Learn When To Move From Intensity To Intentionality

23:36How can we help you? So I have two questions. Should I disregard this and not care about marriage? And should I invest those$25 ,000? I'm just afraid of if something were to happen, how do I care for my children since we're not married and I'm not entitled to anything is my fear.

24:06Dave Ramsey:yeah if he up and dies or up and leaves you're screwed and so that's why I'm afraid to you're like a homeless single mom no that's not funny at all that's terrifying yeah he doesn't understand this I don't care if he understands it that's the reality I'm scared to death for you yeah

24:35you're vulnerable you're very vulnerable i definitely am i i feel it yeah stressed out

24:43Dave Ramsey:all the time yeah it's on it's an undercurrent in your house that you're not valuable enough to marry but you're valuable enough to have kids with correct i'm sorry thank you so i don't i don't think you're going to do anything about it though are you i mean you're eight you're eight years into this system yeah um i just i don't i can't afford to move out and be a single mom um i'm hopefully starting a new job soon but how much is that going to pay next to nothing because i i can't okay so let's probably but we have to be part-time. So let's address your fear, okay? The fear is legit in the sense that you have no plan right now, but the fear goes away when you have a plan.

25:36So you have got to start digging into what would have to be true for me to work a full-time job that would take care of me and the babies, right? What would have to be true? I'd have to have affordable childcare, and we've got to dig into that. If I can't afford daycare, what does that look like? I will tell you that there are solutions to this. But until you begin to dig and go get answers to the fear question, can I survive without him right now? You're telling us no. That's not true. But you're going to have to go dig and figure this out. And you can do it. And I got to tell you, if it were me, that answer that he gave that it's only a piece of paper would be everything I need to know about being committed to this guy long term.

26:23And I think you're going to regret this. and this is going to eat away at you. When you're an old lady, I think you're going to regret if you don't make a change at this very pivotal moment. So I think you've got to say to this guy, I disagree. But do you want to be with me? Because if you do, it's marriage. And if it's not marriage, now we need to begin to decouple. And this is what it's going to mean. But I think you've got to, before you get to that point, you've got to go, what does it look like for me to be able to take care of myself and those kids? And that$25 ,000 cash becomes an emergency fund if you have no debt.

26:55Do you have any debt? I don't.

26:58Dave Ramsey:How old are your kids? Three and six. Little boy, little girl? Yes. Okay. Both. Would you want this for your daughter? I don't, no. Then fix it.

27:14Easier said than none.

27:15Dave Ramsey:then fix it because you're modeling for her that this is the way life's supposed to be and it's not yeah it's not you're being held hostage and financially and you feel it you feel vulnerable you feel disrespected and that's in the air of your house and it's translating into your daughter's body and she thinks this is how men are supposed to treat women and it's not fix it you've got to stand up and fix it and amazingly junior may decide he wants to paint or get off the ladder i don't know but i'm not sure he's worth it but uh mister i've got i inherited my mommy's house with my brother Oh, whoa, aren't you a dadgum producer?

28:05Dave Ramsey:You're killing me here. And so, yeah, I'm not impressed. So this is two in a row. The last guy with the house fire, same thing. He's a four-year-old kid and his girlfriend who's hysterical living together. So here's the data, folks. If you are 35 to 54 years old, this is actual data we just got a hold of the other day. The average married couple has a net worth of$329 ,000. 50%, over 50 % of the couples in America living together are not married in America right now. We have more unmarried people shacking up than married people shacking up right now. But the data says it's not working financially.

28:55Dave Ramsey:And the data says it's not working relationally. So here's the thing. Married couples, on average,$329 ,000 between 35 and 54 years old. Unmarried male, not$300 ,000,$87 ,000. So one-fourth of the net worth if you're an unmarried male. So if he wants to know why he should get married, that's the reason. Unmarried female, one-tenth,$35 ,000. One-tenth, 10 % of the net worth. And that's where she's sitting right now. she's sitting with 10 % of his net worth or 10 % of an unmarried guy's net worth, but 10 % of what she would have had had she been married for these eight years on average. That's the averages.

29:41Dave Ramsey:The average married couple 65 and above,$608 ,000. Unmarried male,$218 ,000, one-third. Unmarried female,$174 ,000, 25 % net worth. 40 % of all the public are married 75 % of millionaires are You getting it yet? Married males outlive unmarried males An average of 8 years Married females outlive unmarried females By 4 years Cancer survival rate among married people 20 % higher than unmarried people.

30:31Dave Ramsey:Hello? Is this microphone on? This used to be a show where people would call up and I'd say, your car is stupid. Sell the car. It's gotten to where the answer to every question is, get married.

31:03Thank you.

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32:57Dave Ramsey:Lori is in Canada. Hi, Lori. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi there, Dave. Thank you so much for taking my call. How are you today? Better than I deserve. What's up? Wonderful. Same here. I'm looking for some, I guess, tough love if it's at all needed. but just kind of my backstory here, I'm going to be reaching the end of baby step two at the end of April, which is so excited. I'm so happy. I've been working myself to the bone. Congratulations. Thank you. And then for baby step three, it won't take me long. I have very low expenses. I'm planning to save about$6 ,000 for a three-month emergency fund.

33:38And so by early June, early mid-June, And I should be about done doing those two steps. Now, I'm trying to plan for after baby step three and maybe scaling back from my part-time job because I'm working two jobs right now, 70 hours a week. And I'm feeling a bit nervous to lose that extra$2 ,000 a month in income. and so I'm looking for some advice on how to heal back from a gazelle intensity mindset and nurture a prosperity mindset after I'm done baby step three.

34:15Dave Ramsey:Very wise. Good for you. When you're running wide open and you cross the finish line you don't suddenly stop. It takes a few steps to slow down. Think of a sprinting a foot race, right? Like a 40 yard dash. Okay. Yeah, you're not going to slow down. It's going to be a few yards after that before you slow down. But by the time you get out there 100 yards after the finish line, you'll be back to a normal pace again. So it takes a minute to slow down. That's thing one. And thing two is anytime you're looking at something and I have anxiety about it or worry about it, you said, facts are your friends.

34:56Dave Ramsey:So look at your budget. I think you're doing a detailed monthly budget, aren't you? I sure am, yeah. So instead of white-knuckling the budget, look at the budget and go, now that I have no payments, how much room there is? Oh, my goodness.

35:18Dave Ramsey:And so that gives you mathematical, tells your brain, the math tells your brain it's okay to slow down. It may take your heart a minute to catch up, but your brain will go, oh, we're okay. Yeah. Because you are okay. Because you're putting more than the part-time job towards the debt and then towards the emergency fund, right? Correct. So that means when you do away with the part-time job mathematically, there's still the more than part, the margin. Yes. So you're okay. Math says that. But what you're trying to adjust for is the emotions. But I'm telling you, emotions are something you tell what to do.

36:02Dave Ramsey:They don't tell you what to do. Yeah. You know, I'm listening to you and I think a little exercise would be what is my focus now? You know, we hear a lot about what's my why and you're getting through this because you want to be free. But it's really what am I doing in order to get the why? And so now as you move out of baby step three, ask yourself, what am I intentional about now? Because you've been intense, super intense. Now let's move from intensity to intentionality. And so now ask yourself, what is my financial focus now, right? And baby step four, super clear. We're trying to build wealth now.

36:42And so I think if you can reframe into the next what, I think it will naturally help you slow down, as Dave gave the beautiful metaphor there, kind of out of a sprint. How long have you been fighting this? uh i've been at this baby step two since february of last year so so 70 hour weeks for a year plus no no the 70 hours a week was a very recent addition uh before i was working about 50 to

37:11Dave Ramsey:60 hours a week so i've been at it for you've been at it you've been hard at it so my point is this when you stretch something to this degree that's never been stretched before it's impossible for it to return to the same shape so you can we have the number of people that the number of people that we coach that do what you have done they go back to being irresponsible doofuses with credit cards is almost zero

37:39i i don't want to go back i don't think i think there's any chance you will that's my point

37:42Dave Ramsey:if you've been doing this for two months you might you might go back but when you've been fighting it like this by yourself for a year scratching and clawing and we can hear the visceral intensity in your voice, kiddo. I love talking to you because you're like passionate. You're getting it. You are getting it. Thank you. And so that tells me that you have stretched to a place you've never stretched before, and you will not return to the same shape. And so you're great. You're going to be fine. You're going to be great. And just be intentional, not intense. If you just tell your money what to do, you're going to have money the rest of your life.

