Be the Tortoise Not the Hare
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Live from Franklin, Tennessee, from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, it's The Ramsey Show, where we help people with their money, their relationships, their work, their mental and emotional health, with just about everything. I'm John Deloney, joined by my good friend George Camel, and we're taking your calls live, 888-825-5225. If you were born in the last century, the call is toll-free, and if you were born in this century, you don't even know what that means. 888-825-5225.

Let's go out to Orlando, Florida and talk to Grace. Hey, Grace, what's up? Hi, how are you guys? I mean, I don't know a way we could be better. We're actually doing pretty good right now.

I love that. I love that. Thanks for having me. What's up? I was calling in because I am getting married later this year. My fiance has no debt, but I am bringing in quite the load. I have about $180,000 in student loan debt that's all private and about $15,000 in credit card debt. And I've been told multiple things. I've been told to file for bankruptcy while I'm single. No! Who's telling you this? You can't even discharge that $180,000.

Yeah. So I just, I feel a lot of options. I've been grinding. I got a higher paying job and I'm really trying, but I'm just curious, you know. Did no one bring up the option of paying it off? They have, but I mean, my monthly payment is about $800. I've defaulted on two of them already because it's four separate loans. And I just feel like every single month I'm barely scraping by. What's your income every month?

So I just took a sales job. I was working in ministry before. My base income is $55,000 for the year, so I make about $3,500 a month, not including commission. I'm just starting to make any kind of commission. What in tarnation was this degree for?

I wanted to go to med school. And so I went to a private school. I went and played volleyball. I made terrible choices. I didn't have great oversight from my parents on what signing a private loan meant. And now I'm 27 and I'm really, really feeling the weight of that. So you didn't graduate?

I did graduate, but I ended up feeling like I was being called into ministry, so was obedient to that. Decided that I wasn't going to be... Were you also called into 200 grand of student loan debt? No, no, no. But I was 18 and stupid. Okay, so what's the actual degree you got? Biology. Okay. And you're not in that field currently, or are you working in a closed field?

No, so I work in medical device sales. Okay, so you can make some cash in that gig. Yes, yes. I'm just starting though. I'm literally three months in. All right, what does your fiance think about marrying somebody who's going to bring 200 grand of debt into the marriage? He actually is not scared. He knows that this is right and this is from the Lord and he is like, we're going to do this together. We're going to tackle it together. So why won't you allow him to love you as he is signing up to do for the rest of your life?

I know. You don't believe him. No, this is about shame and embarrassment. Yeah. He's signing up. He knows. If you were lying to him, that'd be a different thing. He knows. And he looks at you and says, I love you anyway. Let's go build a life. This is going to be issue number one of about 10,000 you and I are going to have to tackle together over the next 75 years. Let's make a run at this thing.

Yeah. And if you want some encouragement, go check out our friend Jade Warshaw's story. Her and her husband were making, what, 30 grand when they started paying off almost half a million in debt. So we've seen worse. And what they did was they got their income way up. By the end, they were making over 200 grand. And you guys will be, too, once you're married. Let's set a plan. We're going to say, all right, we're going to throw five grand of this debt every month. That's 60 grand a year. It's done in this amount of time. And bada bing, bada boom, you're out of debt in less than three years.

Yeah. So it's not as, I don't want you to think this is like, oh my gosh, everything's on fire. It's bad. Let's not, you know, mince words, but it's not the end of the world. I need to file bankruptcy and start over. And could I, can I challenge you with something? Yeah. I didn't, I didn't hear you say this. And so I'm reading the tea leaves. And so maybe this isn't you, but maybe this will help another caller who's not you. If God wants your attention, he'll get it.

Yeah. And sometimes we feel called into things. And I can imagine feeling called into ministry. But if you've already dug yourself a $200,000 hole, most ministry is not going to pay you enough to cover that. Right? If you're somebody who on a regular basis is just waiting to get some kind of word or some kind of... I hear that more and more these days. And what it's doing is giving people this pseudo permission to sit on the sidelines and wait for life to just happen to them.

What I want you to do is to begin to take full action in your life. And if God wants you to go a different direction, I promise you, you'll know. Yeah. But I would love to see you take this job. And until you start raking in big bucks, drive for Uber at night. Get up early and do, I don't know. I was going to say do a paper route, but those don't exist anymore. I don't know what else you could do, but here's the thing. I want you to begin to feel some skin in the game because right now you feel like a loser.

Yeah. And you're not. You're just another student of which there are millions who did what everyone said. You have to go to this private school so you can get into this medical school. And then suddenly your heart was pointed in a different direction and you dug yourself such a hole. Now you think you're such a loser you can't do ministry because you can't afford to. Yeah. You don't even think that you're worth marrying. It's nonsense. Right? Yeah. Will you do a homework assignment for me?

Yeah. Will you write 18-year-old you a letter? No, listen, I'm being serious. Yeah. Write a forgiveness letter to 18-year-old you. You know who does stupid stuff when they're 18? Every single 18-year-old who's ever existed. They don't all do $200,000 worth of stupid, right? But we all would love to have things back from when you're 18. And you've got to stop carrying that crap around, especially into a new marriage to a man who's like, I want all of you, including the $200,000 in debt.

Yeah. But you got to let yourself go get married. You got to let yourself go be a great salesperson, right? So you can be the saleswoman of the year. Go get it. Yeah. The richest irony is that your name is Grace and you have none for yourself. Mine is John, which is a toilet. So everyone can see that one pretty clear.

So Grace, there's two parts of this. One, there's the emotional healing that John's talking about. And then number two is the tactical, I got to work my butt off doing three side hustles. And guess what? You guys are going to get married. It's going to get paid off. If it's two years or four years, whatever it takes, it's going to happen. And so I think right now it feels like it's never going to happen. Therefore, I need a shortcut.

And there's option C that we forgot about. In brass tacks here, if you file for bankruptcy, you can clear the $15,000. That's it. Student loans are not dischargeable by bankruptcy. So whoever's telling you to declare bankruptcy...

They haven't done a Google search. Yeah, exactly. They haven't Googled, right? Yeah, it's a lawyer, so that's scary. Oh, yikes. There we go. Well, they probably want your money if they're a bankruptcy lawyer. They're like, I'll take the money even if it doesn't help you. Exactly. Oh, Grace, I'm so sorry. So you're in on this, Grace? Are you ready to rock and roll?

I am, and I feel empowered, so thank you. All right, here's the deal. Your marriage gift, George and I are going to hook you up with Financial Peace University. I want you to watch the digital lessons. It's nine lessons, you and your fiancee watch them together. I don't want you to look at him and hold his hand and say, I'm so glad that you picked me, and you better be really glad that I picked you, and we're going to ride or die together. Second thing we're going to send you is the EveryDollar app. You've got to start practicing budgeting, and it's going to give you some skin in the game so you don't feel lost. Okay? Mm-hmm.

And the next time you are looking for a hack and somebody has Googled something and they're like, oh, you should just holler back girl at us. I know you ain't no holler back girl, but just holler at us and we will give you the next right step. This is the Ramsey Show, 888-825-5225. We'll be right back.

Statistics show that half of Americans don't have enough life insurance or they don't have any at all. I don't understand this, John. Why don't people want to take care of their family? They think they're not going to die or something? Well, I used to be one of those guys. I didn't even think about it. And one of my buddies said, hey, the only reason to not have life insurance is if you hate your wife and kids. And

And I immediately went and got term life insurance. That's a gut punch. For decades, Dave, I've sat across people who've lost a spouse. They've lost somebody important to them. Me too. And they don't know what to do next. Terrifying. You're going to have a crisis here. You know, you got two options while you're sitting and talking to a young widow. She's concerned about how she's going to invest all this money properly and not mess this up. Or she's concerned how she's going to eat tomorrow. That's exactly right. These are the two options. Yeah.

