No Matter Your Income, You Can Still Build Wealth

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22:08Dave Ramsey:buying or selling a home is a big deal you want a high protein high octane professional real estate agent helping you with that transaction not somebody who got their license three weeks ago and is your friend from church no we want a pro somebody does hundreds of transactions and knows what the flip they're doing. Ramsey Trusted Program is the only way to find the top agents you can trust to help make your home a blessing. It's a free service, Ramsey Trusted. So if you want to find a local Ramsey Trusted Real Estate Pro, which has been vetted for production and quality, you can find that for free at RamseySolutions.com slash agent, or click the link in the description.

22:53Dave Ramsey:There you go. Benjamin is with us in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Hi, Benjamin. How are you? Hey, doing wonderful, Dave. Thanks for taking my call this afternoon. Certainly, sir. How can we help? Well, me and my wife are having just a mild financial disagreement, and we're trying to put the puzzles together to see what we should invest in money or what we should do with it. Cool. How long have y 'all been married? We haven't been married for 10 years. Awesome. How old are y 'all? 38 and 37. Cool. Very cool. So tell me about the disagreement. Well, right now I own a construction company and we've been successful.

23:33We've paid off all our debt besides our mortgage. And I really haven't tried to attack my mortgage just because I am locked in at a 2.5 % interest rate. And rather than paying it off, I'm investing money in rental properties trying to make a passive income. I've invested in silver and just a few other things to where, you know, when time comes to retire, I've got a passive income coming in that's taking care of me and not too concerned about the 2.5 % interest rate being, I don't think we'll ever see it again. We're at the point now to where I could pay the house off. Oh, you have the money. At the same point, we do.

24:13We have the money. How much is the balance?

24:16Dave Ramsey:The balance is about$200 ,000 currently. Well, you are doing great, Benjamin. Congratulations. Thank you. I appreciate it. Okay. And that's our decision. She believes that we should go ahead and pay that off. And, you know, me personally, I believe we can purchase some more properties. Why does she believe you should pay it off? What's her reasoning behind that? Just stress more, just knowing that we don't owe on anything. You know, there's nothing tying us down. And my mindset is that we could invest in more properties. I can have my guys go in and fix it up. We could rent it out. And the rent could pay for our mortgage.

24:55And then we've got more assets, you know, in time.

24:59Dave Ramsey:How long ago were you broke before and you didn't have 200 and you had debt still?

25:06Dave Ramsey:Five years? I would say within the last five years, yeah, we've really turned things around. Yeah, and your construction business has blossomed during that five years too, correct? It has. We've been truly blessed. Yeah, because it's been the time it should have. And that five years has been excellent for your business versus not excellent for construction, which has been some other times in our past, right? But right now, it's making hay while the sun shines. So very cool. Okay. Well, you called us, and I'm guessing you probably already knew what we were going to say. well my wife knew what you were gonna say oh you've been set up benjamin you've been set up okay well let me give you a little background as to why she set you up then and but and be nice to you okay so when i was uh 23 my mom and dad were in the real estate and construction business and i got my real estate license when i was 18 and i love real estate investing and when i was 23 i I started buying everything in sight and anything that I could make a return on.

26:10Dave Ramsey:And I have a degree in real estate and finance from the University of Tennessee. And so I was all in on this stuff. I'm 65 now, by the way. But I was 23. And so by the time I was 26, I had$4 million worth of real estate with a million dollar net worth. And it was cash flowing like crazy. I mean, I made good money on it. And but I had a lot of a lot of it on short term notes because I was flipping before there was cable TV or before there was Chip and Joanna. They weren't even born. And so, you know, this is where we were. Right. And so I became a millionaire by the time I was 26 years old doing the kind of thing you're talking about.

26:49Dave Ramsey:But I did it super poorly, a little differently than you're describing. But I'm telling you this story for a reason. then the bank got sold and they called our 90 day notes that we had outstanding and that began a crash that took two and a half years for us to lose everything we own and we were sued and foreclosed on and bankrupt by the time I was 28 with a brand new baby and a toddler 10 years younger than you are now and in that process I started learning what grandma with common sense says about money and what the Bible says about money, and both of those say don't borrow money. But I, with my finance degree, was looking at it through the lens you're looking at it, at the math, and saying, well, I got a 2.5 % mortgage.

27:36Dave Ramsey:Why would I ever get rid of that? I'm trying to create this stream of rental income. But what I left out in my analysis, and therefore what you're also leaving out in your analysis is risk.

27:52Dave Ramsey:100 % of the time that you have debt, there is risk. More debt equals more risk. And so a way to emotionally feel that right now in this discussion is to say, hey, Benjamin, what if your house was paid for? And you didn't have$200 ,000 in the bank. and you have the opportunity to go borrow$200 ,000 against your paid-for home at 2.5%, would you go do that? And you might because you've kind of figured out 2.5 you think is a great rate, and it is a great rate. But you also, if you look at it that way, you might also go kind of gulp. You realize what's at stake. When I say that, I'm going to go borrow against my paid-for home.

28:38Dave Ramsey:There's something in your stomach kind of moves around. You see what I'm saying? No, I see exactly what you're saying. It's a physical reaction to risk. And all that I did there was what's called a sunk cost analysis, and that is to reverse the discussion and see if it feels any different. And if you reverse the discussion, you say, I paid for a house, I'm going to go borrow. It's the same thing as I'm not going to pay it off so that I can go buy rentals. instead of borrowing on my paid for home to go buy rentals, I'm going to not pay it off to go buy paid for rentals. It's the exact same mathematical equation, but thinking about it through a different lens makes your stomach go up in your throat instead of your brain going, oh, I've got two and a half percent.

29:23Dave Ramsey:I'm making money on that. So all of that to say, you called the show where we're always going to tell you to pay off your mortgage. Your wife sets you up. Okay. A hundred percent of the time. And I own several hundred million dollars in real estate that is paid for today. I recovered way vastly recovered from my old bankrupt days. And, you know, and I love real estate. So I want you to own some rental property. And I think you're in a great business with the adjoining business with construction. But let me tell you what will happen to complete my sales pitch. on this. Okay. When you have zero debt of any kind, your construction business will flourish even more.

30:10Dave Ramsey:And here's why. There's nothing gnawing anywhere at the back of your skull saying, I got to take this questionable job because I got to have cashflow. Instead, you look at a questionable job and go, that juice ain't worth the squeeze. I'm one over and you're going to turn down crazy customers. You're going to turn down situations where you're going to go out over your skis and you're pushing too hard. Instead, you're going to, and I've experienced this in my business. I make different decisions in the day-to-day operation of Ramsey Solutions because I don't have debt than if I had to do deals to make payments.

30:53Dave Ramsey:And it's increased my prosperity. Those two things don't seem to be directly connected, but they are yet connected. Oh, here's another one. Physically, people have less physical ailments when they're not carrying any debt. It changes the composite of your body because your anxiety level is way down. So I'm going to sell you as hard as I can to follow your wife's leading there. Agreed? Agreed. happy wife, happy life.

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33:13Dave Ramsey:Jade, I feel like I'm supposed to recap one other thing, and that is that real estate. If you come on this show or if I'm having an interaction with you anywhere and you tell me you want to invest in real estate to create passive income, what I'm going to realize immediately is that you don't know what the flip you're doing. Because you said passive? Because you act like real estate creates passive income. So if you've ever been a landlord, you know that there's nothing passive about it. If you've ever owned rental property, there's zero passivity involved so when people say real estate creates passive income what that tells me is they've been getting financial advice from some moron on tiktok that's what that tells me not that they've actually been in the real estate business okay i've owned rental real estate longer than most of you calling have been alive and that means i'm old but it also means i'm experienced.

34:19Dave Ramsey:And you know what you get from experience? Wisdom? Scars. Okay, I'll go with scars. I'll go with scars. From doing stupid stuff. And so I've done, I've seen it all and done it all. I think with landlording, whether it's commercial properties that are retail with a pizza place or a CrossFit gym or whether it's a condominium and the guy decides he's going to use his wife as a punching bag and he gets put in jail and she has two little kids and now they can't pay their rent and i'm the landlord now what am i supposed to do with her yeah so this you want to call that passive that makes you dumb or at a minimum inexperienced okay so you don't know what passive means passive means you don't have to do any you want passive put your money in a mutual fund and they will just send you an email great great tell you what happened you don't have to do anything.