38:17Dave Ramsey:That's all you've got to do. Just tell it what to do. You don't have to freak out. You don't have to work like a crazy person. You don't have to do beans and rice. You don't have to do gazelle intensity. You just got to tell it what to do. That's intentional versus intensity. Stay on the every dollar budget the rest of your life and watch your net worth climb. As Ken said, have a new target that you're aiming at. And it's one that is a little bit more joyful and comfortable than running from the wolf of debt. Yeah. That's chasing you through the forest. It's really true. Your brain and heart, your nervous system, all of that.

38:51Has been reshaped. Yeah, and it will adjust, by the way, when you adjust your new focus. It's a miracle of the way our brains work, all this research on focus.

39:01Dave Ramsey:Avery's in Hartford, Connecticut. Hey, Avery, what's up? Hi, Dave. It's a pleasure talking to you. I'm very excited. Honored to have you. How can we help? So my fiance and I are getting married in October. And I'm trying to stress the importance of budgeting. but my question is do we budget together when we don't have visibility into each other's finances and should we budget together or separately? You should budget separately but you can do some practice budgets together as part of your pre-marriage counseling. In other words you actually run your money separate until you're married. Do not combine finances with someone you're not married to.

39:40Dave Ramsey:Then after you get home from the honeymoon you can do what you've been practicing. So sit down and do a role play almost and say, oh, let's pretend this month we were married, what it would look like. And you put all your money on the table. I put all my money on the table and put all our bills on the table. And we go, okay, what will we do with our money this month? And that'll create a really good fight. Yes, it will reveal expectations. And it'll be great. It'll be great for your pre-marriage counseling. It really will. because where you spend your money reveals your dreams, your fears, your values.

40:14Dave Ramsey:Jesus said your treasure is where your heart is. And so you're a spender, he's a saver, or the other way around. You know, one of you grew up in a household where people didn't care about money, and the other one, they were screaming about it all the time. And so all these things are going to start coming out when you start looking at this together. But the money is not actually the thing. It's revealing who the two of you are and what your differences are that will work for you if you learn to use your strengths for each other and guard each other's weaknesses. So I'm not the natural saver at my house.

40:45Dave Ramsey:My wife Sharon is. So that's our natural safeguard. She's a straight-up tightwad. She saves everything. There's way too many leftovers in my refrigerator, and I have a net worth of hundreds of millions of dollars, and there's freaking leftovers in my refrigerator. It's awful, y 'all. I'm complaining right now. I like day old spaghetti. I'm just going to put that out there. Well, you can come to my house anytime. And so we get it a lot. But so it's her nature, though. And I love that. And I'll have a lot of problems in my life. But my wife being, you know, spending money like a crazy person is not going to be one of them.

41:21Dave Ramsey:Her husband, on the other hand, me, I'm the spender by nature. And thank God I like making money. Yeah. Because I've been good at spending it. So, you know, you learn about these things when you start working this together, Avery. So make sure you're doing it. Get the every dollar budget out and run an app, run, run, get the app out and run a budget as if you were married. But don't combine your finances until you are married and do get some good in-depth pre-marriage counseling. It's one of the indicators of a marriage that lasts, by the way, because you get to talk about what's wrong with her mother.

41:53Dave Ramsey:I mean, his mother. I mean, your dad. I mean, can you imagine the pre-marriage counseling my kids went through? You're marrying into the Ramses. Talk about fraught with danger. No comment. There's no air. There's no air at the table. I mean, you got Rachel Cruz, me. There's no room for another word in. I'm just saying. And you still got two of the finest dudes on the planet. You got two good sons-in-laws, I'm telling you that, and your daughter-in-law. Yeah, we did great. You really did. We did great. They did great. They did. We taught them how to pick.

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44:07Dave Ramsey:Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fairwinds Credit Union studio. Ken Coleman, number one bestselling author, host of Front Row Seat. Ramsey Personality is my co-host today. Megan's in Phoenix. Hey, Megan, what's up? Hi, Dave. First of all, pleasure talking to you. I love your faith in God, and it's great to be on here. But I was a kindergarten teacher who left teaching to be home with my kids, and I found myself doing contract work and just private tutoring to make money. But then I did not pay my quarterly taxes, and now I found myself in a pickle, where now I can't afford to pay my taxes.

44:49So I didn't pay the quarterly taxes the past two years, and now I'm thinking, am I just working to pay that unpaid tax? Like, did I screw my family over in this sense?

45:04Dave Ramsey:Okay, so a portion of the money that you made should have come out to pay quarterly taxes, correct? Yes, it definitely should have. Okay. And now you're having to pay it, but you already used the money before. So I don't know how your family got screwed over. Your family got the benefit of money that really wasn't theirs in the earlier years. And so you didn't screw anybody over. You just, but you create a mess, obviously, by not taking care of business. So what's the tax bill? For 2024, it's$13 ,000. And this past year, it's going to be $11 ,000. Okay. So you need, so$13 ,000 and$11 ,000. So we need$24 ,000.

45:48Dave Ramsey:And you're married, I guess. Yes. Yep. Okay. And what does he make? He makes$85 ,000. Okay. And how much money do you all have in savings? We have about$1 ,500. Okay. All right. And how much debt do you guys have other than the IRS? We have about$70 ,000 in debt between cars and student loans. Okay. All right. And what do you owe on the cars? How much of that's cars? $26. Okay. Thank you. All right. And so So you've got about 44 in student loans? Yeah, yes. Okay. All right. And 24 to the IRS, I mean the KGB. Yeah. Okay, so if you owe 13, that means you probably made close to 50. Yes. Okay. And so are you planning to make 50 this year?

46:49I'll make a little less than that. And I will say for this year, I do have money set aside to pay quarterly taxes for this year.

46:56Dave Ramsey:Yeah, but I mean, if you...

47:03Dave Ramsey:Okay, why would you make a little less when you have a problem? You would make more. You work more. Right. One of the things that I did for contract work isn't a thing anymore. It was working with migrant students, and that program got, it's gone. Okay. All right. I can imagine. All right.

47:28Dave Ramsey:But you're going to have to take on a bunch more of the other kinds of students, not only to offset that, but to, you know, you've got to grow this business in order to pay this. Okay, so basically we're going to work a debt snowball, which means you have$94 ,000 in debt, But anytime you're working in the debt snowball, the IRS is first. And you and your husband have a household income of about$135 ,000. And every dime of that we can squeeze out of our monthly budget, we're going to throw at the IRS until it's gone. And they're going to be cleaned up in about a year or sooner. Well, they need to be cleaned up a lot sooner, really.

48:06Dave Ramsey:And then you're also going to have to think about, is the$26 ,000 one car? yes it is okay that may be something that has to go away too in order to make this work the car payment on that's substantial and getting rid of that and anything he can do to pick up extra work is there anything you could do in addition to tutoring to create income for a short period of time to clean up the mess um i mean i can pick up more more clients and i know that's a it's it's a And trade-off with that is being at home and taking care of my kids is the problem. If we don't have any family around to kind of help with that.

48:50Dave Ramsey:Yeah. Yeah. You need to solve for that on the short term. Yeah. It's not a long-term prison sentence, but you need to create income because of this faux pas, because of this mess. Yeah. And if you create the income, it's going to make the mess go away, and you're going to get your life back. because if you didn't have a car payment and you didn't have the IRS and you were making, you know,$40 ,000 or$50 ,000 without having strain on the kids and he's making$85 ,000, you guys could work through the rest of that debt snowball fairly easy. But these two things are the glaring problems in my face.

49:21Dave Ramsey:And I'm like, it's$50 ,000 of your$94 ,000 is those two things. Right. Yeah, half of it. Megan, let me ask you a fun question, okay? If I told you that you could have$100 ,000 cash in three days, but for three days you had to work a 10-hour shift, and you had to, in order to do that, you had to have somebody to watch your kids for three days, and I gave you a week to come up with child care for three straight days, could you do it? Yes, 100%. So I'm trying to be nice about this, but when I hear this defeatist attitude towards child care, and I hear it a lot, I think you've got to get more innovative.

50:03And that's why I created a fantastical scenario for you to get your mind to say you would pull it off.

50:09Dave Ramsey:The good news is it only takes a year of being completely out of control crazy, some kind of very uncomfortable thing that we do for a year. This is not saying I'm going to raise my children this way. It's not saying for the next decade the kids are going to be in this situation. I'm going to be in this situation. But this tax thing has highlighted the fact that you all really are not in very good shape financially. And you've got to, you know, for a short period of time, you've got to punch this as hard as you can punch it. And when you do that, I think you can move the needle. So I'm going to go completely crazy with your income.

