The Right Financial Decision Starts With Understanding the Problem

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21:13George Kamel:welcome back to the ramsey show right before the break we were talking to a fella who was asking hey how do i invest with baby step four and i've got a four three b through my employer and the roth and the match a lot we were throwing out lingo left and right and so we thought we'd just take a moment to help explain some of this in layman's terms because it is confusing and it can be overwhelming. And I don't want that to stop anybody from building wealth. Yeah, that's right. And we teach over here, obviously, Baby Step 4. I told you guys the last segment. And we say, when you do start doing Baby Step 4, you're investing 15%.

21:45We like for you to start with an employee-sponsored account. So if you just have a regular 9 to 5, W-2, it's usually a 401k. With teachers, we see 403bs. Military has something different. But most professions have their version of a 401k.

22:01George Kamel:And that's just literally the section of the tax code that says you can have an employer-sponsored retirement plan. So section 401, subsection K. Yes. That's it. And then from there, there's different tax treatments on it. So we've got the traditional that we talk about all the time. And that's just saying, hey, you are adding money into this account before you've paid money, before you've paid taxes on that money. Pre-taxed dollars. And people go, okay, great. That's one option. And then there's the Roth option that we talk about that we tend to favor because this is the option where this is after tax dollars.

22:35You've already paid the taxes on this money. We love that because when the time comes later on in life after retirement, when you want to pull that money out, you don't have to pay taxes because you've already paid them.

22:45George Kamel:Yeah. Think about your take home pay. The government already took their cut. So I'm using my take home pay to fund this retirement account. And Uncle Sam says, all right, you paid us once. You don't have to pay us again. Yes. Great. So if there's$2 million in a Roth 401k, that's like$2 million of net income. Yes. Because you're not paying tax on that. And that's great, especially if we're talking about leaving that money to heirs and things like that. That's also so, so important. You mentioned the match earlier. We asked him, do you have a match from your employer? We can talk about that, George.

23:13George Kamel:Yes. So we say match beats Roth beats traditional for a very simple reason. Match is an instant return on your money. So at Ramsey, if I invest 4%, Ramsey's going to give me 4 % to match that. So I just got 100 % return right there. Now, some might say we do 50 % up to a certain amount. So it might be different based on your employer, but many employers have a match. So we always tell people, take that first when you're ready to invest, then go to the Roth options because you're going to have that tax-free growth. That's right. And then move on to traditional if you haven't hit that 15 % mark yet.

23:45George Kamel:And the last thing I'll say about this, Jade, is people message me and they go, I'm so confused. Is it 15 % of my income or our income? And I say both. It doesn't matter. So Jade and Sam are investing. Jade invests 15 % of her income. Sam invests 15 % of his income. How much of their household income are they investing? 15%. It's the same. Ding, ding, ding. Because people go, well, I'm doing seven and a half. She's doing seven and a half. I'm like, no, no, no, no. That's just seven and a half total of the whole pie. No. So. All the money together. 15 percent 15 percent of his 15 percent of yours 15 percent again if you don't have an employer sponsored plan or you don't have a Roth option you can always open a Roth IRA and that is just a non-employer retirement plan that anybody can open as long as they have earned income yes your 17 year old working at Burger King can open up a Roth IRA that's right and start investing there and the limit for this year is 7500 bucks so that's why we said if you fill that up and you still haven't hit 15 % of your household income, then go back to traditional options.

24:47George Kamel:And if you make too much, there's contribution limits for the Roth IRA. You can look into a backdoor Roth IRA, which sounds, you know, it's not that sneaky. It's a very legal loophole to where you just, you basically fund an after-tax traditional IRA and then immediately convert it over to Roth. Yeah, I like that. And while we're here, let's just hit on what happens if you have a 401k connected to your job, you leave your job, and now that 401k is sitting there. We had a call about that yesterday, George. Yeah. So we always tell people, you don't want to see that money because if you do, you're going to have some taxes and penalties and fees attached to it because it looks like an early withdrawal in the eyes of the IRS.

25:25George Kamel:Right. Let's hit that real quick. Obviously, if you've invested this money, it's expected to be there until 59 and a half, which is like legal retirement age. So if you pull it out early, it's an early withdrawal. You're going to get hit with that penalty plus 10 % just for pulling that bad boy out. So what you want to look into is a direct rollover IRA. And what that means is the money is moving from your traditional 401k directly over to a traditional IRA. It never sees the light of day. You want to keep the flavors the same. So if it's a Roth 401k, move it to a Roth IRA. Direct rollover is what you want.

26:00George Kamel:Make sure that you've checked that box before you just send money to your bank account and then go, oh my gosh, I didn't know what I just did. That's a hard one to undo. All right, I feel like we covered it. So there was our investing 101 in about four minutes. We did our best. All right, Mike is in Salt Lake City up next. What's going on, Mike? Hey there, thanks for taking my call. Sure. So I'm just finding myself in a situation here. I've been taking the steps towards starting my own business, doing carpentry work and other construction jobs for the last couple years. And we decided to purchase a home this spring and in our area about an hour from Salt Lake.

26:45George Kamel:There's a lot of opportunity for me in construction. There's not a lot of affordable homes. So we bought a home on the edge of our budget and we're paying about$3 ,800 a month for our mortgage. and I've calculated the rest of our expenses at about$3 ,000 after health insurance and gas and everything like that. We currently have$15 ,000 in securities-backed line of credit against my index funds that value$105 ,000. Otherwise, we're debt-free, and I was curious. Also, we have a baby coming in December here. All right. Just, yeah, just kind of seeing if you guys think it's the right time for me to jump into this business and kind of just getting a little overwhelmed with our overhead right now.

27:42I don't want to sell the house.

27:44George Kamel:I'm not ready to think about that just because we do have some runway. What's your take-home pay? It's going to be hard. What's that? What's your take-home pay every month? My take-home pay was about$70 ,000 a year before I started doing more of my own work. And now it ranges from about$1 ,500 a week, so$4 ,500 or$6 ,000 a month, to about$10 ,000 a month, depending on the month. And is your wife working outside the home? Does she plan on staying home after the baby's here? What's the plan there? She does work outside of the home. She makes about$1 ,200 biweekly,$2 ,400 a month, and commutes about 30 minutes.

28:36And I think between child care and the commute and the opportunity cost of her being able to be home to keep our expenses down, I think it's best that she doesn't work once the baby's here because I don't think we're going to end up keeping much of her income after child care and everything. What does she think about that? she's back and forth uh she loves her independence um she's also excited to take care of the baby and i think we're kind of talking about you know let's look at three four years of you staying home and then we can revisit that and are you telling me that you're currently self-employed with this business i am currently self-employed with this business i can

29:19George Kamel:so what do you mean jump into it sounds like you already did that's what i'm confused about too What's that mean to you? So I can go back to my employer as a 1099 subcontractor and make my$70 ,000 per year. So you're saying do I do this? Is it a safety thing? Like do I do the safe thing of making the$70 ,000 with the employer? Or do I keep doing my thing making$6 ,000 to$10 ,000 a month even though it's more risky? Do I have that right? Right. That's kind of where I'm at right now. What makes it more risky? just the fact that I may not be able to find work for myself and that. Well, right now, based on what you said, if you make six grand in a month and it's just you, you can't cover your monthly expenses.

30:08George Kamel:So this house is too much of your income, even at 10 grand, it's still close to 40 % of your take-home pay on your best month. And so I don't know that this house is a good long-term option for you. if you guys want this life where she stays at home, I'm self-employed doing this business and covering all the insurance. So that's the tactical numbers you need to crunch and figure out if you can sustainably make 12 grand a month, 13 grand a month with this business, I would consider it. But I would probably go get that full-time job again and do this on the side until you have a clear path to doing it on your own full-time.

30:44George Kamel:Just a lot of risk here.

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32:52So I was calling basically just to see. So right now I owe$52 ,000. Me and my husband owe$52 ,000 to my card that we got in August. We have about$40 ,000 in our bank account saved. We started saving pretty aggressively back in December. and we're about to have a baby in July. My husband makes about$10 ,000 a month and I'm a travel nurse, so sometimes I work, sometimes I don't. But my question is, should we get rid of my car payment or should we keep my car payment? Because my husband owes about$3 ,800 to his truck, which we were planning to pay off within the next two weeks, about$3 ,000 to a furniture payment and about$13 ,000 to land that we're paying on.

33:45Land? But we want to know if we should, yes, land, property. We want to know if we should get rid of my car or if we should keep my car. I don't like my car. It was an impulsive buy. What kind of car is this? It's a 2025 Honda Pilot. I wouldn't say it was an impulsive buy. I actually wrecked and totaled out my Grand Jeep Cherokee that was paid off in July. and we were trying to carry up and get out of the rental and it ended up having a better interest rate than a used car. Wow. So that's how they got you. They said, we'll give you a lower interest rate.

34:21George Kamel:If you buy a brand new one, a$52 ,000 loan, you said, what a deal. I'll take it. I mean, I can tell you. Actually, it was about$60 ,000. So we paid it down some, but it's still very expensive. That hurts my soul. Okay. What's the car worth today? Okay. So we quartered it with Carvana because we thought about selling it to them. It's about$43 ,000. That's how much they'll give us for it. Okay. But we still owe$52 ,000. Uh-huh, uh-huh. So, okay. So we're upside down there. Not too much to scare me. I think we can get out of that. And I would, by the way, if you want to get out of that. You guys have the cash.