35:15Dave Ramsey:That's passive. And so there's nothing passive about real estate, period. I even own a piece of ground that has nothing on it. And it's still work. And the tree fell across the neighbor's fence the other day. And he called me and said, your tree's blocking my driveway. It's not even passive. A freaking blank piece of ground is not even pass shouldn't have had that tree on it dave so i mean it's like and he was right so we sent a guy over with a chainsaw and got the guy's driveway back right but oh my god this idea that there's you know but so don't listen to someone who says real estate is passive this is someone that's selling you crap or don't know what they're doing yeah okay it's another way to have an income stream it is an income stream it is an alternative income stream and i love it i've actually more a higher percentage of my net worth is in real estate paid for no mortgages than is in mutual funds yeah okay but i'm adept at and careful with and understand and have a management company that manages our real estate you know and so but it's not passive what's your uh what's your opinion on airbnbs and things like that that aren't just a direct rental that's not even that's not even rental property you opened a hotel you got in the hotel business hotel business If you don't believe me, figure out how many maids you have to hire to change them sheets every day when those people leave.

36:42Yeah.

36:43Dave Ramsey:And all the stuff that you don't even want to talk about that you have to clean up that was left behind at the bachelorette party. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hello, in your condo. Yeah. And they thought that, you know, what happens in Nashville stays in Nashville. Nuh-uh. You left some of it in Nashville, but it didn't stay in Nashville. So we still had to clean it up after you left. and apparently you don't drink that much, girl, because you left some of that. No, this is bad. So this is what Airbnb is. It's gross. It's gross. As difficult as it's going to get. If you might as well buy you a little Hotel Six and go, I'm in the hotel business, at least then you're admitting it.

37:20Dave Ramsey:Yeah. Instead of like, I'm maximizing a piece of rental real estate by making it Airbnb. No, you're not. You're running a hotel. That's all you're doing. It's a short-stay hotel. A hostel at best, right? I mean, that's so, yeah. And be ready for disruption. Like 16 states have already passed laws limiting, and a lot of cities, New York City is coming down on it hard, is shutting down the ability to operate a privately operated, uncertified hotel called an Airbnb. They're shutting them down. And so VRBOs and Airbnbs are - You think they're short-lived? Well, I mean, no, I think they're going to be there.

38:03Dave Ramsey:But, you know, it's not going to be the answer to everything. And, you know, for you to count on that stream of income and then your municipality go, oh, we changed our mind. Yeah. You're out of business. Yeah. But you pay too much for the house because you Airbnb'd it and you're pro forma. Yeah. And you got screwed because you thought, oh, this is going to work. Famous last words, right? So, you know, again, if you want to run a hotel, you can make a lot of money in Airbnb. be. But don't get it twisted. This is the other end of the spectrum from passive. This is like lots of work and gross stuff.

38:42Dave Ramsey:Yeah, it's just ugh.

38:46Dave Ramsey:There's that. Yeah. Alright, and then Caitlin is in Salt Lake City. Hi Caitlin, how are you? Hi Dave and Jade, how are you guys? Better than we deserve. What's up? So So a little background story. My husband and I are both 24 and we just welcomed our first baby a couple months ago. So we were kind of in stork mode, but now we're in that mode. Thank you. We're on baby step number two. My husband's an electrician, but we're trying to decide if he stays at his current job, which is a private owned company. It's a little bit more stable, offers a better work-life balance, or he can move to the electrical union, which would mean significantly higher pay and stronger retirement benefits, but potentially less stability during slow periods and layoffs and then more time away from home and overtime.

39:30So we're trying to decide the more stable path or getting ahead financially.

39:37Dave Ramsey:Well, I think the net-net on the union with him not having steady might not be as much of a raise as it sounds like it is. Yeah, exactly. And that's what we're kind of trying to decide. I don't think the net-net is going to be much. Right. So in Utah, there's a bunch of data centers coming in right now, and so they're offering a lot of incentive pay, like$10 to$15 incentive pay when working on those jobs. But the data centers aren't going to be forever, so we're just kind of trying to decide. Is it possible to work some of that data center stuff as a side hustle? He could. He has to only be working at the union, but he could potentially go back to this private company once these data centers are done being built.

40:22Dave Ramsey:You can't be working private and union in Utah. You have to be only in Utah. It's not a right to work. Interesting. At least that's what we think. We've kind of just been looking into it. He's currently making$38 at his current job, and then he would be making$43 not with including incentive pay. I would stay where you are. Okay. That's not enough. I think by the time you adjust for volatility, you're not going to make a net$5. I agree. Okay. Even with a pension, like we shouldn't jump for a pension over there? I don't jump for pensions. Okay. No. We trust you, so we will do it. I'm going to stay where you are.

41:04Dave Ramsey:But I am going to explore. There's a lot of work that needs to be done in the area is what you're telling me. And he has the skill to do the work. And I'm going to explore what I'm allowed to do as side hustles legally. Right. And I'm not going to lie to somebody. If the union requires you to be union, then I just can't do it at the union sites. But there's all kinds of side hustles. So let me give you an example. Okay. If the side hustle market is being sucked up by the unions, if the electricians that used to do side hustles other ways are now doing data center work with the unions, that means all the jobs they used to do are available.

41:45Dave Ramsey:You see what I'm saying? That's a good way to look at it. or just straight up get on with the data center thing as a side gig working weekends just for six months and pile on and let's get the debt cleaned up right quick. How much debt you got left? We have$86 ,000 in my student loans, and I currently work full-time too. So we're in stork mode, and now we're just kind of going to throw all of our savings. You're out of stork mode because you're home from having the baby, right? Oh, yeah. We are already starting to throw it out. So that's all in the rearview mirror. That's awesome. Congratulations on the baby.

42:16Dave Ramsey:So what do you make? I make$90 ,000 a year. And he does too, right? Yeah, about$80 ,000. Yeah, you're going to be out of debt in no time. I would not make this adjustment. You're going to lose too much quality of life, the juice and worth of the squeeze. I'm using that a lot today. I like it. It's got to be worth it.

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44:14Dave Ramsey:Welcome back to the Ramsey Show and the Fairwinds Credit Union Studio. Jade Washaw, Ramsey personality, is my co-host. The phone number here is 888-825-5225. Jeremiah is in Knoxville, Tennessee. Hi, Jeremiah. How are you? Hey, Dave. Doing good. How are you all doing today? Better than we deserve. What's up? Yes, sir. Well, I just have a couple questions here, a little background story first. I was the owner and operator of a family business of 12. The business was over 12 years old, but I ran it for 12 years. And after COVID, it just got really hard for me to get any work. So I had to take a different avenue for employment, which at the time I didn't have very wise counsel or any counsel at that.

45:07and I did a lot of probably not so popular avenues to help with bills and different situations like that. So my overall question would be I'm working on the baby steps, and obviously I would be at number two, baby step number two on getting rid of all the debt. What is the best scenario or I guess to kind of expedite that, so to say, I've got some unsecured debt, and I have a HELOC that's kind of a gray cloud over my head right now that I'd really like to get taken care of before that draw period closes. How much is the HELOC? The HELOC is$94 ,000. Did you roll all the debt into that, or is there more?

45:57I did. I do have some unsecured debt outside of that, about$13 ,000. Okay.

46:04Dave Ramsey:What's your first mortgage amount? My first mortgage is$1 ,500. No, no, the balance. Oh, the balance. We're$260 ,000. What's the house worth? The house is worth around$850 ,000. Okay. That's good. And what's your household income today? The household income annually is$75 ,000, and I'm the breadwinner. My wife is stay-at-home mom, homeschool mom. We just had our third child last year. So we got a lot of mouth to feed. What did you used to make in the family business? I used to make average take-home gross pay was anywhere from$120 to$160. Doing what? What kind of business was that? I owned a caulking and waterproofing business, so pretty much anything that you can't see on a normal building.

47:01I was the one behind the scenes doing it, but it paid good money when the work was there. It just seemed like the right thing to do at the time because we were thinking fast and needed to take something with a more secure pay, but I obviously knew when I took the job that it was going to be lower income. So I've tried to be patient where I'm at and work the latter.

47:28Dave Ramsey:You can't afford the house you're in with the income you have is your problem. Yeah. What's your mortgage every month? My mortgage every month is$1 ,500 a month, which is pretty good considering what the housing market is now with a 3.35 % interest rate. And we're on year 10 of that. Yeah. And the 94, what's the terms on the HELOC? The HELOC is a 10-year draw period, and we're on like year four. I believe the interest on it is around 6%, probably a little bit lower than that. Who's your bank? My local bank that I deal with is First People's Bank. Will they just put that on a 10-year fixed? Take it off a HELOC, make it a 10-year fixed second mortgage?

48:19Dave Ramsey:Because you've got a 3.5. I normally would tell you to refinance and wrap the HELOC and the first together. But if you do that, you won't be able to afford the payment. Right. That's kind of what I have been getting at anyway on refinancing. Yeah. And that's going to force the sale of the house, which might be the net result of this whole thing of you closing down the business. You may be in a house you can't afford. I don't know. You can afford the$1 ,500, but you can't afford$350 ,000 in debt. That's what's weird. So I don't know how you got a$1 ,500 payment, even at$3 ,500 on$260 ,000. Yeah, did somebody put down a bunch of money?