50:45Dave Ramsey:I'm going to look at selling that car. I'm going to look at him picking up an extra job. I'm going to get on an every-dollar budget. We're not going out to eat. You're not going to see the inside of a restaurant unless you're working there. And you're not going on vacation. You're broke and you owe the IRS because you screwed up and didn't pay your quarterlies. And you have got to clean this up because the penalties are unbelievable. The interest is unbelievable. Every day that sits out there is just killing you. Matter of fact, if you can go borrow on a credit card and pay them off, I would. Because you're just moving one debt to another debt in this case.

51:17Dave Ramsey:because they have unlimited power to come screw with your life. They're unbelievable to work with in not a good way. So, yeah, put them on a payment plan so that you don't have them coming after you, garnishing your wages or hitting your checking accounts or anything else, and then get rid of that debt as soon as you can. It's the first thing to go. And, of course, meanwhile, you're paying the quarter lease on your current situation. Ouch. That'll bite you. Dave, real quick, I'd love for you to give us an answer as to what is the psychology that is necessary when you get yourself in a big financial hole and it feels impossible to get out of?

51:59You've done it. She feels it. And I sympathize with that. But what is that? What's going on psychologically that has to be defeated?

52:06Dave Ramsey:You can do anything for 90 days. You can do anything for 90 days. As a matter of fact, you can do anything for 180 days if it changes the whole rest of your life. It's not a death sentence for 10 years, but the next 10 weeks are going to really suck.

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54:20Dave Ramsey:Maria is in Orlando. Hi, Maria. How are you? I'm doing great. Thank you for taking my call. I didn't even know where to begin. I'm saying there's I have some credit card back that. Long story short, I basically ignored for the last several months, you know, a couple of them have gone into collection. and I'm just hoping you can help me figure out how to speak with these collectors so that I can pay what I'm able to pay and get out of this hole I put myself into. How much credit card debt, hon? About$18 ,000. Okay. What do you make a year?

55:10It varies, but roughly$55 ,000.

55:14Dave Ramsey:And why have you been ignoring them? I was actually paying them off, and then last summer I had some big loss of income compared to the previous summer, and I had some medical bills, and I paid off the medical bills and neglected the credit card ones, and it kind of just snowballed from there. Okay. And are you single? No, I'm married. My husband does not know I have been. Oh, he doesn't know the stats here. Why? Yes, mostly because I'm just embarrassed. I don't know. You guys have separate finances? Yeah, for the most part. So what does he make? He's retired now, so he has his Social Security every year, and then he's 401K and his savings from when he...

56:20Dave Ramsey:Now, how much is in his 401K? I don't know. Yeah, you do. No, I have no idea. You don't know if it's$10 ,000 or$10 million? No. We have one joint bank account. I know how much is in that account. But I don't touch the joint account. Because you've done this before and he keeps everything from you? I haven't really done it before, but he's always, from the beginning, I've always kind of wanted to have my own stepper thing. Yeah, it's not working for you, is it? Yeah. Yeah. And how long have y 'all been married? 16 years. Okay. Why have you not told him? Because you're ashamed. You said that, yeah.

57:11Yeah.

57:13Dave Ramsey:Does he have any debt? She doesn't know. No, I don't. There's a debt. No debt. How do you know? Because he has done most of your baby steps. But you don't know what's in the 401k, but you're sure he doesn't have any debt. That's inconsistent. no no that i can guarantee you that the house is paid off cars are paid off no that okay part of it is i was paying some of it is because i was paying off the credit card and we just we paid off the cards last year the year before how much money is in the joint account um i'd have to look again probably like 50 50 15 15 okay all right so here's what this is about this is about behavior it's not about dead collectors this is about shame and marriage

58:18Dave Ramsey:And you don't want to come clean because of the instant you come clean. First off, he's going to be disappointed and rightly so. And you're hiding this, number one. But number two, you're doing it at all because he's very good with money. And he's not going to be happy that you aren't. And then he's got the money. He probably got a million dollars in a stinking 401k, write a check and pay this thing off. And that's actually what ought to happen because a married couple, one of them doesn't know it yet, owes$18 ,000. So sorry, dude. But then what you owe him, Maria, is the two of you get on the same page and handle money together for the rest of your lives.

59:01Dave Ramsey:Full transparency.

59:05Dave Ramsey:Period. I'm going to be independent and then go do stupid stuff has got to stop. it's killing you, girl. It's eating you up. You're not even sleeping good because of this. No. I know. Scary. And here's the weird thing. As soon as you sit down with him, that's going to be a really difficult two-hour discussion. And the next day you're going to feel 100 pounds lighter because you've been carrying deception around in the name of shame. And if you're not careful, it becomes an identity, and then you've got a real problem. And it's not an identity. It's just you screwed up. You did a thing, but that's not who you are.

59:49Dave Ramsey:You are not defined by the worst thing you ever did in your life, nor are you defined by the best thing you ever did in your life. So there's more to it than that. So, yeah, I think you've got to sit down with him tonight, and then you guys need a new system. Your system sucks. I do my thing, you do your thing. It's not working. So you guys need to be on the same page, and it sounds like this. Honey, I need your help. I need to know what's going on with the money, not because I want to mess up your stuff, but because I want to get in on how good a job you've been doing. And I want you and I to work together, and I want to see everything that's going on with the retirement.

1:00:23Dave Ramsey:In case you die, I'm going to need to know what you want me to do. But you don't want him to die and him have a million dollars worth of investments, and you don't have any idea how to do it because you have this all separated, and now you're just out in the cold with a bunch of money. And you don't want to live in shame either. please do not let the sun go down with a secret it's eating you up my little sister let it go okay tonight you tell him okay say say okay no i will talk to him yes okay and tell him every bit of this I'm not a child who's been here. Yeah. And just, I am, you know, I didn't want to tell you because I'm ashamed.

1:01:11Dave Ramsey:I feel inept. And I need your help. I need to work together with you on money from now on. The way we've been doing it for 16 years is not working. I'm not as good at it as you are. I don't want you to do it all by yourself. I want us to do it together so that I know how to do this in case something happens to you. Yeah, Maria, just real quick. Do you trust him? Yeah. Yeah, I know. I asked an obvious question because I want you to hear it. Well, let me ask you this. What do you think his reaction would have been if a couple years ago, before he got into this mess, you said, you know what? I want to have combined finances.

1:01:48I want to do this together. I think you're better at it than me, and you know what you're doing. What would his reaction have been? I'm probably welcome. Yeah. So the only reason I'm bringing this up is because emotionally I want you to hear that that kind of guy who you love and respect, who would have been on board with this from day one, while he will be disappointed, I think that's a good man. And I think he's going to welcome you going, I messed up. I don't want to ever do this again.

1:02:22Dave Ramsey:If$18 ,000 is the cost of us getting on the same page, I'll write the check. I think so, too. That's what I'm getting at. Yeah. And I hope that takes the edge off. Money well invested. Yeah, because you're right. I'll guarantee you he's loaded. I just have a hunch. There's a million dollars in that 401k if there's a dime. I think you're right. I absolutely felt that. Yeah. And I feel for her, too. And I get that's why, by the way, she's so shame. You nailed it. She's a shame because he's been so good with money. Yeah. It just, the weight of something like that is multiplied every day you carry a secret.

1:03:03Dave Ramsey:And when you shine light on stuff, the bugs run to the corner. The roaches run for the hills, man. They get out there and do little dances in the dark. But it's hard for demons to exist when you shine light. Demons don't like light. They run. so just when you just lay everything out there's no place to hide you just got to be who you is then so clean

1:03:56So

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1:05:17Dave Ramsey:In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage, Addison and Autumn are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? Good. How are you doing? Better than I deserve. Where do y 'all live? We live in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Fun. Welcome to Nashville. And how much debt have you two paid off? We paid off$184 ,000. Goodness. How long did that take? 32 months. Wow. And your range of income during that time? It went from$127 ,000 to$200 ,000. Excellent. What do you two do for a living? I work in a family business doing drywall. And I'm a wedding photographer. Awesome. And you're making a couple of hundred a year between those two.

1:05:57Dave Ramsey:Excellent. What kind of debt was the$184 ,000 in 32 months? Our house. You paid off your house? You two weirdos. How old are you guys? I'm 26. I'm 27. And you paid off a house? Yeah. I just, I can't, I'm speechless. That's amazing. Congratulations. So$184 ,000 mortgage. What's the house worth? It's around$340 ,000, somewhere around there. Okay. How long have you two been married? Almost three years. Yeah, three years in April. So you got married, bought a house, and the first order of business is 32 months later paid off. Well, the house was already bought. Oh, it was already bought? Yeah. We bought the house the week that we went on our first date and met.

1:06:38Dave Ramsey:Oh. Yeah. So you were stuck with it. Yeah.

1:06:46I like it. Okay.