34:57You can pay the$9 ,000,$10 ,000 difference and even have a little bit left over to get yourself, like, buy yourself a cash car. maybe$10 ,000 or 12 since you're trying to get out of debt. I know you've got a baby on the way. So hold that, hold everything that I'm telling you to the side. Cause I know you have a baby. The way we would teach to get out of this debt is by snowballing it, listing it smallest to largest and paying minimum payments on everything in the meantime. So it sounds like the smallest thing here is the furniture. So I'd hypothetically knock that one out first with any extra money after paying the minimums.

35:35Then I'd move on to the truck. Then I'd move on to the land and do it that way. However, there's a baby coming in July.

35:44George Kamel:So we always talk about stork mode here on the baby steps where you can hit pause to stack up cash. Now you guys already have the cash stacked up. So that changes the advice here. So now it's how much can we use to pay off the debt without putting us in jeopardy to make sure we're OK when, you know, until baby and mom are home safe. And so Jade's right in that debt snowballing these these bottom few. You could do that with less than 20 grand from your 40. Which frees up those payments and gets rid of those debts and then maybe pause until baby's here and then decide what to do with the car. right i think we were hesitant i think we really wanted to kind of get rid of the car because the car payment is nine hundred and fifty five dollars a month yikes you know we can afford it i'm just the question is what car are you going to get on the other side of that well we were planning for me to just drive my husband's truck because he drives uh he works pipeline and he is always in his work truck he never been in another state for four months so you can live on uh you can be a one car family for a while yeah because he hasn't driven his truck in about four months it's been in that estate so i'll be honest with you i would get out of that car right away because it knocks your debt and the debt snowball from 52 000 down to 9 000 so then that order would be the furniture the truck the loan the upside down difference although i guess you could do that in cash and then the land right and i would also shop around to see in cash how much you could get for that car you may want to check car max a few local dealerships private party to see if you can be less underwater so you're not eating as much of this and then if you can live on that be a one car family for a while you just freed up a thousand bucks absolutely these other debts will get paid off real fast because you're not having to dip into savings to get something for you to drive right away exactly yeah i like that plan uh now let's talk about the stork mode thing a little bit because you do want to consider that you need to make sure that you've got a nice chunk of money sitting there.

37:46And I'm not mad at if you want to wait until the baby comes to do all of this, because it makes you feel better. I'm not mad at that. A rule of thumb that I kind of have is I want to make sure that I have the out of pocket max saved. Like that's what I want to make sure I have just in case you stay in the hospital a little longer, just in case there's any complication, God forbid that you have the money there, because that's really the most that you're going to come out of pocket. And then you might want to do some calculations on, I don't know, George, meals. Like that first couple of weeks can be tough.

38:16So just making sure that you've got a nice cushion of money there just in case is really, really important.

38:22George Kamel:Nobody's cooking for at least a month. So you got to factor that in. Hopefully there's a good meal train going. Get on the old choo-choo. Yeah. The math, Sharon, says that if you paid off all of your debt today, the underwater amount plus the other debts, that's 29 grand out of your 40. So you'd still be left with 11 grand plus another month or two to save out of your great income. So you guys might decide, hey, we can do this all right now and take the stress off. That's right. So that when this baby arrives into this world, we are debt free. Wouldn't that feel good? That would feel good. So it's a risk tolerance thing because either way, all the debt's getting paid off in the next, you know, in 50 days.

38:58George Kamel:So the question is, when do you want to do it based on your comfort level and all of the variables that we haven't even talked about? So I would sit down with your husband tonight and figure that out. and decide a plan that works for you guys. But my guess is you could probably stack up another 10 grand before the baby's here. Right, yeah, because I'm actually traveling at the moment right now. Oh, great. Okay, good. Wow. So based on the next couple of paychecks, think, okay, what are these next paychecks going to be until, you know, I head into the hospital and have this baby? And if you can make it work, I love the idea of you guys becoming completely debt-free and getting rid of this payment because next month that$9.55 stays with you instead of going to Honda lending.

39:34Ooh, that's a nice feeling. Woo.

39:36George Kamel:$1 ,000 car payment. That makes me want to throw up. Glad it's going to be out of your life. All right. Jessica is in Detroit up next. What's going on, Jessica? Hi. My husband and I are on baby step two and plan to be moving into baby step four around this time next year. I own my own company and have learned that my business can contribute up to 25 % untaxed of my salary into a solo 401k. Yeah, I'd like to know where this fits into the baby step and how do I know if I should prioritize that contribution over taking owner's draws to pay down the mortgage on our home? I love this question. Okay, good.

40:19I'm unclear on the best way to categorize these revenues. I have to make the choice between funneling it through payroll, taking it as owner's draws, or making it employer contributions into my personal retirement. Yeah, I think right now because you have the debt, you're doing owner's draws and you're doing payroll, right? That's what my husband and I did. There's probably a limit on how many draws you can take and then the rest is payroll and you can get with your tax person or your bookkeeper on that. and you're yeah it sucks because if you're taking more payroll than you want right just to to be able to pay off personal debt um so i would do that and then the 25 which is fabulous for that solo 401k that falls under baby step four that's you investing and so that's where that falls under now i wouldn't go over uh 15 until you've gotten through the baby steps and then yeah if you wanted to go up to that full 25 % limit, you could, but it all fits within the parameters of the baby steps for a reason.

41:22And it's because we want you to be paying off your house. So once you've gotten up to 15%, you can do the rest through payroll. I don't know if you work from your home or not, but there's a certain amount that you can pull from the business to put towards your mortgage as well. So yeah, get with a tax professional, get with your CPA and definitely do that. Yeah.

41:41George Kamel:So the key is, it sounds great to invest right now, but we have some debt to clean up. So let's wait. One year from now, you've got your eye on the prize. You're going to be investing 15 % there. Let's knock out the mortgage. And in no time, you'll be investing that full 25%, and you guys will be building some serious wealth for the rest of your life.

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43:20George Kamel:Welcome back to The Ramsey Show and the Fairwinds Credit Union Studio. I'm George Camel here with Jade Warshaw. Open phones at 888-825-5225 if you want to jump into the conversation about your life and your money. Jacob is in Springfield, Illinois, up next. Hey, Jacob. Hey, how's it going? Great. How can we help today? Yeah, so my wife and I, we're basically just trying to figure out how to navigate rising costs and everything while still trying to put money aside for the future and for retirement, but also just other savings goals and just trying to figure out how can we navigate this while everything seems to be just keep rising out of control.

44:09where do you feel like in your home where do you feel like you guys are feeling it the most is it groceries is it gas are you trying to buy a house like tell us tell us the top three pain points that you feel like you're feeling it uh so it so our our two biggest expenses obviously are going to be housing and uh child care um but then the third is uh right it's actually kind of a tie between groceries and gas. Okay, good to know. Okay, so let's get into the nitty-gritties. What do you guys do for a living and what do you earn? So I'm in insurance service and then

44:48George Kamel:my wife, she's working in a clinic. So we're basically combined, we're right about $110 ,000 a year gross. Okay, cool. And do you have any debt right now? The only debt we have is our mortgage, and we have a small, about$200 left to pay off on our credit card. Okay. And that was just due a monthly, not a monthly, a couple of medical bills that we just wanted to split those payments, not to ruin our budget. How much do you have in savings right now for your emergency fund and anything else? The emergency fund, we have about three or four months of expenses. We're right about that$20 ,000 range.

45:33Okay. Okay. So I think in those ways, I feel like you guys are in a pretty good spot. I guess the biggest question is how much is your mortgage payment every month? It's about$1325. So, I mean, it's probably about that 21%, I think. Yeah. Excellent. Great. So it's got to be childcare then. How many kids do you guys have and what are you paying for child care every month? So we just have one child. She's 18 months and we're paying right about, that would be 13. Okay. Yeah, 1300 a month. I mean, that is definitely it. I mean, you're usually somewhere between 13 and 1500, especially for a younger baby.

46:18George Kamel:Are you guys investing 15 % right now? We are not. So I'm putting money into a Roth IRA and then wife is putting out. I think it's about 5 % of her paycheck into a 403. So I see. Oh, how much into the 403? I think about 5 % of her paycheck. Well, I can tell you, I mean, I'm looking at the biggest ticket items, your mortgage, daycare. That's eating up 2 ,600 of I'm guessing you're bringing home around 7 ,100 a month. How much are you bringing home? So after taxes and after deductions like insurance and health care stuff, we're right about$6 ,400 a month. Okay. So I still think there's something missing here.

47:10George Kamel:Have you guys done a detailed budget to figure out where the rest of the money's going? Because even if you were spending a bunch on groceries and gas, there's still a couple grand left over. So, yeah, actually, I mean, yeah, I was just doing the budget before we hopped on. And, I mean, looking through our paychecks, it costs, I think it was about, I want to say about$150,$180 per pay period for health care. for because it's under because mine's by myself and then wife covers herself and our daughter for so yours doesn't cheaper that way okay so hers is coming out of the pay so that's the 6400 a month that already covered hers and then yours is another 300 a month is that what you're telling me?

48:06So no, for my healthcare, it's like, I want to say about 150 a month. Oh, okay. So that's, that's not the problem either. Here's what I, this is what I think. I think you guys don't have a detailed budget and I think, and this is no implication. This is no judgment. I think you guys have a young baby. I think you've come off of, you know, when you have your first child, it's a major life change. You're doing a lot of things out of convenience. You're doing a lot of things out of learning what a new life rhythm feels like. And my guess is there's just a lot of spending that can be cleaned up. And I'm not saying that some of it hasn't been necessary.

