Be Planning for the Future Before It Catches Up With You

He talks about your professional growth, including where you work, how you work, and all about career stuff. He's going to be here to help me today answer your questions. The phone number is 888-825-5225.. You jump in and we'll talk. Joy starts Rapid City, South Dakota, off.

Hi, Joy. How are you? I'm very well, thank you. Good. How can I help?

About $140,000, and that's all. $140,000, okay. Yes, we do not own a home. We did our stupid a few years, 10 years ago, and yeah, so we do not have a home, and I don't know, I guess I'm just really wanting to see these figures move up.

Let me see. He brings in, I have it right here, to $3,300,000 a month, depending on the dollar, you know, ratio, of course.

Okay. So, I mean, the good news is, is you have a sustainable situation. You're not going to be hungry, or the lights aren't going to get cut off, right?

. What is the $140,000 invested in? It's in a bunch of different things. It's Roth and traditional and annuity. How much of it's annuity?

. Oh, crap. Okay. So, all right. Here's what...

The only thing I can tell you is that we might get to.

. You might reorganize and shuffle the deck on the $140,000 and get it invested in some good mutual funds and get it working a little bit harder. Okay? But let's say it's earning 10%, or let's say it could earn 10%. That's $14,000..

And right now, it's only earning five. That's $7,000 a year. So we're only talking about $500 a month difference, even if you get it working a lot harder.

So it's not going to be like.

. It's not going to be a massive change in your life if we get the $140,000 invested perfectly, as opposed to the way it is, because the $68,000 in the annuity probably sucks. It's probably doing poorly. I don't know exactly what you got, but most likely that's a bad product. Some stupid insurance person sold you that instead of a real investment person, because they can't sell real investments.

So they act like they're investment people, although they're actually insurance people and they're not licensed and qualified to sell investments. So they sell annuities under the heading of their life insurance license because they're not licensed to sell investments for those of you out there. Okay. Now, I mean, it's not just me calling them stupid, although that does completely apply to that situation. So, all right.

So here's what I want you to do. Go to ramseysolutions.com and click on our Smart Investor Pro and sit down with them again. That's going to help, because at least then you'll know what you've got is just working as hard as it can. Yeah. And we sit in this.

I think so. Here's where I go. My mind goes.

. Yeah. That's what I call a retirement job. Instead, I would like to see them be self-employed and go make like 50,000 bucks. Because I got to tell you, man, if I was broke, I'm entrepreneurial enough, I would just start something, even if I'm 69..

I was thinking.

. We're not putting out the 140 to open a business. Yeah. But I mean, let's get some kind.

And he is working more than he could possibly want to work, but he's making such good money, doing small renovations, fixing a kitchen here, doing a bathroom here in Williamson County, where we've got plenty of money and people have got time and they can spend it. And so if I had a trade skill at that age, I would absolutely be doing that instead of working for a Walmart. Because, to your point, you're going to get a premium rate for your time. We're talking about an hourly rate. Maximize what you can make.

And stack cash at this point.

. Or start something. That's what I mean. By starting something off of a skill. So in my father-in-law's case, he started his own home renovation business and he's not doing full rebuilds, but he's doing a lot of stuff.

And he's not swinging a hammer.

That's two things. One is, what can we do to get your income up? Better, quote, retirement jobs, unquote. And get with a smart investor pro and let's see how, if they can help you get that 140 working a lot harder. Those two things together and you guys stay on a tight budget, I think you're going to be okay.

But I don't think there's going to be anything here that adds a million dollars to this issue. Yeah. This is the Ramsey show.

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Ken Coleman Ramsey, personality, is my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225.. So those of you that are not as old as Ken and me, oh, you're not old like us. You're youngsters and you're out there watching us on the YouTubes and all that kind of stuff, right? I want you to go back and listen to that last call.