1:06:48Dave Ramsey:Stuck with a paid-for house. Now, what did you say it's worth again? Like$340. Okay. And it's a paid-for house in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Yes. Wow, man. That's amazing. So what in the world? And you're 24 and 26? 26 and 27. 26 and 27. I'm sure. Yeah. Okay. All right. Wow. So, you know, all we hear about all the time and the negative things in the media is that Gen Z, your generation, is stuck. They can't buy a house. It's not affordable out there. It's impossible. Yet you went and bought one the week you started dating and convinced this young lady to marry you and help you pay it off. Yeah, yeah.

1:07:28Dave Ramsey:Where do you people come from? How does this happen? How did you run into the Ramsey stuff? Well, we grew up, like, our parents had, like, grew us up with Ramsey principles and, like, the envelope system. And so, yeah. Both sets of parents? Yeah, yes. Both of you are financial peace babies? Pretty much, yeah. Oh, my God. I have to ask the obvious question. Was this an arranged marriage? No. No, but the parents were happy about it. Yeah, they were. My dad was very happy. I think you found a good one. Yeah. He knows about the envelopes. Wow. This is incredible. I'm serious. You had to go home. When y 'all both discovered that both your parents were doing the Ramsey stuff, that had to be a little weird.

1:08:14Dave Ramsey:Yeah, it definitely was. But it was really exciting because it was like Autumn had the same values as I did, which, I mean, honestly translated into the rest of our marriage. And it was just like, wow, this is very easy. I mean, this is so simple, such a simple plan. And we were able to work together on it seamlessly. How did y 'all meet? A blind date. A blind date. We got set up. Wow, okay. So you weren't like going to the same church or something? No. Okay. No. All right, because I thought maybe your parents, if they'd gone through FPU together or something, that'd be too much. All right. Yeah.

1:08:42Dave Ramsey:Wow, okay. No, yeah, yeah. Pretty incredible. But we just like made a lot of really like wise financial decisions like right when we were like 18, 19. So we like cash flowed college and like bought cars we could afford and you know, all the things that you teach. So when you entered into this, all there was was the mortgage. Yes. And it was brand new. Yes. Because you just got it when you started dating. Yeah. And you get married and 32 months. So you did about$60 ,000 a year for three years, give or take. Yeah. Around$5 ,000 a month, making$127 ,000 to a high of$200 ,000. Yeah. You lived on nothing to do that.

1:09:16Dave Ramsey:Y 'all pretty intense knocking that mortgage out. It didn't really feel like nothing, though. We just followed our budget. Okay. All right. Let's get into this. What was your budget in year one of your marriage based on what income at that time? Well, it was based on roughly, I mean, it was$127 ,000 a year. And so we just, I guess it was like$8 ,000 a month, I guess. All right. So what was the, what were their bills? If you just, if you can remember, what was your, to cover all your expenses out of that? Oh boy. Roughly. I'm not holding you to the, uh, five grand a month. Yes. And it definitely near the end is when we started piling it on a lot more.

1:09:52Dave Ramsey:We put more on the last year. So maybe three grand in the early years and six grand or eight grand in the year. Yes. as Autumn's business, as Autumn's photography business started to grow, she definitely was picking up a lot more weddings. And yeah, the money just kind of started rolling in. I was like, wow, this is amazing. And we based our budget mostly off of his income because I was really consistent. So then anything extra that I made that was above the minimum amount that we set aside and planned for that I would make, we just threw on the house. So that was just our goal. Yeah. Pull the taxes, throw the rest of the house.

1:10:24Dave Ramsey:Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Good for y 'all. I'm so proud of you. I know your mom and dad are proud of you. I'll both have you. Yeah. And they all came, right? Both sets of parents came to a celebration. Yeah, they're here. They're in Nashville. Okay. Yeah. Wow, that's amazing. Very, very cool. All right. Well, this is kind of makes the case of it's very important to choose a good mate. Oh, yeah. We've been talking about the value of marriage earlier. Dave went on a marriage rant that was great, and this really illustrates it. And here's what I want to know, because we put it to you guys like you guys were super intense.

1:10:55And Autumn, your response was, it was fine. We live within the budget. That speaks to contentment. So as a young couple, you're starting out and the world is your oyster, right? How did you develop that contentment? Was it a discipline thing or was it the way you were raised? I'd love to know why you were so content. It was definitely the way we were raised, but also like we're Christians. So like we knew that there was joy and contentment and just not comparing ourselves to anybody else. So it was just like how we could keep looking at each other and just connecting with each other. Yeah. Yeah.

1:11:37And we made the budget together and we were both like okay with it. We still did so many fun things too. I love it.

1:11:45Dave Ramsey:I just don't sense a lot of time spent with Instagram influencers. No. Like none. I mean, I'm on Instagram. I know. Well, you have a job. I mean, you have a photography business. Yeah. I mean, I don't think you're sitting there doom scrolling wanting stuff. I mean, it's just. No. Yeah. That's not you. Yes. Matter of fact, there's some data out right now that shows the amount of hours spent on Instagram equals the number of dollars spent. It's ridiculous. Wow. Okay. Quick follow up for this young couple because a lot of young couples listening to this. They think, oh, I can't win. amazing how are your what are your dreams give us you don't have to give this grand plan or share something you don't want to share but what how are your dreams or is there something that has changed now that realize that you guys have zero debt a house included and you're 26 and 27 yeah it's it's kind of surreal because like i it's something that as i bought the house as i was like working like right out of high school at 18 it was something that i was like striving for like I knew I wanted to buy a house and I knew I wanted to, to pay it off and then to marry someone who had the same values.

1:12:47And like when she, like we both wanted to pay it off right away. So it was just like, it was really cool to be able to work on that, work on that together and enjoy, enjoy that life together. Um, so now looking forward, I don't know. I mean, we're just excited to build wealth together and build a life that, um, is good for our family. Yeah. And we set a goal and we wanted to do it in five years before I was 30. and we ended up doing it way quicker and less than three. So I think that's just like so motivating and encouraging. Like when we set a goal, we can work towards that together and just be on the same page.

1:13:23And like, yeah, it can go faster than we really ever expected it to go.

1:13:27Dave Ramsey:What do you tell people the secret to getting out of debt is? Honestly, contentment, like you were talking about, just keeping your eyes fixed on the goal that you have as a couple or as a family. Sticking to your budget. Oh, yeah. Setting that, have that conversation together. And we were both okay with every line item and how much we were giving. And so, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now that you're 100 % free, no payment at all. Does it feel different than you thought it would feel? Yeah. It's just kind of like uneventful because life still goes on. We were living in the house. Nobody shot off fireworks in the backyard.

1:14:07Dave Ramsey:No. Yeah. I was like sick when we paid like our last mortgage payment too. So it really felt just like, I got the flu. I don't care. Yeah. Well, we're going to, we're going to celebrate today. We're going to have fireworks going crazy. We're so proud of y 'all. Y 'all are amazing. You're like the perfect couple. you young, you Gen Zers. Here's your poster children right here. Addison and Autumn, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 184 ,000 paid off house and everything in 32 months from 26 years old and 27 years old. count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream! Three, two, one. We're debt-free! Yeah! Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo!

1:14:49Dave Ramsey:Wow!

1:15:25Dave Ramsey:It's interesting. I was checking out at a place the other day, and young men work in the valet, two high schoolers. One of them was in our classes in high school. And he's like, hey, man, stuff on YouTube, man. Cool. Thank you, man. And all this stuff. And he said, so give me one of the other one pipes up. And he said, give me a proverb, Dave. And I went, OK. Where's that coming from? Because I love proverbs. And this kid must have actually known something about who we were. And so because if you read Proverbs, the book of wisdom in the Bible, over and over, you'll have a master's degree in finance.

1:16:05Dave Ramsey:and it happened to be the 22nd of March and I said well here's one for you Proverbs 22.7 says the rich rules over the poor and the borrower is slave to the lender oh by the way here's an interesting thing Proverbs 22.6 says train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it now keep in mind that there are not numbers in the original scriptures and so there's no 22.6, 22.7 So if you actually just read that, it says, train up a child in the way he should go. When he's old, he'll not depart from it. The rich rule is over the poor and the borrower is slave to the lender.

1:16:44Dave Ramsey:Train up a kid to stay out of debt. It's pretty clear. But we separate those because proverbs are very disconnected sayings, and we don't usually put them together. And I said, so train your kids up to stay out of debt. And so train them up when they go on a dating website to find another family that went through financial peace. You see, when you change your family tree, here's how you do it. You cannot change your family tree simply by stacking cash. If you raise idiots, they will go through everything you made, no matter what you make. If you leave idiots money, there will be no money. It will not survive one generation.

