The Best Return Isn’t Always Money

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Normal is broke and common sense is weird, so we're here to help you transform your life. From the Ramsi Network and the Fair Wins Credit Union Studio, this is the Ramsi Show. I'm George Campbell, joined by Dr. John Deloni and we're taking your calls for the next couple of hours. You can call this number triple eight, eight, two, five, five, two, two, five.

You jump into the conversation. David is an Indianapolis to kick us off. What's going on, David? How can we help?

First off, big fans, John Deloni, I've listened to so much of your stuff, George,

Love YouTube channel. Great. Thank you. So yeah, so I have an interesting situation, so me and my wife fall in the baby steps, paid off approximately $60,000 in the past seven months or so.

Well, I guess I'm sorry, really the last two years if you include everything, and it's been great. On the flip side, my brother has not done that, and they got themselves in the some financial trouble, and my parents have ended up giving them $80,000. And so it kind of feels like every time they get in trouble, they are using my parents

to try to get out of it, and my parents keep letting them do this. The meanwhile feels like we're being punished because we're over here doing our own thing, paying off our debt to do it the right way. Can I rephrase this and you tell me if I'm right? Okay, go ahead. Your brother is the prodigal son and dad threw him a party and said, here's a big old

check, but even though you've been misbehaving, and you're out here doing your homework and eating your vegetables, getting jack squat, and there's a little bit of resentment bubbling up. That's exactly right. That's very similar. How are you being punished?

Well, I guess at the end of the day, it feels like we aren't receiving the same kind of treatment that you're a hundred percent not no question. Like no question about it, you're not getting $80,000 checks in the mail, no question. But how are you being punished? I guess, I guess we wouldn't, it just call it a punishment is not right, it would just be unequal treatment. So let me take a one step deeper.

How are you a victim here?

Because here's what I'm hearing.

I'm hearing a man who looked himself in the mirror, got on board, him as wife got together, and y'all conquered a really like seemingly impossible thing together for two years. And you've changed the life of you and your wife. You've changed the life of any kids that will come along the way. Yeah.

Like how are you being wrong here? Yeah, right. And we're stoked about that.

“And I think in that perspective, we don't feel wrong.”

But we feel some resentment towards my brother for continuing to take advantage of my parents. It's not your brother. Your brother's going to brother. He's doing his thing. You're mad at your mom and your dad.

Yeah. Direct that way.

You've been mad at your brother for years.

This isn't new. You're upset that your parents are contributing to him. Not making wise financial choices. But here's the problem. Yeah.

They didn't call and ask you. And so you projecting yourself into their heart and mind into their money into their decisions. It sounds crazy. It's a choice that you're making on a minute by minute basis to be miserable in your own skin. All right, and dude, listen, I completely understand the frustration.

You're not, you're not out to lunch. Your frustration is right. I get it. And I'm not going to let that into my home because the home that me and my wife are building is full of laughter and warmth and freedom and joy and all the making out we want to do.

Like we've created this thing. Right. And I'm not going to make it out 100%. I'm not going to, I'm not going to let something. I'm just not going to, I'm going to stop at the door like a vampire.

I'm not going to welcome it in. And have you sat down with your folks? I have many conversations with him. Okay.

“Do you have, have you had the conversation where you feel at peace?”

Having said what you, like, believe? Yes. No, it just feels like they don't listen a lot of the time. Okay. Are they ever, are they ever going to change their mind?

Are they, is your ever conversation you can have and they're going to go? God, do you know what? You're right.

By the way, here's 50,000. No, you think that's ever going to happen. I hope so. No, no, no. I don't think that's going to happen.

Okay. So again, you're right to be frustrated. You're right to be upset. And it may even be contributing to, like, a, I can tell you, it's probably going to continue to negatively impact your brother.

Because he's not going to develop the skills and the muscle that you and your wife have developed. Right? And you've, you've exercised, like, you've a person to character. You've looked at people in the eye. You've, you've come to them.

You've said, here's the problem.

Here's what I'm frustrated with.

And they've looked at you through their actions and said, I don't really care what you say. We're going to do. We're going to do. So then to pick that Cinder block up every day and keep caring it to the point of resentment.

And that's, at some point, that choice becomes yours. And I would, I would suggest, man, you've worked so freaking hard to bring peace into your home. Leave that Cinder block out in the street and don't bring that inside.

“And here's the thing, what you don't know is, and, and again, I'm making this up.”

You're, at the end of the day, we all make up stories. Okay, we're storytellers. That's who we are. The story you're making up is they're going to drain themselves. Your brother's a bottomless pit of bad choices.

And you're going to end up with nothing. That's a story you're making up. It could be true. It might probably be true. You could also wake up every day, tell yourself the story.

They've put my money aside. My inheritance aside.

And they're going to do right by us later.

And I'm going to live in that kind of freedom in peace. Yeah, that makes sense. And one of those stories that you, that you make up will kill you. And one of those stories will give you life. Yeah.

Do you believe your parents love you? I do. Absolutely. Okay. If that's the case.

And then love is not a finite pie where he got 90% and you got less now. It just looks different for different people. And they see a guy hurting out here. And they're giving a hungry guy a sandwich. And you're like, I got to the grocery store and make my own sandwiches.

And you're like, you're right. They lowered the hoop for him. While you've been training in the backyard shooting hoops. And you're thinking that's not fair.

“But the truth is you're a better basketball player.”

That's great. You've earned it. You've got the blood sweat and tears to prove it. And you're going to be just fine without any help from your parents. And that's one of the most powerful gifts you've given yourself.

Is not needing other people not relying on other people financially. But it does stay. Yeah. Here we say it does stay. And you're right to feel that way.

And I would feel the exact same way if I was in your shoes. I would be calling this show. Complaining to John. So in case you can't feel it, David. George and I are so on your team.

We're talking to ourselves as we talk to you. Okay. Well, I appreciate that. I really do. And it makes sense.

Everything you guys have said is makes sense. I think we're just going to. We're just going to try to leave it up the door. We're going to keep doing our thing.

And yeah, we're just here's what I want you to do.

Okay. I want you to write your parents a letter. And I want your wife to write your parents a letter. God help you never send this letter. And I want you all to read each other the letter.

Okay. And have that moment of grief and sadness. And then let's agree. We've said our piece to ourselves to each other. We've shared with us on our hearts and minds together.

We've told my parents to their face what we think is right and wrong. And they've said we don't care where the parents and it's our money. And we're going to go about having the greatest life we can have. That would be my path, man. That you controlling what you can control, which is you.

This brings a back to one of the greatest life can under him. That life isn't fair. It reminds we think it should be if I do XYZ, I should get XYZ. And it's not a clean form. It should.

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“Here at Calls, Robert is up next in the Luxembourg, Mississippi.”

What's going on, Robert? Yes, sir. I need more sound from an auto restoration show. We build classic colors. Cool.

Yeah. We're used to be. We're behind right now by about, I guess, 25-30,000. And what do you mean by behind?

Let me take, I guess you can say we started out for not farging enough. And then I guess turned into Robin Peter to pay ball. But I mean, are you 30 grand, y'all are in the hole to repair the cars, already in your bay? Or are y'all doing that much money like a month?

Or did you take out a loan for 30 grand? We're behind to finish the cars that are already in the shop. Okay. And what it's costing you first is what you're charging. There's a net loss of 30 grand.

Yes, sir. Got it. What were from a position? I guess we're fighting from a behind position right now. Yeah.

It's not farging enough. But that problem has been corrected.

But it just feels like we're never going to catch up.

“Has that negatively impacted future business deals?”

Yes, because now they're taking too long. So obviously, the calls are slowing down because they're like, I think I'm not going to, you know, wow, you know. Is it just you two doing all of this work? No, sir.

We do have three full time people. Okay. So what is the, what's the monthly hemorrhage on top of this? Um, so we're bringing, I guess right now we're bringing in about 12, 12, too, and it's costing us around 10, 10, 7 to do that 12, too.

You're right. Do you have any debt? It's going to take forever to catch that up. Um, no, sir. There's no debt attached to the business or in your personal life.

Um, no, sir. Can I throw a couple of things that you as a complete idiot when it comes to the stuff? What does it look like? Like so I can imagine, like the only, the only corollary I have is guitars. I like, I like fancy guitars and I don't have super fancy ones,

but I like guys who work on super fancy guitars. There's a couple of guys in the building here that are legends in that world. And like I understand that once you position yourself as we are classic car restores, I would imagine, same as I only work on high end guitars. If that market dried up, it would feel like I was losing something

to then go change pickups and cheap guitars. But I know this. I know that I, there's a guy here in town that will come to the office and pick my truck up and drive it back to his shop and change the oil on it and bring it back here.

And I pay him well to do that because it, it lets me be with my daughter more, right? Are there things like that that y'all could scramble for the next six months and do conchiers oil changes? Go fix tires, go do beyond call 24/7 that would allow y'all to play catch up

while you do what the heartbeat of what y'all love to do, which is restore classic cars, which by the way I love. But that business isn't holding water right now. I'm afraid in an effort to hang onto your dream, you're going to have to close the whole thing.

Yes, sir. You got him saying, is that possible?

“Do y'all have a way to scratch and claw and do other things?”

I sure, I'm sure we probably do. Which I did, I guess didn't get, I guess, to my complete question too. If you don't mind, I'll go for that too. I do have, I guess, my retirement, me and my wife have been putting money into for years.

I have the money there to repair it. And I didn't know if, well, I should take that money out to get it caught up and then potentially pay that back one day even though it's paying myself back. But I, I, I would have to dip into not retirement fund, but I could, I could fix it doing that.

How old are you? 50. Oh, boy.

So you're basically going to take a loan out for 35% interest.

This is what you're doing. By doing that. After a penalties in taxes, you'll be taken at 35% loan. While I'm plugging all that growth. I didn't consider that.

So if you had a hundred grand sitting in there and you took it all out, you would have had two hundred grand. Now you have zero. And so that's the, the two main concerns is it's a really expensive loan. Plus you're unplugging all the future growth.

And now you're going to retire broke. So it's not worth the short cut in the, in, in this, at this juncture.

So here's what I would do is look at the timeline.

When do you actually need to make up the gap? Is this, I would, I would say by the end of the year. So that puts us at what three. Good. So now we have some facts.

We have three months to come up with 25 or 30 grand. And that can come from liquid savings. That can come from future income. That can come from selling things. So I would sit down.

Do you do all the books in the business? Or do someone control the finances? My son does worry. Okay, partners in the business. He kind of handles that.

So let's have a come to Jesus creative meeting where we go. These are the options we have. We can liquidate things that are easily liquidated.