It's saying I love you to your family. Term Life Insurance. Jeff Zander and the team at Zander Insurance makes it easy and affordable. I've used them personally for 25 years. They're the only people I trust. Go to Zander.com or call 800-356-4282. Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm John Deloney, sitting next to the one and only George R. Kimmel. What is your middle name? Not true. Starts with a P and I'll never tell.

Reddit, if you guess it. I want to hear your best guesses, George P. Kimmel. I'm sure it's Googleable. I'd like the mystique, you know? As public figures, we've got to have a little mystique, John. I regret that entire sentence. I don't have any mystique. Do I? No. No. I think I'm kind of mystique-free. Well, you are a private guy. I mean, you're big on privacy. You know, you want to live out in the woods. No one can find you. All that. Yeah, there is that. But it's not really a mystique. It's just...

I was on social media at seven years old, John. I was ready. That explains so much. I was in the AOL chat room, baby. I was anxious and depressed before anyone else was anxious and depressed. Let's go out to Boston and talk to Anthony. What's up, Anthony? Hello. You all right? We got you, brother. What's up?

Great. So I graduated undergraduate about four years ago, and I've been working in consulting ever since. And I've just been treating Bitcoin as like a savings account, just kind of dollar cost averaging into it for a decent amount of time now. And I'm contemplating if I should, you know, pull out and reconsider long term saving strategy or continue down this road. I'd like to hear your thoughts on it.

Are you talking about all of your money? Do you have an actual savings account? Do you have money in the bank? No, I don't have a savings account. But I have like a 401k, but this is like the majority of my savings. Do you have any debt? I have about $70,000 in student loans, federal and state combined. How much do you have in Bitcoin? Probably over $200,000. Can we just salute you? Most people are kind of Bitcoin light and...

You're all in. And I got to tip my hat because there's like people who play around on the edges. Anthony's not fooling around. You went full bonkers. Does your social media profile include the word Bitcoin? No. Okay. No, you're not. I just want to know how far on the spectrum you are. Okay. Bitcoin bro 27. That would be awesome, Anthony. You've done really well. And the truth is when you put your money into any service,

single item, a single stock, a single cryptocurrency, you're putting yourself at risk. And it may not feel that way because for the last, you know, the Bitcoin bros will tell you it's just been going to the moon forever. We don't know what the future holds. We just saw, I mean, chat GPT this week.

China comes out with deep seek and all of a sudden it tanks the stock market because everyone's freaking out. And so all it takes is one thing to happen in the news or everyone starting to dump their crypto for you to lose big. And so I would, if this was, if you were in a, in Vegas right now, I'd be like, dude, cash out and go home. And so that's what I'm telling you to do. Cash out, pay off your debt, get an actual emergency fund in place. And then you can still invest. You know, I can't call it investing. You can still speculate in crypto and put some money there,

But I wouldn't do it until after you've taken some prerequisite steps, which is pay off your debt, get an emergency fund in place and liquid cash in a high yield savings account. Then begin investing 15% of your income into retirement accounts. Then any money beyond that, some fun money, you can put it into Bitcoin. And here's the deal.

At the end of the day. Don't think you're going to do that. I'm just telling you, I'm going to sleep well at night knowing I told you that. If you were to ask me and George, who are both husbands or both fathers, this is what we would do with our money. So it's not just like Instagram, back of the Instagram reel, like, yeah, bro. Two things I want you to think through. When you talk about guys who own real hard assets, like who are wealthy with tangible things, I'm thinking of Warren Buffett. I'm thinking of Dave Ramsey. I'm thinking of guys like that.

They invest in things they can touch and feel. And I have no doubt in my mind, like I basically live in a, I want to say Bitcoin, but I have a digital currency anyway. Dave Ramsey doesn't hand me cash every month. It deposits in a series of ones and zeros into my account, right? And then I move that into this account into retirement. So we basically have a digital currency. It won't surprise me if this technology is used at some point.

It also wouldn't surprise me if tomorrow some AI kid in St. Louis with a laptop figures out how to decode and spread Bitcoin out everywhere using AI. It won't surprise. So it's such an insanely risky gamble to hold two or three or four years of your life worth of money, especially when you're leveraged $70,000 into the government.

Do you get that? And so it just sounds bonkers to me on the other side of this thing. If you told me, hey, I've got a house that I own that's mine that no one can ever take from me. I've paid it off. I don't owe anybody anything, especially the government. I want to put some money over here and see what happens with it. I'll shake your hand, high five you. I do that just not with Bitcoin, with other stuff. So I'm totally game on that. But tell me what your resistance is because I can hear it. You're not buying it.

I don't know. I think it's kind of like if it's not broke, don't fix it. I understand. It's definitely volatile, and I've experienced a lot of psychological, what's the word, ups and downs. Psychosis? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, psychosis. But the last four years, all I've done is dollar-cost average and effectively outperformed it.

every hedge fund on planet earth so it's like i don't i see what you're saying that they're like i guess having all your eggs in one basket sort of argument uh but you were zoomed into a very particular spot in history and i'm trying to help you zoom out and look at the big picture and go it may continue to go up or like we saw in 2022 bitcoin took a 50 percent hit

Even the housing crash of 2008 didn't take a 50% hit in the stock market. And so it's way more volatile than the traditional stock market. You can handle that risk right now as a young single guy, but we're telling you as married guys who have seen a thing or two, that it's not a good long-term play. And here's the other thing. Go Google and you can dig into the researcher. I'm sure you're a tech guy. So you've probably got more sophisticated, um, problem solving software than I have. Um,

Everybody thinks they can beat the market until they can't. And everybody thinks they've figured out the magic serum, the Harry Potter wand that nobody else has, that trillion dollar hedge fund managers don't have access to, but I figured it out in my basement. I've got it. And until they don't. And so if you by yourself in your room have figured out this thing, you're the one guy who's kept this thing afloat for four years. Awesome. Yeah.

Um, you said it best. I think, and George and I've talked about this on air. I think in moving into the future, as everything is being leveraged, it's going to be disrupted and everything's gonna look different in five years and robots are going to be mowing or whatever's going on. I think that the wealth of the next hundred years is going to be peace.

is how can I get off this insane roller coaster that I've put every egg in the basket, every single one. So that's George and I telling you solve for peace. You have been on the roulette wheel for four years and you haven't fallen off. Your moment will come. And George and I are just saying, man, there's the wisdom is knowing when to leave the table and go buy breakfast for your friends in Vegas and then put the rest of the money in your pocket. Especially when you're sitting on all these student loans, which tells me

If you had the money to pay off your student loans, most people go, yeah, I'd love to pay them off. But you said, nope, I'm going to hold because of really what it is at the end of the day is it's a greed. There's a level of pride and greed that goes, nah, I'm going to keep riding this ride. Well, it's arrogance. I'm better than the system. And if you want to think, if you want to use a Vegas analogy, you went and pulled $70,000 out of an ATM machine. I mean, off a credit card, except the credit card is the government who can garnish your wages, take your stuff.

and you went and put that money on a roulette wheel. That's what you've been playing, and congratulations, bro. You made it. I have too much anxiety for these 24-7 cryptos. I mean, you could pull up at 3 a.m., and it's going up, down, up, down, up, down. Okay, now it's here, now it's there. Well, some people... Ivan will go with you. I mean, cocaine and meth is an issue, right? People use drugs, and they like the ride. I even get that. It's... There's just a moment beneath it. I made it sound like I do coke and meth. I don't. I understand it intellectually. Um...

But at least have enough wisdom to what they don't tell you on Instagram is the big players have a house.

The big players are not leveraged 100%. And you get these young 21, 22, 23-year-olds who get out of college and put everything into these assets. And they think they're playing the same game these bigger guys are playing, these wealthy multimillionaires, billionaires are playing. They're not. The billionaires' long tails are covered. They've got their housing taken care of. They've got their insurance. They've got life insurance covered. And then they go play with big sums of money. And so you think you're playing in the major leagues. You're not. You're playing right into their hand. And at some point, they're going to take your money off the table.