1:17:23Dave Ramsey:No kidding. We all know that. I mean, you can't leave them$100 million. They'll still blow it. And there's not you can't but you can't stack enough cash to leave it to idiots. So the way you change your family tree has two components to it. One is you raise godly, strong, contented young men and women that find each other and choose to marriage someone like them. And you leave them a stack of cash. in this case this young couple has not had yet the inheritance of the stack of cash that is waiting on both of them probably but instead they are already almost millionaires at 26 and 27 with a paid for house been married only three years in 32 months paid off their house but mom and dad changed their family tree by teaching in both cases these kids were raised in an environment of biblical wisdom, common sense ways of handling money, get out of debt, stay out of debt, be on a budget.

1:18:23Dave Ramsey:They're financial peace babies. They don't have credit cards. They're not motivated by the name brand on your purse. They're not motivated by fill in the blank of stupid stuff that people in America do and that consequently are broke, spending money that you don't have to buy things you really can't afford to impress people you don't even really like. That's the opposite of what we're talking about. And this young couple is like, this is like every parent's dream come true, not only to raise one, but then have them marry another one. Oh my gosh, that's awesome. Isn't that the most fun thing you can think of?

1:19:01The only thing that would add to that is if you had somehow officiated the wedding, that would have probably, you asked me, was there any more fun? That would have probably been, I mean, it would have been quite the, you know, you just zip in. I'm pretty, pretty boring and stuff like that. pastor.

1:19:14Dave Ramsey:That would not be a good thing. To see you in a tux would be also exciting. A little, yeah. We're not even... Just keep it up, Ken. So the question was proverbial. Yeah. It was rhetorical. Rhetorical, that's the word. Rhetorical. That's the part where you're quiet, yeah. I try to be when you're on, I really do. That's a great story. The point is the way you change your family tree is you change the mathematics of your situation, your net worth, instead of retiring and having to eat dog food and calling up your relatives for money because you're broke and you worked your whole life and you have nothing to show for it because you spent everything you made, your whole stinking life.

1:19:56Dave Ramsey:Instead of doing that, you changed your life. In the process, your kids watched, and it changes their life. That's right. And then they become a better version of you and a wiser version of you, and you've changed your family tree. Add to that a high net worth, and now you've got amazing things that happen. So if you studied the Old Testament, for instance, you would know that inheritance is very biblical when done properly and when understood that it's actually God's money that you're managing. So, see, David was prevented from building the temple because of misbehavior. And named Bathsheba. It was a UFO, an unclad female object.

1:20:43Dave Ramsey:And so, yeah, he was prevented from building the temple. So his son Solomon built the temple. What did Solomon build the temple with? His own money? No, with David's money. It was inherited money that built the temple. And it was somewhere around$20 billion in today's dollars to build that structure. If you do the biblical money narrative and you fast forward that with inflation several thousand years, you get a ridiculous amount of money. So this billionaire left billions of dollars to his son who built the temple, inherited money, built the temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. That's interesting when you think about it.

1:21:29Dave Ramsey:So this idea of generational change is entirely possible. And it can go negative and it can go positive. But you've got the ability to change your family tree. And that last couple, man, that's just everything. That's the whole thing. So if you're working the baby steps, we want to get you on every dollar because that's what everybody says when they're doing their debt-free scream. What do you tell people the key to getting out of debt is? I say it over and over and over again. and all the time, what do they say? Got to be on a budget. Got to be working together. Got to be on a budget together.

1:21:59Dave Ramsey:Got to be working together on a budget. Got to be on a budget. We have to be on a budget. Every dollar. We love every dollar. Every dollar got us out of debt. Well, every dollar will get you out of debt because it not only is a budgeting app, but it also hand spoon feeds you all the Ramsey insights to make you do the budget the correct way to work our system. And if you don't want to work our system, you're really not going to like every dollar because we're going to be like up in your face going, this is the fastest way to get out of debt and build wealth and be outrageously generous and change your whole family tree is every dollar and it's free you can download it at the app store or google play ta-da just like that david is in sioux falls south dakota hi david how are you i'm doing well how about you dave and ken better than we deserve sir how can we help um so i am a lutheran pastor and my question is should i opt out of social security and what steps should i take if i do so because i mean you've been mentioning changing your family tree if i did that i would actually change my family tree with investing and also helping out fellow Christians, because I mean, as a pastor...

1:23:10How old are you, David?

1:23:11Dave Ramsey:I'm 28. Perfect. Okay. Great question. And I've counseled pastors, Financial Peace University has been taught in 50 ,000 churches in the past 25 years. So I've been asked this question a lot. And here are the, here's the three or four components to the situation. Number one, Social Security provides three things. disability in the event you became completely disabled. So you need to make sure you have disability insurance. You need that anyway, whether you have Social Security or not. If you die, your children, your minor children will get money from Social Security. They won't get that if you opt out.

1:23:49Dave Ramsey:So you need life insurance. You need that anyway, about 10 to 12 times your income. So those are the two main things. And, of course, you're going to retire. And so you're not going to have Social Security when you retire if you opt out. And so you need to be investing for retirement, but you need to be doing that anyway because Social Security is not enough. You eat dog food if you're on Social Security. So you have to do those three things if you opt out because you're vulnerable if you don't. Disability insurance, life insurance, and make sure you're saving for retirement. The fourth component is the IRS paperwork says that in order to opt out, you have to be a conscientious objector, which means I object to the Social Security system on a spiritual basis.

1:24:39Okay?

1:24:40Dave Ramsey:Not just I don't like it. Okay? I, as a Christian, could object to it. I can't because I'm not a pastor. but I could object to it on a spiritual basis saying it's a horrible use of God's money. It's bad stewardship. And so I easily could sign that in good conscience, but you need to be able to sign that in good conscience and say spiritually, I disagree with the social security system.

1:25:26Dave Ramsey:Welcome back to the Ramsey Show in the Fairwinds Credit Union studio. I'm Dave Ramsey. Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, number one bestselling author, is my co-host. Dee is in El Paso, Texas. Hi, Dee, how are you? Good, how are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Yeah, so my husband spends a lot of our landscaping budget on trying to get grass to grow in the desert. Is it fair for me to ask him to spend feudal grass spending from his fund money? How much is he spending? I've got to know this number. Well, like in a summer season between sod and seed and water, it's probably like$250 to$300 out of our$500 budget.

1:26:13Dave Ramsey:Your$500 budget for what? The$500 is the line item for landscaping? Yeah, for like a season. Okay. It's not a lot. Okay. And what's your household income? I mean, it's a trivial amount compared to our budget. What's your household income? We make$210 ,000. What? Sorry,$210 ,000. $210 ,000. Okay. All right. Yeah. And so, yeah, and it's so is it the futility that bothers you? I think so. And we just have like even though we have a high income, we have a lot of other things that we're putting that money towards. So it's like we've carved out this number that we agree on. And, yeah, so maybe it is the futility.

1:27:12And I don't mind it that he wants to experiment with growing grass, but this is three seasons now. So is it fair to just call it a hobby? How much does he enjoy it? Apparently, a lot. Well, does he enjoy it or does he just feel like it's really ugly and it's more of a thing that bothers him versus he's really loving the time spent on it? That's what I'm trying to get at. I think that he's an analytical person who doesn't like to lose. And so I feel like it's almost like Sisyphusian.

1:27:44Dave Ramsey:It's me against the grass. By the way, great word. You win the caller of the day for using that word. That's fabulous. And him trying to beat the sun is, that's a tough one. That's a tough one-on-one battle. The futility seed is another one. These are some great lines. Oh, man.

1:28:04Dave Ramsey:Okay. Okay.

1:28:08Dave Ramsey:Because it is a very small amount of your world and it gives him joy, I don't care which line item it's in. It still leaves your house. You're still spending$250 on futility, regardless of what you label it. You could label it futility in the budget. Have you customized the futile seed budget? That's a different kind of utility. And so you just put it right there under subset of landscaping. And you name it what it is, but it still leaves your budget. I mean, if you take it out of his hobby, oh, you're saying, though, it doesn't leave your budget because you're saying you would not increase his hobby by that amount.

1:28:52Right.

1:28:53Dave Ramsey:Oh. And you've got another line item you want that money to go to, correct? Yes. Which one? What is it? We're saving to put in a shade structure in our backyard. A what structure? Like a shade awning thing. A shade structure. Okay. Okay. And what does the shade structure cost? It'll be about$7 ,000. Okay. All right. And so$250 a month for six months is$1 ,500, right? Yeah. Okay. So I think the way this would sound at our house, okay, net-net, I agree with you that this is futile probably. And net-net, I agree that it's cool for him to want to do it anyway. And net-net, we're all in agreement on these three things.