Like assets, vehicles, whatever it may be.

We can use cash and savings. We can sell other things or we can scratch up some new income.

“Based on all that, how do we do that within three months?”

That's the goal. Have y'all done that yet? Yeah. That's right. Okay.

I, I think that conversation will be sobering on either end of the barbell. Either you guys will have a fire lit under your butt and you'll be like, Oh, we see a pretty clear path. Or you're going to realize this, the business as y'all dreamt it is no longer exists. And y'all need to make some other harder decisions.

You get, you know what I'm saying? Yes, sir. And going about this, my only other question. I feel like I probably ought to know the answer to now. What is I guess, but I haven't looked down.

So I'm going to say it is.

We are in a. We are in a bad location and would it be worth going into retirement to get a better location with a blogger building to try to further build a business once this is handled. You're seeing different retirement to move locations. And to a larger one that would give us more, I guess, eye traffic.

We have absolutely no traffic where we are now. We just, we just do word amount, which actually was doing well. So they started taking too long. We have that a larger, like a larger building and better location. Yes, obviously we're, we would tell you the same answer is don't take a 35% loan

from yourself, plot minus future growth for a business. The bigger issue is, like, your business as you describe it is failing. Y'all make $1800 a month in net profit. And the failure will just be worse in a newer nicer location that has more expenses. Yeah, it's not going to speed up your, like your return rate on your cars.

It's not, I mean, like, you haven't solved any of your business problems. Once you're thriving and you've got to handle on all this and you can cash flow the move, absolutely do it. But right now, you're, you're trying to solve one problem with a bad solution. Which is if we move, everything will be fixed.

I don't think that's the case. And my, I'll tell you this, the mechanic that I trust and use on all my cars is in a way out of the way location. But that dude's reputation is so stirred. I could care less where he is, man.

Like you see, it seems like that kind of work is like a 10 minute oil change.

“I can imagine you need to catch somebody's eye on the, on a street corner.”

But I mean, they're dropping the car once and picking it up. That's right. You're doing his destination work. Yeah. Okay.

Is there anything you can back out of that would free up some of this money you're behind on? That's it. I was wondering, can you go have a really, I would have to look at that. That's a very good question. I don't, I honestly don't have the answer to now.

So I don't, I don't want a lot to do. Do they sign an agreement when they drop the car with you? I'm mostly the time not. I'm in a small southern town and most everything is done on. Yes, good old boy.

In shakes. It might be faculty. It might be that you end up with some egg on your face. But you have to go talk to two or three gentlemen whose car's been sitting in your shop on touch for four or five months and say, I'm not going to get to it.

I can't do it. I'm sorry. And they may get upset with you and whatever. But that's just you, that may solve all of this problem for you.

“But I think I think you and your son need to have a bigger conversation about the systemic challenges”

in your business because it's even if all cylinders are firing. You're making 12 grand and spending 10 and a half. That's just not a sustainable business. Do you guys have any savings right now? Well, the business are personal.

No, sir. Okay. Do you have a wife? I will say, yes, sir. She workouts out the home.

I think goodness she does, yes, sir. Okay. Well, we might need to look at some other sources of income and maybe you even go out and do something you're really good at and make really good hourly money doing it in the mean time. Even if it means letting go of some clients to try to climb out of this.

We're hoping for the best for you, man.

Listen, if you're behind on debt payments and drowning in debt, I already know what you're thinking. I can't afford a lawyer to help.

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“John, there was a in the dark corner of the personal finance YouTube internet.”

Where you live? There was a firestorm. And here's why. Graham Steffen. Who I was love.

Real estate investor, personal finance YouTube. But we've been friends for a while. Yeah, he's a great. We've collapsed a lot. A lot of Graham fans out there.

And some people found Ramsey through him and found Graham through us. And he recently posted this video. One day ago, million views, I paid off my 2.875% mortgage dot dot dot. Dave Ramsey was right. (Laughs)

Graham. Which is a great title. Because famously, while Graham agrees with a lot of our teachings and he's one of the most frugal people I know, he makes me look like a real big spender.

I always dreamed of having a segment on my show called The Spendoth between you versus Graham.

It would have been awesome. It would have been awesome. So Graham posted this video and it was 16 minutes of him. Basically saying what I have been telling him every time I've been hanging out with him. What Dave Ramsey told him, which is, yeah, but you kind of just paid off because the peace of mind is worth it.

It's a way to off your shoulders. Life isn't about arbitrage in the spread. You're not taking no account risk. And it was 16 minutes of just it sounded like he had we had infiltrated it. It was inception.

All right. Maybe. Well, you know, why don't we roll the oral 60 second version a little montage of you. So you can get a taste for what happened in this video. All right.

After years of telling people not to pay off low interest rate debt and arbitrage your money in the markets to make more money instead. I'm starting to think that maybe I was wrong.

I never thought I would say this, but for the first time ever kind of started to think that maybe Dave Ramsey has a point.

Even though everything was on auto payment, I never accounted for the fact that every single mortgage became its own mini ecosystem of thinking.

“Honestly, I didn't even think this would be a thing until I started selling off my real estate.”

I'm talking the ones with 2.875% mortgages fixed for 30 years. And once those result, it just felt like an odd sigh of relief. It was as though something was taking up mental space in my head that I didn't even know existed until it was gone. That is why when it comes to the final piece of paying off your loan, it really just comes down to freedom. I'm just going to slow clap that one.

No, hold on. I have to say this. That's the first time I've seen this and you're telling me about this. I cannot do it. I've even seen this coming.

I'm getting choked up. Here's why. I grandma somebody who I just love hanging out with, but also I have high respect for. But also grandma is a whole bunch. Like people follow him because he's brilliant and he's smart and he's got very clear ideas on how and he lives what he sees.

He's peep preachers, which is rare these days. The world will shift and the world that my kids are inheriting that your kids are inheriting will change. When people have the courage to say, I was doing this. I had a lived experience. Magic words.

I was wrong. And here's what I'm doing now. And dude, just like I applaud Graham for that level of character is that gives me a little sliver of hope. And in this world on fire we live in for the world my kids are growing up in. Like bravo brother.

That's awesome. Well, I got a real treat for you, John, because we have Graham on the line right now on video. Graham. What's going on Graham?

It's good.

“I wouldn't have said nice things if I knew you were.”

I was on. Yeah. I knew I was on the entire time. And you're like talking to me. I wasn't going to say nice things.

My ear and I'm like, man. How are you, man? I'm doing good. Awesome. Good.

Yes. I got to know this was not an April Fool's prank. You actually paid off your primary mortgage. So this started with some rental properties that I had. And I kept them for years because all of them were locked at like 2.8% to 3.3.

And I kept them because I didn't want to give up that mortgage. Because to me, the mortgage was everything. If inflation is, you know, 3 to 5% assuming they're not lying about those numbers. You could be way higher than that. You know, it's free money.

And I started selling off these properties.

And oh my gosh, it never hit me until I looked at that category.

Just go down. I was like, wait a second. This is just a weird way off my chest. Even though they were all cash flowing. They all did fine.

“It was just something for me that was just a bit of a sigh of relief.”

That it just felt good to see that number go down. And then I asked on Twitter, And I say it is link that I asked if anyone regretted paying off their mortgage early. Even the people with low interest. And I want to say 98% of people, not a single one,

was like, yeah, I have regrets. Everybody was like, yeah, I know I could have made more money in the markets. But just the feeling of having a paid off home. It just gave me a little more confidence. Little pep in the step.

So you come on to taller. A lot. Man, that's huge. We've argued about this for years. I feel like anytime I've been on ice coffee hour,

you've been on our show. We usually get into a debate about arbitrage and spreads.

And I'm always like, man, it's more than about a spreadsheet.

It's about living your life and risk and peace. And you guys were such like math logic people that I felt like I couldn't get through to you. So what finally did it? It wasn't me. Was it Dave Ramsey himself?

No, it was really just paying off the paying off the rental property. The feeling. Yeah. It was the feeling of doing that and then realizing, oh my gosh, it's just like, I've gone to this arbitrage my entire life to like,

not nickel and dime. But like, oh, if I could make an extra dollar over here. And I could do this and move this. So I like, I would do it because I always just look numbers. I'm like, the numbers make sense.

But when I started to get that piece of mind of just like, eh, you know, maybe I'm not going to make as much money. But you know what? It's simpler. I don't have to think about it.

It frees up some space for me to focus on something else. I'm not just stressed out all the time.

It's just that that's a feeling that I never really appreciated

until I want to say this last year. And it all started oddly enough because I had this rental property where it made sense for it's so dumb. But I calculated that I could take a pledge to asset line at like four points, something percent and build out this

basically guest house. And I was able to make like a 15% cash on cash return on none of my own money. And I thought, well, man, this makes sense. I should do this.

And it was the worst nine months of my life dealing with construction in Los Angeles. And I realized, why? Oh, my god. From what? From what? I get the borrow this money over here.

And do this over here to make an extra. It was like 14 grand a year that I thought was, oh, that's going to be free. It was awful. The amount of stress and headache that that went into.

I lost so much more money than I ever would have gained in years just from lost opportunity cost because my mind was not fully present. And that's what I realized. You know what? I've taken it too far.

And I think there's a value to simplicity. And peace line that I never calculated until that experience. Beautiful. So what would you tell someone? Because we get these calls often on the show of I'm confused.

Why should I pay this off when I can make more in the market? What would you tell those people out there who are hanging onto those low interest rate mortgages going, I could pay it off. I could pay extra. But I just feel like there's better opportunities.

The thing is mathematically, I do think that there are better opportunities. I mean, again, when you look at the numbers, it doesn't make sense on a primary residence low interest rate mortgage. If you're taking the deduction on top of that,

like my gosh, that that mathematically pencils out. I would say for me, there is a quality of life improvement,

“but that doesn't also mean that you should be building”

also up in emergency fund. You should be maxing out retirement account. You should be investing. I don't like I wouldn't take down the emergency fund and not invest for the sake of hanging out in mortgage.

But I do think there's a value of peace of mind that comes

As long as it's not done at the detriment to everything else.

And when I decided to be surveys, by the way, it said that one of the biggest quality of life improvements was also cash on hand. Yeah. And so not having zero emergency fund,

but you have it paid off house. It's having cash on the side. Lead to more peace of mind. They're even having a paid off property.

“So I think there's something to be said about that.”

Beautiful. Otherwise, I think peace of mind you got to calculate that. Hey, bravo brother. Thanks for hanging out with me. Not because you follow the Ramsey plant,

but bravo for choosing peace. That's awesome, man. And respect man. Big time respect. We'll see you, Graham.