49:03Dave Ramsey:No,$260 ,000 debt. $1 ,500 doesn't support that. It's$18 ,000 a year. We live on family property, and the property was given to us. So we put the property on collateral, and the house is actually a – we built the house in 2016. So at the time, I was making really good money, and we went that route for our future. And here we are now. Let's see. We built the house in 2016. So we're 10 years into it, four years with another employer. Are you in the same business that you used to be in, but now you're an employee? I am not. I am not. Could you start up the old business as a side hustle? I do a bunch of side work.

49:59That's another thing I was going to point out is I do just about everything I can imagine to help pay off some of those, especially that unsecured debt that we have. Was that part of the 75 you said, or is that on top of? That 75 is my salary through my employer now.

50:17Dave Ramsey:Okay, so tell us what you... I would restart your old business as a side hustle. okay and get because i think you can make the most money there you know that business and you know how to make 160 000 a year doing it and there's plenty of work out there right now um so but but you don't i mean i do it stood as a side hustle you don't have to quit completely and you don't have to go all the way back and you and if you want to shut it back down after you get your heloc cleaned off that's fine um but and then i would start talking to the bank about putting that HELOC on a 15-year fixed or a 10-year fixed or whatever, and no balloons and no calls bearing down on you in the future.

50:57Dave Ramsey:I don't want this thing to pop on you later. But that gets the problem off of you. And then basically you're doing cleanup from the debt that was left over when you didn't transition out of the business fast enough. Correct. Yeah. And it's going to take you a little while to clean that up. But let's just say you made an extra 50 as side hustle. In two years, you paid off your HELOC. True. That's what I want to do. Yeah, that's 100 % possible because that just puts you back at your old income if you do that. Yeah, and then you've got to decide long term. What happened was you got sliced and diced by the COVID situation.

51:45Dave Ramsey:and you came in out of the cold. You wanted a place that felt safe in a rough-and-tumble war zone. I wanted a place where I could come, a bomb shelter I could come into. But it cost you because you're only making$75 ,000, and you used to make$100 ,000 and a quarter to$160 ,000. So it's cost you$50 ,000 a year to have a safe place to heal. So I want to also challenge you that that doesn't mean you need to be there 38 years. Yeah, it's time to get back at it. You may need to step back out, and maybe the side hustle is a way for you to test your footing again and see if you emotionally are ready to go back out in the cold.

52:25Dave Ramsey:Because you're taking a beating on what you could be making.

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54:23Dave Ramsey:Kaylee is with us in Austin, Texas. Hi, Kaylee. How are you? Good. How are you doing today? Better than we deserve. What's up? I was just calling because I am on step two of the baby steps of paying down my debt. But I have a decision to make. I have um I'm 24 and I haven't gone to college yet and I was wanting to go to college to get my business administration degree and even though I'm in baby steps number two I was calling to see your opinion on if I should wait and just keep going with the baby steps and then go to college or bite the bullet get take on the student loans and go to college now well I definitely don't like the idea of you taking on student loans, how much will it cost for you to get the degree?

55:16$12 ,000. Total or per semester? Total. The community college and it'll be fully online. Okay. How, what made you to decide on that? How did you come about saying, I want to, I want to do this? What's your, what's your path here? I've always been kind of a admin girl. I've always been the person behind the scenes doing like data administration and making coordinating and stuff like that. And after doing a lot of research, I found that if I get a business administration degree, it's broad enough of a degree that I can go from either hospitality to hospital services to maybe going in white collar.

56:00And so I figured getting this degree would be the best way for me to move forward. Okay.

56:05Dave Ramsey:So are you talking about a business administration degree? Are you talking about a two-year program? An associate's degree. Yes, sir. I am talking about an associate's degree. Okay. All right. I was making sure I understood what you're doing. Okay. And what do you make today? I make gross$2 ,400 a month. $2 ,400 a month doing what? The same work? Administrative work? Sadly, no. I'm actually a cook. I work at a daycare. Okay, cook at a daycare. How much debt do you currently have? $8 ,771. Okay. Listen, I'm not mad at a$12 ,000 degree if you have researched that it's going to be the path to get you in the spaces you want to get to.

56:53I do like the idea of you buckling down for a few months and paying off the$8 ,000 first and then cash flowing this because I don't see why you can't cash flow this. How much, let's see, how long will it take you to pay off the$8 ,000 making$2 ,400? I'm actually about to hit a really good point in my snowball method. I'm about to pay one of my debt down, and basically I'll have it done within the next 18 months in total. So if you can do$8 ,000 in 18 months, then can you do the$12 ,000 over the course of two years? I think you can, and I think you could probably do that in less time. you might be able to do the$12 ,000 in 18 months because the debt will be totally gone.

57:36Dave Ramsey:Hey, Kaylee, are you saying$2 ,400 take home? So my take home is roughly$2 ,200, so about$1 ,100 a check. And you're living at home? I live in an apartment. What are you paying for rent? So rent in total is$1 ,200. I split it with my partner, with my boyfriend. Have you? So are you making$15 an hour? $15.50, sir. Yeah, that's what I thought. Okay. So it just feels to me like you could probably make more doing almost anything else. Like Target is paying$20 an hour. Oh, goodness. Yeah. Yeah, so I think you need to be looking to up your income and pick up some side hustles, both. I think your job sucks, your current job.

58:35Dave Ramsey:It doesn't pay much. It doesn't. I'm very impressed that you've put together a sustainable life with$2 ,200 take-home pay in Austin, Texas. You are an impressive young woman. That is very responsible. You've been very careful. You've been extremely frugal. You are very, you know, and you're thinking into the future at the same time. You're an impressive young woman. So I want you, I think you're worth a lot more doing some other things in the meantime while you're getting this degree than they're paying you to cook at the daycare. Okay. So let's go job hunting in your off time and pick up two things.

59:19Dave Ramsey:One is a better day job and two is an even better side hustle that pays$25 or$30 doing something. I don't care what. I think you could babysit for neighborhood kids and make$30 an hour. $25 an hour if you could find a nanny job, you know, and, you know, anything these days in freaking Austin, Texas. So it's not exactly a poor market of some kind. And so, yeah, I want you to place more economic value on your hours than you have so far, because I can tell you're worth it. And so what I'm saying is I think between those two things, you probably are going to double your income. Yeah. And then you're out of this super fast.

1:00:06Dave Ramsey:And that clears that debt really fast and puts$12 ,000 in your pocket to get your BA degree real fast. and then you're doing all of this in 12, 14 months, you know, and you're rolling right along. And that's the path I would want to be on if I'm you. I got a feeling you're going to be fine. You're going to be fine. You're going to find your way through this. You're, you know, but the question is just what's the most efficient method for you to get through this because you're, you're a survivor and you're a planner and a thinker. So, wow. Very impressive. Cool. Hey, Thanks for calling. Andrew's in Norfolk, Virginia.

1:00:39Dave Ramsey:Hi, Andrew. How are you? Hi, Mr. Ramsey. I am doing fine. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? So my question for you today is, how do I save for retirement when I have a low income? Why do you have a low income? So currently I am working for a church. I'm on pastoral staff. half, and my income that I get to take home every month is low because they give me a lot of benefits when it comes to housing, phone, gas, paying for my daily. What is your take home? What do you make? I'm taking home about$2 ,000 a month. And what is your position with the church? I would be their assistant or youth pastor.

1:01:26Dave Ramsey:Okay. All right. We work with about 50 ,000 churches in the last 10 years, and the numbers that we have say that somewhere around 80 % of the pastors in America are bivocational. Have to be. That means they have another job. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. How old are you? I just graduated from—I'm 24 years old. I mean, this is very similar to the last call in that way. You've got to be able to sustain a life. And I don't think you can on$2 ,000 a month, even if you lived at home, even if you, you know, had a great benefit of, you know, whatever it is that they're offering you. Are they furnishing housing?

1:02:08Yes, sir. I get about a$1 ,500 a month housing allowance.

1:02:13Dave Ramsey:Yeah, okay. And I currently have a – yes, sir. Yes, sir, in addition. All right. Well, so here's the thing.

1:02:23Dave Ramsey:So you have a$3 ,500 a month income. is really what plus i'm not able to touch that housing i know for personal funds i know i know how it works and so the um yeah you'll get into all kinds of tax issues if you do and so will the church so we don't want to do that but bottom line is is your mate it's as if you have a 1500 house payment and you make 3500 how can i get ahead you can you can and until your income comes up. But the way you ask the question, it's as if you're going to have this exact income when you're 54. Right. And therefore, we can't save for retirement. I mean, in the meantime, you may have to work a side hustle.