1:29:48Dave Ramsey:You have the money. It's no big deal. Okay? So it's not killing your family. Your children have diapers, all that. I mean, we're okay. Okay. So at our house, it would sound something like this. look, it's bothering, Sharon would say, it's bothering me that we're wasting money on X because we're saving for Y, and I think we could get there faster. And I'll say, yeah, but it would bother me to not do the futility seeds. I need to do those. It's good for me. And so I'll cut the, let's cut the budget some other places and let you get, let's get the shade thing a little faster by cutting in other areas.

1:30:24Dave Ramsey:And she and I would end up negotiating some other area that we cut that didn't mean as much to either one of us. Because in this case, this actually means something to him. He has a valid vote in this process. It means something to you to increase the speed at which we buy the shelter from the same sun that's killing the grass. I wonder if these things could work together. Yes. Oh, there you go. We'll have a large, we'll have a little patch of grass that's underneath the shade. Dave, that's actually brilliant. I'm telling you. This is why I'm here. You know what Stacey would say? It would go like this at our house.

1:31:00She would say, so how do we feel? How do we feel? And she always does that, and it snaps me out of it. And I always go, we? You don't feel— You got a mouse in your pocket? Yeah, you're never out there. She'll say to me, like, we should weed. I go, you don't weed anything. Yeah. It's not weed.

1:31:22Dave Ramsey:It's a passive-aggressive statement. But it's a great one for a wife because it snaps me out of it And it lets me know that she's probably questioning my investment. We have a trash problem. Oh, that means I have a trash problem. That's right. We should go to the dump. That's never the two of us. That's funny. That's funny. I like that. Stacey's the queen of we. No wonder Stacey and Sharon get along. Right. The passive-aggressive queen. And it snaps me out of it because I realize, oh, the queen is not happy with something. We. Right. We are buying seed in futility. Here's why I am on D's husband's side.

1:31:51I'm not anti-D. D, I get it. It's kind of a fun call. It is. But here's the deal, Dave. Yard work for me is very therapeutic. I enjoy getting out, doing a little bit of landscaping. I'm no architect, as you know. But I do enjoy the time out there. My brain frees up. I get some good thinking done because I'm on this menial task. I get it. He doesn't want to give up yet. I think the approach is, how do you feel about this season? You think it's going to work? How many more seasons are we going to try this? I'm going to give you the Stacey tip.

1:32:26Dave Ramsey:We kind of felt that way about our Titans tickets. Oh, exactly. How many more seasons are we going to try this? How many more seasons? That's right. Yeah. Talk about futility. Boy, that's so true. You NFL fans know what we mean. Our beloved Titans. We got another uniform, another new logo. I don't think we have any new results. We'll see. Dee, it's fun. We're not giving you much of an answer, but I think he has a valid point. It is that, but I also think it's valid for you to bring up that because you feel like this is futile, we need to squeeze somewhere else in the budget if you're not willing to give up the futile seeds.

1:33:07Dave Ramsey:And I actually love Dave's, and I'm being serious, Dee. I love Dave's suggestion. we save up we stop the futility we save up for the shaded structure and then he tries to grow grass underneath that i think that's actually a stroke of genius i don't think it i don't think it'll work but i think it needs sun but what do i know it's the arid climate ken it's not that's it just get a bag of rocks

1:33:43We'll be right back.

1:34:10Dave Ramsey:Dave Ramsey here. Most people stay stuck with their money because they're not paying attention to it. Most people are living paycheck to paycheck, stressed out and broke. Don't be most people. You work way too hard to be broke and feel broke, and you deserve to have something to show for it. That's why we built the Every Dollar Budget app. It gives you a personalized plan for your money that shows you how to free up extra money every month and use it to beat debt and build lasting wealth. Plus, you get real coaches guiding you through your plan step by step. Look, most people hearing this will just keep hoping something changes, but not you.

1:34:50Dave Ramsey:You're ready to make change happen, starting now. Go download EveryDollar in the App Store or Google Play and start for free today.

1:35:17Dave Ramsey:The Ramsey Show Question of the Day is brought to you by Why Refi? Defaulted private student loans don't define you, but dealing with them can. Why Refi helps you to refinance into a low fixed rate payment that you can afford so you can take control of your money and get back to working the baby steps. Go to whyrefi.com slash Ramsey. That's the letter Y-R-E-F-Y dot com slash Ramsey. Might not be in all states. Today's question comes from Kristen in Idaho. My husband and I are in our mid-50s and both work full-time. I contribute 15 % in my employer's 401k, but my husband works for a small business and doesn't receive retirement benefits.

1:35:58Would you recommend that I increase my investments to cover the both of us? I don't think so, because just because he doesn't have an employer program, he still has an income, and he can still be investing at that 15 % rate that we teach. So it's the principle, not necessarily the product. And in this case, if you invest the way we teach, then he can absolutely start investing in retirement. So you don't have to double up.

1:36:24Dave Ramsey:You can, but I would use some extra in yours if I had to, Christian. Yes. But the first thing I would do is both of you do Roth IRAs. You can do$8 ,600 each every year right now. And so that's$17 ,200. That 15 % of$100 ,000 would get you there, right? So, I mean, that's 17 % of$100 ,000 income. So if that doesn't get you with what you're doing in your 401k to 15%. So if he makes over$100 ,000, you'll need to do something more than, or over$110 ,000. You'll need to do something more than two Roths. But you can do$8 ,600 apiece at age 50. and that all, you know, both of them, 8600 your name, 8600 his name, go to RamseySolutions.com and click on SmartVestor Pro.

1:37:14Dave Ramsey:Find a SmartVestor Pro in your area. They can set that up and have it auto-drafted out of your checking account. It's very easy to do. In the four types of mutual funds, we talk about growth, growth and income, aggressive growth and international. That's how mine is set up. That's how Ken's is set up. And if that plus your 401k doesn't get you there because he makes 200k, which, okay, he works for a small business and doesn't receive retirement benefits, the likelihood of him making$200 ,000 is pretty low. Probably. Okay. So more than likely, you know, that'll do it. But if it doesn't, then you could add some to yours.

1:37:48Dave Ramsey:But I would want you to do two Roth IRAs before you talk about adding to yours, to Ken's point. And so I think you can get there without any trouble. London is in Atlanta. Hi, London. How are you? Better than I deserve. How are you? Just the same, sir. How can I help? So I'm on my last credit card of my debt snowball, and it's at$7 ,800 that I got. And the entire time that I've been paying it, I've had a 0 % APR on it until the start of this year. And now it's skyrocketed up to 28%. I'm wondering if it would be smart to seek a debt consolation loan to get a lower APR, or if I should just bear down and pay off of an APR.

1:38:38I make$4 ,700 right now, but I'm getting married in two weeks. What does she make? Not quite sure. We're not quite sure. She's starting a new job. But she'll be making$15 an hour part-time.

1:38:51Dave Ramsey:Why part-time? it's a career advancement for her, and this is kind of an entry level, and they aren't offering full-time for a little while. Okay. I'm sorry, part-time$15 doesn't sound like career advancement to me. Well, it's for a pharmacy position, so there's a lot of room for growth. Is she a pharmacist? No, she's a tech, so she's working. All right. Yeah, she needs to get full-time work. And if they don't provide that within 30 days, she needs to get a different job. There's no career. This is not career advancement on counting pills out is not. No. No, it's not. You know, she's not a pharmacist going to make$135.

1:39:38Dave Ramsey:She's not. So anyway, aside from that, because that does bring us to the point of while she's working part-time, she needs another part-time job, too, because you guys have a$7 ,800 debt. What other debts do you all have? No, that's all of it. Does she have any money? Do you have any money? Not in retirement? I've got$1 ,000 for my emergency fund, but aside from that, no. She doesn't have any money? No, no debt either. Okay. All right, good. All right, cool. All right. Well, the answer is, you know, no, I would not get a consolidation loan. You're going to get yourself off into some deep water with some bad papers, some bad loan terms there.