All right.

I'm going to end with this comment.

I left on the video John, which is my work on this earth is done. I've done it. I've evangelized the Ramsey plant successfully, even if it's subconsciously. I love it.

And a glad Graham's a friend and way to go. Be in debt free, man. This show is sponsored by Better Health.

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John is in DC next. What's going on, John? Welcome to the show. Hi. Thank you guys very much.

I appreciate you taking my call. I have a bit of a weird situation for you guys. So about this time last year, I was wrongfully terminated from my union job. My union is fighting it on my behalf,

but they've also advised to, for me, to take legal action. I do have concrete evidence that proves the termination was wrongful. But going into debt to retain a lawyer or something I'm very skeptical about, considering I just got out of debt recently and going back in it seems scary and daunting.

Yeah. I've got some ideas. What happened? What happened in your job, man? I was long story short.

I was off duty on my own on my day off. On my personal time. I went out to check out a museum. I was about a week later. I get called into the boss office.

Find out I was accused of something that I didn't do. There was no proof of it. Yeah. That's the short of it. I don't know.

D.C. is laws. Is it a right to work state? Right. Right. But I'm also a union number.

So it's a contractual violation as well. Why is it? I don't know enough about unions. Why isn't the union? I would think part of the dues you pay in is that they represent you in wrongful termination.

They are to the extent that they can. But I work in a unique industry that has laws. Different different sets of laws governing.

This kind of stuff is handled.

“But so it makes it a little bit like the union can.”

The union is helping me fight it from their perspective. But from a legal perspective, that's not something that they can. What about? I guess call me ignorant. I.

I don't understand what's the point of a union. I thought there was for this exact moment. It was collective bargaining in to help you like fight the man. And they're like, right. The man picks a fight with you.

And they're like, all right, man. Good luck. Good attorney. Like that. Well, yeah.

So I'm trying it without trying without getting into too much specifics. I work for the railroad.

And that's kind of governed under the railway labor act.

Just kind of dictates that employment matters. Have to be dealt with with binding arbitration. But you can still, you know, sue and certain cases. Okay. I have one of those cases to sue that I can sue.

What's the ideal outcome? Is it a big check? A reinstatement in your job. Re-instatement with back pay and a big check. How many years are you in?

8. Okay. So you've already paid in a while.

“Why do you need to pay a lawyer or retainer?”

Why aren't this why aren't you hiring a contingency lawyer? If this is a strong case, they'll take that and take part of the settlement. I haven't found one that's willing to take it on a contingency basis yet. Hmm.

Is that because they don't think you have a strong case?

Or because you haven't found an attorney that works on contingency. Because like personal injury, it's usually contingency. So you're not going to pay the lawyer or run if they think you have a case. They'll go, cool. We'll take 40% of whatever the settlement is.

Right. And I haven't found that in this situation yet. I'm still looking. But one one one law office was like, yeah, we think. You know, they were like, yeah, you were railroaded.

There's no doubt about it. But we don't see a way forward for us to take this case right now. Without, you know, you paying a $30,000 retainer. No, not to be, you know, $33,300 something an hour. It's going to add insult to injury.

If you pay these lawyers and nothing comes of it. And it's been two years. Now you're 60 grand in the whole. So please do not go into debt for this. Do you have any savings right now?

Yes, I do. As a matter of fact, I have a rainy day fund of about $60,000 in my checking account. I do work part time. So I do have some money coming in. But with the what I was quoted.

What I was quoted by the firm that's not taking my case. It seems like that's my, because they said no one's going to take this on contingency. Well, of course, they're going to tell you that because they want your retainer. Right. But, but, but listen, you got to see like.

They're in business. And if they're looking at what you laid out in front of them and they don't think they can make money off of it on the back end. They're going to demand it on the front end. Right. It's kind of a people call the show.

And they want they have questions about like, hey, my bank won't loan me this money. So I want to go somewhere else. And it's like, hold on. The bank is in the business of loaning money. If they have said, I'm, I can't give you any more.

“That's like, you need to look in the mirror because you've got some challenges there.”

Because that's their whole business, right? And so I'm wondering if the age and the anger and the way you're treated, all that stuff is right and good. But that your case is in as strong as you think it is, or maybe it's not as strong as you want it to be. And that very well could be. And maybe I've been asking the lawyers the wrong questions are explaining it the wrong way.

Because I have other things on top of the wrongful termination, but maybe they're maybe I was explaining myself wrong. But I would reach out to a couple of other ones. Here's the overall fear John. I don't want this vengeance to cost you your piece and your emergency fund. Because you can go broke trying to prove you were wronged.

And you will lose either way. And so I would much rather you let the union fight. You do what you can do to move on and go. That really was awful and learn less and from it. Whatever comes of that.

And then move on and not let this live in your head rent free on top of draining your emergency fund. Because we got a lot of calls in the show, John, or people. They hire the lawyers and it's been years now. And it was over, you know, divorce. And now they are 60 grand in over two years.

And they're like, when do I throw in the towel? Right. And that becomes a hard sunk cost fallacy. And if they want that kind of retainer, which is a significant retainer, plus an hourly rate, which if fair, that's they can do their business however they want to.

You're going up against like a monster in a railroad company. They've got deep pockets. And so your it's it's David vs. Goliath here. And if you have again, if you've got a law firm that sees a clear path towards, Oh my gosh, we're going to get a big check at the back into this.

They'll line up for you. I hate to say this because I like, I don't like injustice drives me bananas.

It makes me, that's why I do this job. And also, I've learned a hard way through lots of scars, lots of hurt relationships, lots of sleepless nights that sometimes the bravest,

most powerful thing I can do is quietly walk away.

And so that's for whatever that's worth man. Have your heart broken, be upset with injustice, learn any less than you can take from this, and go get a job where you can sleep on a regular schedule, what you can't do, where you can have holidays on a regular schedule, what you can't do, and your old job. And that that big mirror recommendation man.

If someone won't take this on contingency and the union won't do their, like, won't fight for you on your behalf. Man, that's a, that's a, that's a, it's hard to row about upstream with one with just your, the only rower, right? And this, I just don't want this legal problem to also turn into a financial problem.

“And that's what often happens when we finance our way through it.”

And now you've got all this injustice plus the Sun Cause fallacy. And now you're like, I got to see this through. Yeah.

And that can just burn you up.

Yeah. And it's a serious, serious part, John. So I'm so sorry, you're going through this. I know a lot of people are getting laid off right now. And there's a similar feeling of that level of, you know, betrayal of hurt of, I jumped on a zoom call with 200 people and the CEO to said,

yeah, you're all done today and jumps off the score. It's just, I like, stone, cowardice. So you have every right to be angry to feel hurt, but don't let that cause you to make terrible financial decisions that you're going to have to clean up for years to come. And let blind rage or this, this, this phrase that like, man,

it's become part of our culture. You owe me. They might, they might actually might, but don't let that carrot dangle out in front of you and keep you from reality, which is, I got to go get two jobs today because I don't have an income anymore. I got to go through a box is this place and then go.

Make coffee at night because I need a paycheck coming in. And by the way, Bravo to you for setting yourself up, paying all your debts off, having a killer emergency fund and I hate to say it like this for just this moment when life happens to time such as this. Man, while working part time, you're in the driver seat.

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Shopify.com/Ramsy. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show and the Fairwins Credit Union studio. I'm George here with Dr. John Deloni taking your calls at Tribal 8-825-5225. The George is in Kansas City up next. Love the name. What's going on, man?

Hey, good to talk to you guys. I'm looking for some good counsel here. Hey, promise that. We'll try. I'm hoping that can get some guys to go to the council.

I started my job about a year ago and it's motivated me to sell all of that. And now I'm going to pay the step three. And the job that I'm at is very overtime dependence, which means I've only been able to take 40s off in the last year. And every time I take time off,

unless it's coincides with the holiday, which I have to work holidays, then I can't rush to come off. Otherwise, I'll take a big hit in my paycheck. What are you doing? What's the job, bro?

I'm a trash truck driver. Okay. And it's 361 days a year. I think you probably get Thanksgiving and Christmas office by day. Like Labor Day, you know, New Year's Eve got to work New Year's Eve, you know.

“Do you have to do this or is this like you have a regular schedule?”

And then you work overtime because you're trying to pay stuff off and get it financially.

Like it's an unspoken rule.

“Like if you don't do it, you probably get canned or they'll find a reason to canned you.”

Okay. What do you make doing this? What's your normal pay? And then what's the overtime pay? So my normal pay is $20 to $23 an hour, which comes out to,

I don't know, like, 1980. I can't remember exactly. But overtime is 3553. And I work anywhere from 10 to 15 hours of overtime, which probably 10 to 30 hours overtime in a month.

Okay. So that's bank in you. And extra, like, a couple grand. Yeah. I mean, I'm making good money.

More money that I've made in a long time. You know, and I'm moving forward. But I don't want to stop even if even if at the cost of me, you know. So what's the end game? Let's say you get through baby step three.

You've got a fully funded emergency fund. And now you're just a guy working 360 one day a year. Okay. So this is all for the family. Like I want it.

We've been living in the same apartment for like the last 10 to 11 years. And the wife has been dreaming of a house. And I really want to be able to do that for and for me and the family. So that's our goal is to be in a house and, you know, follow us up. Yeah.

Yeah. And dude, we obviously we support you 100%. And also, I don't want your kids at your early funeral. Reading off your, your debt payoffs spreadsheet. I want them to tell stories about funny silly things.

It times they have with their dad. Right. Yeah.

Today's the first day of taking off in like months.

Yeah. And I only took the sales because it coincided with a holiday. So I would hurt my pay less. And we just got done fishing. And we're about to eat some lunch.

Oh, yeah. So like how close are you to these goals? How much debt do you have? All right. So I have no debt.

And I have about four grand saved. And I need about 17 grand to make this. Emergency six months. Emergency fund. And I'm the only one working.

So I followed your your AI. And it said, I need a six months instead of three months. And then I need to save the bound payment, which is going to try to be like, within a 25% which is about. Forget what this is.

I think it's like seven grand. Maybe I can't remember. Can't be right. Not seven grand. You mean like 70?

Probably not. Probably 70 grand. Four down payment. Yeah. What's the house going to cost?

Well, we're trying to stay within 25% of my paycheck. Oh, okay. You're talking to seven grand. Is your take home pay? I've got the house payment for that as for the house.

Okay. Because like if a house costs 200,000. $10% down would be 20 grand. Oh, yeah, we're not. We're not going anywhere.