1:03:10Dave Ramsey:A bivocational pastor would not be that unusual. And so the pastor that led me to the Lord, when he was starting his church, had a bread route. and you know later on he was the pastor of a huge church and obviously was full-time at that point but um that's what i want for your future is god's call on your life in the meantime you may have a bread route and um but you've got to have a long-term game plan that says i'm not going to have a low income the rest of my life and then that allows you to invest and to be generous and to do other things.

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1:05:35Dave Ramsey:Ramsey Show Question of the Day is brought to you by Why Refi. Out of control, private student loans can make it feel like you're stuck financially, but Why Refi helps borrowers explore refinancing with low fixed rates and payments that make sense for their budget. Visit whyrefi.com slash Ramsey. That's the letter Y-R-E-F-Y dot com slash Ramsey. Might not be in all states. All righty. Today's question comes from Scott in Oklahoma. He says, my 2003 Toyota has 226 ,000 miles on it, and I recently discovered it needs a replacement suspension system and an oil leak repair. The lowest quote I've gotten is 8 ,500 to fix all of the issues.

1:06:18The car is paid off, but I already have put$10 ,000 into it over the past five years. I make$50 ,000 per year and don't have any debt. I have the money to fix the car, but it would deplete my emergency fund. Should I get this old car fixed or should I put that money towards a newer car? I feel like this is a really simple one. I got to believe that Toyota is probably not worth any more than$2 ,000. So for that reason, I would invest in a new car for you. Um, if you're able to drive it a little while longer, I don't know if you can, I'd maybe try to save up as much as I can to put with the 8 ,500 so that you're not fully depleting that emergency fund, but it is time for a new vehicle.

1:07:02Dave Ramsey:And you're paying cash. This is not your down payment. Yes. So you're going to buy a six or$7 ,000 car, which is going to upgrade you about five X. Yeah. So, yeah, you're in good shape to pay cash for a sizable upgrade and then replenish your emergency fund as fast as you can instead of doing the repairs. But what should have been happening, just to kind of go back in time, Scott, you know you drive a 2003 Toyota with almost 250 ,000 miles on it. you should have been putting money aside to upgrade this car over time, not just an emergency fund, because that's the part I feel like people forget about the Ramsey plan is I love that he has a paid for vehicle.

1:07:44I love that he's living that life. But you've got to remember that you've got to have money to the side that you're planning on upgrading that vehicle because you can only drive a 2003 for so long.

1:07:54Dave Ramsey:Yeah. That's assuming he hadn't spent the last 24 months getting out of debt and just now got to this point. That's also true. That's also true. But if he just got been going along at this point and not saving for a car, then you're exactly right. So here's a good formula for you guys, okay? What is the car worth salvage today? And so you can sell this car with an oil leak because 2003 with 226 ,000 miles, it's going to have an oil leak. That's what you sell this car with. It's an oil leak, okay? And it's not going to have a wonderful suspension because it's got 200 ,000 miles on it. Exactly. So that makes this a$1 ,500,$2 ,000 car.

1:08:35Dave Ramsey:And so you sell it for that. If you did the repair, does it add the value back? Okay, equal to the repair. So how the formula works on that is, let's say that this is a$7 ,000 car. If it's fixed, but you could sell it for two. Well, two plus eight is 10. So you would still not fix this car. It's overpriced. Because you're going to have more in the car. What you can sell it for plus the repair is going to be more than the car is worth after the repair. And if that's the case, that tells you that this is a throwaway car and you go buy you another throwaway car if you have to. In this case, he's got the money to move up quite a bit.

1:09:25Dave Ramsey:Yeah. and move into a$7 ,000 or an$8 ,000 car. If he sells this for two, puts six in, he's still got a couple of grand in his emergency fund to start rebuilding, right? And that's the kind of thing you're going to do there. And then have a plan, like Jade was saying, to move up again in two years. Right, because the$8 ,000 car is only going to last you. Start paying yourself$500 a month for two years, that's another$12 ,000. And you put that with the car that you bought for$7 ,000. And the good news about a$7 ,000 car, it's not going to go down a lot. No. Two years from now, you sell it for six if you bought it, right?

1:10:00Dave Ramsey:Right. And now we've got an$18 ,000 car that we pay cash for. That's the... That starts to make a lot of sense making 50 grand. It does. Well, at any rate, really, because I think that of all the things we teach, the cash car is the most elusive of the principles. I think people who are driving cars with car notes, they're driving a 2026, 2025 vehicle, they hear you and I say things like, the car payment is keeping the middle class broke. And they think, well, what am I supposed to do? Just hand over$30 ,000 and have a new car? No, you're supposed to hand over$4 ,000 and pay yourself$1 ,200 a month.

1:10:38Dave Ramsey:Yes. Instead of paying Bank of America, screw me,$1 ,200 a month. Exactly. That's what it looks like, though, to stair step up and Scott's doing that. Yeah, if you pay yourself a car payment for 10 months, that's a lot. A lot of people have a$1 ,000 car payment. Yes. That's$10 ,000 freaking dollars in 10 months. You know, how much patience do you have? I mean, you can do a lot of bad transportation for 10 months and get by with it. That's right. I mean, you could drive the hooptie of hoopties for 10 months. A$1 ,000 car, you know, it's predominant color is Bondo. Yeah. You know, you can. A two-car family can be a one-car family for 10 months.

1:11:15Dave Ramsey:Well, you know, we had a guy working here at one point that, you know, their second car was a car he bought at Salvage that was perfect condition, engine and transmission. Interior was perfect condition, but it had been in a hailstorm. Oh. So it looked like it had acne. Terrible, yeah. It was really, it was really potmarked all over. It was the ugliest, funniest looking car because it had the snot beat out of it. And what does he care? And it looked like somebody walked and hit it with a hammer all over, right? But it worked perfect, and the interior was perfect. The technology was current. But it was a salvaged car completely.

1:11:54Dave Ramsey:And he said, for right now, instead of having a car payment, I paid$2 ,000 for what would have been a$15 ,000 car, but it looked like somebody hit it with a hammer all over. We really made fun of the guy. But he was a classic Ramsey guy, right? And he did that for a year and paid himself a car payment, and then went and bought a regular car. That's right. And he has a story to tell. That's a great story. Exactly. I love that. I come from a generation where we drove cars that were bad, and we kept them so long that we named them. I was going to say, it's got to have a name. It's got to have a name.

1:12:29Dave Ramsey:The Blue Goose, right? Yeah. The Brown Shoe. That's so funny. The Brown Shoe, like the old woman in the shoe. Yeah. We had a station wagon named the Brown Shoe. Wow. It was seriously ugly. It's got to have what I call special features. Yeah. Which are? The windows that don't go down properly. Yeah. The door that won't lock, all that stuff. The tape deck that eats the tape or eats the CD. Nobody even uses tapes and CDs anymore. Yeah, see, now you're getting old. That's what's happening right in front of you. Well, your car is so old it has CDs in it. That's right. Yeah. It's a whole different kind of car play.

1:13:04Dave Ramsey:Yes, yes. Hey, all kidding aside, if you will drive like no one else later, you can drive like no one else. So Jade and I don't drive hoopties. I drive whatever I want to drive these days and I can write a check and do it because I drove crap for a while so that I would never have debt again. And so it's not like we're saying drive a piece of crap car your whole life. Right, right. But for a short period of time, a year, two years, while you get out of debt, while you save up to avoid debt on the next purchase, you drive something that looks like a ball-ping hammer hit it all over. You drive something that's named the gray goose.

1:13:47Dave Ramsey:You drive something, the brown shoe. I don't care what you name it. But it's the pitiful. And take pictures of it. So when you're old, you can tell your grandkids that are trust fund babies because you're a multi gazillionaire. Back in the day, grandma and I drove that car. And that's why you little brats have money. So you got to have story to tell, right? You got you really got to have a way to do this. So I had a 1980. My first car was a hand me down for my sister. It was a 1984 Nissan Pulsar. And it only went forward. It couldn't go in reverse. So you have to choose your parking spot. carefully, which means you park way out in the parking lot sometimes.

1:14:27All the time.

1:14:28Dave Ramsey:Because you have to pull forward, right? Yes. Oh, my God. That's so great. It had to be warmed up. Like, the transmission had to be warmed up for quite a while before I would even think about going in reverse. We need to do a show where we ask everybody their worst car they've ever owned. Yeah. So, my wife's first car when we got married was a Pinto. The ones that were blowing up? Yeah. Yeah. The Pinto and the Vega and the Gremlin have been named the worst cars of the 70s. That's funny. And my wife had one of them.