So build a foundation, build a foundation, man, and at least pay your debts to the government for crying out loud, brother. This is the Ramsey show. We'll be right back. Hey, guys, this is Jade Warshaw. Listen, I get it. The student loan situation is bananas, but it

It's time to make progress, not excuses. So if your payment and interest rate have you treading water, refinancing could be the solution for you. Look, if I were in your shoes, I would contact Laurel Road today and get a free 30-minute consultation. You'll work with a student loan expert and you'll go over your refinancing options.

Hey, for refinancing to make sense, you've got to check certain boxes, like making a good income. And bottom line, Ramsey's advice is that you only refinance if you can get a lower rate or a shorter term. Remember, the point is to pay off debt faster. Maybe you just need to keep rocking the debt snowball.

But if refinancing does make sense for you, Laurel Road offers low competitive rates and interest rate discounts are available for stuff like auto pay. Listen, you can't mess around with student loans. If you want them gone, you got to go hard. So go to laurelroad.com slash Ramsey to find out more and schedule your free 30 minute consultation. That's laurelroad.com slash Ramsey. Laurel Road is a brand of Key Bank National Association.

Welcome back to the Ramsey Show, 888-825-5225. If you were born in the 19th or the 20th century, I guess, 1900s, that's a toll-free call. If you were born in the 2000s, you don't even know what that means. It just means you can call from anywhere, anytime, 888-825-5225. John Deloney joined with George Camel. And listen, if you just listen to that last call talking about

putting all my savings in Bitcoin and I'm smarter than hedge fund managers and I've got it figured out. I know I've got $70,000 in student loans, but I've got this thing figured out.

There's so much nonsense about investing, how to do it, what to do. And the one thing that we don't often do, George, is we don't often put down TikTok and put down the blogs and put down Reddit and actually ask people who are very wealthy, what is your playbook? Will you just show me, please? Don't just tell me, here's what I think and here's what's going to happen. What are you doing in your house to keep you and your family safe and your legacy secure?

So here at Ramsey Solutions, we have an amazing two-night virtual event so you can watch us from your house. To get real questions, Dave Ramsey opens up his portfolio and says, this is how I have built what I have built. Dave Ramsey, George Camel, it's called Investing Essentials. It can be overwhelming. It can be confusing. And here's what we're going to do here.

George and Dave, not me, because you guys are way smarter than me. Love for you to be there. We could use a studio audience, John. We could. The last time I heard Dave talking about this stuff, I was like, oh, you're Good Will Hunting. Like, it's just, he's beautiful mind with it all. This is stuff people go, well, we've heard all of it on the show. No, you haven't. Not this stuff. This guy's pulling out formulas that I think even mathematicians are astounded by. But here's the thing. People think Dave over the years is just, he plays hillbilly on the radio, and I'll tell you what. I'm a simple man. Yeah.

Dave is a savant. No one's searching when it comes to algorithms and why he does what he does when it comes to his money, especially real estate. Exactly. Night two, we're focusing on real estate, real estate, investing, buying investment property. And Dave pulls up real properties that he owns, showing you exact calculations of

of how he gets their cash on cash returns and there's A-pods. John, it's amazing. The number of calls we take from people who are scrolling TikTok and went and immediately got married and bought a duplex and they're going to live in one half and they're going to rent out the other half. We live in the bathroom. We rent out the other four bedrooms. That's right. And then we're going to stack cash on cash on...

Listen, Dave's going to open up his playbook. Dave and George are going to walk through step-by-step how they do it so you can get clarity and you can get just the playbook on how you can invest with confidence and start building wealth.

March 4th and 5th. It's virtual. You can watch it on your iPhone. You can watch it on your laptop. If you're a crypto bro, you can watch it on those two big curvy screens that you watch your whole life go by on. And tickets are 199 bucks. We charge for this one because the return on this thing could be amazing.

I guess you reserve your spot, but there's not really spots. It's virtual, right, George? It's a virtual ticket. Go to ramseysolutions.com slash events, or you can click the link in the show notes if you're tuning in on podcast or YouTube. Go check it out.

I would, except I have one of the highest privileges in the world, which is I just text you on Saturday morning. I'm like, hey, George, should I move my money to this, to this? And you go, yes. You have the pleasure of sitting next to Dave and on a break, you're like, hey, Dave, can you tell me about this? And he just goes, yeah, I just do it like this and this and this. My favorite is that Dave says, who's going to care about this? They don't want to go that deep. And then people were like,

Please, we want to go deeper. Tell us more. Yeah, exactly. Dave calls it nerdville because it really is. We kind of nerd out. We obviously cover the basics. We're going to tell you how to invest, how to pick mutual funds, retirement plans. We cover all that, but then we go deeper into what about beyond that? What's beyond the baby steps? That's right. And it's the question that when you're scrolling TikTok, they don't give you the

the reasoning or the math behind it. They just give you some 60 seconds of excitement, some proclamation. They got off somebody else's Tik TOK account. So Ramsey solutions.com slash events, or click the link in the show notes. So that's a Sacramento, California and talk to Brayden. What's up Brayden? How are you doing? Like, man, I could not be doing better, brother. How are you? I'm kind of in a pickle. We got you. We got you. George loves pickles. I specialize in Brian cucumbers. Yes. Do this.

That was a deep pickle reference, George. People don't know, John. This is me educating the masses. That was fantastic, brined cucumbers. All right, so what's up, Brayden? Okay, so I finished my first baby step. I have about $1,000 or $1,200 sitting at home, but I got a $15,000 loan out on my truck, and I work a lot under the table, so I don't have income, and I had to have my grandfather sign on to my loan.

Wait, wait, wait. Pause there. What? Do you sell drugs? No, no. I work for a lot of farm properties. I make about $4,000 a month. Just cash? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You know the government listens to this show too, right? I'm totally playing with you. They don't. See, they just scrambled your signal there. They're on to you now, Braden. All right. So you make $4,000 a month in cash, all right? Yeah. Yeah.

Um, so he signed onto my loan and I just got news that they are pretty heavy in credit card debt and they need to take out a secondary mortgage on their house because they both are disabled and can't pay for it. Um, but they can't take it out because they're stuck on my loan for my car. So I kind of already know the answer. I just need clarification. Do I just sell the truck?

That's the answer. Yeah, it probably would. It's going to hurt. How are you going to get to work? I got it for three grand under, or about seven grand under market value. And I paid nine into it. So I have about 14,000 I can get out of it just to get something else. But I just kind of needed that clarification from that. Sell it right now. Yeah. How much could you sell it for?

I got it for $20,000. I can get it for $27,000. And like I said, I only owe $15,000 on it. So you can sell it for $27,000 today? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, do it right now. And then go get yourself a $9,000 truck and never borrow money from your granddad again. Never put a family member in that kind of position again.

Okay. And here's how you go car shopping from now on. You have $9,000. That's your new car budget. Not $10,000, not $12,000 because the salesman was like, oh, well, you could upgrade to this model if you just put it. The one you can afford in cash is the one you drive right now. And then with more savings, you're going to be able to save up with no debt to upgrade that over time to where it's not crushing your life and hurting your relationships. How old are you, brother? I'm 19. Okay. You don't know this yet, but I'm going to tell you a secret.

If you go to do work for a 45-year-old on his farm and you roll in there in an 88 truck and it's got some character to it and some patina and it's got some dents in it, they're going to look at you with more respect than if you roll in there with a 2025 car that costs $120,000 because they're going to know, oh, you may be good with tools or throwing hay or whatever you do, but you do not know how to handle money.