Okay. So what is a house cost? It's way cheaper. So for us, we were looking at a house a little bit. It was like a hundred grand.

And it needed some work. And 25. It would come up to about $700. What a month. Yeah.

We're really trying to stay even lower than that if we can. And build it up over time versus get into this house and get through a 50-finance. So we've got to put some work into it and make it worth something. Okay. But you can't put any work into it.

Yeah. We don't want to be a house for you to do that. And I get that. But I want you to be honest with yourself.

“Are you going to do it on the four days off a year?”

Are you going to fix the roof and the air conditioner in the chimney? I don't know. Because I'd like to think I'm like my parents. My parents were foreigners and they were go geters. I'd like to think something that rubbed out for me.

It clearly has. Bro, you're working hard. You got the work ethic down. We just don't want you to sign up for something that you think is a blessing and it turns out to be a burden. I'd rather you save up some money and buy a $150,000 house.

It doesn't need as much work on it. And put a little bit more down. And that's more realistic. And then you and your wife be about asking, what kind of job can I have? So it'll be a husband and a father.

Because the job you have doesn't allow for that. And I think there's a season.

And it's pretty amazing what you're doing.

Like, I'm going to sacrifice these two years to give my family a different life. That's noble, brother. It's just not. It can't be indefinite. So right now what you're telling me is you make about.

Let's say 47.48k. And then with over time, it's another 10 grand or so. Yeah, I'm less of a misled you guys badly. In my in my numbers, I make about 70,000 years. Okay.

Good. So 70 grand a year and you want to be doing this in the long run. I do not want to be doing this because I can't find a way to get out over time.

“So let that's what I'm trying to get at is I want to build you a great life.”

Not just get you out of baby step three. So that's what I would also be looking at is yes. Let's get to baby step three and maybe the down payment.

So what baby steps allow you to do is have the freedom and margin to actually go pursue the thing you want to do.

And the brain power and financial ability to do it. So I would start dreaming of what is that next career for you. If it's not waste management. We can still make 70 80 90 grand. I feel so torn because, oh man, like literally I don't hate to do this, but me and the wife both felt led by the Lord to do this and everything worked out.

And I don't know if this is the time to move or if I'm supposed to stay here too. Because I've been put here and I've been using that as an opportunity to do the gospel to give the word and got to people too. But I pay the bill then I get to reach people too and I we get to do that too in our jobs.

So I don't want you to have the fallacy that this is it and the Lord said I can never do anything else.

I found that this is just me personally that the Lord often works when I'm working when I'm doing something active when I'm searching for that thing versus just sitting around on well if something falls on my lap, maybe I'll pursue it. And so I don't want you to stop dreaming either because this is a grind and like John said, I don't want you to have an early funeral. But all the Lord intended it. It also is a pretty a pretty cool moment for your kids to see their dad hustling grind to change their future.

And it's pretty cool to see like your husband I mean your wife gets to see you say I'm going to put it all in the line for three years so that you can have we can have the life that you've been dreaming of that's that's awesome that's amazing. And it might be that your dream job comes along and you're going to take a pay cut for it for a season. But that sounds hard. Yeah, but if you don't only buddy any money and you have a fully funded emergency fund and you have a $700 a month house payment, you've set yourself up for exactly that moment.

You say, now I'm good. I don't need the overtime. They go, well you're fired and you go, okay. Okay, good day guys. We'll miss you. Yeah, it's that simple.

“That's what we want you to get to is to have that kind of freedom instead of being in this this prison that we've created for you.”

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“Roy is up next and bend or again. What's going on, Roy?”

Hey guys, how you guys doing this afternoon? Doing well. How can we help? Well, I'm about $320,000 in debt. I'm a small business owner and I'm struggling to pay my estimated quarterly taxes. And I'm still spending when I shouldn't be and just could use some advice and use some help.

Well, at least for self-aware here. Is it $320 all business debt or is it other consumer debt? Only about 37-38,000 of that is on a equipment loan. The rest is actually all personal with I've used personal debt for the business since it's open.

“But the only thing actually in the business name is a equipment loan for about 37,000 of the rest is all personal.”

And it breaks out some of the other loans for me. So we have roughly about $4,000 by now pay later type of accounts. We have about 58,000 in vehicle loans. About 99,000 in tax debt. 24,000 in personal loans, such consumer loans.

52,000 in credit cards.

And I owe my parents about 15,000 in between the two of them.

Good and all gracious. It'd be a shorter list of who you don't owe. And a $20,000 student loan on our name as well. Okay. Wow. So you're saying, "We, who's the accomplice to these crimes?" Well, 95% mean you about 5% in my life.

She doesn't really contribute to the debt. He says things from from before we were married. There's a her student loan she has in her name. Okay. On a scale of 1 to 11.

“How badly are you guys actually wanting to get out of debt?”

Because that helps me navigate how to walk you through this. So badly that yesterday had an hour and a half consultation with a bankruptcy attorney. And all my chemicals are not thinking that's not the way out. Like this is just the band aid for this, for this problem we're having. Well, I'm glad you called us because I'm going to steer you away from bankruptcy.

I think you guys can get out of this. And it's not going to be fun, but it'll be more fun than dealing with bankruptcy for the next decade of your life. I agree. I totally agree. So tell me about these cars. What are they actually worth? About 1 cars.

It's we have a suburban. It's a 2021 suburban. Towards about 46. We sold it private party. We all about 55 on it. Your 10 grand on the water. Yeah, we've been rolling naked back with the over for a few years.

And we finally landed on that one.

And then we have an older Mazda that I got rid of a 37.000 dollar auto loan earlier this year. And got a way smaller alone, which I know I shouldn't have. But I got to do like a $4,000 little Mazda pick up. So we have about $3,000 left on that. Okay. So that one's pretty much a wash.

Yep. So the suburban is the one that's killing you right now. But you said you had 50.000. Because you owe 55 plus a three. Yes, sir.

Okay. Man. Well, what's your income right now? I do pretty well. I met after my business expenses and everything. We met between 175 and 200 a year. Good.

And that's all through the business? Yeah, all through the business. It's all one income. Okay.

So is the business thriving?

“You just weren't paying taxes or is the business having its own struggles?”

It's a trucking business. So I'm throwing up on three years in business. And it was doing pretty well. I mean, I did pretty well. I'm 24. Had no tax bill 25. Running off 24 didn't realize that.

I thought I'd be, you know, all of a few grand here there. But I owed about 50 grand last year and that kind of hit my pocket. And I've already had higher taxes from 23 else paying on too. So that tax debt this was almost doubled last year. And then I mean, the business is doing well.

I mean, I know fuel prices aren't the greatest right now. And it's a little tough right here. But you know, I'm still we're still rolling. We're still making money. Could you guys live without the suburban right now and go down to one car?

Are you going to need something else? We're definitely going to need something else. We have three kids at home. Okay. Because I think getting rid of that car will give you some breathing room.

Because what's the payment on that thing? About 80. All right. So that frees up a nice chunk of the budget and brings you down to 265 in debt. Now, we're going to need the amount you're under water on.

Plus enough to get you another car to get from A to B with the kids. Yes, sir. So that might be your A1 to clear one of the biggest debts followed by the IRS debt. You want to get rid of that one ASAP.

“Are you have you talked to them or do you want to payment plan with them?”

Yeah. I suppose the state, the state I live in, it's supposed to state of Oregon and federal. And yeah, I'm on a payment plan with Oregon. And I'm trying to figure trying to put finalizing with the federal IRS to get on a payment plan. But since it's over that $50,000 threshold,

it's a little bit more paperwork to do. It sounds like. Yeah. Well, if you're is your wife on board fully that we're going to have a couple of years of deep sacrifice. And life is going to look different.

And we're going to say no to every single thing. I think so. I'm still struggling with spending. We just came back from a vacation that we couldn't afford it. How are you spending?

I didn't answer. Like on credit card. No, pretty much cash loan. You know, we cash. I put about a thousand dollars on to a firm count for our hotel.

And we cash for the rest of our district. See, it's pretty cash for our vacation. Well, here's one thing I want you to do. Cut all access to anything that could cause you to make a bad financial decision. Which means I'm deleting my account with a firm.

I'm cutting up my credit cards and closing the accounts. I'm going to change the log in and give it to a trusted friend to Amazon Prime. Wherever you see yourself spending, you definitely don't need to be spending. It's gone.

And even switch to cash envelopes for a while for your physical and person shopping. Okay. If you're willing to do that, it tells me you're willing to get out of the stat. And you'll actually do it. Because if you can make 175 and live off of 100 and throw 75 at the debt,

we can be done with this thing in under four years. That's an app can math. Now, can you scale this business at all? What does it look like to make $250,000 in the line of work you're in? Once I once I'm done with my,

I'll be able to, you know, be able to save a little bit more on you.

I was paying a gentleman, I was paying a gentleman the first couple months of this year.

I was really high dollar amount a month in payment. I finally refinanced the equipment into my name. And I was, I started saving about $4,000 of it. I created that extra $4,000 a month. I've been saving, I've been going right back into my maintenance of this vehicle.

But, you know, we're right now. We're doing about $7,000 a month in debt payments is what we have on our. Goodness gracious. On our name. This year.

Well, and here's my concern, brother. Like you've got a job that you're making good top line on. But if you're, if you're bringing in 175, you're, you're independent, right? Yes, sir.

So take 35% off the top. So if you bring in 175, you're only making one 13. And then you put in fuel costs and you put in maintenance costs. And just minimum payments are 84 grand a year of your net income to service your debts. Like so you've got a business that you're running that makes a good big number at the top.

But it's not, but you're living, you're living above though, that number. But I just want to be sobering because you could go make $65,000 at a hardware store as a manager. Yeah. Right. And so once you do the true honest to goodness math on your business and what it costs to run this business, I don't think you're making near 175.

I think it probably feels really, really good to tell people you're making 175 to 100. I mean, that would light me up too. But man, that it's not what you're bringing home every month. Well, I know in the last six months we've grossed right about in 196. We got about 111 in expenses and we've netted about 84,000.

Okay, but all business expenses. Is that including your tax? That's not paying my estimated $4,000 a month in tax.

“Okay, then you have to start thinking about that differently because you have not made 84,000 bucks.”

Because the problem is you and your wife together imagine we could go ahead and spend a hundred.

Yeah. And you haven't made 84. You've made closer to 55. Yeah. Right.

And you can't pay $7,000 in debt payments on 55,000 bucks a year. No, not even close. That's tough to raise three kids on 55,000. Now is the year as the sole provider. Yes, sure it is.