48:46You have a new baby. So you buy new gadgets and new things and conveniences to make life easier. You pick up dinner more often, those sorts of things. And my guess is that if we give you every dollar and you really use your bank statements to kind of do what I would recommend is do last month's budget, go look at your bank statement and plug it all in. And you're going to go, oh, crap. You're going to see how much in the red you were. And then do this month's budget. And in real time, start making those adjustments. And I think, George, that they're going to find a couple of thousand dollars there.

49:19George Kamel:Based on my estimation, there should be like two grand left over. And so the last question is, what are you actually saving for? Because you're saying you're having a hard time continuing to save. Is that for the emergency fund? Is that investing? Is that trying to pay off the mortgage? What is the goal? So we actually do use every dollar you're talking to the nerd. Yeah. Well, what do you think is going on there? You see the line items in front of you. Yeah, tell us. How much is actually left over when you do your every dollar budget? What's the margin right now? So right now it's about, I mean, grand last month was rough just because we had five weeks to pay for in daycare.

49:57um yeah but it's right about it's right about 800 a month uh so our savings goals we have we have to

50:07George Kamel:just we have a kind of a uh a home improvements uh savings account we have emergency fund i'm just basically just trying to keep up with it a couple like a hundred or so here there um the but the The other two big thing that we're trying to focus on is the saving for a new car to try to pay that in cash. And you have sinking funds for all those things? There's a sinking fund for savings. Okay, so that's where the money's going, which in that case, I'm not mad at that. So that's why there's$800 left over after all of that? Right. So we contribute to those sinking funds at the end of the month after we see where our margin's at.

50:50um so for new so for the car uh a vacation fund that we just have kind of just to keep as like a a safety net for if we want to do a vacation in the next year or so i think that's great jacob i think what you're doing is exactly right uh the only thing that i would tweak in what you said is i wouldn't wait till the end of the month to decide that i would plan that when the month begins because the money you have is the money you have you're both it sounds like on salary so if you know we are taking home 6 ,400 make the plan on purpose this is how much we're spending this is how much we're putting in the vacation sinking fund this is how much we're putting in the car do it at the beginning because if you don't you'll let yourself go over on door dash you'll let yourself go over on you know some of the frivolous things and then just say well that's okay we're just not going to put as much in the car fund be intentional about that it's your money you get to decide.

51:45And if you want it to feel like you have more going to those categories, make the necessary adjustments.

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53:29George Kamel:Sarah is in Sarasota up next. What's going on, Sarah? hi thank you so much for taking my call sure so i had a question um so we bought our home in 2022 we bought it for 535 000 and um there's a lot of equity in that in it now we think it's worth about 750 and i should be coming into a settlement in the next six months i just talked to my attorney today, and I think I'm going to be receiving about$250 ,000. And my husband really wants to sell her home, take the equity and the money from the settlement and buy a home outright so we don't have a mortgage and we just have a little bit more freedom in our budget.

54:17But to be honest, it doesn't really buy a lot of house around here anymore. And I like our neighborhood and, And, you know, we are kind of tight month to month. And I was thinking maybe we'd take the$200 ,000. We have kind of a smaller emergency fund. So I was thinking that we put$50 ,000 in an emergency fund and$200 ,000 down on our mortgage, which we have$397 ,000 left on it. So I was thinking about doing that, but I wanted to get from you guys what you thought was a better idea. Cool.

54:51George Kamel:So you guys, do you have any debt right now outside of that mortgage? No. Okay, so you're thinking, hey, let's stay in the house. Let's use$200 ,000 to throw at the$397 ,000. That brings it down to about$200 ,000 in a mortgage. And then would you do a recast to get the payment lower? That was going to be my other question. Do we do that, or do we just kind of continue to white-knuckle it and try to pay it down faster, or do we do a recast? Well, what's your current mortgage payment? Now, it's$3 ,600, including the HOA and the CDC and insurance taxes and everything. I think the actual mortgage is only$2 ,500.

55:31But, I mean, we live in a HOA community, and there's also questions that probably is going to go up over time. So is the community development fee, and I think our taxes should remain stable because we're homesteaded.

55:45George Kamel:What's your take-home pay every month? I think it's around$9 ,300 a month. Okay. But that's kind of variable. We made$206 ,000 last year, but my husband got a bonus, and I got a bunch of commission. But we're guaranteed$9 ,300 a month. But I made about an extra$30 ,000 last year in commission and bonuses. I was going to say, making over$200 ,000, you should be bringing more home. So I would look into that. because I'm going, man,$3 ,600 all in for your housing payments for all the HOAs and things. That's a lot of your take-home pay right now. So you are feeling the pinch. But with the recast, it could lower it, which would help.

56:26George Kamel:But again, if you can just keep paying what you're paying and not pay for the recast, you'd be fine to just keep knocking through that mortgage. And if you guys did that, you'd probably be done with this thing in what? Maybe two or three years? The mortgage? Yeah, could you do that? I think that would be a little bit hard for us. So we have one child still in daycare. Oh, that's a mortgage payment right there. For sure. Yeah, it is. And I also, we have quite a bit of medical expenses. So I just went through kind of a really hard, challenging time health-wise. And the treatment that I'm doing right now is not covered by insurance.

57:08And I'm spending about$700 a month on that. That could be another reason why the recast is good for you because obviously for anybody listening, when you do a recast, you're throwing the lump sum at the mortgage and it's just recast at that new principled amount. It doesn't change the terms. It doesn't change the length of the loan, but your payment is going to be lower.

57:27George Kamel:Everything stays the same, but the payment's now calculated on the new balance. The new balance. And yeah, so your payment would be lower and that would free up a lot of margin, especially if you're saying you've got medical things to pay for. There could be something there. But I do, I would caution on this because it doesn't change the length of the loan. You do want to find ways to be more intentional about paying it off since it is a lower monthly balance, monthly payment, I should say. So that's where I'm going. Man, if you guys make$200 and you can live off of, let's say,$80 to$100 and throw the rest of the mortgage, that's where I'm going, hey, you could pay this off in three years.

58:01George Kamel:But if you're saying there's a lot of other expenses right now, that's okay. You guys are in a tough season. I mean, you got one in child care. You're dealing with the health issues. I would focus on that right now. There's no urgency to knock out this mortgage as far as, you know, nothing's on fire here. You guys are doing great. So I would take care of you right now. And when the time is right, you do this move and bringing that mortgage payment down will give you some breathing room for sure. But I wouldn't downsize into a house that you guys hate just to be mortgage free. No, I wouldn't do that either because you're not going to enjoy it.

58:33Want to live like no one else. Right. he thinks we can find a place that we can be happy in like we don't have a pool we could afford a pool in some of these different areas a little bit more land um we'd be closer to schools also the schools that we're known for are like really far away from middle school and high school so i think he's thinking long term and and i get i get all the reasons why but i mean we've been in this neighborhood for four years now and i really we have a big beautiful home that we have a lot of equity in and we were very lucky i mean i think to get in when we into this neighborhood when we did i mean a new house here construction with everything we have would probably be close to a million dollars so i feel like it was a really good investment and i want to stay here but things are really tight so the other day it just came up he wanted to do some more sports activities for my son over the summer and it was going to be four hundred dollars like we had just paid like for a camp we found like a county camp that was very reasonable in price we had just paid for that and a bunch of other expenses and he's like i hate that things are so tight all the time it's a values question of what's important to us and what are we actually going to put in the

59:46George Kamel:budget and that should be a reflection of of the life you guys want and because you are talking about a mortgage you do need to look long term because you don't want to make a short-term decision and change a long-term asset like a mortgage. So you need to be thinking through, okay, the sports thing, is that just for this summer? How many summers do we see them wanting to participate in things like that? And really think through how long certain variables are actually going to be part of the equation and just have some really intentional time set aside to dig through this before you make a major choice, I would say.

1:00:22George Kamel:Thanks for the call. Yeah. Appreciate that, Sarah. Good luck with this and the health issues, especially. Yeah. Kyle's up next in Louisville, Kentucky. What's going on, Kyle? Hey there. Thanks for taking my call. I am 45, my wife 43. We have three kids, a daughter that's 15, a 14-year-old boy that has profound autism, and we have a 10-year-old boy. My question is whether I should keep a survivorship policy that I have in place that the sole beneficiary is a special needs trust that we set up for our son, who's likely to be with my wife and I for his lifetime. So I know that Dave is not a big fan of a lot of these universal life policies, but wanted to get your thoughts on how I should think about that from a special needs planning mentality.

1:01:19George Kamel:How much is that? What's the premium on that? The premium is only about$1 ,300 a year. Definitely not anything that's breaking the bank. You know, it's something that we plan for every year. The death benefit would be$500 ,000 in the event that both me and my wife died. And that would go straight to the special needs trust? That's correct. And in addition to that, you know, I have a term life policy that is about 10 times my base salary. My wife is a stay-at-home mom, and we also have a term life policy on her as well. Okay. Okay. That's good. Is there anything else in the special needs trust besides those three pieces?

1:02:08No, not currently. And the term life policies don't pay to the trust immediately. You know, that would go to my wife, or if she were to pass away, that would go to me, and then would likely go to our other kids. The trust is there to fund any trustee or any caregiver that might take on our son.