So, if you're 27 instead of 67, here's what I can tell you. If you save a hundred dollars a month.

from age 25 to age 65 in a series of decent growth stock mutual funds that perform as the market has performed for the past hundred plus years. If they have normal historic values from age 25 to age 65, $100 a month is $1,176,000 in your retirement.

And that way you're not in the same situation that sweet lady was in. It's exactly right. And so you're not having to worry about your, in air quotes, retirement job.

And so I have another friend, Ken, who's way on the other end of the spectrum. And his father-in-law is their age or a little bit older than them. He's approaching 80.. And he was a, um, he became, um, he's probably legitimately a billionaire. Wow.

And, uh, starting from nothing, he was a poor kid. He grew up poor. And his goal was to give it all away before he died to ministries around the world. And I, my friend is, um, married into that family and sits on the family, sits on the board with the rest of the family as they're giving this money away. The old man is still alive and he has just about succeeded giving it all away.

Wow.

Yeah. That's beautiful. A hundred dollars a month is a million dollars. living on social security and a retirement job or trying your best before you die to give away a billion. Yeah.

That's amazing. These are three ends of the spectrum. I mean, two, two in the middle and two ends of the spectrum. So these are the things, if you're a youngster out there, you could be thinking about that. I'm saying.

It's not just been one time. It wasn't a one-time thing. They've been systematically for 30 years giving it away. You know, that puts a.

Andrew is in Minneapolis. Hi, Andrew. Welcome to the Ramsey show. Hi, Dave. Thanks for taking my call.

That's good. How can we help? Almost answered it right.

I'm in a corporate job now as a mechanic. And I wanted to open my own restoration shop. And originally it was actually supposed to be a nonprofit as well. So my question to you is kind of how it actually was. That's why I close.

Well, yeah, you're not wrong. So yeah, my question to you is what might restarting that look like, or how would you do it? Debt-free, starting at 28 years old. So fixing cars just for everyday people?

Ideally, no, I can, but anymore that's getting into just changing parts. So describe what you want to do.

Don't you think if you really had to? A freaking garage.

I've cut it all the way from a hundred grand down to about 30 in the course of three or four years.

But if you can lock it up, that's all that matters, right? And so cheap, and simultaneously, while I'm trying to find that, and I want to rent an old gas station or something like that, well, they don't even make those anymore, but any kind of a thing that had a bay in it.

But before I actually start.

I know, for a fact, in just about every city in America where you want to get a car restored, there's a long line and you got to get on the list. And the reason that is, is because there's just not enough hands to do the work, which tells me that there are several shops around you, Andrew, that if we looked hard enough, if you and I got in the car today and drove around, I think I could get you a freelance job before the day was over. And so I'd start there. I'd start freelancing, just kind of, hey, you need me for 10, 15 hours a week. I got a day job.

On the side. On the side. I got a day job. Nights and weekends. Nights and weekends.

And that's going to help you pay this debt off. So we got two things. We got two birds with one stone here. Extra money to pay down the 30 grand quick. I really believe you could do that within a year if you really got hustling.

All right. And then the second thing is, I'm back in the industry, or still, and I, and I got, I'm meeting people. I'm getting paid to get reconnected in the industry. And that's when I start finding out about more people. Well, I can't take this job, but we would never take this job because it's too small, but for you, a $10,000 job is great.

And you'll jump on that. You do it on the side. So I would build the business up on the side, rent the equipment, do not pay cash for any equipment, rent anything you need as a part of the job itself. The big stuff. That's right.

The big stuff. And I think I would just slowly start to stack cash. And then here's what I tell everybody. How do we go from day job to that side job? Being the dream job in your case, if you're making 70 grand, I want to have 70 grand in the bank.

Ideally, I'd want 12 months. You could go as low as six months of that, which is 35 before I ever walked away from the day job. And that's just me playing it safe, because this is why, Dave, I'd hate for somebody to have this massive pressure to feed themselves right away. I want some cushion there so that you can really focus on doing the job and growing the business. This is the Ramsey show.