So why are you wanting to get out of debt now? What was the impetus? I'm almost 32 years old. I started this debt journey right out of high school pretty much.

Nineteen is old by my first pick up.

And I mean, this debt's been eating me a lot for years. I've been a follower of the show for a few years.

“I've tried different budgets and different apps and how old are your kids?”

But Facebook's two five and ten. Wow. Man, if I were you, I would have to come to Jesus conversation with my wife tonight. And I would get really angry. Because I don't think you're angry enough yet.

I want you out of debt more than you do right now. I'm willing to go scorched earth and sell everything in sight. And so if you're willing to do that, you can climb out of this. Please do not pursue bankruptcy. We're going to hang on the line.

We're going to give you our every dollar premium budgeting app tonight. Tonight you lay it all on the table and you and your wife. You're going to go, we're in this thing together. The next four years going to be hell, but we're going to get through it. [Music]

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If you haven't heard of the news, Ramsey is taking over an entire cruise ship next year.

through the 21st, 2027.

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Jamaica, Grand Cayman, Cosimel, full Ramsey take over the ship,

which means the nicest, most generous people you will ever meet. It's an entire cruise with Dave, all the Ramsey personalities, myself included, Dr. John Deloni, John. We had a great time doing a comedy night last year. I don't know if they're going to let us do it again.

It kind of was off the rails. It was awesome. It was a packed theater, late at night, it was a blast. Yeah, they'll let us run it back. You get all the fun, Ramsey content,

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So check it out. If you're baby step four not meaning your debt-free, you've gotten emergency fund, you're budgeting and paying cash for this thing. We'd love for you to join us to celebrate

the hard work you've done on this wealth-building journey. Click the link in the show notes or go to RamseySolutions.com. /events to book your cabin. Are you working on my base ten, John? I'll get there.

I don't know what that means. Mike is in Los Angeles up next. What's going on, Mike? Hey, how's it going, guys? Right.

So I have a question. I have about $17,000 in my 401k with my company. I'm planning to stop working retire from that company in about nine years. And they just switched, or I should say,

they just began to offer a loss portion of the plan.

So basically, I can start contributing now,

moving forward to a Roth IRA. Yeah, Roth IRA. Roth 401k? It's a Roth 401k. Got it.

And so I'm wondering, without killing myself tax-wise, because obviously this is tax deferred, what I've been doing, how much should I contribute to the Roth portion?

How much do you like? I make about, say, for that job, about 60,000. Okay. I would just go all Roth,

and you don't need to worry about the traditional money right now, unless you have a paid for home and you're in baby steps seven. Are you there? We had no, okay. No, not there.

So once you hit baby steps seven, you can start to do some conversions from the traditional side to the Roth side and pay taxes on that money, so that it grows tax-free for the rest of your life.

But we call that a baby step seven item, because the money you would spend on that taxes is far better off being used to fund college education savings and the home pay off extra on the mortgage. So what I would do is just start all the future contributions

to the Roth side. So you're not going to get the tax deduction for it, but that money is going to grow tax-free,

and you'll basically just have two piles in nine years

when you retire, and then you can decide how much to convert and when from the traditional side over to Roth. Okay. So what is the converting mean?

Converting just means to move the traditional, since you haven't paid taxes on it, the government says,

“if you want to move this to a tax-free version,”

you're going to have to pay the taxes on that amount of money. So it's basically going to add to your taxable income for that year. So let's say your effective tax rate is, I don't know, 15% and you move over 100,000

from traditional to Roth, and that would be $15,000 added to your taxable income for that year. Right. So it's really the same as if I'm trying on it,

you know, in retirement, I'm going to pay taxes on it when I would draw it. Exactly. So the big debate is, well, what's the tax rate going to be nine years from now,

or 20 years from now when you retire? There's nobody knows. So I like to control the variables now, instead of, you know, some people say, well,

do traditional now because what if tax rates go down? And it's actually a better bet for me. I think it's a lot of rain calories to burn. You're going to pay the tax man either way. And so the best time to pay it

is when you have low income years, gap years, retirement years, or you're in baby step seven, and you have that extra cash on the side to pay the taxes.

“The key is you don't want to pay the taxes”

from the account itself. You want to use money outside of the account to pay the taxes. You don't want to unplug all that growth. Mm-hmm. Okay.

So the strategy we have around here, Mike, to make it clear, this helped me focus in on the filter to use when investing any amount of money. Match beats Roth, beats traditional.

So do you have a match through your employer? They give matches, not dollar for dollar, and there's profit sharing. So I'm not sure exactly how it works,

but is it like 50% up to a certain amount, or one of those? I'm not really sure what it is. I just know it's not dollar for dollar, but they do match,

and they do profit sharing.

to my retirement. Okay.

I would bump that up to 15%

“if you're debt free with an emergency fund.”

Okay. So that's going to be nine grand a year. Split up across everyone at your paychecks. So I would just dial that up to 15%. So that nine years from now,

you have that extra 3% going for you. So from then to nine years from now, plus to all of the future growth. And we found 15% is not a magic number per say, but it's enough to get you going

to build a series in S.T.A., while having enough to live your life, save for vacations, upgrade the car, save for college for the kids,

pay off the house early, all of that. So it's a good balance. That's the question. I just had a question, George.

I don't know if I'll have an answer. What do you got? So let's say that gentleman, he's making 60 grand now. Let's say in nine years,

he's making 250.

And he's moved tax brackets.

Would he pay when he converts? Would he pay all that conversion tax under his current tax rate? Or would he be able to go back and say, I was only making this much money.

So I pay 15% on this conversion. It's where every year you convert it.

“Whatever your income is when you file in your taxes.”

So if you're married filing jointly, and the government says, how you made 200 grand? You're in a, you're in a,

It's adding to that number. Okay. And so, and now the good thing to notice, your marginal tax rate is very different from your effective tax rate.

Because people get spooked by this. They go, Well, I don't want to make more money. Because it's going to bump me up in tax brackets. No, you pay this,

you know, 12% up to this amount. Yeah, it's a 15% up to this amount. What's the cut off? I'm making it up. Completely making it up.

Because if it's 250, and suddenly you make 260 one year, all 260 is not taxed at that bracket. Just whatever's over the tooth, the 10,000 would be taxed. Exactly.

So it's a graduated tax bracket. So I don't want people to get spooked by this. And generally your effective tax rate is so much lower than the marginal. So if you're in the 37% bracket, you know, you get spooked by that.

Your actual effective tax rate was probably more like 28 to 30%. Okay. And so that's a good thing to note. Don't get too spooked by the taxes on this. But it is a baby step seven item in general to do any kind of

conversions from traditional to rough, but man, Roth has a game changer. Because then you're going,

the government never has to take taxes.

You don't have the required minimum distributions. Because with traditional, the government says, Hey, you haven't paid taxes yet. So when you turn 73, they start knocking on your door going, Hey, bud.

We're going to need some of that money. And so you have to start withdrawing. So they can get their taxes out with Roth. You already paid them. So they get nothing on you.

And it's a great feeling to go that 2 million in a Roth 401k is like net income. Yeah. That's a game changer. So you really want to beat inflation.

Yeah. Think about inheriting your kids get to inherit tax for money. Yeah. Instead of going man, we love John,

but he left us with a hefty tax bill with that inheritance. Thanks, Dad. Thanks, Dad. So it's a great sort of baby step seven goal to get as much in Roth as you can as you get older.

But it's a good thing to work with a smart investor, pro on.

“If you want to connect with one of Ramsey Solutions.com,”

they can walk you through the timing of that, what the best strategy is, so that we can at least keep your tax bills low as possible. I don't want to give, you know,

season more than I need to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And make no mistake. Whether you're in baby step seven or not, like writing that check for the conversion.

That'll hurt. Elstein. You won't like it. It won't feel good. Just prepare yourself for that.

It's not going to be like all right. All right. All my money's in Roth. You're going to be like, you're going to check.

I just wrote to convert. Oh, my wife did this because she worked at Ramsey for nine years. So when she left, we rolled it over to roll over IRAs. And a big chunk was in traditional

because she had the employer match was in John traditional side. And because there's something got the super nerdy called the Pro Ratter rule, you can't do a back door Roth IRA if you have any money sitting in the traditional side. So we had to convert the whole thing all at once and boy, oh boy.

I got to panical Sam a nice chunk of change for the pleasure. But now. But it's yours. It's all sitting on a Roth IRA. Yeah.

It's all yours. You know, a couple hundred grand from her, her hard earned money here at Ramsey. So way to go. And that employer match. I just looked at my account John 30% of my entire balance was just the employer match.

So you may think, well, that's only a couple percentage points at a time. As a compound. So thanks Dave Ramsey. Appreciate you HR. If they don't get a shout out very often.

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Go to joindeleteme.com/ramsie and you'll get 20% off an annual plan. That's join j-o-i-n-deleteme.com/ramsie or click the link in the description. Ask ramsies are free AI tool that is built and trained on proven ramsie principles. And today we're going to break down one of the questions we got this week. Here it is.

“When you guys say eat rice and beans, do you literally mean to only eat that?”

No, it's a metaphor, guys. I was going to say yes. You can and people do it. I love burritos. And I enjoy getting those posts.

People send me like they've like dolled it up and it actually looks amazing. Or to add some protein to it if you're John because you know you don't get those muscles. Eat and just rice. Have a beans or a good source of protein. All right.

Doc, thank you for that. Well here's some ways you can do that. What we're talking about here is cutting your lifestyle down to the absolute bare minimum and being very frugal to create as much margin as possible, freeing up every possible dollar to throw at your dead snowball or build your emergency fund.

So here's what rice and beans really looks like.

This could mean canceling all of your subscriptions, which could free up 200 bucks a month for some of you eating at home instead of restaurants. That's the main thing it means, which is we're not going to go out to fancy restaurants, we're not going to be door-dashing, we're going to be meal prepping rice and beans every day for lunch so that we can free up a couple hundred bucks a week just doing that alone.

Having an older paid off car, we're not going to upgrade, we're not going to have all these luxuries like vacations, we're skipping those, we're selling things we don't need, we're going to pick up extra work or side gigs. So the spirit is temporary, intense sacrifice, not permanent lifestyle cutting, we want you to live like no one else.

So later, you can live like no one else. So get your questions answered. It's crushing it to the point where I'm nervous that we're out of a job job because it is giving people really good answers, it's conversational, it'll actually fireback questions at you to go deeper and get into your specific number.