1:02:32George Kamel:Yeah. I mean, if you guys are debt free or investing well,$1 ,300 a year is a small price to pay for some peace of mind right now. I agree. And if you want a second opinion, I would definitely get with an estate planning attorney, a smart investor pro at RamseySolutions.com. Because special needs trust and having a special needs child, you want to make sure that all the I's are dotted and the T's are crossed to take care of them if something were to happen to you guys. So you're doing a great job, man. I can't imagine what you guys are dealing with. Three kids and the special needs kid. That's a lot to manage at your age and your mid-40s trying to hold down the fort.

1:03:05George Kamel:Keep it up.

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1:04:38George Kamel:Today's question of the day is brought to you by WhyRefi. If you've been turned away by other lenders because your private student loans are out of control, WhyRefi may still be able to help. They specialize in refinancing options built specifically for borrowers in that situation. Go to yrefy.com slash Ramsey. That's the letter Y, R-E-F-Y dot com slash Ramsey. May not be available in all states. All righty. Today's question comes from Hudson in Utah. It says, I'm 17 years old and I run a music marketing business using Spotify playlists. I've been running this business for just about a year and a half now.

1:05:13The business has taken off and I have secured several deals worth up to$25 ,000 and have gotten to work with very large artists. My parents are hard set on me going to college, but they are not paying for it. So all tuition and expenses would be on me. I have about$30 ,000 in the bank, a car worth$15 ,000, which I bought with cash, and zero debt. Do I go to college and pursue a business or finance degree, take a gap year to try to scale my business, or skip college completely? Man, I just love this question because it really does. I like things, George, that kind of like butt up against norms and like allow you to do your own thing because there is no rule that says when you leave high school, you must go to college.

1:06:03There is no rule that says that. And I know a lot of parents probably hate me saying that, especially if their children are listening, but it's true. That's not always the smartest path. And so if we have three choose your own adventures here, go immediately to college, which is very easy, George, for somebody to say, go spend your money on this. They're not the ones paying for it. He doesn't. I mean, he's got$30 ,000, but he maybe doesn't want to spend his money that way. He's doing something entrepreneurial that's doing well for himself right now. I like that. And so my thought here, I'm just going to, and I want to hear your opinion too, George.

1:06:38Ruffle some feathers. I know what's coming. My opinion is college is always going to be there. It's always going to be there. And I know there is something to like momentum. like when you're you don't want to just take a gap year and not know anything right but this guy he's got a clear path it's like okay there's momentum going in one direction follow the momentum your entrepreneurial uh business on spotify is taking off i love you doing it if for some reason it putters out and you find yourself like okay the reason it's puttering out is because i just don't have the information or skills i need to grow it well then you might look at okay what are some of the things i need to learn is it a university path is it a certification path do i need to go shadow and, you know, do some sort of internship path.

1:07:18So many options there. George, what say you?

1:07:21George Kamel:Well, as a guy who took a gap year, I went to school for a year, took a gap year, pursued music, was in a band, worked at the Apple store. Everything you think about me looking at me is true. So I would never tell him not to do that. I mean, here's the funny thing. People send their kids to colleges with prestigious music programs, hoping one day they'll start a business like Hudson did at 17. Yes, and just not to be whatever, but the school is already behind. The education is already behind what people are doing right now. Your professor doesn't know what Spotify is most likely. So I would go, hey, I'm going to pursue this.

1:07:57George Kamel:I'm going to see where it leads. And worst case, if you go, man, I am at a wall. I hit a wall. I don't know where to go from here. I think a business degree would help or a finance degree would help. Then go for it. But do it because you're passionate about it and not because mom and dad told you to. I don't think that college is a place to search for what you want to do. I don't. I don't think you should search for$80 ,000. For most parents, it's just a safe place to find that. And so they go, well, I'd rather my kid there than out in the real world. But you're paying for every semester and every change of major and every change of, I just think that we can be more efficient.

1:08:33George Kamel:100%. I always joke that if you want your kid to be cultured, send them to Europe for a year instead of to college. I can tell you as a person. It'll be cheaper and they'll have a better time. and come back a different person. I agree with that wholeheartedly, George. As a person who worked on ships right out of college, traveling the world will do more for you than a lot, a lot of things. I'll tell you that. I love it. Way to go, Hudson. Yeah, I like that. I'm proud of you, man. I mean, I don't want your parents mad at me. They're already mad at you, but I'd say mom and dad, unless you're footing the bill, I'm going to just pursue this business.

1:09:03And let's add this. Maybe he has to move out at 18 because of it, because mom and dad have one opinion and he has another. That's okay, too.

1:09:10George Kamel:And you can afford it if this business keeps up. Way to go. Jason is in Chicago. Up next, what's going on, Jason? Hey, how you doing? Great. What's your question today? So I have a 2026 Honda, and that's$25 ,000 left on the vehicle. I have$23 ,000. I'm close to paying it off already, but I was wondering, I don't know, I'll get paranoid when I don't want to pay it off right away because then I have nothing in my bank. Would you recommend just paying off right away? Or, I mean, I could build it back up pretty quickly, but like... What's your payment? It's$532. And what's your next paycheck? What's my next paycheck?

1:09:55George Kamel:Yeah. $21,$22. Okay, so we're talking two paychecks from now. You'd have enough to pay off the car and still have$1 ,000 left over in savings? Yeah. And you'll be freed up of that$532 for the rest of your life. So how quickly could you save it back with$5.32 extra in your pocket every month? I could probably give it like a couple months. I'd be in a decent spot. I think you have your answer. Because what I do is I split my check in half. Half of it goes to savings, half of it goes to bills, and go from there. Okay, so 50 % of your take-home pay is going to that savings account that has$23 in it?

1:10:37Yep.

1:10:37George Kamel:Way to go. I mean, if you keep that up once you're debt free, you're going to be right as rain, my friend. So I would definitely do that. I mean, if you look at our baby steps, baby step one is$1 ,000 starter emergency fund, which means if you have more than that, it's going to go towards baby step two, which is pay off all of your consumer debt. So is this all the debt to your name? Is this$25 ,000 car loan? Yep. Man, I would pay it off and not look back. But again, don't do it until you have that$1 ,000 buffer on top of the money to pay it off. So we're talking about a month from now? Roughly.

1:11:09George Kamel:That's it. All right. I would not be scared, my friend. And listen, if you have an emergency come up, you hit pause and you cover the emergency and then you hit play and move forward again. Awesome. Are you a single guy, young guy? I'm not single, but yeah, I'm young. Is your wife working outside the home? Yes. Okay. So we have two incomes on top of this. Yes. What do you guys bring at home every year or every month? uh probably she's bringing a month i don't i mean she's my girlfriend so oh well that's a different story okay different story yeah then it doesn't then the the advice stands it does not concern her not her business appreciate that jason that's a fun one that is i want to talk about the uh the car loan epidemic jade because i just saw the headlines that they have now surpassed student loans in national debt.

1:12:03Oh boy. What's the number?

1:12:05George Kamel:I believe it's$1.68 trillion. Oh wow. That is surpassing. In auto loan debt. The average payment is now$750 for a new car. That's painful. And in the high 500s for a used car. Yes. And it just shocks me that people are still out here buying a brand new car, which depreciates 10%. The moment you drive it off the lot yeah 60 within the first five years yeah on average I while you pay interest and it goes down to value I think the most compelling argument here is when you synthesize the data out there on car payments who has car payments you can derive that of working adults like adults that are of working age over 50 of them have car payments then when you stack that up against to the percentage of people who are living paycheck to paycheck.

1:12:55And then when you stack that up against the amount of people who feel like I won't be prepared for retirement or I don't have enough money in retirement, the numbers are so close that you go, oh, it really is true that the car payment is keeping middle class broke and unable to cross over that line to wealth.

1:13:14George Kamel:It's very interesting. And then the hardest part is we can justify it. I mean, you talk to the callers, they got brand new cars. And I go, why'd you need a brand new car? Well, safety and reliability. I go, okay, so two years from now, you've got a used car. Is it still safe and reliable? Yeah. Yeah, it is. And the truth is new cars, you know, if you look at all the technology and things that can go wrong, they're not as reliable. Some of these used cars without all the bells and whistles are actually safer in a lot of ways and less prone to needing all these repairs. So what I do is research the make model year for known issues that come up with this car.

1:13:51George Kamel:Don't buy one. Oh, it's got the CV transmission issue in that Nissan. Great. Let's avoid that specific model for those years and find something we can buy in cash until we can upgrade in cash. And if you stair-step it that way, you are guaranteed to build wealth instead of trading in one payment for another.

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1:16:22George Kamel:Full circle. You're welcome. Marie's in San Jose up next. What's going on, Marie? Hi. So three years ago, I went to the emergency room because of a cold. And I'm not from this country. I had no idea how high deductibles worked. I had insurance at the time. And while I was there, I signed up a paper that the amount would be around$720, but I was hit with a bill of$4 ,700. And the insurance paid$1 ,700, and I still have a$3 ,000 bill to pay. I think that's outrageous, and I really don't want to pay this bill. I didn't pay, so I went to collections. and the collections company sent me a bill with the same amount, but with my name wrong in it.