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1:16:12Dave Ramsey:Don't live normal when you can live like no one else. Start every dollar for free in the App Store or Google Play. Connor is in Riverside. Hey, Connor, how are you? I'm good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? So I graduated from college last June, and I got a job making$88 ,000 per year. I'm still living with my parents, and on my current budget, I can save$100 ,000 by the end of next year. And I want to know if I should move out at this point, or if I should wait till I can save more to put a bigger down payment on a house. Well, I was going to ask, what's what the goal, the specific goal is?

1:16:51And it's to put a down payment on a house. How much do you need? Like, what's the monetary goal? Well, in California, a decent house is around$700 ,000. There's some that are less, but worst neighborhoods. So I try to buy on a budget to buy a house around$700 ,000 and I'm on track. If I keep doing what I'm doing, I can save$100 ,000 by the end of next year. And yeah, the goal is to buy a house and to do it without having to take on a huge mortgage and to keep the payment underneath 30 % of my take-home pay.

1:17:29Dave Ramsey:What are you doing for a living? I do supply chain analytics. You got a logistics degree? Yeah, I have a bachelor's degree in business, measuring in supply chain. And you're only making$88 ,000? Yeah, well, I'm only one year in, and I'm trying to make more money. I'm going to go for a master's degree. You don't have to have a master's degree to make more money with a logistics degree. You're going to be just fine. Yeah, I'm going to try and do this for you. Yeah, you're sitting on a$125 ,000 salary any minute. um wow uh what good degree choice let me start there yeah yeah what do you see yourself earning a year from now which is the time that you want to live at your mom's house do you see yourself at least i want to make more trying to make more yeah okay so here's the trade-off the way you have analyzed this and it comes from the way your brain works which is awesome by the way i'm thrilled with the way you're looking at things is that there is no downside to living there and the upside is i'm stacking cash because you get along with your parents obviously or you wouldn't even be asking this you don't have a strained situation there uh it's comfortable and so it appears to be a no-brainer to stay here and live here for free and stack cash.

1:19:01Dave Ramsey:The unintended consequence is that you haven't started your adulthood completely as long as your mommy is in the house. Yes. And when one of my children came home from college and their apartment, their new place to set up house wasn't ready yet, they stayed with us for about three months, which was just fine because we love them and we get along and there was no issue. But I will tell you that as soon as that child moved out and paid their own bills and bought their own milk and had their own electric bill, it changed their posture. It changed the way they walk. More confident. The swagger, the everything.

1:19:52Dave Ramsey:and yeah it and not to mention for some ladies it would change your eligibility as a date come on dave whether you live at your mommy's or not yeah i i gotta say i think there's two three i'll say there's non-monetary things here that might be more important than the money that that's true But even the money, I don't think that your math is quite right because a$700 ,000 house that you've put$100 ,000 on is not going to get you where you need it to be, even making$125 ,000. True. You're going to be well above. I mean, I'm just plugging the numbers in on our mortgage calculator, and I think you need to rethink your math on that.

1:20:37That being said, I don't think there's a rush. You're 22, which means you'll be 23 years old.

1:20:43Dave Ramsey:You don't need a$700 ,000 house at 23 years old in your first year of working, right? Or second year. Yeah, let's create some stability. Let's make sure that this is really the field we want to be in. Let's make sure this is the area we want to be in. Give yourself some freedom by just renting. Get an apartment. I love that for you. It's not horrible. Yeah, if I woke up in your shoes knowing what I know about money and life, I would move out. even though on the surface the economics don't look that favorable when you do that, then I would also value your – I think you're worth more than you're being paid probably in the marketplace right now.

1:21:26Dave Ramsey:The job market is a little slow right now. It's sluggish. And then the other thing that comes to mind that you may or may not want to consider is that you might be able to make$125 ,000 in Kansas City. That's a good point. Yeah, maybe. Which would cost you half as much to live as Riverside, California. That's true. And the only reason you're there today, or at least one of the reasons you're there today, is because you grew up there. Yeah. And I'm not suggesting you have to move to be successful. Just get more bang for your buck. But there's something about when you move out that that option starts to be there that's not emotionally setting itself in your brain when you're staying at home.

1:22:09Yeah, I agree with that.

1:22:10Dave Ramsey:And so I want you to go out and have a life. And let's just see how – let's live the grand adventure. And then you're also not comparing your current life to your parent's life who has spent 60 years building it. Yeah, they've been trying to get – yeah, you can't – you don't need a$700 ,000. I mean,$700 ,000 is not a fancy house in Riverside, California. No, it's not. But I'm just saying it's still a lot of money no matter how you slice it. Yeah. It's a lot of money. It's a lot of math regardless of what it buys. Uh-huh. Yeah. Uh-huh. So, yeah. Wow. Yeah. Now, if he had told me he had$100 ,000 of debt and he could live at home and pay it off in one year, I would probably change my mind on that.

1:22:51I would probably go, hey, if you can do it and you can knock it out and there's a clear timeline and there's a clear amount, I'd probably be fine with that. He is going to sacrifice some of the things that you said.

1:23:00Dave Ramsey:Yeah, I'm not sure that I have adequately thought through and quantified what living on your own is worth. Well, it's at the - It costs more, but I think it's worth more than it costs. And I can't put actual dollars to that off the top of my head like I can some things to justify my position. So my position might be weak. There's got to be, you got to consider your age range because I think the older you are, the more it hits. You know, you can't be 33 living at mom's house. Yeah, 19 is a little, I can give you a little break there. I'm like 21. Hey, he graduated from college at 19. Yeah. That's like two years early, three years early.

1:23:46Yeah, he's a little bit of a super genius.

1:23:48Dave Ramsey:Yeah, we got some savant stuff going on here. Yeah, I did catch that. Oh, that's interesting. I'm treating him like he's 22. too. That's a good point, too. Interesting. Interesting. This is a good discussion. Connor, you're a sharp dude. You're going to be okay. You don't have to buy a house in one year. And there are benefits to moving out that you haven't considered. And that's a summary of what we have yacked about and gone around the barn for the last few minutes. But it's good. I appreciate you letting us use you to have the discussion for America. Because there is the old movie, failure to launch, there is a problem in America, particularly disturbing among males that are not leaving home.

1:24:33Dave Ramsey:Now, you're not. The 33 year old living at home is a problem. You know what, Dave? I actually do think it's both. I think it's men and women, but I do think that it is more frowned upon. And I'm not saying right or wrong, but I feel like. It's because I'm a sexist boomer. We get more of the ick when we see a guy living at home. And you're a sexist whatever, if you're not I remember if you just said that. Yeah, I get ick with the guy being at home. Yeah. Yeah. But it is, it is. But still, I mean, you know, go be like a grown-up. It's okay to be broke and be on your own and be single and make your way.

1:25:04And have dignity. Yeah, that's part of life.

1:25:07Dave Ramsey:But you're not 33, you're 19. So if you want to hang out one more year, we're not going to be mad at you. That's true.

1:25:33Dave Ramsey:welcome back to the ramsey show in the fair winds credit union studio renee is in los angeles hi renee welcome to the ramsey show hi dave how are you better than i deserve what's up i was hoping you could help with a disagreement me and my husband are having So I'd like to pay off debt. We have about$16 ,000 in consumer debt, and we make about$11 ,000 a month. My husband would like to pull out from our, what is it, stocks, to pull out all of our stocks to pay off the debt, whereas I'm on the side of I think we can make a lifestyle change and pay it off in three months. Right now we have one income.

1:26:15He is able to work, and he can bring in an additional$7 ,000 a month, and we should be able to pay this off even faster. Why isn't he working now? We just kind of have been living a cushy life, very luxury. There's really no particular reason. How cushy a life are you living in California on$11 ,000? It just happens to work for us. The rent's pretty low and a lot of our expenses, we really don't have any car payments or anything else. Okay. That aside, I just want to ask, does that bother you at all? I know that that's not pertinent to the question, but does that bother you? Only up until recently, but for the most part, I was pretty content with it.

1:26:57Everything was getting done at the house, so I had no complaints. Okay. So how much stocks, single stocks, do you have that you could sell? What are they worth? Not a ton. Only$28 ,000. Okay, but that's enough to clear the debt and still - That would be enough to clear the debt, yes. Okay, yeah.

1:27:12Dave Ramsey:Yeah, here's the answer interesting to me. I think you're both right. I think you need to adjust your freaking lifestyle. Yeah. And I think you need to cash out these stocks and pay off your debt. He needs to work regardless. The credit cards are the$16 ,000, right? Correct, yeah. Yeah, so that's financial laziness. You make enough money to not have run his debt. You just weren't paying attention and you wrecked the car. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So have you cut up the credit cards? Yes. Yes. This is actually old debt. So we've paid down about$30 ,000. Oh, good. That's good. That's good. That's good.