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Well, I don't know when you happen to be.

It's the day that my net worth goes down because my government steals my money. You need to pay your fair share. Well, you should then and shut up.

49% of Americans don't pay, pay zero federal income tax. So don't talk to me about fair share. Okay. I got your fair share. It's not very fair.

Not fair at all. I can't breathe. Anyway. So I, I do a lot of whining and crying and cussing and, and, you know, beat on people who's, it's not their fault just for the fun of it this time of year, just because I'm generally in a bad mood when I.

And he was putting it out there to say how much he paid in taxes. Yeah. Then he revised it this morning and said, showed the note from his account. And it was actually $278.. And he was espousing the importance of paying your taxes as though we have an option, but it was a little political move, but nonetheless, that's not the point.

He put it out there that that's what a tax burden is. He's saying he liked that. He said,

If you want to send them some more, you can, since you're.

I wanted your hot, take on it. And boy, did you deliver? Thank you, Dave. I love you, Mark. I love you, Mark.

But that was stupid. I got some friends that do stupid stuff. We've all done it. No one's immune. Yeah.

Really excited.

Where's all your money gone, honey?

It's okay. It's part of the game. It's not fun to what?

It's the worst part of the game. Is what?

So you didn't do something right. If you got a tax refund, you did something wrong because you had too much taken out of your check. And then they send it back to you. Santa Claus is not in charge of the IRS. He did not send the money.

I know him. He doesn't go anywhere near Washington, DC. Those people are all on the naughty list. So that's how this works, boys and girls. You don't get a refund unless you pay in too much.

Let that sink in a second. All right. So now, if you haven't done your taxes, you got to get them done right now, of course, because they're due by midnight.

So, uh, there's two ways to do it. at Ramsey. We've got Ramsey smart tax software, which is very inexpensive. If you have a simple return, don't go to something like TurboTax or those guys, because really all they're doing is actually trying to sell you debt. They, they put you on the credit card list.

They put you on their home equity loan list. They start hammering your butt to put you in debt and the add-on fees will get you. So Ramsey tax, smart tax, is just very simple, very inexpensive way. Boom. You file it.

Like if you've got a 1040 easy, you can do it in a few minutes with this. And it's very, very accurate, very well done, very well built out. And if you've got a complicated return, go to Ramsey solutions.com slash tax. And you can see our tax endorsed local providers, and you can get a pro to do your return for you that we have done the due diligence on, and God knows it's complicated. So you got to have, somebody knows what they're doing.

If you have a complicated return, so you can get an ELP and you know, you're going to pay a professional to do that. And, um, and if you don't have a complicated return, just use the Ramsey smart tax software. It's. both of them are real easy to do. Um, those people that are members of a Ramsey trusted or, I'm sorry, of, um, Ramsey plus, they're a financial peace university and all that stuff.

They get Ramsey smart, tax free. And so very quick, easy return. So that's just one of the benefits of being in that thing. Henry's in Fort Lauderdale. Hi, Henry.

Welcome to the Ramsey show.

. It's at 65,000 right now.

It's 18.

. So, yeah, but you still got a scratch. What's your household income?

And then, um, then you may have to take out a small personal loan for $5,000.

. It sounds like, um, and then you got to figure out, you got also got to figure out how to get a hoopty that you can drive as your panel. What were you driving before this?

5,000 here, 10,, 15,000 here. It's starting to turn into some money that you're losing.

Or you could substitute sweetheart, if that works better. Yes, dear. I agree. Yeah. It's all I got for him.

You're killing me. I wish George was here. I wish Rachel was here to make fun of.

Teslas, and listen to your wife. These are three, four things you don't do. I'm going to miss you. This is the Ramsey show.

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Ken Coleman Ramsey personality is my co-host at 888-825-5225.

. Uh, you know, we had a lot of fun at that last caller's expense. He was being kind to us. Let us do that. But, um, but we also answered his question in the process, but I think it's probably good to take a second and just, um, talk about for our audience.