1:17:10I was wondering if I can skip this payment. Okay. So when you went to the hospital, did you stay over or was it just a quick ER visit? Tell us, did you think that you were just going into an urgent care? Tell us what happened. Did you stay over? No, I didn't. It was a few hours. there was a lot of people there were a lot of people in there was it the emergency room I took a pill and like a like an odd bill like they gave me an odd bill and that was the whole treatment you know it's like I was a short time I mean it could be faster but you know for what he was it took a long time but it was a cold I had a cold did you get an itemized statement did you get him to print you out a statement of each line-by-line item so I call them And I complained about the price because I couldn't believe when I saw the price.

1:18:05And I asked for the itemized. They didn't send me the itemized. They never sent me the itemized.

1:18:12George Kamel:If I'm in your shoes, send a written dispute to the collection agency and to the original hospital. I can tell you this. I don't think you're going to get out of it because of a typo of your name. No, that's not going to do it. The debt is yours. You can get a debt validation letter. You can send them that. But they're going to validate it and go, there's a typo in your name, but the debt is yours. I'm surprised if you saw the portion that the insurance paid, but you couldn't see the information. Do you see what I'm saying? I would keep fighting for that. I'm like, no, show me. How old is this debt?

1:18:44Three years.

1:18:45George Kamel:Oh, wow. Yipes. Well, you can still try to get all that information. And at this point, they're going to be willing to settle. Do you have any money? I do. I do. Yeah. Okay. So this is more out of principle. You're just angry at the American health care system. Absolutely. Join the club. You could probably settle this for a quarter of the amount and be done with it. Do you think a quarter of the original amount that I signed for? Because they told me I was going to be billed$700. I mean, you can talk to the collection company and say, listen, I was told it'd be$700. I've got that. That's all I have.

1:19:20George Kamel:If you'll take that as paid in full in writing and don't give them access to your checking account, then you call it good. And see what they say. They might go, no, we can't do$700. we can do a thousand. It's probably worth it for you to not deal with the hassle at this point and just go, all right, I'm angry, but you've been angry for three years now. Yeah. So I want you to just be free of this. And when you settle it, just know, cause I've had to do this. You might have to call several times to get somebody with a brain who will actually know the policy that they can settle it. The first three people might say, we can't settle this.

1:19:53You owe$3 ,000. Just hang up and call the next person until you get somebody with some brain cells.

1:20:00George Kamel:And have you talked to the insurance company to understand why they didn't cover more or what your actual insurance was? I didn't call the insurance company. What I understood is that I had a high deductible. And at that point, I had no idea how this worked. In the United States, I had no idea of this scam that insurances are in this country. So I sincerely didn't understand. I couldn't believe. I thought I had to pay the whole thing. But what pieces me off is the$700 jumps to$4 ,700. Sure. Yeah, that is the confusing part. That's the part I would at least get the info on through the itemized bill and some of the validation of this debt.

1:20:40George Kamel:And I would be talking to everybody. I'd be going to the insurance company, to the hospital, to the collection agency, and really get to the bottom of this before you ask for that settlement. Just so you know, the typo in my name is not really just a typo. It's like a whole name. They put a wrong name. Like they put the first name correctly and they put a second name and then they put my last name. So do you think there's a confusion of accounts? Do you genuinely think they have your account confused with someone else? You know, it is possible. I never thought about it, but now that you're saying that, I mean, it could be.

1:21:18George Kamel:That's where sending that debt validation letter would really help. Say, hey, this isn't even my debt. This isn't my name. I don't know. I didn't get these services. And so that's the part you can fight. And I would. But again, it's been three years. And so you might be limited in your options because of the age of this. So worst case, if you fought the good fight, I would just try to settle if it really is your debt. And if not, keep fighting, Marie. Good luck. Yeah. See if it's connected to your social security number, that's usually a great place to start. Yeah, that's a good call. And pull your credit report and see what pulls up on there.

1:21:49George Kamel:Because if it's not your credit report, you got to wonder. You got to wonder. Is it really your debt? Listen, two Marias could have come in on the same night with similar last names and similar symptoms. Well, it's funny as we just took a call from Maria and now we've got Maria. Maria, was it your debt? Hey, are you with us? I think you're calling on me. I am. Can you hear me? Yes. How are you doing? Hi. I'm well, thank you. How are you? Good. What's your question today? Good. So I have a subtle debate question. My husband and I are on Baby Step 2, and we are debating whether or not to pay off kind of like our fifth or sixth loan amount debt to free up a huge monthly payment.

1:22:36Oh, tell us more. How much would you be paying off if you jumped the line and paid off the fifth smallest debt? What's the amount of the debt and what's the monthly amount? it's 359 107 and the monthly payment is 47105 okay and what's the smallest debt right now how much is it total and what's the monthly payment uh it is 2000 total and there's no monthly payment because it was a friend from church that um lent money to help pay for a car repair oh listen i don't want that paid first yes like uh aside from the rules for a second i would 100 percent pay the front that's a relationship tied to that right how much money do you guys have right now to pay if you threw money at debt um right this minute we like it's it's about four to six thousand i was pregnant so we were like bankrolling and then several things went wrong we also ended up in the hospital so we have money to throw at debt but we're waiting and we're just kind of like holding my husband just started working again and um we're still waiting for the financial assistance application to be answered to find out like how much of it is Are they going to charitable write it off?

1:24:04Yeah, what you're on the hook for. Or what they're going to do. Okay. So let's imagine Perfect World. We'll call it good for a grand. We want to make sure we have it. Yeah.

1:24:12George Kamel:So let's say you have five grand to throw at your debts. If you did the debt snowball, how many debts would that knock out? So that would be one, two, it would get into three. Which is the$2 ,000? Yeah. So it'd be one for 2000, one for 2014, which is a credit card, and then one for 2800, which is a past due bill and also doesn't have a monthly minimum. Okay. I still like the debt snowball option because you're going to be up against that one soon enough, the 3591. If it was like$1 ,200 or something, it might be worth it if you have the lump sum. But I think either way, if you map this out on paper, you're probably going to get to the same destination in a similar amount of time.

1:24:58yeah and and because this particular loan goes down by 470 105 per month so we've been having this conversation for many many many months yeah and at this point it's gone from like 10 grand or eight grand I mean I can tell you this I can tell you this Maria I would I do care about relationships when you owe people money and I do care about knocking those out fast I think there's worse things you could do than to pay the$3 ,500 first, but I'm a person who I like following the rules. I think when you set a standard to follow a process, you will follow it.

1:25:45George Kamel:Welcome back to The Ramsey Show and the Fairwinds Credit Union Studio. I'm George Camel, joined by Jade Warshaw this hour, taking your calls at 888-825-5225. Julie is in Indianapolis up next. Julie, welcome to The Ramsey Show. Hey, thank you for having me. Absolutely. How can we help today? I'm wondering if I should pursue public service loan forgiveness or if I should try to pay off my student loans. What are you doing for work? um i work at a university uh doing what kind of role um i'm a pharmacist okay and what are you making uh 115 000 a year starting when my job starts next month okay and how much student loan debt do you have?

1:26:39$164 ,000. Okay. So the term on that is this idea that if I follow the payment structure that they put in place, sometimes there's other things attached to it, then after a while these loans can be forgiven. The only problem that I have with this, like I would love for everybody to have some form of, you know, pay out on something. Oh, you didn't have to pay the debt. That's great. But the problem with this is the success rate is so very low. I mean, we're talking 1 % to 5 % of people even have their loans forgiven. That is just terrible. I mean, that is just a terrible success rate. So what a horrible idea to pour a decade of time into something and never see it, you know, it never come to fruition.

1:27:36When if you applied the full force of your income, that's only going to go up from$115 ,000 to paying off$164 ,000 as a single person with no kids. Do you see what I'm saying? I think that you could pay this off in more than half the time, don't you? Of waiting around for the forgiveness. yeah see i'm not do you know why the success rate is so low um there's a lot of reasons so a lot of it is paperwork being filed in completely um incompetent government is the headline yes incompetent government whoever's working and checking things behind the scenes there's just so much of it that you might not even be able to control here and so that's we're talking like

1:28:22George Kamel:three presidents from now and i don't know if you've seen even with this administration they're already starting to change the rules of what qualify what employers can and can't qualify and so because of that it just scares me for you to sign up for a 10-year clock make all of these payments minimum payments while interest accrues and then still possibly be on the hook while locking yourself into a certain job or a certain type of employer when you could go make more in the private sector i mean what if you went to go work for a big private sector company making double yeah that would be really difficult given my job um i pretty much have to work at the university but uh i hear what you're saying so i right now i make 50 000 a year like i said next month i'm transitioning jobs i'll be making 115 a year how do i then allocate like what should my percentages be my income what should i be saving what should i be putting towards the loan well Well, let me clarify something first.

1:29:20Are you working for the university because they're a qualified employer for the public service loan forgiveness? No, I work in academia. I do research and stuff. So I pretty much will always have to work for a university. Because you're on the research side of things. Just double checking that. Okay. So your question was, how much will you have to put towards this to pay it off? Yeah. Okay. Well, let's look at some real numbers to get this a fair timeline for you. So where are you living right now? Like, what are you bringing home and what are you paying for rent? I pay$1 ,800 in rent, and then that'll be against the$115 ,000 income.

1:30:03Okay, and you haven't received the income, right? That's not until next month? Correct. Next month is when I start that income. Okay, so let's pretend you'll be bringing it in around$7 ,200 a month. I think that's a fair place to start, taxes considered. Okay. So$1 ,800 in rent, what other expenses have you taken into account that maybe we should think about? I mean, I have pets, so obviously like food and stuff, groceries, but I don't have any car payment. No other does? Yeah, no other credit cards, nothing like that. Good.