1:27:52Dave Ramsey:All right. So, yeah. Number one, we're not going to tell you to have single stocks. We're going to have that liquidated. Put that in the emergency fund or put it towards your house or whatever, wherever you are on the baby steps. Or put it towards this debt. Put it on this debt if you want. But then number two, we need to be on an every dollar budget where you've adjusted lifestyle and the two of you are not, you know, you're not living beyond. You've been doing that, though, because you've reduced debt. So you're already doing that. So you feel like you just want to stay on the plan. I'm not catching up.

1:28:24Dave Ramsey:I'm recycling here. It just sounds I think what's going on is good. I think you've it sounds like you've tightened up in order to pay the debt down to what it is now. Is that right? Correct. Yes. Yes. We have tightened up. My only thing is I'm holding on to the stocks. It's a private stock that I have in a previous company. Here's the thing. I do believe it's going to be like a high potential. Even if you didn't have the debt, I would give you the same advice. I'd say I'd rather you sell that stock and I'd rather you, let's pretend you were on baby step four and you could invest in mutual funds.

1:28:58I'd still take that money and diversify it in that way. so the debt really has nothing to do uh specifically with that advice it's just at this point this is money that you have access to that you can pull out and there really wouldn't be a penalty on it it's not retirement money or anything like that so for that case i would take it out i would put uh 16 000 towards the debt the other 12 000 to dave's point you can throw that in a high yield savings account have an emergency fund now we're setting ourselves up to really be able to invest the proper way if we do that.

1:29:29Dave Ramsey:Yeah, the stock, Renee, I had a guy offer me a position in a private company the other day that I could have bought controlling interest in, in a private situation like that. And when you're, I didn't take it. And the reason is that typically a situation like that is all or nothing, meaning this stock's going to tank and it's going to be worth very, very little, and it's going to be a problem. Or it's going to go the moon and it's going to be the smartest thing you ever did. It's never in between. It's not a predictable environment. It's a high risk investment. But the thing is, if you're saying that...

1:30:07Dave Ramsey:If you can get it out, I didn't do it. I'm saying, but if anybody could be in a position to just take a fun risk, you could have done that, no problem. I'm not blinked. But the point is, she doesn't need to be doing that. And so you're only looking at the upside and you're emotionally involved because it was the last company you worked in and you think those guys are smart and they may be smart and it might go to the moon. If it doesn't, it's going to go to zero. And if you didn't, if you had$28 ,000 in the middle of your kitchen table right now, would you go buy that stock or would you pay down the debt?

1:30:37Dave Ramsey:I'd pay down the debt. 100%. And I'd cash out the rest of the stock and I'd put it in a stable investment that was much more predictable. So I don't know if you're going to do any of that, but that's what we would tell you to do. I'd cash out the 28. I would continue the adjustment on the lifestyle. You're both right. Yeah. And husband needs to do something. Now, don't get me wrong. I love when people have worked to create flexibility in their lives. I think that's great. But I think he's going to need a sense of direction and purpose, and that's what he needs. If he doesn't need it for the paycheck, he needs it for the sense of direction and purpose.

1:31:07Dave Ramsey:Jenna is in Oklahoma City. Hi, Jenna. How are you? I'm good. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Good. Hey, so my husband and I have about$80 ,000 of non-mortgage debt that we're working through. We're on baby step number two. And my husband runs a landscaping business. And so our tax accountant has told us to save 15 percent of his gross revenue and throw it in some sort of savings account that we don't touch just for tax purposes at the end of the year to cover any unexpected tax burden we might not be prepared for. But I have about nine thousand dollars in that account right now.

1:31:43And I'm just wondering if I should be using that to clear any of our debt instead of just holding on to it for taxes.

1:31:49Dave Ramsey:You hold on to it for taxes. That money's already spent. It's got the IRS's name on it. And I probably would have done 20%, to be honest with you. We recommend 25 % of your net profits, not 15 % of your gross. You may be saving too much for taxes. We don't know that yet, but don't screw around with the IRS. Got it. Yeah. Keep your tax money sacred. It's not even there emotionally. Now, you may want to adjust the formula after you've done a year or two of this, but you do need to be setting aside and being be paying quarterly estimates. And they're usually going to approach about a 10 % tax rate on your net profits plus 15 % of self-employment tax.

1:32:37Dave Ramsey:Because, you know, if you're if you're an employee, you pay 7.65. But if you're self-employed, You pay both sides, the employee and the employer. So you pay$15 ,700.

1:32:49Dave Ramsey:So you've got a 25 % hit there of your net profits probably is going to be pretty accurate for your quarterly estimates and then your total tax bill. Don't mess around with that money. Now, if you're over-saving and you can prove that mathematically, if you've saved$4 ,000 more than you need and you can prove that mathematically, then sure, take that money and throw it at the debt. But that money, please, your accountant really gave you great advice to make you start withholding on yourself. Because it's one of the small business people get hit in the head like this the most of anything I see.

1:33:28Dave Ramsey:They don't do their quarterlies, and then the IRS comes up and smacks them.

1:33:42Thank you.

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1:35:04Dave Ramsey:Time is running out to enter the Ramsey Cash giveaway. way. You can enter anytime between now and May 31 to increase your chances of winning the$500 weekly prize and the$10 ,000 grand prize. Obviously, no purchase necessary. No salesman will call. Be sure to check out our sale, though, while you're on the site. Right now, you can kick off your summer with books and assessments for only$12 for hardback books. Wow. Yeah, I just jumped online and bought a friend of mine has a new fiction book coming out, and I just jumped online and bought it. Uh-huh. Oh, your Navy SEAL? Yeah, it was not$12. I'm sure it was not.

1:35:42Dave Ramsey:It was a lot more than$12. Ramseysolutions.com slash giveaway. Hit that right now, and you can enter, and you can also check out the$12 books. That's a good deal. All right. Jean is with us in Chattanooga. Hi, Jean. How are you? I'm fine. Thank you so much for your ministry. Thank you. How can we help? Someone used my stolen ID electronically to open a checking account in another bank and stole funds from one of the accounts that I have with a wealth management company where I have retirement and investments. Wait a minute. I'm sorry. They opened a checking account at another bank. How were they able to steal funds from your wealth management company?

1:36:27They used the checking account electronically to go into the wealth management company. So they had all your information to do this? They evidently did. And I never have managed any of those accounts by phone or direct electronically. I've always done by phone or direct mail.

1:36:48Dave Ramsey:So why is your wealth management company not liable? That's my question. And are they not liable because this loss I sustained was not associated with, you know, market value. It was they got hacked. Yeah, their site got hacked by an identity thief. I think that's on them. Okay. I'm not sure. I'm not an attorney, but that's what it sounds like from a common sense perspective. How much money did you lose? $45 ,500. How old are you? I'm 84. How much money was in the account total? Oh, goodness. I would have to look that up. A lot?

1:37:35I think it was about 100. Let me see.

1:37:39Dave Ramsey:Why did they only get 45 if there was more in there? I don't know. I have 169 ,790 in there. So why did they not get it all? I don't have a clue. Maybe they thought, you know, they could get some more later. But you called your wealth management company. What did they say? They were – I would never have known about it if they hadn't sent me a letter asking them if I had changed my email and my bank account. And, of course, right away then they tried to reverse the transaction, and by then, of course, the money was gone. So, but they, is it, did you leave the rest of your money there? Well, right now I haven't changed anything, but I intend to.

1:38:28I just don't know whether, whether I should change my, um, my management company before they refund my money or whether I need this.

1:38:38Dave Ramsey:Well, you need to, you need to make sure I'm going to have a discussion with them on the phone. As soon as you hang up with us, that makes sure that the remaining money is safe. Yeah. That's the first thing. We've got to make sure that's safe. And then the second thing is, when are you guys going to refund me the money that you lost because your account that I have with you was hacked? Correct. I'm going to ask them to refund this. I don't know that that's going to work because I'm not an attorney, okay? But I think that they're going to be liable for that because their account got hacked. I mean, so let's pretend you had a savings account at a bank.

1:39:18Dave Ramsey:and a thief got into the savings account on the bank and stole the money. It's the same thing. Yeah. The bank would be liable. So I'm pretty sure this wealth management company is liable for this. No, it's on both ends. There's issues on both ends because if they were able to set up another bank account with your information, then if they were able to use that to connect the two banks, they've got a lot of your information.

1:39:48jean do you know the person that did this no i don't know who it was

1:39:53Dave Ramsey:okay then you've got to they got a lot of information on you they do i know and and let me tell you what i've done i have subscribed to zander insure good good are they helping you the id theft people oh uh no zander is uh it was after the fact i know but did they offer to help anyway? They just, I don't know if they would or not. I didn't ask them. Yeah. I'm going to ask them to help you. Okay. All right. As a favor to me, they're friends of mine and, um, I, my 84 year old friend, Jean in Chattanooga needs some help. And I'm going to ask them to help you, even though, uh, you bought the insurance afterwards.