Um, the, we were joking about listening to your wife, but talk about the principle that's involved here. So when I went broke, uh, 35 years ago and lost everything we had owned, I was buying and selling real estate, doing flip this house before Chip and Joanna were born. And so, um, and I, I've owned pieces of real estate. that to this day, we're driving around Nashville and I'll tell Sharon, I'll say, you know, we own that house. She's like, never knew it.

I was doing deals and my wife had, I wasn't hiding it from her. I just didn't ask. I was just running my business, doing deals and she's with babies at home. And we just didn't talk about it, just doing it. And, uh, she didn't ask about the structure of the business and I was doing whatever I wanted to do, because I was a genius, not.

And, um, after we went broke, I started out, I was a baby Christian, just, just met God. And, um, I started finding out that the Bible had principles of how to handle money. And they all, almost every one of them, they're not really mystical. They have, they're all basically common sense things like borrower, slave to the lender. So stay out of debt.

Don't build a tower without first counting the cost. So do a budget, live on less than you make, because a foolish man devours all he has. So there's scripture that says, live on less than you make, stay out of debt, save money. And the one I'm, I found is, is, um, uh, um, well, I can't call anyway, who can find, it's proper, who can find a virtuous wife, for her worth is far above rubies. The heart of her husband safely trusts her and he will have no lack of gain.

And I went, wow. Okay. There's a couple of elements I like here. One is, um, no lack of gain. I like that plan.

Um, and I can safely trust my wife and, um, and she is virtuous. Now, part of being virtuous is, you don't take that particular Bible scripture and decide you're the Holy spirit, um, wives. And so, um, you know, the, you're, you're not the Holy spirit. You're, and so virtuous is, I might be wrong. Virtuous is, I've got an idea.

I've got an opinion. In my wife's case, she's from the Hills of East Tennessee. She gets a feeling. And so it's a seven syllable word, and it's a failing. And if she gets a failing about something and I go against that, it costs me a minimum of 10 grand every time I do it.

Cause her failing is never off. It's just, it's spooky. Now she has a degree in child development, home ec, but she has insight in the multimillion dollar business deals based on this failing. Yeah. And so Proverbs 31..

And so, um, you know, and, and those of us have been married, I've been married 43 years. So those it, and is she perfect? No, she's not perfect. And sometimes she just straight up wrong, but, um, but, but, but she's virtuous about it. I mean, she, very solemn as a butt about it.

And, um, and, and so I learned from that to never again, make major financial decisions without having not just her permission, but her alignment and agreement that there was no bad failing about it. And so, consequently, now, you know, we're, I mean, our net worth has returned hundreds of times over, uh, since then, all those years later, I mean, these buildings we're sitting in are worth five or $600 million and they're paid for. So, I mean, you can blame that on her, right? So, uh, the point is, is there's a high correlation between people who work together in their marriages and have a respect for each other's talents, insights, and abilities, and make major decisions together, not in spite of each other. Larry Burkett used to say, you know, most people that are getting married are different.

One's a spender, one's a saver, uh, one, one's a nerd, one's a free spirit. Right. And, uh, so opposites attract. And if one of you, you know, and you know, uh, otherwise one of you is not necessary. If you marry somebody just like you, one of you is not necessary.

So, um, you know, you need to be, it's good that you have Sharon's wired, completely different. Stacy's wired, completely different from y'all. And I've watched y'all use the same principle. It's a financial principle. It's a marriage principle.

It's a spiritual principle. No lack of gain to be on the same page on major deals with your money.

But I want to just back up Sharon's feeling for a second. Okay. So scientists, uh, not too long ago, studied Dave grandmaster chess players. They put heart monitors on the world's greatest chess players. And here's what they found.