You don't know that yet because you're 19 and I totally get that. But brother, dude, if you just go get a truck you can afford that's going to run and run and run and run that you can actually work on yourself. Now, George, these trucks are like they're like mobile iPhones. There are some mobile homes at this point. Some people have to live in them, John, because the payment is more than rent. $120,000. It's insane. All right. Let's go to Newark, New Jersey and talk to Lucas. Hey, Lucas, what's up?

How you doing? It's an honor to speak to you guys. I really appreciate you guys taking my call. Hey, we're right up against the clock, so you've got just about a minute and a half. Get right to your question for me.

Perfect. I'm 24. I live with my mom. I make around $135,000. I want to make sure that I'm ready to step out my mom's house. And if I am ready, do I buy a house or do I first rent to get that experience? Go get yourself an apartment this afternoon and be moved out by this weekend. What makes you think you're not ready? To be honest with you, it's just taking that next step. You make $130,000. Yeah.

You've taken the step. Are you in crippling debt? Not at all. I have zero debt. Oh, my goodness. Dude, you're making more than double the average income in the United States. When's the last time you went on a date? Actually, I have a girlfriend. Well, she needs to call into the show because she should not be dating somebody who makes $130,000 and lives with his mom.

Okay. Say, thank you, Mom. I'm ready to fly the coop. Yes. I want to be an eagle. Because as Dave says, if you stay, you become a turkey if you never leave the eagle's nest. Well, I kind of like that. So here's the deal. I want you to go get an apartment this weekend. And by the way, you can get a nice apartment. Don't get a dive. Get something that's actually pretty cool. You make $130,000. Congratulations. That's awesome. Less than 25% of take-home pay. That's the angle. Yeah, not something stupid, but something cool. And then I want you to wrap up the key.

Actually, don't do that. Wrap up a copy of The Lease and give that to your mom as a gift this weekend and take her to a really nice restaurant and say, thanks for letting me crash at your house. I'm ready to go be a big boy now. Thank you for raising me. Bye, Felicia. This is The Ramsey Show. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.

Hey everyone, listen, we all have stories. The family and cultural stories that we were born into, the stories of the things that have happened to us, both the good stuff and the challenging stuff. And we have those stories that we constantly tell ourselves. And none of us can go back and change any of our old stories, but the world is waiting to see what each of us is going to write next.

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So start writing a new story this month with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash D'Loney to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash D'Loney. Welcome back to the Ramsey Show, 888-825-5225. I'm John D'Loney, joined by the one and only George P. Campbell. Let's go out to Chattanooga and talk to Beth. Where are you, Beth? There you are. What's up, Beth?

Hi. How are we doing? Oh, I'm great. Better than I deserve. Outstanding. How are you? Exactly. We're the exact same. We're better than we deserve, too. How can I help? Okay. My question is about MPI insurance, and do you think it would be worth it to get that if you're purchasing a new home? Are you talking about life insurance? Mortgage insurance?

No, not life insurance. It's mortgage protection insurance. Oh, got it. Okay. Yeah. We are actually looking to buy a new home, and I've had several people tell me about that, so I was wondering your thoughts, if it's worth it or not. No, it's not something that we recommend. Did you hear that you need it from someone else?

No. Well, yeah, kind of. My husband is self-employed, and I'm kind of concerned because he had a heart attack a couple years ago, and also he has problems with his back. So if he becomes disabled, I want to be able to know that I'm not going to be living on the streets. Yeah. Well, the only time we'd recommend something like that is if you don't qualify for term life insurance.

Okay. I do have term life insurance on him. We got it through Zender. Great. How much do you have in the policy? $300,000. Okay. And what's his income? $300,000. About $300,000 a year. Okay. So we'd recommend he makes $300,000 a year? Gross, yes. Wow. Beth, what is this, I'm afraid I'm going to be on the streets forever,

song and answer telling yourself. My brain couldn't even fathom when you said he makes three. I was like, oh gosh. How much money do y'all have in retirement savings? Probably about 75 right now. I'm a little bit behind on that. I got a late start. You have 75,000 in retirement? Probably close to that. How old are you? I'm 62. And why are you guys buying a house right now? We just want a different location.

Can you afford a different location? Can you afford a new house right now? Yes. Do you guys have any debt? Yes, we do. We have probably about $120,000 in debt right now. But part of that will be paid off.

Um, it's mainly, um, business loans. Okay. So I'm confused where this $300,000 is going. Cause it's not going to retirement. It's not going to cashflow cause you're going to debt. So where is 300 grand disappearing into?

That I'm not sure. I feel like I don't know. I mean, I do try to do a budget and stay on a budget. And I do do the snowball. Beth, do you do this or do y'all do this? No. Mainly I do this. We're working on the y'all part. We do have contract labor that we do pay out.

every year too. So that takes up a lot of that $300,000. Not a lot of it, but part of it. Here's what I'm hearing. And I want you just to please trust me on this one, me and George on this. Yes. Yes. That's why I called. Okay. So number one, don't buy a house yet. You've got some gaps in your marriage and y'all are hoping a new location is going to fix it. It's not going to bring you the safety that you think it's going to.

And in fact, I'm going to tell you right now, based on your financial situation and just the ambiguity around your financial situation, it's going to make it worse. You and your husband need to sit down and have a come to Jesus, bare our souls, everybody being honest. I'm going to pull credit reports on both of us. Where are we? Yeah. Because I don't think you can breathe at night.

Because you don't know where the money is. And he keeps telling you, I make $300,000. A, you don't know. You've never seen it. B, you don't really know how much debt he's holding business-wise. You kind of know some of it. And it could be 70% or 80% of that $300,000 is labor cost. And so he could be making $300,000 and be completely broke. He could be. And if he's using your family credit cards to buy stuff for the business, you guys got a mess on your hands.

No credit cards. Well, bank loans, whatever. If he's taking personal loans out for this business, you might have yourself a big old mess. So here's what I do. Before I did any kind of house purchasing, I would say we're going to have a sit-down conversation about the realities of our financial situation. With $75,000 in the bank,

a very unknowable, I don't even know where we are. We owe $120,000. Maybe the business does, maybe we do, or maybe it's a business loan that we secured with our personal, like you might have a mess. You're not in a financial position to move, quote unquote, just because we want to. You're just not, you don't have that kind of money. Okay. Now he may sit down and clarify all this and it may be a really scary, hard conversation. If I were you, I would start with the words,

As your wife, I'm really scared right now. All right. And I just want to see it. Does any of this ring true to you or am I out to lunch? Part of it might ring true and part of it you're out to lunch, to be honest. That's good. I like going to lunch sometimes. I went to Chick-fil-A today. It was fantastic. They are. I pretty much know what's going through the business because I...

I kind of, basically, I do the book. Okay. So, you know, I don't think he's hiding anything from me at all. Well, less about hiding it and more of it just kind of, like George said, it just runs through like a net, water through a net. It just goes everywhere. Okay, yeah. Okay, gotcha. What do you pay yourselves each? Yeah, I don't think he's being deceptive. I believe you that he's not. I think you guys are aligned in knowledge, but we're not aligned on a plan. That's right.

How much does he pay himself every year out of this business? I agree. Not much. He just pays himself when he can. And that's one thing I'm working to do is to start paying ourselves first because it's been just paying

paying bills first. Okay, so when I ask you how much y'all make and you say $300,000... That's business revenue. That's not your actual income. Yeah. That's not income. No. Because you said you have expenses, there's people you're paying, so you guys need to sit down and figure out what is our income going to be for 2025 and...

And if it's $200,000, we need to be throwing the majority of that at our debt. We got to cover the bills, the four walls, food, utilities, housing, transportation. But beyond that, we're not going to let this money disappear because we've been doing that for four decades now. And we're going to have to retire one day. What was your revenue last year that you reported with the IRS?

I can't remember. I think between his and mine, it was like $180,000, I think. That makes more sense. So that would be your gross income for the year, meaning you're probably taking home closer to $120,000, so $10,000 a month take-home pay. You know that money's going. You've only got $75,000 in retirement.

