was this beautiful unity with something else. I was on the air that I remember it was crazy. Absolutely crazy.

So yeah, 9/11 brings up a lot. And a lot of you weren't even born at that point. And that's kind of wild to think about. 26 years old, right? Yeah, it's been 25 years since the date.

So I was in middle school. Not listening to this show unfortunately. I should have been.

“Yeah, come on George. What kind of what kind of nerd are you if you're not listening to the show in middle school?”

I mean, that's a certified right there, baby. All right, Laura's in Phoenix. Hi, Laura. What's up? Hi, I hope you're well. And I thank you so much for taking my call. Sure.

So I am currently $70,000 in debt.

I just started a new career and I just sound all I'm pregnant with my second child.

I just want to know how I can prioritize paying off debt without putting myself in a worse situation. A lot of I and me are you married? Yes, but it's complicated. He is not as citizens. So he's currently in his country still with our first born.

One will happy.

We're still in the process and the paperwork.

It's looking like a projected time. It ranges anywhere from March of next year until I lay as August of next year.

“So how does income work? Is it just your income at this point?”

Yes, it's just my income at this point. He doesn't work in his country. He does but how the money. What do you call it? Convert is just not enough. You know, what country is he in?

He's in Egypt right now. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Yeah, so you're waiting on a peace sign, a green card, so that he's legal to earn an income. I'm in the United States while he awaits citizenship.

So for the purposes of this call, we'll just assume it's you 70 grand in debt. And just you're income trying to pay this off while pregnant. Anna, baby, on the way. Yeah. So what do you make in this new career? So I just graduated in accounting.

So I just started new accounting career making 82,000 year. Awesome. So that's what I was making before. That's great. What kind of debts the 70 grand?

Okay, so it is 43,000 in student loans. And about 6,288 for credit cards.

“I took out a title loan which was so dumb.”

And that is $3,000. And then I have a buy now. Okay, later loan for $1,800. And then there's credit cards in collection that are like just a little bit over $15,000. 15 grand in collections.

Okay. You're not paying anything on that right now. They're in collection. No, not. And you're not paying anything on the student loan right now.

Because it's been in hardship. No, they're in, they're in the government. Yeah. And so all we're dealing with is $6,000 in credit cards. So $2,000 by now pay later.

And that's on the car on furniture. And that's, sorry, the $3,000 title loan. Title loan. Yeah. Okay.

So, and are you renting or what? Yes, I'm renting. And my rent is 1389 per month. Okay. Okay.

Well, I want to make as much progress as I can in the next few weeks. Before we get too far down into the pregnancy process. Okay. And so you've got to get that title loan out.

So your first goal is beans and rice rice and beans do a written budget.

And I want your entire check to go towards just food, rent, and title loan. And I think you can clear that. I think you can clear that. I think you can clear that. I think you can clear that title loan in one month.

I think so too. I haven't gotten the first check-ups. I just started about two and a half weeks ago. But I think that can be made. Yeah.

“I mean, you should be taking on five grand a month.”

Okay. Yeah. And three for the title loan and live on the rest. And do nothing else. No investing.

No, you don't know 401k is no investing. No nothing. Do you have any money and savings? No, I don't. Okay.

So we're going to get rid of the title one. That's the thing. Do you have a working car? It's paid off. Yeah.

Yeah, my car is totally paid off. Wonderful.

We'll get the title back and never do that again.

Okay. Okay. And then clear the 1800 by now, pay now later the next month. And shut down the account and cut up the credit cards. Because right now, we are trying to stop the bleeding and stop us from making any more

dumb decisions. Okay. And so what I want you to do then is to start after you pay up the by now pay now. And you have pay minimums on the credit cards and nothing on the ones in collection. Nothing on the student loans.

And pay your rent and your food. And I want you to stack cash. You need a war chest for when the baby comes. I want you to have 15, 20,000 bucks by the time the baby comes. And I don't know if you give advice on this.

But I'm still in the process of selecting a medical insurance. And there is a high deductible option and the low deductible. And I just didn't know what to choose because of the amount that would be taken out of my check. I would investigate how they handle maternity in both cases. Ask HR to explain the maternity benefits and the two policies.

And you need the most thorough maternity benefits even if it's the low deductible.

But probably you're going to be on the low deductible and get full coverage on this maternity.

Okay. So it's not just about lowest premium. It's what's the lowest total out of pocket cost to cover me through the pregnancy. Yeah. We're trying to have a baby without hardly any out of pocket.

Okay.

“Now, who's going to be around you and help you and take care of you when the baby comes?”

Um, I haven't figured that out yet.

No, that's some brochure working on. I'm so new to the area. No, you guys are working on it. Okay. Okay.

Okay.

I have family that's in on the east coast.

Yeah. Well, do they know you have a baby on the way? No. I don't want to tell. I haven't told anyone yet.

Why? I have a pretty dysfunctional family. Do they know you're married? No. Okay.

Lot going on here. Okay. So you got to create a village scratch. Yeah.

“You need to get in touch with a good church and you need to get church people around you”

to love you and walk with you through this and give you support. And then you've got to decide, is it baby going to go in daycare after it comes? And you're going to go back to work and continue your wealth building while your husband works on his v-sync green cart. Probably probably what you're doing.

And probably don't have a lot of options. Because we can't really lose this great job. That puts us out of the Ramsey Show in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it.

“In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace.”

And that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace. Christ Jesus.