Yep. And every time that one of those grandmaster chess players made an incorrect move that ended up costing them deeply in the match, the heart rate spiked. And all that means this, here was the direct takeaway that the feeling, the gut feeling that he's talking about, that Sharon has, it's not some spooky East Tennessee talent. What it is, is that it's actually the brain sending the signal of the body. This is a bad decision.

And so I say all that to say, if you've got a bad gut feeling, what they determined from that study was had those chess players listened to their body, uh, they would have said something logical up here is saying, don't do this. And they overrided it and they overthought their way through it. Trust, the feeling is the point. Yeah. Yeah.

And you know,

That's right. Not a sense of angst. That's right. And if there's, if there's angst, it could be because it's a bad mover. It could be because you haven't studied it hard enough.

That's correct. And you get, you don't understand. So, for instance, if you're doing an investment, you've never done before, doesn't mean the investments is bad. If your heart rate spiking, it means you don't know enough about it to do it. yet.

You need to get comfortable with your knowledge base to be able to buy that same thing with buying the next house. Right. And here, I want you to comment on this. How many times have we all done something? We go, I knew better.

That's exactly right. You look back in the rear view mirror, you know, you're like hindsight,

That's right. You're right. I can, or, or same thing back, back at me. I mean, she says, I think we ought to do this because, and I go, okay, well, I need to hear the because cause. right now I don't want to do it.

So I need to hear a really good, because you're going to bring it. And so, but there's a, what happens is you end up with a long marriage. that is good, high quality marriage. Your health is improved and your wealth is improved. That's what getting aligned.

And so when we say stuff like, okay, you ought to be in one checking account, a couple's ought to combine their finances and not act like roommates. And then all you people go bananas cause you were raised in a feminist world where everybody has to be independent. Listen, if you want to be independent, don't get married. It's a great point, because it'll screw up that whole independence thing. I'm just saying, I don't even know what that is anymore.

It's like, I mean, you need to learn to work. You can't play well with others. It's like, wow, I need to be independent. Good. Just head your butt over there.

And so we can all joke around and go, well, you shouldn't listen to your wife, but that's almost like, you know, he should be henpecked and do whatever is whatever the woman says. Cause he's scared of his wife. That's not what we're saying. No, we're saying. a healthy relationship respects the other person's input.

We work our way through the differences. And until we do, we don't make the move. And you wouldn't have bought a Tesla at 13% interest, rolling negative equity into it and ending up with a $900 car payment, making $80,000 because there's no amount of logical analysis. It's going to make that smart. This is the Ramsey show.

live from the headquarters of Ramsey solutions. It's the Ramsey show where we help people build wealth, do work that they love and create actual, amazing relationships. Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, number one, bestselling author of the book paycheck to purpose, host of the Ken Coleman show. He's my co-host today. The phone number here is 888-825-5225..

Elizabeth is in El Paso, Texas. Hi, Elizabeth. How are you?

. I don't have teaching experience.

. What do you need more income for? Give us the big picture. Why are you feeling this need?

He ended up getting a car. So we had an additional $400 payment. I have a $300 payment. And then, on top of that, our escrow was short $400 a month. So now we're short...

There's nothing wrong with that either, by the way, if that's what you choose to do.

But basically to keep that house and those cars, you're going to put your kids in daycare.

That's your choice. And either one is a fine choice. It's just you need to make the choice out loud. Y'all need to say, that's what we did. Because you should be making $10,000 a month take-home pay to take that house payment.

Right. And you're not even close to that.

Yeah. You're in deep. So I'm okay with... The other possibility, of course, is your husband realigns his career and gets his income up 50K. I don't really care where it comes from, but your income is going to need to go up pretty dramatically or you're going to need to sell the house.

And you're already feeling that. That's not me saying.

Pretty much. Yeah. And if you trace your steps back to the last time your life was good, then it tells you where you went, where you turned left and you turned left. So yeah.