Right. So here's it. Just sit down and have a where's our money going? We make two. If you're making one hundred eighty grand over the course of a year, you'll combine. You'll make way too much money for you to have seventy five thousand dollars heading into the last fourth quarter of your life. Right. George, how often do you hear when you sit down with people, how often do you hear we just want to do this thing?

And you look at their situation like, hey, y'all can't do that thing. You know what I mean? It's heartbreaking, especially when you get into your 60s and you're going, hey, we'd like to retire next year. And I go, the math says you can't. I'm the bearer of bad news now because I broke your heart. But it's not a decision you get to make. The math does that for you.

Otherwise, you're going to just carry debt until you die of stress and anxiety. And so in a situation like this, they can clean it up, but they need to be aligned on the plan of, all right, we've got to throw $5,000 a month at this debt. That's $60,000 a year. We'll be done with the $120,000 in two years. Then we can start tackling the mortgage. Then we can retire. And by the way, all the questions I just asked Beth to ask her husband to sit down and get answered, a bank is going to ask you the exact same questions before they write you a check for a mortgage.

So you're going to have to answer these questions anyway. It's best that you all do it together behind closed doors and unite and then go attack any of your financial goals moving forward. That's our one of the Ramsey Show in the books. We'll be right back. 888-825-5225. I'm John Deloney joined with George Campbell. Hang on. We'll be right back.

Live from Nashville, Tennessee, I'm John Deloney, joined by my good friend George Camel, and this is The Ramsey Show, where we talk with real people going through real challenges with their money, their work, their relationships, their mental and emotional health, building wealth, all of it. You call in, we've got an opinion and an idea or two. 888-825-5225. It's 888-825-5225.

5-2-2-5. We have an amazing call screener, Christian, waiting for your call. Our board is completely lit up, George. Let's go out to Salt Lake City, Utah and talk to Kathleen. Hey, Kathleen, what's up? Hi, Kath. Hi. You're Kathleen. I'm John. Yes. What's up? Hi, John. What's up? It's a good day. Yes, ma'am. How can I help?

So my husband, my ex-husband has not been able to hold down a job due to his health and he has not paid alimony or child support in five months. His only assets are his 401k and a little bit of the equity in the house that I got in the divorce that he gets, he gets that equity when I refinance, when I finished school.

So I'm wondering if it's fair to ask him to cash out some of his 401k to pay his responsibility. I know there's huge punishments, but he's working on disability and that can take a long time, but he's got no other assets to feed his kids. What a mess. Because, I mean, at the end of the day, it's going to fall on his kids on the back end, right? Yeah.

Yeah, right. Like, I'd rather he, you know, keep his kids alive now than, I don't know, well... Well, I mean, no, but they're going to be propping him up right now? Are they going to be propping him up in the future? If he cashes it out, then he's going to be calling them when he's old and can't work. Yeah. So let me ask about your situation. Are you unable to support them right now without his check?

I'm getting some financial support from my family. I'm going through school. I've still got years to go before I can have any training that can pay anything more than fast food. Okay.

Hmm. I feel like fair is that that word is stuck with me. I'm like, is it fair? It's the wrong answer. It's the wrong question. It's more like what is necessary to keep the roof over our heads and keep the kids fed and keep the basics here. I wouldn't use it as a punishment. And I don't think you are. You sound like a lovely person. Is he for real hurt or is he trying to end around not having to pay?

No, no, I believe it's genuine. He can't work. Okay. So let's take the alimony piece off because that's a third rail right now. Let's pretend y'all are still married. I know that's a big stretch. Okay. Your husband who's working in your home gets hurt and he can't make any more money. Y'all have to have some hard conversations about the house you live in. And you think I'm not going to disrupt the kids' lives. The kids' lives are already really disrupted.

I need to go to school right this minute so that I can finally get a degree so I can finally get to earning some real money so I can take care of everybody long term. That makes sense unless you can't afford to do it right this second.

So our housing, we refinanced this house when it was at the bottom of the interest. My interest rate is 2.6. My mortgage is $1,000. Okay. I can't rent a studio apartment in Utah for under $1,000. I got you. I get it. The financial sense means that the kids and I stay here. If I was still married to him, we would keep this house. If we were still married, I would ask him to petition some kind of hardship to get into his 401k.

His parents are paying his rent. I guess my parents are paying my mortgage. Yeah, I mean, you can contact your attorney and you can say, hey, I want him to forego his stake in the equity of this house.

That didn't put cash in your pocket. He's threatening that he needs to do a bankruptcy because of his credit card debt since the divorce. And so he's threatening that he needs a bankruptcy. And I'm worried that this is an asset in his name. I'm going to be honest with you. I think you're grasping at straws here. Okay. He owes you money. The bank says he does. Morally, he owes you money. He doesn't have any.

How much is in this mystical 401 that you think he can give you? He has $250,000 in it. And how old is he? He's 42 years old. And he's done working? Is he going to have to fight with disability forever? He's going to have to fight to get on disability. He hopes that he can rejoin the workforce someday, but based on his last 10 years of health, I don't see how it's possible. He's hit an early dementia. Okay. So, I mean, that's the question I'll ask you. I mean...

I guess you can. What's he going to do besides call your kids and ask for money? I just feel like I'm asking my family for help to take care of his children. They're your children too, though. Yeah, no, they are. And I have a plan. I'm getting through school as quickly as I can. I'm selling my blood money. No, I mean, I know everybody's working hard. I think there's just a global situation here, which is the guy's hurt. He can't work.

And we don't like him. We're mad at him. He blew up our life. All those things, fill in the blank, the divorce and all that. He didn't have it. I mean, doesn't he have it? Can't he get into that 401k? Isn't it better to use it now? Then when? Then when? When he's 65 and he has zero, nothing? I don't see him living till he's 65. Who's the beneficiary on the 401k? I don't know if he switched it over to his new wife and his kids. But I have a life insurance on him that I kept from our marriage.

Okay. What's the policy value? His is $500,000. And you're the beneficiary? I am. Okay. Here's the deal. I don't know enough to know Utah law. I would go sit down with somebody and even see if you even have a claim to it. I don't even know if you have a claim to it.

My gut says if you the attorney, the courts are going to say, hey, this is a last ditch thing that we would need to approve in order to garnish his retirement to make this happen. They're going to explore every other option and they may end up where you are going. This is all this guy has. And here's how much we're going to garnish to make this work. But he's broke.

And so we can't just rob his entire retirement and just give it to you. They might have a different option. So we have a guy who's very unhealthy, has been. He's got early onset dementia. He's got an he's unable to work. He's trying to piece together Social Security and piece together disability. And maybe you can find a judge that will force him to cash out part of his 401 and take the 35 or 40 percent penalty, whatever he's got to pay and give you the other piece of it.

Is it fair if I, because my sister's supporting me and I'd like to pay her back someday. Is it fair to say, hey, if you forego the equity that I owe you, then you can not pay me the child support? Yeah, that, if I'm you. That's the best solution based on what you told us. And I think if you went to the courts and an attorney, they'd probably tell you something similar. Is let's explore that before we garnish his retirement. But that doesn't put cash in your pocket.

I think we need to figure out how to make Kathleen's life sustainable without the outside help. And that might take some sacrifice in the short term. You might need to pause going to school. What are you going to school for? Okay. It may be that you can't afford to do that right now. And you have to go work three or four jobs. And it's an awful economic trap that single moms find themselves in.

And I know that sounds like a two steps back and I don't want to. I just don't think anybody's in a situation to do anything that they want to do right now. I think we're in a, we have to, we have to do some different things. You can get with a lawyer and try to go get, do what you got to do. I don't know what the laws are. So you need to sit and get with an attorney there. I would be, I'd want to look in the mirror first. We'll be right back.