1:30:43George Kamel:I mean, the napkin math is telling me you could probably knock this out in four and a half to five years. Yeah. If you're bringing home seven and you can throw three at the debt every month. Which I think you can. And live on four. That's very reasonable. And so the key is, this is all we're doing is we're focused on this debt and we're not, you know, investing, going on vacation, upgrading the cars. This debt is going to be your singular focus for a couple of years. But this short sacrificial time is going to free you up for the rest of your life. So how old are you today? I'm 26. Love it. Can you imagine by 30 years old, you're completely debt-free, making mid-six figures, if not more?

1:31:21George Kamel:That would be amazing. That's the dream for most people. And so what I don't want is for you to now be 36 and go, oh my gosh, this whole thing fell apart, and now I'm still on the hook. Now you're really frustrated. Starting from scratch. So much regret. I like to feel like I'm in control of my life, and I'm not mad at people who got the public student loan forgiveness. But the thing is, it was also created for the person making$38 ,000 who is going to have a real hard time climbing out of it. And so in your situation with as much as you make, it's a very solvable problem for you to just knock this debt out making$115 plus.

1:31:58Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate the encouragement. I feel better about this. Yeah. And if you look at that timeline and you don't like it, you still feel like it's too long, that's another place where you can take matters into your own hands and say, okay, maybe I'm working overtime. Maybe I'm picking up side hustles. Maybe I'm getting a roommate. All of these things that are going to add to your income and add to the amount that you can throw out this debt every single month, the more the merrier.

1:32:22George Kamel:I like this plan. All right. Laura's in New Orleans up next. What's going on, Laura? Hi, how are y 'all today? Doing great. What's your question? Great. My question is this. I am just about 62 years old. I just, due to my past, not making the best financial decisions and being married at the time and no longer married, I have about$190 ,000 in debt that I accrued and took over from my divorce. And in retirement, only have$329 ,000. Okay. What kind of debt is the$190 ,000?

1:33:04I had an SBA loan where I used that. Most of that was to pay off debt that we had had from a marriage due to some real estate difficulties. And so I was able to get a loan to pay off some of that debt, most of all that debt, at a lower interest rate. So the other debt is my car. I have a$550 a month car note for a car. I owe about$28 ,000 on that.

1:33:41George Kamel:Hey, Laura, hang on the line. I'm going to carry you over into this next segment because I want to break this down with you and give you some hope that you can still retire with dignity, even at 62 with a bunch of debt, not enough in retirement. Let's walk you through a plan where you leave feeling confident. So hang on the line. We'll be right back to explore that situation.

1:34:30I'll see you next time. you work your butt off for your money but your money's never going to return the favor if all you do is hope for the best if you're ready to learn how to make your money work for you check out the smart vester program smart vester can help you find advisors who specialize in retirement planning charitable giving advanced investing strategies and more whatever your goals your pro will take the time to explain your options so you never have to invest in anything you don't understand. Head to RamseySolutions.com slash SmartVestor to get connected.

1:35:05George Kamel:Ramsey Solutions is a paid non-client promoter of participating pros. Learn more at RamseySolutions.com slash SmartVestor.

1:35:20George Kamel:All right, we're going to be joined by Laura. Before the break, we were talking to her. She's 162, has$190 ,000 in debt. She's got$329 ,000 in retirement. Let's see if we can help her out. Laura, are you still with us? Yes, I am. Okay. So you were breaking down your debts for us. You got a car loan. It's$550 ,000 a month. You have this SBA loan. Any other debts in that$190 ,000?

1:35:47I have a boat loan that is about$40 ,000. I own with a person. So it's my boat and another friend of mine that we are trying to sell. Is both of your name on it, on the loan? It's under, no, it's under my name. Okay, just your name. That's good. Do you have any money saved besides retirement? Not really, not anything to speak of. Tell us the amount because it's something. Probably$5 ,000. Okay, great. $5 ,000 saved. And what do you bring in every month from work? I make about$32 ,000 a month gross. Okay, good.

1:36:31George Kamel:That's great. That helps the situation out. That helps the situation greatly. Now, how much do you actually have left over? If you went real serious and went, I'm going to cut all my expenses, I'm selling the car, selling the boat, how much could you realistically throw at this debt out of that$32 ,000? Obviously, that's gross. So you're bringing home$22 ,000 and then you've got a bunch of debt payments? Right. Yes. So that's probably about, I'd say, with all my expenses, about$10 ,000 with expenses. Okay. So you've got about$12 ,000 left over. Yes. That you could throw at these debts. That's great.

1:37:08George Kamel:And what's the car worth if you sold it, and what's the loan on it? I owe about$28 ,000. I've only had it probably a year and a half, so it's probably at least break even, if not maybe sell it at$30 ,000. Okay. And then the boat, what is that worth? The boat, it probably is about$120 ,000, maybe$140 ,000, and I owe$90 ,000 on it. Oh, I thought you said$40 ,000 is owed on the boat. Okay, so you owe$90 ,000, but it's worth$140 ,000. That's a nice boat. Yes. Okay, and you think you could get$140 ,000, because that could clear a whole lot and give you some profit back to knock out. You could knock out the car and keep it if you wanted to.

1:37:50George Kamel:Mm-hmm. Right. And then the SBA loan is the giant one, right? Just one big debt? Right. And couldn't you throw$10 ,000 or$12 ,000 a month at that and knock that out in almost Well, that's what I'm trying to do. A little less than two years? Because I really want to get rid of that. Right now I've been putting about$5 ,500 into my retirement. And so I don't know if I should put less into that and pay more to the debt. Yes. I would. I would stop those contributions altogether and put it all towards a debt. Because if you can put, if you said 10 to 12, if you could bump that up to 15 by really cutting back your lifestyle, I mean, gosh, you could knock that out so quickly.

1:38:32And then you could put that same amount into retirement. Right.

1:38:38George Kamel:Because is the SBA loan like 70 grand? Though it's, well, 95 grand. I thought I heard you say$190 ,000. Did I get something wrong? Well, that's with the boat. Oh, that's everything together. Okay, great. Even better. Okay. So think about it this way. If you just had the SBA loan of$90 ,000 and you threw$15 ,000 out of the month, you'd be done in six months. Perfect. So think about that. You sell the boat, you could profit, you're telling me$50 ,000, which would knock out the car completely and still leave you with another$20 ,000 to throw at the SBA loan. Now we're down to 70 grand, right? Correct.

1:39:18George Kamel:So four and a half months, you throw 15 at that SBA loan and four and a half months, you're completely debt free if you pause retirement. So what we're talking about is not pausing retirement forever. We're talking four and a half months, you pause retirement, get to a place where you have some financial foundation, no debt, get yourself an emergency fund, and then think about how much you could sock away in your investments if you had no debt making 32 grand a month. Okay. So this is, you're going to be just fine. Okay. And I'm having only the$329 ,000 in my retirement. Well, if you turn around and if you do what George said, and then you take the$10 ,000 that you were throwing at the debt, even just$10 ,000 of it, and you put that away every month.

1:40:02George Kamel:If you put$17 ,000 away every month into investments, that's$200 ,000 a year. That's crazy. That's just your contribution. That's not even the compound growth over the next 10 or 20 years. So Laura, I'm telling you, if you get focused and you follow these baby steps, knock out consumer debt, that's it. That's all you're doing. Get the emergency fund of three to six months in place. That's all you're doing. Then baby step four is 15 % of your income. And if you don't have a mortgage, if you're completely debt-free, then you can bump that up to 25%, 30%, 40%, 50 % of your income to catch back up on retirement.

1:40:33George Kamel:So very solvable problem because of your amazing income. Get focused and call us back when you're debt-free. We'll celebrate with you. Michael is up next in Stillwater, Oklahoma. What's going on, Michael? I'm just working away. I feel you. How can we help today? So a few months ago, my wife and I decided to get a house built, and so we just signed a contract a little over a month ago to start that process, and they started on it. And then so within a year of that, They told us is when we'll have to get our traditional mortgage and we'll need a down payment at that time. And then a few weeks ago, she got diagnosed with cancer.

1:41:20And they're going to have to amputate her right leg. And she's not going to be able to work for six months, give or take. So that takes away a large majority of our income. and I don't know how we're going to be. As far as monthly bills, my job should be able to hopefully sustain everything, but I don't see how we're going to have money for a down payment now. And then the other thing is our house won't actually be complete either because in that loan I told them not to worry about drilling well for a water. I was going to pay for it out of pocket and then not to worry about running electricity because I've got a friend who's an electrician, and I was going to pay for that out of pocket and get a deal.

1:42:14But now I don't know. The well would have been about$10 ,000, electrics a couple thousand, and then about$60 ,000 for the house down payment, which I don't see how we're going to be able to make that work now. Yeah.

1:42:30George Kamel:How much debt are you currently in?

1:42:34About$50 ,000.

1:42:37George Kamel:Is that the construction loan? No. Nope. That is a car and student loans and a tractor. Okay. What are you in for the construction loan so far? The total cost at the end will be$304 ,000. That'll be the total cost. Okay. And where are we at in this process? You said you're under contract. Is there a way you can negotiate a stop with the builder on this? Not that I'm aware of. I talked to them a little bit, and they basically told me we're screwed. So they gave me, when we started the process, they gave us a backup plan, which is very possible, I guess, at this point. and it is a the full loan mortgage it's a 30-year mortgage at a 10 interest rate ouch oh gosh just sounds absolutely terrible to me so and what was the down payment they needed from you what i was going to do is go through another company for the uh mortgage we wanted to do like a 15-year mortgage.