So check it out, RamseySolutions.com, it's called Ask Ramsey or click the link in the description if you're on podcast for YouTube. I want to point at one thing, we have a like the last few years during the summer, we have college kids that will live with us and at the house and who are working in town here at Nashville. The young man is living with us as summer on Sunday, the first Sunday he was there, he's

like, hey, can I take the kitchen over for a few hours and they have to be like, of course,

I did that dude put on headphones and got a old school cookbook and made this amazing

meal and then had these glass pyrex things and made meals the whole, and I was like, what are you doing? And he's like meal prep, man. And he said it as though like I'm watching my clothes and every week and then a few times in the summer, some of his buddies came over and they all just hung out and they were

laughing and being goofy, but they're all meal prepping and I thought, hey, this kids turned it into an art project and it's fun and also I can't imagine how healthy the food he was making was astonishing, but also he was going into it. Yes.

“And how much money that kid saved and it was, I was like, oh, that's how easy it is.”

It's literally that easy. It took a few hours on a Sunday afternoon, made some made, I made it a fun thing with him as friends and then they had healthy meals all week and it was, it was like, it was inspiring to me the old man like, oh, that's how simple meal prep actually is just to put on the calendar and just go do it.

And I can make it as fun or as miserable as I wish. But man, so it's a thing, people, I can't do it. You can't. You absolutely. And even if you don't like enjoy, like I'm not a cook, you know, it's fun having money,

not being broke forever, wondering where it went and I check your bank statement, I'm like, a lot of door dash and Chipotle on here, what's going on, man? So it's a great thing to do with the hidden spot me to, you know, more. I just love that young people are getting back into meal prepping. They're acting like it's some like little house in the prairie thing that's brand new that

you can do. And I'm fine. Whatever trend you want to make is all about it. It was awesome. Fantastic.

All right, Chase and Chicago up next. What's going on, Chase? How can we help today? Hey, my question was just very simple into the point.

“Should I be contributing more to my household or are we okay where we are?”

A little summary of it is, I've been a stay at home mom for about 11 years during a very

my children at like 5 a.m. to get them to school because I had to be there at 6. And that only lasted a couple of years, the family ended up having some health issues. And so I ended up quitting my job and going to studying at a local school district.

My husband has held it down and he's never complained one way or another.

He thinks it's awesome that I stay home and that I said that the school I'm involved in the school and our children's lives and just make it work. We make about $90,000 annually like gross income and we're on baby steps three.

“My only hesitation honestly and I guess what I want to know is far as like contributing”

more is we're making this steps work it's just a slow process. So you want to get through baby step three faster is that the ultimate goal? I'm just worried like are we behind and retirement or are we behind and baby step three should we be making it there quicker should we be concerned with him working in me not working like my kids are in school but I don't have before school care or after school

care.

Got it. So how long is it taking you to get through baby step three?

We're right around the two month mark and I want to say that we started this right around like March maybe. And you have two months of expenses saved. Yes. Okay and that's taken or I mean we're we're already in September here as we record this.

“So it's taken you a good bit to get that two months.”

You're telling me to get to six months we need two more chunks of this which could be another year. Well now that we don't have like the diet and we once like we've got down with baby step two we have put like money into like other things we have some like car expenses come up so like we just cash flowed out so like all of our money was going towards like

savings. So there's been a couple of steps but generally here's the parameter we generally see people do baby step three and get that fully funded emergency fund in about six to 12 months max so if it's taking longer than that that's just it's not up you're behind your terrible person it's just all right if that's the average how do we get closer to that

number versus it taking 18 months after already getting out of debt to get the emergency fund. So the the question then becomes well what can we do to get there making more might be part of the plan but it might also be can we cut 300 bucks of expenses because we're getting a little bit lazy now that we're at a debt we got a little too comfortable

you got to keep our our foot on the pedal so I would be looking at the whole picture and as part of that hey if we could get this done in by in three months or six months what would that take it would take a thousand dollars more per month who's willing to do what how do we get there in the best way. Can I challenge you on something, Jay?

Yeah. I don't want you you can do what you want right I don't want you I it pains me to hear you say the words ask the question should I contribute more because I want you when you say it like that when you ask it like that you're you've you've put a dollar amount on the word contribute.

You're contributing an extraordinary amount to your household and I would even go farther to say you're probably the anchor point that allows your husband to repel off the side and go earn the money that he earns and so if you if you in him decide hey we want to expedite this like George was saying it's less about should I contribute more I want you to change the language to should I contribute or could I contribute differently for a finite

period of time. Yeah that's true I definitely think George is correct in that way that we definitely took our foot off the gas pedal once baby set two was done and I mean some of it really was like we did have some things that came up that instead of like going back into that we just started cash flowing like from month to month but I think we did kind of get late

in that aspect and it is hard though like I don't know it's so hard I can tripping to the household because I don't have a problem doing inside work or outside work I don't have a problem scheduling the things or paying the things or doing any of it it's just I don't know like sometimes you wish you could help more financially and you kind of overlook even the small things you do and I'll fall totally totally and and and the you're in what I call

the American mom guilt factory there's no way you can win right if you've got young kids

“you should be staying at home or and or you should be working more and there's really”

no way to win and so the the path forward is is almost always opt out of the what should

I be doing like what is this Instagram account says should be doing what does this Instagram account says should be doing what is this mom of a friend's grandma's kids saying I should

and how quickly do you want to get these things done and then y'all get to decide which

“leverage you pull moving forward sounds like you got some fun home archaic we're going to sit down”

tonight look at the budget and go okay what are all the levers we can pull and then what is my part of that and you might find there is a part you might be working a couple more hours a week but don't do it out of guilt do it because we agreed this is the best path forward well come back to the Ramsey show in the fair wins credit union studio Sam is in Halifax Canada what's going on Sam hey on the 24 years old I have a 78,000 and change

in debt I've been budgeting since 2025 I've got my first job after graduation but my

but it makes all she tells me that I'm supposed to have a money left over at the end of the month but I'm just not finding anything and I'm just a lot of debt that's daunting on me yeah what kind of debt is this 78 52,000 out of that even I just take today are student loans and the 19,400 is a

“car loan all right what do you do for work the project manager for construction great what do you”

make take home 41,000 and change okay so that's after taxes so you're bringing a little under 4 grand a month exactly $109 hit my account every week what is the sort of career path look like in this world are you wanting to be in construction are you just wanting to be in project management of course management's been my passion a construction I kind of just got into it

with high school jobs and stuff like that so that kind of merged together this is my first job

after her university so I'm just starting off I know this salary is quite low in my area from what anybody else makes but everybody wants to please five to six years of experience before you can make it to that $90,000 or $110,000 range that everyone's posting about yeah I'm glad you got your foot in the door and I'm glad you're doing a budget that's fantastic but you're saying

“based on what should be on paper it's not there and that's largely due to some spending happening”

outside of what's on the paper so I would be looking at your bank statement as this source of truth to go okay where were the leaks this month was I you know eating out too much or some of my

bills higher than I actually have budgeted for need to adjust them because electricity is not $40

a month like I hope it would be that's where I would start to reconcile what you budgeted for and what the actual numbers are and that will help you at least get some control over the control levels fee so I did that exact thing for last month just before I go on the call here my expected or projected leftover was supposed to be $540 dollars maybe nine cents last month and I actually ended up with $387 less over okay so I know I'm saving money I know I'm putting the actual

versus for projected versus actual in my sheet I've been doing that at a monthly basis because I don't go in weekly though then when I'm trying to put in like you know I was on my travel for work I get a little bit of a bonus for travel that goes directly into a car payment or the next oil change or whatever so I'm doing that periodically I'm just like with these monthly payments here and the debt that I've got it's just I don't know I'm not sure how to kind of put all the money together

instead of wasting it somewhere else into where I should pay it I know I've tried these snowball calculator a online but I'm just not sure how to tackle that really well I what I don't want you to do is focus on the nickel because you stepped over the dollar so let's let's focus on some big wins versus hey I'm focused on trying to dial in this hundred dollars that I'm trying to figure out where it went I would rather you go on be going how do I create enough side hustle income that

I'm bringing in an extra $1,000 a month or I'm getting a roommate to cut my rent and utilities in half which is going to add an extra $500 towards my debt snowball those are the big moves I want you to make because even putting $2,300 towards your debts every month it's going to take forever to pay this off yeah and you're I can tell you're a math guy you're real sharp so you know the math of if I can put a thousand a month towards this we might have some traction so that's the question

work is how do we bring in more for me 24 I was in your exact shoes I had 40 grand in debt and set a 78 but I was making what lesson what you were making and I just took on about five side hustles and then whatever the one was most lucrative I doubled down on that and tried to use my time more wisely you we tell you something wild Sam my wife and I for maybe nine months

we lived in a 900 square foot like one better I mean it was a tiny little place we sold

“our house and moved into a dorm one time and this is before living expenses exploded like they”

have and so yeah at 24 the more the the more sacrifice you're willing to take on now um I mean that's kind of my next point I did end up getting a roommate about two years ago uh just before I got this job um obviously I came out of school pretty much broke with a huge debt I started off at 64 soon just and I get about in Canada we get about six months of I guess great so just from October to September now I've paid off $14,000 into that because I was

making extra payments before all of my other loans went up or good for you what's your car worth well if I were to sell it today uh going to a dealership I've been sold 14 13 to 14,000 dollars well the dealership's gonna give you the lowest price known to man if you sold this thing private party took some good photos what do you think you could get for it you're looking online probably the thousand two thousand dollars more than that just off the face of market place I'm seeing

okay so you might be under water by a couple of grand I'm just wondering this car it's it's not quite half your income which is kind of our parameter no more than half your income tied up with things of wheels and motors but man it in your entry level stage of life getting rid of a $20,000 car and freeing up that payment would give you some breathing room what's the payment on that? Yeah um among size 51 okay so you told me that you have about if you're lucky 500 bucks

to your name at the end of the month right so we get rid of this car we can double that margin instantly but that means we gotta save up the difference that we owe let's say you know you

“you owe 19 and it's worth 16 you need to come up with three grand just to clear the title and sell it”

plus enough to get you a used car something to get you from A to B yeah just just to work really because you know project management I don't have a company truck yet that's been in the talks but just that just keeps getting pushed back and I would change your life I mean that's honestly when I

first the reason I took this job was because I was keeping me in the same I guess a little

city that I went to school and and there was my industries and the truck was promised but some resuffling with the fleets happened and that's my name wasn't actually in that draw because I hadn't spent a whole year at this company yet so now I gotta wait for that next round wherever your other project manager gets a truck yeah well at the meantime you might be driving the worst looking car in the entire parking lot at work and I'm okay with that because in construction

who really cares well buddy the dude with the lift to truck is usually the most insecure so you'll be just fine getting one with a little rust on it I've a lift to truck George exactly I was