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slash Ramsey. Hey, Dave Ramsey here. Dr. John Deloney and I are coming to a city near you on the Money and Relationships Tour. You, the audience, will vote to choose the topics we talk about, things that impact your life, like investing in your future, money, stress, and marriage,

and more. We're coming to Louisville, Durham, Atlanta, Kansas city, Fort worth and Phoenix in April and may 2025 tickets are at their lowest price right now. Grab yours at Ramsey solutions.com slash tour. Welcome back to the Ramsey show. 888-825-5225. George, that last call. I think it's important just to say this on this show. Uh,

We're often able to help somebody with their money or their marriage and see a path through it, right? And when you're living in chaos or the world is falling down around you, sometimes it's helpful to get somebody just to shine a light and say, hey, I see a path out where you can't see it. I'm at a different vantage point, right? When military, when they're doing a raid, there's always people, eyes in the sky. It's important to have people looking at a problem from different perspectives, right?

Sometimes the situation's just bad and there's not a lot of great options. There's no secret thing you haven't thought of. That's right. Other than put down your anger and put down your hatred and just go do the next right thing and it sucks and I hate it. Not by your hand, but in your lap. Here we are. The hurricane hit your house. And any amount of poking and yelling and screaming and raging and running around...

your house is still falling down. What are you going to do next? Right. And that's a, that's a, that's one of those bummers when you're listening to the show, when you and I are on the, like trying to help somebody, it's like, there's not a good option here. Um, you can take a really painful route or maybe a less painful route, but all the routes are painful. And so,

And so choose the one that's going to get you the most dignity and respect and where you want to end up. And I imagine when something traumatic happens in your grieving, a piece of that grieving often looks like trying to find a villain, trying to find a shortcut to fix this, someone that can take this on. Yeah, there's a great proverb that says, I finally confronted my anger and sat down and she took off her mask and revealed herself as grief. And it's like, I want to be so enraged and mad. And here's the reality. This just happened.

And that last caller, I don't want my husband who we got divorced. He's got this small 401k. I don't want him to pass away because he's literally passing away and I don't want his new wife to get it. Right. Exhale. Right. This is just a bum sit. The whole thing's a mess. Right.

So anyway, sometimes there's just not a silver lining. You gotta go straight through the middle of the storm and hang on, right? And hang on. That's part of the show. We don't always have magic answers. No. When we do, it is magic. It is cool. But sometimes, man, I'll pull up a seat on the curb next to you in front of your house that just blew down and I got a lighter if you got a smoke and I'll sit here with you. But nothing's easy from here on out, right?

Scott's at Toronto and talk to Bethany. What's up, Bethany? How are you? Awesome. How about you? I'm okay. Thank you. Excellent. What's up? My question is, so I'd be paying off my...

Only debt I have is just my car payment tomorrow, so that would be clear. Congratulations. Oh, thank you. My husband has just a $7,200 car payment, and he just took out another line of credit for $8,000. So my question is, I have about $600 spare from my car payment. Should I help him pay back his line of credit? But my word is that he paid off $10,000.

dollars line of credit last year and he took another eight thousand dollars and put in stock so my worry is that if i help pay him like help pay his line of credit back he's going to take another line of credit and we're going to be in debt still over and over again i'm more worried about the marriage than the debt way more me and my roommates in college were more aligned on our finances than you and your husband are yeah we don't have joint accounts we have separate

But I heard on the internet that it's best to have separate accounts. And here you are telling me? Yeah. Okay, I'm joking with you because this is the hate we get when we tell people combine finances for this reason, for transparency, accountability, because it's real hard to make financial mistakes when your partner is locked in arms with you. You have someone else to say, hey, maybe we shouldn't take out that line of credit. So did you know he was doing this and agree to it? Did you tell him stop? Did he do it behind your back?

So I didn't know he took out another $8,000. He was talking about it, but I didn't know actually he was doing it. All I said was, he just paid off the $10,000. He worked overtime to do that. And he said, well, I really want to do stocks. I was like, okay, I'll look into it. And he took out $8,000 for it. And I didn't think he would actually do it because he just finished it off. So he essentially went into debt to gamble? Yeah.

It sounds like he may have some addiction issues here. So he got into finances after reading Dave Ramsey books.

He didn't read any book Dave Ramsey wrote, I can tell you that. He wanted to do something different, I think. He wanted to do stocks. He's into stocks now. I have no idea what... He's probably day trading. Basically, what day trading is... It's gambling for financial nerds. Even better than that, it's a piecemeal donation to large hedge fund managers.

Okay. That's what it is. He's just taking that $8,000 and he's breaking it up in little pieces and giving it away to really rich men and women to make them richer.

Okay. It's not good. So let me answer your question simply. Should you help your husband pay off his debt? No. Should you guys pay off your debts? Yes. So there's a different piece of language that's going to require some hard conversations, some reset, some alignment to go, we're doing everything together, and that means no more debt. We're paying this off once and for all, and you're not going to make any decisions behind my back. I'm not going to make any decisions behind your back. And I think...

What I'm hearing here, Bethany from Toronto, is your marriage is in a mess. And I would recommend sitting down because this kind of stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum. It's not like y'all are completely aligned on raising kids and the future and vacations and holidays and savings. And then all of a sudden he pulls out an $8,000 loan and puts it in the stock market, puts it on red 50 and spins the roulette wheel.

This is two people who are barely roommates who are trying to co-manage a house, but this isn't building a united marriage that it's you and him versus the world, which is what you have to have to survive these days. So you sit down with him and y'all say, and you exhale and say, I'm scared about us.

I'm scared about the way we handle money. I'm scared about the way, I don't know where things are going and how they're going. Will you join me on this? But your marriage is on some pretty thin ice and that's worth addressing before you get into the money stuff. But yes, once y'all are aligned, you both work really hard to pay off each other's debts because it's y'all's. There's one debt. It's ours, right? Let's go out to Tampa, Florida and talk to Victor. Hey, Victor, what's up, brother?

How you doing? Doing great, man. What's up? So I'm just getting into investing, and I was just wondering if Webull was a good platform to start with, and how do I start investing into a mutual fund or an index fund? Why are you going with Webull? Why go with any singular app that you can get on your phone? So I had actually Webull for about a year now. I haven't really done nothing with it. I haven't had it.

And then I found you guys' channel and started watching you guys. So I didn't know if, you know, I really just don't have any knowledge on it. Well, the best thing I can tell you is what George and I do with our money that helps feed and honor and protect our wives and our kids. And that is we call SmartVestor Pros and we sit down with them and they walk us through and then they do the investing on their platform. Or we use our Workplace 401k.

And maybe get on and do an index fund or something. Webull was designed for day traders, which if you heard on that last call, that's the kind of people who are using Webull. It's not to say you can't find some decent funds on there and invest in an index fund. What I'm telling you is if you use one of those apps, it's going to psychologically get you to do something dumb.

And that's their goal. Because they're going to give you notifications. And hey, we'll give you, you should make a trade today. We'll give you a free trade if you make five trades. You're like, oh, okay. Or, uh-oh, stocks are down. You want to make a trade? And their whole thing, it's like tying your funds to a TikTok account.

Is that right, George? Yeah. So Victor, if you want to do, I have no problem with DIY investing. If you know what you're doing, you're comfortable with it. You've already built a foundation, but most people going on here are in crippling debt, trying to get rich off a stock trade. And that's not how building wealth works. And I guess the bigger picture is, I always go back to it like,

I'm friends with Dave Ramsey's SmartVestor Pro. And so if Dave isn't playing around thinking he can beat the market and he's got a guy who takes care of the mutual fund allocations to

That's good enough for me because I know this. I'm not smarter than that guy when it comes to this. And these people are not doing retirement investing in Webull. So I would start there. You want tax-advantaged investing in a retirement account. Go with that with your employer, a Roth IRA. You can go with one of the big three if you want to do that. Vanguard, Schwab, Fidelity. But I would not mess with these bells and whistles apps that try to lure you back in for another trade. That's how you lose your shirt, my man. 888-825-5225. It's the Ramsey Show. We'll be right back. ♪ music playing ♪

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Welcome back to the Ramsey Show. I'm John Deloney joined by the one and only George P. Camel. Today's question of the day is brought to you by WhyRefi. Now, we don't recommend refinancing on everything, but

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Today's question comes from Kurt in Florida.