1:43:52Okay. And now we're kind of out of options from what I can see. I really don't want to spend, you know, a million dollars on this house after interest and stuff.

1:44:07George Kamel:Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of dominoes here that are going to fall. So I would be trying to do anything I can to get out of this deal. And even if that's going to cost you some, it's still cheaper than what's on the other side of this. So I would be talking to maybe a real estate attorney to see what the heck did you sign? What will they be willing to negotiate if there's an amendment to the agreement to maybe even just pause this build or get out of it completely? Can you pay him 10 grand to call it good and you sell the lot? I don't know what all those details will be. Maybe you can pause if nothing really big has started yet.

1:44:43Maybe you can pause and sell the plot and somebody else can pick up where you left off. I'm not sure.

1:44:48George Kamel:That's a best case scenario. Otherwise, you're going to be working your tail off. And I would be selling this car and tractor and getting out of as much debt as you can in the meantime, because we don't know what the future holds. But man, we are rooting for you guys and praying for your wife.

1:45:13Hey, 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.

1:46:01George Kamel:In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage, we have Chad and Michelle. How are you guys? Great. We're doing great. How about you? Thanks for joining us. You brought the debt-free t-shirts to match. Love it. and your Ramsey Blue. That's fantastic. How much debt did you guys pay off? $268 ,933. Wow. Nice. Love it. And where are you guys from? Bristol, Vermont. Love it. And what kind of debt was the 268? Credit cards, car loan, tractor loan. Mortgage. Mortgage? I knew it was coming. You can't just sneak that in there, Chad. I knew it. That's amazing. Oh, wow. That's great. Fantastic.

1:46:39Okay, 268.

1:46:40George Kamel:And how long did that take you guys? Five years. Wow. That's impressive. And what was the range of income? It was 90, and we ended at about 140. So you obviously paid off the student, the consumer debt, student loans, tractor, all that. And then you just decided, you know, we're just going to go right on through. Did you keep that same intensity? Well, we kept the same intensity for a while. What happened? It sounds like something changed. Go ahead. Well, the gazelle intensity started off pretty well, gazelle intensity. She was certainly going off the start of it. I was kind of more like a laying down gazelle to start with.

1:47:21George Kamel:And then I finally got up and I was keeping up with her. Wow. So you were the reluctant spouse. I was. I was. I was. Yeah, I'm the spender. And she's the nerd. And it took a while for me to get on board. But once I started going to the classes and seeing what the outcome would be, it's like, yeah. Was that the turning point for you, was going to Financial Peace University with her? That's correct. How did you convince Michelle to actually go to the class? Every spouse wants to know, how do I get this gazelle to get up off the grass? Well, this started in 2019. I was doing our bills, thinking I had a budget in my brain.

1:48:01And I was like, I don't know how we're doing this. I mean, I just don't know how we're doing this. and our youngest was graduating that year and I was like we have no money for her for college wow nothing and I was like that's it I got to do something and um in 2019 we had done a school trip and we're actually went to Kentucky to run the Kentucky Derby Marathon and on the way there I saw a billboard with financial peace on it and I was like I wonder what that is and I didn't think anything about it and then in december i saw our local front perch forum had a advertisement for a financial peace class and i was like okay this is a sign so serendipitous yeah so i took it and my oldest daughter was going to go with me and she kind of bailed on me and so chad felt guilty

1:48:47George Kamel:really is why he went with me so the second week of class i end up going and then we went through the rest of them wow and this was during covid so we had two in-person classes and then we were all remote. I remember that. I was hosting a class at that point and we started together and then we ended up going remote. That's so funny. Wow. Okay. So it was a slow start, but then things ramped up and it sounds like your income went up. What do you guys do for work? I'm a paralegal. I'm a mechanical assembler. Fantastic. So what happened to the income over those five years? Was it just natural promotions and raises?

1:49:21George Kamel:Yes. And I worked a lot. Wow. Absolutely. Very, be very cool so the house has paid off what what's been the hardest part through this journey once you guys really understood what it's going to take to make it happen you get focused you get intense what became the hardest part day in and day out patience for me sticking to the budget and and not getting the wants yes you know so there's the needs you gotta have yeah what were those sacrifices for you chad that you were like i can't spend money on this for the foreseeable future until we're out. You know, if for some reason I thought I need a new pair of running shoes, just can't go out and buy a pair of running shoes.

1:49:58Either you budget for the next month or you make do with what you have. There's one thing I didn't sacrifice. My beer budget was always in there every month. Beer budget remains intact. Don't mess with the beer budget.

1:50:11George Kamel:That's correct. That's what's keeping Chad going right now. That's hilarious. Okay, so what's the house worth? 530, around 530. Awesome. And how much do you guys have in your nest egg? in retirement accounts? 1.4. Oh, my gosh. Oh, I love it. Baby steps millionaires. That is why. So you guys did a really good job investing your whole life, but you were also kind of collecting debt and being normal along the way. That was the smart thing we did was invest in our retirement. Yeah, you don't get to 1.4 million accidentally. And you guys still have a long life to live, which means that money's going to double, triple, quadruple.

1:50:46George Kamel:Hoping so. Wow. So it'll at least double. Well, I mean, every seven years, If the stock market's about 10 % average, every seven years it'll double. And you guys could live a good, what, at least 30, 40 more years, right? Well, we're a lot older than you think we are. You guys look 48 as the crow flies. It's all the marathon running. Chad looks older, I will say that. He's got a Dave Ramsey look to him. Thank you. I'll take that as a compliment. Well, he's younger. I robbed the cradle. Wow. Okay. So you guys are far past Baby Steps millionaires, but now you're doing things intentionally. Did you have any cheerleaders along the way?

1:51:22George Kamel:Our two daughters were our cheerleaders. Wow. And you brought them here with you. Did they learn along the way? Because, I mean, they're older now. They saw mom and dad do this journey. They were older when we started. Did they think you guys were crazy or were they on board? I probably think they think we're crazy. I believe that's true also. They thought you were crazy before, though, it sounds like. So nothing changed. Yes, but just more poor. We had to say no to them a lot. Well, yeah, because you said the college was the crux of this whole thing. So how did that end up? Tell us the end of the story.

1:51:54What did you end up doing? Well, we actually sold a – we had to undo some of the stupid that we could. Yeah. So we had bought a piece of property, of course, on a home equity loan. Man. And so we sold that. Yeah. And that money helped pay for her first year of college. Good. Worth it. Good.

1:52:10George Kamel:Very much worth it. And you want to bring them on stage? Yes. And tell us their names and ages? Go. This one is Sydney, and she is 25. Awesome. This one is Ariana, and she is 30. Oh, wow. And a family tree chain just like that. And so did their inheritance. That changed, too. They didn't know that number until now. Uh-oh. They were like, what? Mom and Dad are losing. Sleep with what I opened. Well, the good news is you've got a lot of time to enjoy it, and the character traits are passed down now. Sacrifice, perseverance, patience. And Chad now gets to spend a little more on the beer budget. I would imagine.

1:52:47That's still pretty tight. Okay.

1:52:50George Kamel:I love this so much. So what's next for you guys? You're in baby step seven. The house is paid for. What are you looking forward to in life? Well, traveling more. We've run marathons. So I have four more states left. And so that's the next two years is to. Are you going to do one in every state? We've done. I've got four more. Holy smokes. That is wild. And what are the last four states? um idaho minnesota um wyoming and colorado and colorado holy cow that is amazing wow so inspiring you're only like 46 ahead of me so i'm gonna catch up one of these days that's incredible oh my goodness you guys are excellent what do you tell people the key to becoming debt free is how do we become like chad and michelle my theory is you need to stick to the budget you make a budget every month and you stick to it and it works because i to start with i was a non-believer but i'm a believer now i want to sing it so bad i'm a believer there it is all right how about you michelle what was the key for you i think the biggest the first step to me was admitting there was a problem and then you know then the budget working as a team and getting both of us on board i mean if he wasn't on board i would have tried to do it sure but it made it so much easier and It's simpler with him being on board.

1:54:07George Kamel:Just sheer grit. But you probably would have been very resentful along the way. I would have taken forever. He would have felt guilty. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, working together is a different story. I would have had to double the beer budget. Oh, man. We have this no button, so we use the no button a lot. Hit it for us. What does it sound like? There's different ones, but they sound like Dave. I've seen this before. Yeah. Oh, is it actually Dave Ramsey? It's not, but it sure does sound like him. I think it is. That's fantastic. That's his side job. So I heard that a lot. I'd ask her a question, and she said she hit the button a lot.

1:54:40George Kamel:Well, you said no for five years, and you get to say yes for the rest of your life because of the position you put yourselves in. We're so proud of you guys. All right, here we go. It's Chad and Michelle and their daughters, Ariana and Sydney from Bristol, Vermont. They paid off$268 ,000, the credit cards, the car loan, the tractor, the house, and everything in five years, making$90 ,000 to$140 ,000. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. 3, 2, 1 We're debt free!

1:55:10George Kamel:I love it. Michelle is jumping for joy. You would have thought she won the Price is Right. I mean, look at her. She's won marathons in 47 states. Those legs can jump. That's true. I wish I had a Broyhill dinette set to give her as a prize. But instead, they get to be on the debt-free stage, which some say is even better.