“I was trying to side eye John secretly he does have a big scary truck but Sam the key here is”

if you're willing to live like no one else right now you will be living like no one else so much earlier than your peers I know what your age it's easy to compare the guy the next cube over is also 24 and he already has a house and you're like dude I am so far behind I want to I want to live this lifestyle but I also want to pay off the debt so if you can just focus on one thing which is your debt right now and just do that debt snowball and create as much margin as possible and keep

that up consistently you're going to be in good shape I would love to see you out of this entire debt in two years which you know 40 grand a year that's more that that's as much as you're taking home a year so it sounds like you need a side hustle working an extra 20 30 hours a week making an extra 40 grand take home in order to knock this out and if you get rid of that car it'll help you tremendously so those are some practical things I'm going to send you a copy of my book breaking

free from broke it'll walk you through this whole thing the whole chapter called margin is breathing room that I want you to read specifically so hang on the line we will send it all the way over the border I hope it gets to you I don't know what what the borders like these days

you work your butt off for your money but your money's never going to return the favor if all you

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to make sure their market experts who have your best interests at heart so got a ramsy solution dot com slash coverage to find the type of insurance you're looking for and connect with a ramsy trusted agent. Marisol is in Sacramento up next what's going on. Hi thank you so much for taking my call um I was calling in yes I was calling in for some advice I'm in a different stage of my life I'm about to graduate dental hygiene school in about two months and I'll have about uh yeah

I'll have about ninety thousand dollars in student loans but I'm also engaged near my fiancee

won a plan our wedding and get a house and so we've been saving but we're trying to figure out what to prioritize priority for me would be to get married before we move in together but we don't know if we should rent until we pay off our loans or buy a house so just wanting some advice.

“You have you have ninety thousand in dental hygienist school?”

Yes so I had to move to um the town where I'm going to school so I had to pull out extra loans for housing and bills and all of that plus the school itself. Oh wow. Oh geez okay what are you going to be making now what's a dental hygienist to make in Sacramento? So in my area um between 65

an hour to 80 an hour just depending on um being a first um 80 dollars an hour you're talking

a dental hygienist in Sacramento is making a hundred and sixty five thousand dollars a year. Yes. That is insane. Dude see if there are the openings where you work. Yeah I mean I'm going to take you at your work. You seem like a very honest person but my mind is blown because what I know of dental hygienists is you probably make fifty sixty grand maybe seventy over time. Oh yeah no so it's a it's actually really in demand at the moment um and there's a lot to it to it to the

career but it's a really good profession. Wow okay well I hope you're making that much what is your fiance make? So my fiance is um HR manager at a hospital he makes about 85 thousand right now. Great well I love the idea of you guys getting married before you move in together I would not buy a house we've got a mess to clean up with the student loans and any other debts you guys have to see have debts as well. So he has about nine thousand left us a student loans but interest rate for him

isn't too bad I'm worried about the interest rate on my loan because it's about sixteen percent. Ouch are these private student loans? It is a private student loan. Oh man well um you might I'm not sure that you're going to be able to refinance those into a cheaper interest but the good news is with your incomes combined once you're married you're going to knock these debts out so fast the interest won't have time to even ding you. Yeah that was the plan to hopefully refinance and

paid off aggressively but we also want to have a nice wedding I've kind of come to terms with the fact that I don't think we're going to be able to have like a big traditional wedding and I have to be

“something small. Not if you're paying for it. Is family involved or they willing to chip in?”

Not really we don't really come from a lot of wealth so it deemlessly us. Okay because something you could do that we we often encourage is you go down to the courthouse you get married officially you move in you start your life together combined your incomes rent for a while knock out all of your debts you can the debt snowball method together which means it's going to get down a lot faster and then later on down the road maybe a year or two from now we we budget for an awesome party.

That's one way to do it. Um and Mercell I want you to check out our friends at yrefy.com it's the letter yrefy.com and they specialize in walking through private student loan mess is like you're in and looking at potential like can you refinance these this mess can I say something to you that's gonna sound harsh but I'm on your team? Yes please. Okay getting 90 thousand dollars in private student loans to fund apartments and a dental hygienist degree was a pretty you dug yourself a pretty

projected amount of money that somebody told you you're gonna make upon graduation start counting that as earned income already and then by an apartment by a house plan a wedding based on imaginary

“because the one real thing you have in your life is a 90 thousand dollar hole okay and so let's”

approach this completely the other way which is there's a possibility that me and my new husband combined are gonna make what two and a quarter almost a quarter million dollars if we get a one bedroom apartment as cheap as possible and we put every bit of extra money we have we can owe nobody

any money by the end of the first year being married we can go scourge earth and never owe

anybody anything ever again and then we make a quarter million dollars together and we can do whatever we want whenever we want but that would take you saying I'm going I have this vision of this life I want to live and it sounds like I don't want to put words in your mouth but you're coming from a tough background and you want like you see this carrot at the end this is 150 thousand dollars a year it's gonna be awesome like don't spin that until you have it in a count

and make sure you clean up the past messes before you start creating new ones you get what I'm saying like you have a chance to change your entire family tree if you'll buckle down for one year

“yeah and I think that that was one of the big things I had to come to terms with is not following”

what everyone's doing having these huge weddings have having so much debt but just really attacking my loan I do also want to ask I have about eleven thousand dollars saved because we were planning for for the wedding should I put all that into my loan after I graduate all about a thousand dollars could go towards those debts and free up a couple of payments because I'm guessing you have some smaller student loans in there is it all one giant big loan it's one giant big loan but

it gets split into two because it's per academic year got it okay so you have like two forty five thousand dollar loans essentially yeah I think if you do that it'll put a stake in the ground saying I'm serious about this I think if you don't you guys will be comfortable for a while and you know well I'd rather you know what we could we probably need some emergency savings

right we probably need to upgrade the car there's always going to be something you'd rather

spend that money on than paying off debt and may or so you both did not come from money as I would is that is that right yeah exactly would it would be the first one in the family you know that went to college okay graduated or getting like actual careers so I want you to expect this okay people will come out of the woodwork asking you for things people will expect you to go above and beyond because you're you're you're you're the one who made it

“and I honor that and I actually love being able to take care of people but you have to you've”

dug yourself a hole in the greatest way you can love everyone else who's going to reach out to you over the next five ten fifteen twenty five thirty years is to make sure you and your husband are anchored into that you all taking care of yourself so that you can take care of other folks and that means you're going to be you're going to have just several years of saying no a lot to yourself to old friends to cousins you haven't talked to in years to his family like you're all going

to have that but why are you driving that car you you told me you were making this much money yeah I'm playing a different game why are you living in this tiny one better apartment you told me you're making this one yep we are playing a totally different game like it's going to have to be a almost a it's a psychological and emotional shift but it's almost a spiritual shift y'all are going to decide we are opting out of the game that everybody else is playing because we want

to have this thing called freedom forever yeah yeah and I think I'm okay with not worrying about too much what other people think it's just you know when you've seen you know you see people get the careers they buy their house right away they get married it's a very different vision than I had originally envisioned what you don't see is those people are broke and they can't breathe at night or they had a ton of family help and you didn't know that and so you got to

run your own race because otherwise running someone else's race the finish line will always move

so put the blinders on get rid of this debt within a year save up the emergency fund and you have so much more peace when you finally buy that house hey guys Dave Ramsey here every day on this show

that same kind of help anytime with ask Ramsey ask your money question and get answers built on

“Ramsey principles we use on the show whether you're making a decision or just want something”

explained ask Ramsey is here to help it's fast simple and free to use go to Ramsey Solutions.com and try ask Ramsey today that's RamseySolutions.com the Ramsey Show question of the day is sponsored by YRI-5 if your private student loan payments are at a control you may feel like you're out of options YRI-5 was built for borrowers and difficult situations and helps explore refinancing options that fit real life budgets visit

YRI-5.com/Ramsey may not be available in all states today's question comes from Carl in Missouri

Carl writes I am retired with a yearly income of approximately $20,000 from social security is it okay that my emergency fund only has 500 bucks in it so I can pay off my debt quicker

“I currently only have $2,000 left on my credit cards I just I'm so sad for Carl right now”

it's tired with a yearly income of 20 grand so the average social security payment John is about $2,000 right now so he's making below average and this is all of his income sounds like he has nothing in retirement no savings he's gotten emergency fund a 500 bucks

he's saying is this okay to not even bring it up to a thousand so I can get my debt paid off quicker

he's got two grand left I don't know how he even has any margin to pay off that credit card debt based on the interest rate on those cards and how much he can throw at I hope he can knock it out you can keep it at 500 I would still bump it up to a thousand because what I don't want is for you to have a $700 car repair then I would depletes your emergency fund and you go back into debt you can't you can't

“really sneeze for $500 anymore exactly so $1,000 is our bare minimum and this is a tough question”

because Carl I don't know if you're 63 and you just retired or I don't know if you're 93 and so if you're 63 if you're 73 I recommend you get a side hustle and see if you could go crank out that $2,000 over the next few months and it might be delivering that might be I don't know what your what your abilities are in your capabilities aren't this point but is there a way you could earn a little bit of extra money just and all of it goes to paying off these credit cards

I'm just worried Carl I mean the thousand armors you fund is so thin as it is I mean it's designed to like to be of scary so like a 500 yeah 500 bucks man is just you I mean you can't walk into a dentist for $500 you can't do anything for $500 and so that makes me nervous for you I've got two parents who are recently retired like that would make me very nervous for them to only have $500 in cash if they needed something that's just a recipe for having to go back into that so

even if it takes you an extra month or two to pay off the credit cards having that extra $500 bucks and that emergency fund will give you a whole lot of peace along the way yeah thanks for the question Corey is in Tampa Florida up next Corey welcome to the Ramsey show you got a sense for having me um question revolves around me in my wife trying to be part of the eating too much out problem we we want to open up a restaurant um that'll solve it that'll definitely solve it we

we've spent the last 20 months getting out of baby step two and we will be finished up with baby step two by the end of this month also and looking and looking to be finished with baby step three by December of this year okay so we're really just trying to see what would be the best way to go about potentially opening up a restaurant following the baby steps with the the reality being that the restaurant's gonna cost a lot of money to open yeah well my gut says you don't have

the money and probably won't have the money to cash flow this thing not for a number of years without selling the house and using the equity from the house dear Lord please don't do that can you promise me you're not gonna do that more than likely will not do that so when it comes to business it goes beyond the baby steps obviously we want you to be debt-free with an emergency fund and be investing for your future to build wealth for your family when it comes to business we have a