1:40:34Dave Ramsey:Okay. So I'm going to put you on hold and the gang in the booth is going to pick up and connect you with Jeff Zander. Who's a friend of mine. and they're going to help you walk through this. And make sure your identity is secured, first and foremost. And then secondly, if you need some help, we'll hook you up with one of our Ramsey coaches, Ramsey Financial Coaches, as a gift also, no charge, and see if they can help you navigate with this wealth management company because they need to be offering me my money back really fast. if they want to keep me as a customer if I'm in your shoes. Definitely.

1:41:15Dave Ramsey:Okay. And I tried to get legal advice here, and I went to the Bar Association, and they made a couple names, and I queried them, but they didn't even respond. So I guess I'm just peanuts to them. Well,$45 ,000 is peanuts, but you're not peanuts. That's right. You're okay. You're going to be all right. But what we have to do is stop this from happening anymore, and we have to apply for and get the refund. And I think between our Ramsey coaches and Xander, which is going to cost you nothing, we're going to take care of all of it. We're going to make sure you're okay. But you need to get on the phone today and make sure the rest of your accounts are secure with those people in the meantime while you decide what's going to happen.

1:42:00Dave Ramsey:So you hang on, and our gang will pick up, and we'll put our arms around you and see if we can help you, kiddo. That's terrible. That's kind of scary. Yeah, that is. They got all of her stuff. I mean, they not only knew enough to open an account, but they knew she had the other account. To link it. And how to access it. That's very scary. And these goobs released this money to a fresh email and fresh address that they did not already have on file. Because that means they went in and changed everything. Cybersecurity at a minimum is horrible at this company. Yeah. Wow. She should have named names.

1:42:39Dave Ramsey:If she's got the story straight, if that's what's going on. Yeah. I'm like, drop the name of that brokerage so we can all know. And we'll wait and see, make sure what they do. But yeah, it's, that's. It's scary. Yeah. Yeah. So when you have a brokerage company like that, like our SmartVestor Pros, as an example, you build clients over time. And in that world, you call it your book of business. And how much do you have AUM, assets under management? And so a big, you know that somebody's been working for 25 or whatever years will have half a billion to a billion 500 million to a billion dollars in assets under management and if one of those clients had 200 000 out of your half a billion you're managing and was 84 years old this would be her that's the situation she would normally be in and uh uh but the way you get a book of business that size is you take care of people.

1:43:48Yeah.

1:43:49Dave Ramsey:84-year-old widows would be at the top of your list. You would think so. Hello. And so that's the proper way to run that book of business. The book of business grows when you love the people in the book well. What's curious is they only took 45 ,000 of the 169. That sounds nefarious to me. I'm still afraid a relative of hers is doing this. I agree with that, Dave. Ouch.

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1:45:50Dave Ramsey:Renee is with us in Charlotte. Hi, Renee. How are you? I'm great. Thank you for taking the call. I love the work you do. Thank you. How can we help? My question is regarding how much I should pressure my teenage daughter to apply for scholarships, college scholarships. Why wouldn't you? well we i should reframe the question i have been and it's not working and i don't know if i should start punishing her taking away privileges if she if she doesn't um put forth some effort does she work does she have has she ever had a job she does have a part-time job and she is um she's a she just finished her junior year of early college.

1:46:39So she has done very well and she will graduate high school with an associate's degree and she only needs two years to get her undergrad. And she's under the impression that she can start applying during the school year of her senior year and get scholarships. I've done some research and have found that she should really start applying now, and she is not putting forth the effort. Understood.

1:47:10Dave Ramsey:Are you married? Yes. Where's her father in this discussion? He agrees with me, but he's also not quite as assertive as I am. Okay. So I think what I would do is gather some information and lay it out, the three of you. And here's the way I would look at it. There was a lady that worked on our team for a while named Christina Ellis. Look her up. Okay. She had a book out called Confessions of a Scholarship Winner. She applied for as a single mom's daughter and received$500 ,000 worth. Oh, wow. And so she can, and she's like the best I've ever met in the world. She worked on this team for a while here.

1:47:58Dave Ramsey:And a sweet girl too. Very smart. Very smart. And she ended up getting a graduate degree from Vanderbilt, all paid for. And so, yeah, I would gather the information she's got in that book. And, you know, here's the types of examples that she brought out. And I've heard her teach this from stage with me, okay? You know, if you spent 200 hours applying for scholarships, that's a lot. Mm-hmm. That's five hours a day for a lot, for 50 days. Yeah, part-time job. Like that's your part-time job. And if you got$50 ,000 worth of scholarships, that means that your daughter doing that would have earned$250 an hour.

1:48:55Dave Ramsey:i'm going to present that type of information to your daughter and to your husband and then say based on that i don't care if you like it you're not leaving the house again until you agree to do this it's more important for her to do that financially than have the part-time job the other part-time or go to part-time community college and be ahead of school You know, so, I mean, you cannot earn$250 an hour as a 17-year-old anywhere else. And that's the rate. I made that number up, by the way. Okay. I mean, I don't know if that would work exactly that way. But that's the type of thing that Christina's, the way her mind worked about this was you look at it and you're being paid what an attorney makes to apply for scholarships.

1:49:44Dave Ramsey:Only you're not getting them today. And so if you get$50 ,000 in scholarships and your mom and dad have$50 ,000 in savings, and you're going to get that savings in your pocket when you graduate as a result of having not spent it because you got scholarships, that's making$250 an hour.

1:50:05Wonderful point.

1:50:06Dave Ramsey:Yeah. And so, but, and that changes it like I'm on your side. I want you to come out of college with$50 ,000 in cash in your pocket from your dad's and I account that we're going to hand to you because we didn't have to pay for college because you do this smart thing. And she's obviously a talented student. And I got to believe with AI, it's easier than ever to synthesize your ideas and help, you know, prepare your thoughts for the different essays and prepare, you know, what each of them are. You can write hundreds of essays in 20 minutes. Yeah. With ChatGPT. Yeah. There's really no excuse. And I have been doing all the research and presenting it to her and telling her to get a bio essay and to chart out a schedule.

1:50:54Dave Ramsey:Yeah, but you're telling her what to do without her really grasping the why. And what I'm doing is walking around the other side and putting a big old carrot out there before I pull the stick out. Okay. She hasn't seen the carrot. Because she's not dumb. This is a bright child. Yeah, she's very bright. And by the way, she's not even lazy. She's not lazy. Okay. That's why we're so shocked. Yeah, she's not got character flaws. She's never given us pushback. She just hasn't become a believer that this is worth the effort. And we've just got to help you present that to her and her dad and go, okay, now are you ready to, okay, let's put together a schedule.

1:51:34Dave Ramsey:And you're going to spend three hours every morning doing this until you reach 250 hours because it's going to pay you an average of whatever. Okay. The amount that you get divided by 200 hours. And when you finish 200 hours, I will shut up. If you've applied 200 hours worth of effort writing essays to get scholarships, you're going to get so stinking many scholarships. And by the way, get good at it. Don't just mail it in. Right. Literally. Make it worth it. Literally, yeah. But I mean, work the thing. Because Christina said, I'm a single mom's daughter, and I'm a citizen student, and I'm this.

1:52:09Dave Ramsey:You know, you have to use whatever your advantages are. You know, I'm 116th Cherokee. I don't care what you are. Whatever it is, you lean into that because you're going to find somebody that's got everything. I mean, there's all these little nuanced, weird scholarships. And it doesn't all depend on athletic ability or grades. There's lots of them that come from all kinds of weird, nuanced things. And so, yeah. And get creative with the essay. Be the most positive thing that they see coming in front of them. and they want to give it to them. Pretend like you're on the scholarship committee. What would you want to see if you wrote the essay coming in?

1:52:51Dave Ramsey:What kind of essays are going to make the difference and that you're going to keep at the top of the stack and all that kind of stuff? And treat this like it's a straight commission job. Because it basically is. But I think we need to get a big carrot out here. This is the prize. And so the effort is worth it to get the prize. And then applying for scholarships makes a lot of sense. But, yeah, I think you're the only one jazzed up about it in your whole house. So we need to get the rest of the house jazzed. And the way we get jazzed is we talk about the why, not the how. That's the thing. Mike is on the line in Milwaukee.