1:40:21Dave Ramsey:What I would do is shop for a different credit card that has a 0 % and just do a balance transfer. But here's the thing. It's$7 ,800. I want you to pay this off in like two months. I want you all to work like 24-7 and clear it up right now. That's kind of been how I paid off my other credit cards because I was taking up side work, but my side work's kind of slowed down right now. Well, get a different side work. Okay. get more side work there's always side work lots of side work what do you do for a living i'm a machinist oh great man you can find some work for sure there's definitely people good lord and you're in atlanta a market that size oh you can find work for sure i'm north of atlanta i'm over closer to blue ridge okay well you may have to may have to haul a little bit to get to some work then but anyway yeah you're you're anyway yes i would pick up extra work side work and the it's not 78 000 so this should not be around long and so the interest rate if you only have it for three months the interest rate almost doesn't matter if the debt is going to be around three to six months max the interest rate is almost irrelevant but if you want to burn some calories and go get a zero percent transfer credit card or a five percent interest current transfer credit card i don't care anything like that transfer it to another card and then cut this one up and then cut that one up as soon as you do the transfer and then still pay it off just as fast but you have a 7800 problem you don't have a 700 problem and 700 is the interest we're talking about so that's you know 700 doesn't solve your problem if you got another zero percent it doesn't solve the problem it's still sitting there looking at you you need a grand as saying you're getting married and you need to go get as soon as you can and clean it up as fast as you possibly can.

1:42:18Dave Ramsey:And, you know, that's how I would go at this. Susan's in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Hi, Susan. How are you? I'm fine, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. How can we help? We have a second home. It's my husband and I were recently married. I didn't do anything for about a year with the home. I rented it for a year. And then when we started to delve into it, we thought we'd flip it real quick. But it's kind of become a nightmare. And to bring it up to code, it's costing us a lot. So the question is to keep, you know, plugging along, cash flowing it, or we brought a contract in, we're looking at$80 ,000 to$100 ,000 to get everything done.

1:43:06There is a mortgage still on the home. So we're kind of looking at what options.

1:43:12Dave Ramsey:How much is owed on the home? $80 ,000. What will it sell for as is? As is, I don't think it's going to bring much because it's been pretty much gutted. That's the big problem. As is, what will it sell for? Have someone look at it and tell me. What do you think it's really going to sell for? All the emotion about you being pissed off about this house or whoever gutted it, I don't care about. What will the house actually sell for?

1:43:40maybe 125 sell it i wouldn't put 80 in it sell it and put a few dollars in your pocket

1:43:47Dave Ramsey:move on okay okay yeah why put 80 into that you put 80 into it now you're not it's got to bring over 160 for you to break even on that investment and it's already a piece of crap house that you hate. Right? Not exactly, but I understand. Yeah, I mean, no adjective you used towards the house was positive. Yeah, anyway, that's what I would do. If I woke up in your shoes, this thing is, it's a leftover from another life that was imported into this new marriage, and it needs to be jettisoned from the new marriage. I want a clean house, no pun intended.

1:44:35Thank you.

1:45:04Dave Ramsey:Hey guys, Dave Ramsey here. Every day on this show, we help people work through real money problems and figure out what to do next. Now, you can get 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 RamseySolutions.com and try Ask Ramsey today. That's RamseySolutions.com.

1:45:55Dave Ramsey:The Ramsey Show is going on tour this April. next month. We're headed to Charlotte, Denver, Phoenix, and Anaheim. If you've never experienced this show live in person, well, you have the opportunity. It's a perfect date night. If one of you is a spender, one of you is a saver, come have Rachel and John and George and Jade and Ken. Settle the money debates live in front of everybody. Tickets are already sold out in Anaheim. We've been told there's three left in Denver, which means Denver's sold out. Charlotte and Phoenix, don't wait. You're going to be sold out soon, too. Go to RamseySolutions.com slash events or click the link in the show notes if you're listening on the podcast or on the YouTube.

1:46:38Dave Ramsey:Come out and see the show live in person. Josh is in Chicago. Hey, Josh, how are you? I'm doing well, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? So my question is, my wife and I have been going back and forth on whether or not it makes sense to keep our country club membership at this stage in our life and finances. Ooh. Who says keep it? Who says get rid of it? You know, I would say I'm probably leaning more keep. My wife's probably leaning more get rid of it. But at the same time, I'd say in the recent months, it's been a little bit back and forth of there are times where we'll talk about it and she says keep it.

1:47:15You probably had a big upfront on it, right? So we've been there for six years. We joined as junior members, and we had a pretty small upfront, actually. But the catch is now as I'm getting older and kind of progressing up to different membership classes, if we left and came back, I'd then be hit with a big downstroke. I'd be hit with about a$50 ,000 downstroke if we left and came back.

1:47:38Dave Ramsey:Oh, a$50 ,000. Okay. All right. And what's your household income? So base salaries end up right under$300, and then with bonuses and everything, we pretty commonly clear a little over$4, sometimes a little more than that. So is this a golf membership also? Yeah. And how often do you play? So I'll play two to three times a week during the season. We're in Chicago, so, I mean, we get Memorial Day through Labor Day. What are your dues? So monthly dues before we walk in the door are$8.65. And during the winter, it's about that. We don't really eat out there much during the winter, and during the season we play quite a bit, eat there, pretty involved socially.

1:48:18So maybe$2 ,000 to$2 ,500 a month we're paying in season.

1:48:25Dave Ramsey:Yeah, but that's in lieu of restaurants and some of that. Correct. Yeah, or green fees for that matter. Do you have any debt? We do. We do have some car debt, should be cleared by the end of this year, but we've got about$77 ,000 in car debt. And it's that in our house that we have. Okay. Well, based on your usage, I don't know why you're thinking about getting rid of it. You have the income to support that. Some of that's the equivalent of a restaurant bill. So basically it's$1 ,000 a month,$12 ,000 a year. And you play unlimited golf, I assume. Correct. And usually you've got like a food minimum, right?

1:49:13Yeah.

1:49:13Dave Ramsey:I'd say the reason I'm – actually, in my category, I don't have a food minimum. Wow. Okay. So the$2 ,000 is if you actually did eat then. Correct. Or take guests on the golf course, yeah. Exactly. Okay. So you can afford all that. If you weren't using it and you're just burning$1 ,000 a month and you never golfed and you didn't go over there and eat, then yeah that starts to be the time that's that season has that sun has set right and so we sunset the idea and we move on because it's not it's this season of our life we're not there an example would be um one of the guys working here is a member of a club that we have a corporate sponsorship into and he said i can't go play golf i have little kids and he goes i'm not paying a thousand dollars a month to just say i belong over there and food's okay food's okay but it's basically a golf club and so he's like no I'm out and so because he's not that and he you know someday he may want to join something again but it's probably a decade from now because he's got little kids and a round of golf's five hours you know so that was kind of where the question came from a little bit is so we I mean my wife and I were early 30s and we've got two kids but I mean we've got a one-year-old and like a four-month-old and so I do see my golf usage dwindling a little bit but at the same time I mean And it's something I do want for my kids when they are old enough to enjoy it.

1:50:36And let's say five, six years, something like that. And my thought was if I left and rejoined, I'd be hit with a huge downstroke at that point. So does it make sense to kind of keep it during these next five to six years where I won't be using it quite as much?

1:50:49Dave Ramsey:Yeah, but if you're going to use it some, it's just a utilization thing. Don't pay for a subscription that you don't read. Don't pay for a membership you don't use. right but if you're going over there and playing golf um um you know a chicago club's tough there's some iconic clubs there obviously and um i mean i played medina up there the other day and it's incredible uh as an as an example but um i'm sure with based on the numbers you're giving me that's not what we're talking about but the uh anyway there's some iconic things up there i I think when you cease to use it enough because of whatever reason, kids or whatever, then you would cancel it.

1:51:33Dave Ramsey:But today you're doing that in anticipation of that because today's actual usage justifies keeping it. Makes sense. And, you know, because you can't go back, in Baby Step 2 I would keep it because of your income. Now, if you told me your income was$100 ,000, we wouldn't have been having this conversation. I don't care about your junior membership. You just can't afford it. But you're making$300 ,000 plus, and it's$12 ,000, and you can't get back in, so you stay in to stay in. But I wouldn't keep it 10 years with non-usage either. Yeah, I think it's an ROS, return on spend there. I mean, I'll tell you what happened to me.

1:52:16I joined the same golf club. I got bit. I've always enjoyed golf, but I really wanted to play a lot. And for two years, I did. And then I found another hobby. And this season of my life, I don't have time for two hobbies because I go all in. Mr. Pickleball does not need a golf course. It's essentially what happened. My own wife said, so when was the last time you played golf? And I said, well, it's probably been three weeks because every nice day I was trying to get a pickleball game. And so it came down to, I realized it just doesn't make any sense. It's all it was.

1:52:45Dave Ramsey:Yeah. Vincent's in Raleigh, North Carolina. Hey, Vincent, how are you? I'm doing good. How can we help? Well, I got a Shelby Limited Edition GT500, and it's worth about$105 ,000. I owe about$65 ,000 on it. But the question I have is, I owe the RS a little bit of money, about$18 ,000, and I got some credit card bills. and the garden value, which is a rare car's boost, is a value. I'm trying to wait to at least get up to$150 ,000 or I should just sell it now and clear off all my debt and everything else. If you did not own it and you had$40 ,000 in your checking account and you said I could either clean up my debts or I could go borrow another$65 ,000 and buy a car that I hope goes up in value, you would never do that.