1:55:48We'll see you next time.

1:55:51George Kamel:Hey guys, George Kamel here. You ever feel like you make good money and still have nothing to show for it? You run into Target for one thing and somehow walk out$87 later with toothpaste and emotional support candles? Just me? Okay. Well, that's the problem. Most people don't pay attention to how they spend their money, so it does whatever it wants. And that's why we created EveryDollar. It's a budgeting app that helps you create a simple plan for your money. EveryDollar's simple, it's clear, and it helps track where your money's actually going. Plus, you get daily lessons, to-dos, and reminders along the way.

1:56:20George Kamel:It's like having a money coach in your pocket. Your money's been freelancing long enough. It's time to give EveryDollar a full-time job. Go download EveryDollar for free on the App Store or Google Play.

1:56:40George Kamel:Our scripture of the day, 1 Corinthians 9, 24. Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Sarah Blakely said, don't be intimidated by what you don't know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else. I love that. Hey, the first Corinthians made me think of something in that debt-free scream talking about running. We talk about gazelle intensity all the time. I think we should take a minute and explain that because if you've been rocking with us for a while, you're like, oh, gazelle.

1:57:15We throw out phrases a lot, but that's one of those that if you're listening for the first time, you're like, what the heck were they talking about? What is gazelle intense? He's talking about laying down like a gazelle. So we talk about getting out of debt and doing it with intensity. And there are villains out there. There are predators out there. That's how we consider debt. Debt is the lion. It is the apex predator that is chasing after you. And gazelles are able to outrun a cheetah or a lion that can have a burst of speed. But a gazelle, if you can run fast enough for long enough, you can outrun them.

1:57:50And so being like a gazelle and running fast and intense for a long period of time will get you out of debt. So that's kind of the crux. I could never explain it the way Dave does with his fury.

1:58:00George Kamel:I'll read you the original scripture Dave stole this from. He plagiarizes a lot. So this is from Proverbs 6. It says, My son, if you have put up security for your neighbor, if you have shaken hands and pledged for a stranger, aka debts, you have been trapped by what you said and snared by the words of your mouth. So do this, my son, to free yourself since you have fallen into your neighbor's hands. Go to the point of exhaustion and give your neighbor no rest. Allow no sleep to your eyes, no slumber to your eyelids. Free yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, like a bird from the snare of the fowler.

1:58:32There it is.

1:58:33George Kamel:Poetic. Yes. I love it. That's some intensity right there. It is. It is. You got to go hard in the paint. No sleep to your eyes. No slumber. I like that. I know. That's right. That's gazelle intensity, if you ever wondered. All right. Elle is in Detroit, Michigan. Up next. What's going on, Elle? Hey, George. Hey, Jade. How are you guys doing? Good. Did I get it right, or is it LE? Nope. You got it right. Boom. First try. Okay. How can we help today? So I'm trying to figure out what to do with a pile of money that I have. Hey. Just lower the cost of living that I am dealing with. Oh, wow. Okay.

1:59:05George Kamel:How much do you have? Well, I have like$100 ,000 in a safe in my house. Gangster. And I'm expecting like, yeah, it's stupid. I know. I'm expecting like$28 ,000 more in about six weeks. How are you getting this? Where is this money coming from? Can you legally tell us? It really ranges. Like, we are weird people. So like we breed dogs and this is all over like four, four years. So I clean houses for a living and I get a lot of tips. My husband buys and flips cars and like furniture. Okay. And so it's just like whatever cash we get. I mean, obviously we claim it. And then if it's tips, I don't think you have to claim that, but it just sits in the house.

1:59:49So, but I'm thinking I should probably do something with that. Cause you know, it's not doing anything. And then our monthly mortgage payment increased due to taxes. And I'm pregnant with our first child. So I'm kind of, yeah, excited, but very, very scared for the future. Why are you scared for the future? Do you guys have debt or is there something that's not secure about your life? No debt. No, the only debt that we have is the house and we owe$298 ,000 on the house. And we're both self-employed. So like I said, I clean houses. um my income is steady but i plan to quit working once i have our child and then my husband he um he's a painter and so it really ebbs and flows with the season okay some some months he'll make like two grand some months he'll be able to bring in like 10 to 20 000 on like a high season um so i think that's one of the reasons why i'm just really unsure is because like you said that lack of security and really knowing.

2:00:51What's the mortgage payment every month? Well, it was$24.50, and as of March, it's now$29.95. Ooh, yeah, that did go up.

2:01:01George Kamel:What happened? I didn't know yet. You know, I think it's taxes, even though, like, we've only been living here for two years, and I know that they kind of re-analyzed. They reassessed the value went up on the assessment? Yeah. Okay. I was just making sure there wasn't anything else, but taxes and insurance, they can do that. What do you bring in every month? You said his could be anywhere from$2 ,000 to$10 ,000 and on a good month,$20 ,000. What's yours look like cleaning houses? So, like on paper, it's$3 ,000, but sometimes with tips, it's like$4 ,000. Okay. So, the good news is you have like$128 ,000, it sounds like, that's to your name.

2:01:40And we can do a lot with that. The bad news is I think that it might be worth it for you guys to figure out what an exit plan looks like for you to exit out of your income and into his in a way that makes it feel secure. I think that that's what the crux of this call is. Yeah, I agree.

2:02:00George Kamel:Can he find something to do in the slower seasons? I mean, he sounds like a real handy guy. Are there other things he can do where he could keep business up to be? Because really what you want, you got three grand and a mortgage. You want to be bringing home about$12 ,000 a month in order to make this all work and have some cushion to breathe, invest, save for your kids college, all of that. So, I mean, yeah, it's one of those things where the things that he can do, it's unpredictable. You know, like we just bought a car like three days ago. That was$2 ,000 we paid. And it's worth like$7 ,000.

2:02:36So, I mean, it's like we can just – we have 12 cars. crazy wow and you just sell them off yeah i know just flipping them like if you knew how much money in pokemon cards we have that'd be oh my goodness i like that you guys are resourceful i like that you find ways to make money i think that's very cool i think that what would really help is to lower your monthly expenses a lot and to make sure that you have a fair amount of savings so six months of expenses, I would not do three months. I do six months for you guys. And I would treat your money like a real estate agent or somebody who is, uh, has variable income like that.

2:03:14And I would always make sure I have an extra month's worth sitting there so that I always know that I have enough to cover the bill. So essentially you're always one month ahead. Uh, I would recommend that for you. And honestly, if you guys have no debt, uh, I'd probably keep, I'm not exactly sure what six months would be for you, but let's pretend it is 28 ,000. So you keep the$28 ,000 there in your emergency fund. You guys start the process of investing, baby step four. And maybe you take this$100 ,000 and you throw it on the mortgage. Maybe you recast the mortgage so that it's not such a big chunk of your life.

2:03:48I was thinking about doing that, but honestly, I've been burnt. Like every person that I call, whether it's a mortgage company or just some person I know who's a lender, I feel like I've been burned and everybody's just looking out for themselves. And, you know, there's refi and obviously there's like closing costs and you start your loan. Not if you recast.

2:04:05George Kamel:Recast might cost you a couple hundred bucks. So you're not actually doing a refinance. They're just recalculating the payment based on the new balance and keeping all the other terms the same. And if you want a trusted partner of ours, reach out to Churchill Mortgage and they can walk you through that and tell you if it makes sense for your situation. But I like that plan to give you guys some breathing room and cushion. But either way, we need to put this in an actual high yield savings account, not in a safe. because inflation is eating away at that money right now, even if it's physically safe.

2:04:35I know.

2:04:36George Kamel:So I would put it in a high-yield savings. We have another partner, Fairwinds. You can go to fairwinds.org slash Ramsey. They have a smart bundle just for our fans with a great high-yield savings account. And you can actually have up to 10 savings accounts in there. So what I would do if in your shoes, Elle, is have a Peaks and Valleys fund with your variable income. So on a great month, he makes 10 or 20. Let's park a bunch of that in that Peaks and Valleys fund so that if he has a$2 ,000 a month, we can pull from that instead of our emergency fund. I see. Okay. That sounds like a good game plan for sure, especially with the income reduction coming up once I have the baby.

2:05:10George Kamel:Yes. That's going to give you a whole lot of peace instead of going, oh my gosh, our expenses are still the same, but he only made two grand this month. What are we going to do? Go flip some cars real quick. You need some simplicity and peace in your life as this baby enters the world. And so I'm wishing you guys the best on that journey. Thank you so much, you guys. I really appreciate the clarity. I sometimes just need a straight path forward. Yeah, absolutely. That's what we're here for. That's one thing we got you. That's all I know how to do. A clear plan. Straight path. I love it. The baby steps.

2:05:40George Kamel:Love that. Man, but the good news is there's a lot of good things happening here. You know, when you don't have a bunch of consumer debt, you have a pile of money, even if it's physically in a safe, that's a while. Usually you hear that from the, you know, the 78-year-old man with tin cans in his backyard. rarely from a young couple. Yeah. I mean, I would do it. But, you know, you get that distrust of the banking system and go, ah, but... You got to spread it around. You got to have a little here, a little there, a little... At least it's insured in the bank. You know what I mean? If someone comes up in the middle of the night, takes that safe, you're out.

2:06:12George Kamel:It's curtains, yeah. But FDIC insurance, NCUA insured, if you're with a credit union like Fairwinds, go check it out. Remember, there's ultimately only one way to financial peace, folks. That's to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus. Thank you.