My mom also pressures me to send money to relatives in another country, even though I've explained that I don't have much left after my financial priorities. Am I wrong for asking her to contribute financially, even though I can technically afford it? How do I set boundaries without feeling guilty or jeopardizing my financial goals? My father passed away three years ago, so it's just me and her. Let's start at the end here. How do I set boundaries without feeling guilty or jeopardizing my financial goals? You don't. You don't.

Um, you set boundaries. I love how Dr. Becky Kennedy says boundaries are something that require nothing of somebody else and they require me to act. And so I'm setting a boundary here. I'm not going to put any more money out there or I'm not going to send any money overseas. And then your body might feel guilty. Your money body might feel shamed for a bit, whatever. Fine. But then I'm going to go on and do the next right thing because I'm not going to be dragged around by my feelings, by the nose. Um,

And is it, am I wrong for asking her to contribute financially? No. Is she going to? No. So what are you going to do? You're going to kick your mom out over her not paying $500 in whatever bills? You get what I'm saying? Like, I mean, what are you going to do? Well, it sounds like he's, by the way, this is all phrased. He's resentful that he even is in this position. I bought a home in Florida mainly for my mom.

She gets this money. I ask her to contribute and she's not doing it. She's asking me to do this for relatives in the other country. So he's fed up with this whole situation that he's put himself in. He set the whole thing up and his mom looked at him and was like, yeah, I'm not doing that.

And so you have a decision to make. And you want to be an honorable son, which I think is what has caused a lot of this, of saying, well, mom didn't prepare for retirement. She makes $1,000 a month, which, by the way, is below poverty level. Right. And now I need to float her bills. Oh, and by the way, dad passed away, so now I'm the man of the house needing to provide for her. And by the way, she pressures me. Dude, you're a grown man. You just bought a house. Stop feeling pressured to do something that you can't afford to do. Move on with your life. So this is some tough love here, George.

Here's Kurt's options. Sell the house. Tell mom you're on your own. You make 12,000 G's a year. Go make it happen or continue to share a house with your mom and continue to pay the bills and choose every day. I'm not going to choose misery by walking around looking at all the stuff she's not doing that I would shoot. Move on with your life. Right. There's not a lot of there's no gray area here.

Right? You're going to kick your mom out and go on about your life or you're going to make peace with the fact that your mom gets a thousand bucks a month and she shoves it in an account somewhere. Probably going to you, but maybe going overseas, whatever, fine. I'm just to a point now, George, where we create these situations and what we want is for everything to be exactly how we want it and perfect it. I get to say what I...

You can do that. But every one of those conversations, every one of those demands, everyone's boundaries comes with consequences. And the consequence might be, cool, your mom's out on the street. That could be a consequence. It might be that your mom nags you. Okay. I'm moving on with my life, right? It might be that you're frustrated because your other 30-year-old buddies are doing out, doing stuff. They're hanging out. They're dating. They're having fun. And you're stuck. You're taking care of your mom. I get that. That sucks, man. That's hard. And

What an amazing place to be that you get to help and take care of your mom.

Right? You get to do that. And maybe you got to sell your car instead of having a car payment. And you make six figures and you wanted to drive a Lexus, but all I can afford is a Camry because I'm a guy who gets to take care of his mom because I make six figures. Like, what a blessing. Move on with your life. Just stop the all the time. I'm thinking about if you get rid of this car payment, that's kind of like what mom would have given you for groceries. So you can kind of create that income for yourself by getting rid of this car that you couldn't afford. And choose to not be miserable. Yeah.

Choose freedom. As my friend Dr. John Deloney says. That guy's usually wrong, but on that one I think he's right. Choose freedom. You're taking care of your mom. What a blessing. What a blessing. It was backstage at a John Maxwell event I was speaking at, and the other speaker you may have never heard of, his name's Deion Sanders. Heard of him. One of my top three favorite Deions. Talk about feeling good about yourself, and then he walks back, and oh, he's keynoting after you. Right, so Deion walks back there, and he was just having a conversation with somebody, and he said the phrase,

I'm so blessed that I'm in a position that I get to take care of my mom. And I remember thinking, what an amazing perspective shift. I have to take care of my parents. I have to...

I get to. Amazing. Right. And so you can choose that way of seeing the world or you can choose that the whole world's out to get me. And my mom is blowing her thousand dollars by sending it to other people in other countries who may need it to. Right. I'm just not going to choose misery anymore. My favorite part of this question is the fact that he referenced himself as a business professional. I've just never heard that in real life. And I appreciate that, Kurt. I'm going to refer to myself as a business professional.

I think you qualify for a business professional, or as they say in the biz, a BP. Let's go out to San Antonio, Texas. Nobody refers to that. That's batting practice. And talk to Kristen. What's up, Kristen? Hello. How we doing? Well, I'm calling y'all, so... So not well. Happen.

Thank you for your honesty. You have reached the bottom of the advice barrel. Most people are like, I'm doing so great. We're like, what's going on? You're like, well, I'm in crippling debt and super stressed. All right. So what's up? Well, I am calling because my husband and I, when we had some debt issues, we went to like a negotiation company, basically.

Basically, you know, they have us going into delinquency and then they negotiate. You give the payments to them instead, which tanks your credit. Collectors come after you and then they go, we'll help you settle and it'll all work out. Right.

Yes. And I was totally against it. My husband, it just, okay. So this is the reality. Um, so they have negotiated, we have a total of about 38,000 in debt, uh, with three different creditors, uh, it's credit cards. Um, so two of our credit cards were negotiated, uh,

or settled, I should say. And we spoke to the representative yesterday because I'm like, I want to know, can we get out of this? What's the penalty? You know, what is this all entail? And so right now, um, we still have one creditor that has not been negotiated yet. And I'm trying to tell my husband, I'm like, I want to get out of this. I think we can handle it ourselves. Um, but, um,

And, you know, he's kind of like, well, we're in it now and we need to, you know, stick with it so we can get out of this. And I'm just trying to see if we do have a path to get out of it. You do. And you'll have to cancel the contract with them. So, you know, check the document you signed for a cancellation clause. See if there's any fees or penalties for getting out of this. How much is it?

So the fees and penalties, so we've been 10 months into the program. Once they do your negotiations, for every payment that you do, it's $347 per credit card that they are negotiating just to fees. So, I mean. It's insane. And that's for 12 months is what it is. Do you see why I'm not a fan of these companies?

Oh, absolutely. Hey, let's help you get out of debt by screwing you over completely. Exactly. But they're like the payoff right now for those two would only be $16,000. How much money do you guys make?

So we, very much a budgeter, but we're about bringing home about $6,300 and that's after taxes. Amazing. Which tells me you guys on that budget can get out of this on your own. And so I would figure out what the fees are and calculate it and go, all right, we're going to be out of this debt faster on our own instead of hoping, wishing, waiting on someone else to do it while screwing us over. Just chalk it up to something that Dave famously calls a stupid tax. Yeah.

Maybe a sunk cost fallacy. Ooh, I like that. That's a fancy word for it. We've got some fees we've got to pay because we signed this thing because we were scared. We're not scared anymore. We're heading straight into the storm. We're going to pay this stuff off. We make enough money, we'll figure it out. It's the never again fee. Ooh, that's a nicer way to say that. How millennial of you. It's the Ramsey Show. We'll be right back.