I'll send you Dave's book how to build a business you love that's gonna really walk you through

move at the speed of cash which is so hard for entrepreneurs because all they want to do is

“move forward get it done scale it and often that means they're taking on a whole bunch of debt and”

risk to do it and restaurants are one of the riskiest industries to start a business in and you probably know that the failure rate on these things is pretty high how old are you Cory I'm 33 33 so dude you and I are both we're we're six years removed I mean just six years ago people were lawfully prohibited from entering into restaurant right and that you know what I mean and if you have the the build-out debt payment plus the rental payment plus the staff I mean you just you have

a lived experience of this going sideways in a pretty big way and that's that's that's different than the regular fail rate of just somebody opening up a restaurant what kind of restaurant is this we haven't nailed down the exact concept completely with this this plan would not be taking life

“for another you know three to five years we we don't want to do it haphazardly we we had a”

man if I was on Shark Tank right now I would send you out of the room that was the worst pitch for a guy was like I have this big vision for restaurant what do you guys sell food mostly like all right right I do I do have the concept is primarily going to be a local seafood and meet Rita with a counter loud fire there we go see now I'm picture in this thing I'm excited yeah I want to go visit it's got a place is man that sounds awesome okay so question number one are you in the hospitality

field already yes both me and the life of man and restaurants for a decade plus each okay you know this rules okay because I'm wondering if you can work from the inside out versus starting one can you work your way up to the point where they want to hand you the business because you're the best person to take it over or you buy them out um not with the concept that I have in mine but there's really not anything a hundred percent like it I am kind of caped out on my growth currently

at my current position as is my life what do you guys make I'm currently making 65 or 60 sorry 76 5 plus bonuses a year salary my life makes 69 plus bonuses as well awesome we're averaging about a hundred and 55 total um free taxes fantastic so my question for y'all is it's going to sell like a high school football coach but it really comes down to how bad y'all want this what it what are y'all willing to sacrifice for this dream three years from now five years from now

“is it one of y'all stepping out of the the job you have to go make more money maybe doing something”

you don't love that might be adjacent um so that we can earn money faster is it like y'all just have to ask you that we work more hours y'all have to ask yourselves how big of a how much do we want this dream how bad we want it in three years five years 10 the problem that we have with that is we do have two small children um five and seven and we have sacrificed very hard over the last 20 months

to pay off the 110k and amazing death that we were at um I don't want to put this burden on my

children as well through their entire childhood got it got it so you're gonna have to pick your burden yeah do you want your kids growing up in a household that owns that owes seven hundred thousand dollars in construction and remodeling debt on a restaurant with two parents that are chronically stressed for the health in those margins are and there's one storm there in Tampa there's one beef issue and the price is up like like do you want that that burden or the burden of

we worked really we kept working more hours so that we could do the same with as least risk as possible or the burden of mom and dad have this dream and it's gonna it's it might have even happened to y'all are out of the house it might be 20 years from now yeah for sure I mean that's definitely

something that we considered and I apologize like came off incorrectly it was never my intention

to take on 700 I'm just brought I'm making up I'm making up numbers I'm being sensational for the radio no I but also Georgian I talk to guys you do that all the time if I'm in your shoes my plan would be how do I get into local farmers markets how do I then step it up into a food truck then that becomes so popular so successful people are clamoring for a brick and mortar location that's the right way to do it that's how you go slow that's you make it sustainable so hang on

flat on your face because I love this idea and I hope John and I can one day visit and get some free seafood on the house for a greater advice people ask me all the time George what's your number one money saving hack I'm glad you asked nothing makes me happier than helping another frugal friend so here's the hack get on a budget

seriously how are you supposed to save money if you don't know how much you're spending in the first place

“and that's what makes the every dollar budgeting app a game changer with every dollar you'll”

get a clear picture of your spending and from there it's easy to see where you can get more intentional cut back and save more money how much money are we talking well the average every dollar budgeter frees up $395 in their very first budget if you ask me I think you're way above average so why are you still listening to me go download every dollar for free and start saving more money right now

our scripture of the day Philippians 412 I know what it is to be in need and I know what it is to have plenty I've learned the secret of being content in any in every situation whether well fed or hungry

whether living in plenty or in want Bob Marley said money is numbers and numbers never end

if it takes money to be happy your search for happiness will never end

“Heather is in Portland Oregon up next what's going on her hi yeah thanks for having me sure what's”

your question today yeah my husband and I are considering me becoming a stay at home mom however I am the higher earner between the two of us so that would be just quite the cash crunch for family so I just want to call and get your guys's perspective into the situation what are the two numbers as far as our income I make about 105 and he makes about 85 okay so is it I mean the higher earner thing if you are making like 600 and he was making 60

I would be like ooh this is very lopsided so the real question is can you guys live on 85 thousand dollars yeah you done the budget yes we have it would be tight have you pretended to do this in real life or you go all right my income I'm not we're not even gonna we're gonna move it out of checking and we're just gonna live off of that his paychecks this month that's a great way to test it out

“yeah we haven't done that just with because we're paying for childcare right now and that's a”

big portion of you know where my income goes um so that's something we should probably give it give a try and maybe just maybe just pay your childcare out of your check and keep to keep that as simple as possible and you can subtract it on paper knowing the childcare expense won't be there but all other things considered did his let's call it five thousand dollar take home a month cover all the bills with enough margin to still breathe and eat and upgrade the cars and

go on vacation and it's it's easy for me to make this a math problem like it's just a math problem but also if you are like have it deep in your spirit on stay at home then that that's a that's a different reorienting question for you and your husband because it might mean like hey I want this to be a priority this is a big deal to me and he might say okay then I'm gonna go get a new job or I can make more money right but it's being honest about all the things going on in your heart we need to move

some archiepper which means it's not as nice the school's honest great whatever it may be there's gonna be compromises here to make if you're saying hey this is it's gonna be tight but we can do it so are you guys debt free with an emergency fund? Awesome okay so that's your homework I would budget tonight based off of his income you can take out the childcare and then try that out for a month

and if it feels good you guys think you can do it then go for it and here's what I found people who

their their value is I want to stay home no matter what they figure it out they make the sacrifice is needed but you can't have the cake and eat it too that's where people mess up where they go I want to stay home but also I still want all of our lifestyle as well that's where you go south so if you guys are committed to remaining debt free making any sacrifices needed knowing me being at home is the priority then everything else can fall by the wayside you cover your four walls

you go unless vacations you upgrade the cars less frequently and you stop caring what people think would you guys ever consider lowering retirement contributions? I'll we're trying to work it out you're saying go from 15% down to 10% for example sure I wouldn't if it requires that that tells

retirement in baby step four in order to make this happen okay so as long as you can the the goal is

as if you can continue the baby steps with the income that you have you can definitely stay home you have the green light for me and again you can do what you want you can stay home and not do any retirement and go into debt but I want the best for you guys on your wealth building journey to have

“peace and a nice nest egg and to change your family trip. Do you want to stay home Heather?”

Are you like your job? Well yeah I do want to stay home that's yeah that's the rub here I would do it and this this is something that my wife and I dealt with when she retired here from Ramsey after nine years she was making great money at the top of her game and it still was worth it and not once did she say man it would have been nice to still have that income and for some people grieving all the work you put into that career and the money taking it's really hard

to let that go so I don't know if the money part the identity I'm a I'm a accomplished professional that's a socialize alone yeah yeah well we're wishing to the best Heather it sounds like this is definitely possible we just got I crunched some numbers and tried out and I think you're going

“to find that it is well worth it Alexis is in Los Angeles up next what's going on Alexis?”

Hi how are you? How can we help today? My question is I just got married about two and a half years ago but the last year and a half it's been very very rocky to the point now where my husband has told he just put a deposit on a place to rent he told me he's going to file for divorce but he said he will give us a chance if I make about primary beneficiary to my trust to my retirement account and put him on the house which is in my name as my soul and separate property just a quick

backstory we came into this marriage for a blended family but we don't have children together

This is you know our his second my third marriage and I came in with a lot of assets

and now you know with everything born on he's telling me he'll stay because it shows unity if I put him on everything and making the primary beneficiary of all of my assets currently everything is you know in a trust that my daughter would one day inherit as a 14 year old daughter I'm not working anymore I left my job a couple of months ago with his agreement when we were doing okay you know we agreed to that and now that he is filing for a

divorce he also said that once he moved out which is in a few weeks he's also not going to help me take any of the bills at the house that I have to take care of all of it on my own and I can just pull money from my retirement okay but this is a huge mess and we're not able to solve all that okay but the way you painted the picture for me is I have all this stuff I'm not putting his name on any of it this is mine this is mine before this is mine now and I'm putting the trust

for your daughter to the side okay that's a different it's a whole different issue okay in my house my life we're getting married we're going to have two separate lives here that you're not going to be a part of he got that message and then he's like fine I'm going to go live my life then and then you're like well you still have to you say you're going to pay for stuff

so it sounds like he finally said I get it we're never going to come together and say this is our home

this is our cars this is our retirement this is our future together I'm going to always be living in your world and so I'm going to go back to the way it was before and have my own world again because it's basically how I live anyway and you see what I'm saying and so the trust is a whole other issue if he's if he's trying to hold you hostage for a trust for your daughter that's a whole separate issue well that's the thing that we are already married we got married already no I

“know y'all are legally married I'm saying y'all have you should have put him on your house when you”

moved in because it's y'all's house now right and that part I I actually told him you know I don't have an issue doing that I could put him on the house um but when it came to like the retirement and the the the retirement is actually written out I don't know how you put the terminology is but it is part of my trust which my daughter is set to inherit one day but I don't want to be mean the beneficiary and to be able to distribute how he he says I need to be able to trust him to

if anything where it happened to me to distribute everything among my daughter and his children you know

money is that money is the alarm system here it's not the true issue it's all about trust and

control underneath and he doesn't feel like he's a part of this and now he's using that against you

in a hostage negotiation and so all of it is toxic if I was the referee I'm going flags all around

“on both teams ten yard penalties none of this is healthy and I think this is going to”

require some deep marriage counseling if you both are actually wanting to solve it and if yeah figuring out a way that we are going to build our life together and we do have to take precautions implemented families to make sure previous assets are for our kids that's all that is right and good but I promise this is playing out in 50 other areas of your marriage not just in the money

“thanks for the call access that puts this hour of the rainsy show in the books remember there's”

ultimately only one way to financial peace and that's to walk daily with the prince of peace Christ Jesus