1:53:41Dave Ramsey:You need to sell this car. It is a fabulously cool car. I love the car. But, dude, you're broke. You don't need to be driving a$100 ,000 car. You're broke. Okay. I don't think he anticipated that response. Yeah. I mean, he said$105 ,000 value, 065. Take the$40 ,000, clean up the mess, and move on. You can, you know, when you become wealthy someday and you have extra money, you can buy cars. It's okay. I buy cars. I like wild cars, crazy cars. I like it. It's fun. And that's a neat vehicle. Oh, man. A GT500. A GT500. Boy, that's going to be a sad day. Yeah. Make no mistake about it, Vincent. What we're suggesting here is not painless.

1:54:30No, it's... Whew. That's a beast of a car.

1:54:34Dave Ramsey:Just removed your little finger. I would get one more burn out of it before I sold it. I would burn those tires one more time. It's a hoss. But yeah, it's a classic muscle car. It is going up in value. I don't disagree with you there. I don't think you're in a position to borrow money to invest in collectibles going up in value. And that's essentially what you have done. And so I would tell you to get out of it, even though my 15-year-old redneck boy says that's the coolest car ever. But yeah, still got to sell it.

1:55:10Thank you.

1:55:45Dave Ramsey:It's that time again, folks. Tax season is here. I know some of you would rather bury your head in the sand until April 15th than face your taxes. But here's a better idea. If your tax situation is complicated, get in touch with a Ramsey trusted tax pro today. That way they can take the stress off your shoulders once those tax forms come in and teach you how to keep your tax bill as low as possible. But don't wait. Ramsey Trusted Pros can book up fast. Go to RamseySolutions.com slash tax pro to find one who serves your area with excellence. That's RamseySolutions.com slash tax pro.

1:56:42Dave Ramsey:Scripture of the Day, 1 Corinthians 13, 6 and 7. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Thomas Sowell said facts can be ignored, but their consequences cannot be escaped. Logan is with us in Illinois. Hi, Logan. How are you? Hi, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Well, I'm 29 years old. I'm a single father. Basically, extenuating circumstances over the last couple of years has led me to this mountain of debt. And I just, I can't even look at the bills anymore. And I don't know where to start.

1:57:28Dave Ramsey:Okay. How big is the mountain? A quick list,$26 ,000 in total would kind of get me set straight. Be debt-free. So$26 ,000 in debt. Okay. And give me a little breakdown on that. What kind of debt is it? A lot of it's credit cards. How much? Credit cards. I've got one that's$27.75, 28%. I've got another one that's only$639. I got another that's$2 ,980, and then I think one that's another$600. That's only$7 ,000. Yeah. Okay. So they're emotionally heavy, but they're not that much. So what's the other$19 ,000? I have a 2016 Chevy Malibu,$10 ,139 left. That's 13.63%. That thing is just, I mean, it's falling apart.

1:58:33Dave Ramsey:And what's the other$10 ,000 in debt? The other debt is mostly medical. I'm looking at a lot of medical. There's one from my last apartment that I had to move out, and I just couldn't afford it. Are you paying them monthly right now? No, I am not. I went to a collector, and I owe$2 ,290 to them. Do you pay any of those monthly right now? I just, yeah, I'm trying. Okay. There's different places. And what's your income? $40 ,000 salary. I just got a new job, so I'm starting in two days. What did you used to make? I was making a little bit more than that. I was making about$45 ,000, but I was working a crap ton of overtime, and I was not seeing my child.

1:59:24So this is So you were making more money

1:59:26Dave Ramsey:But were not current And so you took a job making less money I did But I'm driving an hour Two hours less a day I'm not driving an hour to and from work every day Okay So that's going to save probably about Two to three thousand dollars in gas What do you do? I am a I'm going to be a paralegal And how old is your child? He's nine years old He'll be ten in May Okay And so he and your ex live around you there? Yes. Yeah, she lives about 20 minutes away, going through court proceedings and everything right now to get custody. And that's... How long have you been divorced? We were never married. We've been split up since he was about one years old, and I've been fighting this uphill battle for the better part of seven years.

2:00:18Dave Ramsey:And you've been seeing him during that time? Yes, all the time. So why is there a battle if you're seeing him? That seems the way it goes. I fought for joint custody. She had the majority custody in the split up. And then I had to fight to get joint custody. Finally had joint custody for the last couple years. And then there was issues that gave me protective custody over the last six months. And now I'm doing trying to get full custody or majority custody. But the judge wants us to do mediation. And that costs$600 per party. Then I had to pay the attorney another three. Were you a paralegal in this previous job doing all the overtime?

2:01:03No, I was not. What were you doing? I was working at a warehouse on a forklift. Yeah, I'm going to tell you, I appreciate that you're saving gas on the hour each day, but you need to be working crazy hours where you are now. You really do.

2:01:22Dave Ramsey:You can get out of this pretty quickly. Yeah, so here's the thing. You've spent 90 % of your brain power fighting custody for the last however many years. You spent almost 0 % managing money.

2:01:42Dave Ramsey:Agreed? Yeah. I mean, you put all of your energy into the nine-year-old, which is good. You're a dad and you're trying to do things for your kid, and I don't blame you for that. But you get what you lean on. And so you're going to have to lean on this money piece from an income production standpoint, a side hustle temporarily, long enough to clean some of this up. and to start to plow through it, to get rid of the credit cards and cut them up and get this car paid off and whatever else we've got to do to get this thing moving, right? Yeah. I mean, you're not paying on the old debts anyway. Just let them sit for now.

2:02:23Dave Ramsey:I don't care about your credit. And then I want you to pile up some cash. Let's get this car paid off as fast as you possibly can. Get these credit cards paid off as fast as you can. The interest rates are bothering you. I know that because you brought them up in detail. Yeah, it seems like they're paying minimum of one and then I'm behind them next. I said they're bothering you, but I didn't say they're your problem. Interest rates aren't your problem. They're only your problem because they've been around so long. But if you pay off these cards,$7 ,000 cleans up your credit card net, all of it.

2:02:54Dave Ramsey:And so$17 ,000 makes your life whole. And so if I'm you, I'm going to go find$1 ,500 a month, which is$18 ,000 a year. and I'm going to cut into my monthly budget to the tune of at least$1 ,000 a month. That puts$2 ,500 a month on$17. That's a six or an eight-month program, and you're debt-free except the medical bills and the old landlord debt. And you can breathe again. But right now you've focused all of your energy and time. You've spent zero time analyzing and attacking the money thing because you spent all of your calorie burn on this custody fight, which is totally acceptable. I'm not shaming you for that.

2:03:38Dave Ramsey:I'm just pointing out that when you bother to care about the money one-tenth as much as you care about this custody thing, it's going to straighten up. But you have to lean in on it hard, like you've been leaning on this other thing hard. And what do I go first? I know some people say interest rates. Some people say lowest debt. I don't give a crap about your interest rates. I want you to get your budget on beans and rice, rice and beans. I want you to pick up$1 ,500 a month in side hustle, and I want you to put$2 ,500 a month towards credit cards. If you do that, in three months the credit cards are gone, and in four more months the car debt is gone.

2:04:15Dave Ramsey:That's seven months. $2 ,500 into 17, that counted up. Interest rates don't matter when you're doing it that fast. And so list your debts, smallest to largest, pay minimum payments on everything but the little one, and then get pissed off about this. It's been riding on your back too long. You need to get this thing off your back. And by the way, your head will be clear to be a better dad and to fight these other battles if you're not broke. And then go clean up the little medical bills. They're like a bunch of freaking mosquitoes around your head. And then call the landlord and offer them 25 cents on the dollar, lump sum once you've got a little money saved up, and they'll clear that.

2:04:54Dave Ramsey:You could be debt-free in like a year. completely debt-free in a year. But you're going to have no, you're going to get nothing done during that year except nine-year-old, work all the time, nine-year-old, work some more, and pay debt. And that's the only thing you get to do for the next year. Complete focus. And you can knock this out very quickly. I'm going to send you a copy of the book, The Total Money Makeover, to help you do it. And we're going to get you signed up for every dollar. Christian will pick up and get all of that happening for you. You can do this. you've just been completely focused on something else, which, by the way, was the right thing to do.

2:05:32Dave Ramsey:You should be focused on your kid before you're focused on money. But the great news is that cleaning up the money also helps the kid because it puts you in a better position to fight when you're not broke and staring at interest rates all the time. That puts this hour of the Ramsey Show in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus.

2:06:24Thank you.