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Welcome back to The Ramsey Show. I'm George Camel here with Dr. John Deloney. If you've been listening to the show for any amount of time, you may have heard us do a Baby Steps Millionaire theme hour. And so from time to time, we like to hear from real-life millionaires, not the ones you see on Instagram and private jets. Those are not millionaires. They're either faking it or they're billionaires. Real-life people like you and me. There's only two, John. There's only two types. The one that rent it by the hour and the people who own it. There you go.

And so we're going to hear from Kirk in Las Vegas and see how he did it. How did he actually create a million-dollar net worth? Kirk, what's going on, my man? How you doing? I'm doing great. How are you doing, guys? Great, great. So tell us your story. How old are you and what is your net worth? I am 53. My net worth is 2.6. Wow. Okay, give us the breakdown of the 2.6. Okay, IRA is 401k, almost 1.5.

Non-retirement, $370,000. My home and inherited home, $620,000. I have a side business, about $180,000-ish, somewhere in there. Awesome. That's impressive. Okay, and what's your household income? $220,000. And how long have you been making that kind of money? A few years. Okay. What do you do for a living? I'm an accountant.

All right. Love it. And did you get a degree, I assume? Yes, I did, yes. Okay. And what was your GPA? My undergraduate, about 3.3, 3.4, and then graduate with my master's, it was about 3.7. Nice. I like that undergraduate GPA. That means you went to class and you had a good time. Well done. So that's a solid mix. So the majority here, you said how much in the IRA and 401k total? About 1.45. Okay. Okay.

So that makes up the majority, and then the next biggest chunk would be real estate. Correct. Way to go. Yeah, it would be my home, and my mom passed a year ago, and I inherited her house. Yeah, how much inheritance did you get and when? $330,000 total, and that was November of 23. Long after you were a millionaire. Yeah.

Oh, yes, for sure. Okay. So that proves our point. A lot of people think, well, a lot of these people inherited their money, so it's easy for Kirk to say, but you already did the hard work, and then you got a pile of money from Mom's Legacy. Correct. Amazing. Okay, so what do you attribute this to? About $240,000 from her IRA, and the home value is about $90,000. Okay.

So when did you sort of get your finances together? I mean, you're obviously in the accounting world. You understand basic mathematics. If I put money away, I'll have some. If I spend it all on stupid crap and pay interest, I'll lose it. So did you get this early on?

Actually, yes. It's kind of funny. I didn't come across Dave's principles and teachings until about 10 years ago, but I've been living this way since I was in high school. I mean, I hate, you know, no debt, hated debt, you know, wanted to invest, I wanted to become a millionaire, I wanted to have options of retiring early or not, and

And so it was funny when I came across Dave's principles, I was like, oh my gosh, this is exactly what I do. You know, I was glad to see that somebody else is out there and it's, and they're telling people this is what you should do versus, oh, just go get a loan, go get a loan, put on a credit card. You know, I was like, no, I hate debt. Yeah. So have you ever had debt?

Well, yes, I bought my house initially, yeah. Mortgage. Okay, that's it. But no consumer debt? Mortgage, yeah. Oh, no, no. I'd pay cash for cars, you know, the whole deal, yes. Wow. What are you driving? Can I ask what you're driving today? Yeah.

Yeah, we were both driving 2014. I have a BMW. My wife has a Mercedes, so they're 10-year-old cars. Bought them when they were about three or four years old, somewhere in there. And you've maintained them well? You kind of drive them until the wheels fall off, and then you'll buy something else with cash? That's the plan, yeah. Kirk, I don't know if you know this. I know there's been a flurry of executive orders signed recently, but one of the new executive orders is it's illegal to drive...

A 10-year-old car if you're rich. Gross. You know you're driving like a ticking time bomb, Kirk. Yeah, it's just not safe. You know you're not making a wise decision. Oh, the other thing is your neighbors, they're going to talk about you on their TikTok accounts because you have a 2014. They probably think you're poor, Kirk. Yeesh. Yeah. Wow. Hey, where did this just like wild dose of common sense come from?

At an early age, my parents basically said, you want to go to college? Save your money. We're not going to have it for you. So I started cutting grass, selling snow, had a paper route, buying savings bonds for college. That was the plan. And my dad taught me about money and stuff. And it just...

that was a big interest to me. And I was like, okay, here's how money can work for you with investing. And here's how it works against you with borrowing. And that was my philosophy from day one. And like I said, when I came across Dave teachings about 10 years ago, it was, it,

It was like, oh my gosh, this is confirmation of exactly what, how I've been thinking and what I've been doing. And, and then I took my wife to a, you know, FPU because she was just the opposite. You know, it was trying to get her out of that mentality. And finally she like, oh, okay, this is what you would tell me about. But now somebody else told her about it. So now she's going to listen. Hey, it's the end result of that. How long have you been married?

uh it's been 16 years amazing can i ask how your i guess financial freedom your wealth how has that affected your marriage has there been less money fights over those 16 years what do you guys fight about now um by now about spending it yeah are you like are you tight-fisted going no we gotta just why would we do that you're the frugal one and she's sort of trying to get you to let go

Yes, but I'm trying to now I'm at a point where I'm trying to she works in a stressful health care environment hospital trying to get her to OK, now you can retire early and do just

Just do per diem what you want, where you want. But because now I have the, you know, the answer for you to do that versus, oh, you have to do your nine to five, you know, weekly. And so now we're at a point now it's actually going to help her to have that. Give you the flexibility. You mean to show you, you mean to tell you a hack? Yeah. Here's a hack you can use with her for that. What's that? Take her to some concerts there in Vegas.

Oh, yeah. She goes all the time. But you go. Take her to a couple of comedy shows. I go with her sometimes. No. Start going with her more and show her we're okay. I go during the non-tax season. A true accountant. Yeah. 80, 90 hours a week, whatever, during tax season. There you go. Awesome. Can I ask your plan for quote unquote retirement?

Sure. Because you guys will have, by the time you're at retirement age, 10 years from now, your net worth will be, my guess is probably closer to 6 million. And that's if you do nothing else.

Right, right. Yeah, the plan is at some point, I mean, I have a full-time job. I'm a controller for a company, but I also have my side business, tax business. At some point, it's retire full-time, maybe work part-time as a controller, and then the tax business and consulting business, just do that year-round. Do it for fun. You get to choose your clients. I can't do nothing. Yeah, I can't do nothing because I like what I do. I like helping people, so I can't do nothing. Yeah.

I will at least do that and give my wife the freedom to, hey, you can leave your job and you can help me during tax season and we'll turn it into a full-time thing. And then the rest of the year you can travel because she loves to travel. So I try and travel more with her, but she goes with her family as well. That's amazing, dude. Congratulations, brother. So just talk to the 23-year-old out there who might be listening going, I'm going to either listen to this TikTok I found on how to get rich quick or Kirk. What advice would you give that 23-year-old?

Yeah, it's funny because that's advice that I had myself when I was 23 was basically I tell young people now be the tortoise not the hare. I've been telling people that for 20 years and I came across Dave's teachings and I hear the same thing. I have no problem with the long run but start young. I started investing I was in my early 20s but at that point it was just IRAs and you only put $2,000 away.

I didn't have an opportunity with a 401k until I was 27. Wow. So I was stuck doing 2,000 a year in IRA back then other than, you know, non-retirement stuff, you know, buying some stocks and stuff. But now there's so much out there. Start young. Yeah.

Get it in there and forget about the fancy car, the new car, and the stuff. Just delayed gratification. Be a crockpot in a world full of microwaves. You're an inspiration, Kirk. Thank you so much for sharing your story. What a hero, man. You're down the road from both me and George a little bit age-wise, and you're a good light for us. I'm really grateful. Ramsey Network app is where you're going to find the next hour of this show. Or if you're listening to it on radio, we're coming right back.

Join us on the Ramsey Network app, the only place to get the full episodes of The Ramsey Show. Download it for free using the link in the show notes. We'll see you in the next hour. Stay tuned.

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