1:53:30Dave Ramsey:Hey, Mike, what's up? Hi, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. How can I help? So the question is, me and my fiancé are looking into trying to be able to put ourselves in a position to retire on the 55 mark. How old are you? I was wondering where, uh, 35. Okay. When are you getting married? Uh, September. Oh, good. Cool. Okay, cool. Okay, so you got 20 years to get ready to retire at 55 instead of 59 and a half, so you can't access your Roths or your 401ks, right? Yep, and that's what I'm looking for is what it should be invested in to carry from 55 to 59 and a half. Okay. If we were going to guess, let's just put a wet finger in the air, what will you need to live per year when you're 55 if you don't work?

1:54:21If I had to guess, maybe$60 ,000,$70 ,000. I'd rather be comfortable. All right.

1:54:28Dave Ramsey:Let's just call it 60, and you need to do that times 5, so you need 300K. Yeah. Yeah. If you don't work. Why would you not work at all at 55? Why wouldn't you find something to do? Just to have the option to do it. Work optional is probably a better way to say it. Work optional. Yeah. Well, work optional is fine, but it doesn't happen very often. So what I would do is just go ahead and get out of debt, get your house paid off, and build wealth, and worry about that when you get a little closer. If you want to invest when you get a little closer, you just do that in a low turnover mutual fund like an S &P 500, like a Vanguard S &P 500 or something like that.

1:55:10Dave Ramsey:And that's a good way to do it. But I wouldn't fool with that today. First, you need to work the baby steps and get to baby step seven before you even start talking about this.

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1:56:17Dave Ramsey:Our scripture of the day, Proverbs 12, 24. Diligent hands will rule, but laziness ends in forced labor. Oof. Warren Buffett, rule number one. Never lose money. Rule number two. Never forget rule number one. Got it. Works for me. Check. John is in Minneapolis. Hey, John, how are you? I'm good. Hey, guys, thank you for taking my call. Sure. So I'm trying to figure out if I'm losing my mind from wanting to walk away from a high-paying job and start all over in something new that pays quite a bit less, at least a start. So I'm in a financial sales position right now. It's almost all commission. So I average around$250 ,000 a year.

1:57:03And I know I'm blessed to be in a financial position I'm in. But for the last couple of years, I've found zero fulfillment in this job and I've been pretty unhappy. The culture is very much like work first, family second.

1:57:15Dave Ramsey:And there's not a whole lot of job security. We're really pushed to work past the schedule hours, work every single weekend. And it's really starting to affect my relationships outside of work. What are you selling? I have a financial product, a mortgage. Okay. So you're a mortgage underwriter? Officer. Okay, a loan officer. Yeah, okay. So is it the work or is it the conditions in which you're doing the work? Why can't you do that somewhere else that has reasonable culture and reasonable hours and makes a little less? And it's actually not the actual day-to-day work. It's the environment and the hours and the lack of and the bad priorities is driving you crazy, right?

1:58:02Yes. And I've had quite a few workers or co-workers that have left and went to other companies in the industry. And ultimately, pretty much every one of them comes back to the company we're at because they said this is really the best company in terms of, you know, technology and stuff. but the culture has been like this and has really gotten worse over the last, I would say, 12 months. And what I'm worried about mainly is over the next couple of years, I want to be in a position where I'm starting a family and I look at my coworkers and I see them really struggling to keep up in the job and, you know, be there, be present for their families.

1:58:41And I just don't want to end up being the parent or the father.

1:58:46Dave Ramsey:Again, I am not buying the fact that you can make$250 ,000 at one company and you can't work normal hours and work for good people and have a better balance to what you're doing. At a different company. And make$150 ,000 to$200 ,000 at a different company. I don't believe that. I think your coworkers have given you a message that's not true. as if there's one place on the planet that this whole thing can happen and it works and everywhere else it doesn't work. Bullcrap. Correct. Yeah, and that's really the feeling that we get from leadership. I don't care what leadership told you. You already don't have faith in leadership.

1:59:29Dave Ramsey:Why are you listening to anything? So what opportunities have you been looking at? Yeah, so we have a family friend who's an electrician in our area, and he's been trying to get me to be an apprentice for quite a while now. Why? That's so a completely different path. Why? Because this one company that you work for sucks, and so now you're going to go be an electrician? He doesn't know anything about my job. Yeah, so why would he even ask? Yeah, we're talking about you. Why would you do? I mean, okay, I'm an electrician, And I know a guy that is a mortgage guy who's obviously making a lot of money.

2:00:09Dave Ramsey:Maybe I don't know. It's a quarter million dollars a year. Why would I even talk to that guy about being an electrician? That's just strange. Yeah, he knows I've always been interested in working with my hands. And I ended up just kind of falling into this job through an internship in college. And it was always supposed to be, you know, I'll do this for a couple of years and then move on to something else. How old are you? I'm 29. And how long have you been doing the mortgage broker deal? About eight years. Eight years. Okay. So you're looking at this going, man, I fell into this job. This is not what I intended to do.

2:00:44This is not what I set out to do. I need to stop this train and I need to get on the path that I really want to be on. Correct. Understood. Okay. How are you doing financially? I'm good. So I have in my checking account, I have about$15 ,000. I do have an emergency fund with about$25 ,000 in it and a high-yield savings. No debt at all. I'm very, very fortunate there. And then I have a high-yield savings with about$115 ,000 that was supposed to be for hopefully a wedding here in the next year or two and then a down payment on a house and that sort of stuff. Okay. So you're getting married in the next year.

2:01:27Any kids? No. Okay. Listen, I do think that you should do work that matters to you, work that you feel good about. It's all about how can we get there and is there a way that over time we can create the same value? Because the hard part for me is to know that you are worth$250 ,000 in the marketplace and then to go down without the horizon of being able to meet that peak again. That would bother me personally. If it doesn't bother you, that's okay. So tell us about the electrician. What's the route? What does it look like? And what do you want to know from us? No problem. So it would be a five-year apprenticeship.

2:02:10It would be a union electrician. So I'd start at about$21 an hour. In five years, when I make it through, I'd be a journeyman. Right now, the pay is about$42 an hour. but that would just be my base pay doesn't include like any fringe benefits or anything on top of that like health insurance money going into a retirement account when i do the math working

2:02:31Dave Ramsey:the same amount of hours i'm working right now which is 55 to 60 a week you don't want to work that many hours so we can't compare it to that um correct you're you're right so it would be a pay cut at the five-year mark. If I make it through the apprenticeship, I'd be sitting around about 130 a year. As a journeyman, and that's kind of the peak? Correct. Yeah. Unless I would move up to be a foreman and so on. And you really hate this company. I think so too. This is like, they have wounded you so badly that you're willing to jump into a pit of acid to get away from them. How do you know that you'll love being an electrician to the tune of a$100 ,000 pay cut?

2:03:20That I don't know for sure, and that's what scares me the most, and why I called in to get your guys' advice on this.

2:03:28Dave Ramsey:I'm not buying. I think you're running so hard away from something that you're not looking carefully at what you're running to. So if I were going to advise a 29-year-old who made$250 ,000 a year who's in a toxic culture, And he knows how to sell. I'm not against the trades. I'm a fan of the trades. Right. Okay. But you have painted the best possible scenario for a union journeyman electrician. And it's going to take you five freaking years to get back to half of your income. Yeah. Could you not? And that's just not logical. Could you not go to another mortgage firm first and test that out and go, okay, this is good.

2:04:11But because Dave's right, you're clearly good at what you do. And generally, it's very, yeah.

2:04:16Dave Ramsey:I think you could make$160 ,000,$180 ,000 day one somewhere else working normal hours and not being spit on every day or whatever's happening over there. And then see how you feel. You've got to get away from the place. I'm not disagreeing with that. But I think you've convoluted the career field as being horrible with the company as being horrible. and you need to separate those two things first before you make this decision. It's hard to me when, and you'll probably be able to put better words to this, but when you're clearly really good at something and you're clearly very gifted at it, it's hard to then say, but you're not going to do that.

2:04:56You're going to go to this. Do you know what I mean? You've got that talent and that gifting for some reason. I don't know. It's hard to walk the eye.

2:05:04Dave Ramsey:You know, again, it's this smells like an escape. Yeah. Rather than a journey. Yes. And and I don't I just it just doesn't smell right. And so you ask our opinions and we've given a whole three minutes of thought to your whole life. OK, so it's not really fair to you. Well, he doesn't have to choose between this and that. There are some other routes he can go through before he does a complete one. I think it's a false dichotomy that the only way to be happy is to completely leave. Yeah. everything that you're doing. Yeah. I would start by leaving the company that you're in and then see where that takes us first.

2:05:40Dave Ramsey:And then I would decide from there. And then is there another way that I can do electrician and own a company that is electricians and so forth? That puts us out of the Ramsey Show in the books. We'll be back with you before you know it. In the meantime, remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace and that's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace. Rise, Jesus.

2:06:07We'll see you next time.