So I know plenty of people, including Dave and Sharon Ramsey, who took on a lower lifestyle because it mattered to us that she was at home with the kids. And it's what she wanted to do. But it means a different car and a different house in order to do that until the income comes up, to justify otherwise. And so we stayed in a super conservative situation after our bankruptcy, losing everything until my income came up, and we could afford to do that, because she could have gone back to work right after the bankruptcy and it would have made sense actually.

But it was a choice that we made and we said, okay, the trade-off is a better house and better cars.

now. Eventually we'll get them anyway, because my income will come up and his income will come up. But now I want to trade that for time at home with the babies. She said, I don't want to leave. Let's do anything where I don't have to leave.

Now, if she had said, like Rachel Cruz, I want to be in the marketplace. Rachel's in Phoenix doing a book signing. So Rachel's out there, professional lady, speaking, writing, doing this show, and has folks help with her children as a result. And so she chose that, though. And so you need to choose this, because this is choosing you is the problem.

The stress chose you the last time because y'all just thought there was no implication. I can just buy whatever house I want. Like you're in Congress, or something, you can spend whatever you want. And so you got to go back now. So tonight y'all need to sit down and talk about it, Elizabeth, and say, all right, do we keep the house or do I go back to work?

Or what can we do to get your income to 120 from 70?

? And that probably means you're not working in T-Mobile store. Probably means you're doing something else. So which of these three things are we going to do? Because sitting where we are is not going to work mathematically.

The math is screaming at you. Not Dave and Ken, the math. This is the Ramsey Show.

It's financial literacy month nationally, and this month we're celebrating teachers. The teachers of America do such a good job. They work hard. We all know a teacher that made a big difference in our lives, and probably more than one. It's weird that 40, 50 years later, I can remember them like it was yesterday.

The good ones, the ones that really poured into the kids, you know, you can, everybody can name their teacher, or six or seven of them. I can name that or made a huge difference. And here at Ramsey, we want to say thank you for all you do. with our teacher appreciation giveaway sponsored by Ramsey Education. One teacher will win $5,000 vacation, plus two additional teachers are going to win a $3,000 vacation to wherever they choose.

Completely free. No purchase is necessary. For more info, send teachers and teachers, go to ramseysolutions.com slash teacher and enter today for your chance to win one of those vacations, if you're a teacher. Up. next is James in Richmond, Virginia.

Hi James, welcome to the Ramsey Show.

We've been stuck, I guess, and we're trying to figure out what's going on. I've been a business owner for 18 years, not very good one, apparently. Before that, I was in retail. She just retired medically from the Navy two and a half years ago. Before she retired and we were, I was in business, we were doing okay.

We bought a house,

decent interest rate on it back when it was a few years ago, with a VA loan and something we could afford. It's $1960 a month and we were making $85,000 to $10,000 a month with my restoration company, Water Damage, and her and me. She got discharged and the dropped her pay down to like $2,000 a month, and then work dries up. We've been stuck now for a year and a half and it seems like every time we start to build, we were on step three for a while and then all of a sudden something big happens and crashes us, and now we're seven, eight months pregnant and due next month and can't figure out what we got to do. Congratulations.

Thank you.

stress fractures, different tendinitis and some other things. They got her all on that.

We had them snowballed and she had almost $20,000 of them paid off, and then we just got to where food was and we couldn't even.

I think I might've made $40,000 total with us last year and she made her $24,000.

. We might've made $66,000.. We got an 18-year-old going to college.

Is it $80,000? Is it $90,000?? What is it?

It's worth $425,000. now. We've got two vehicles that we pay for. One is a truck that we bought from my restoration company that.

Yes. I can't take a lot of that in Virginia because of licensing, registration, regulations, and all that kind of stuff. So I have to be very.

What could you do if I hooked you up with a couple of builders and stuff like that? What could you do without the licensing stuff? Just real work. Water, mold, fire, smoke,

It's a $17,000 bid. We'll see if they go with it.

All right. Hold on a second. Can you swing a hammer? Can you do basic carpentry?

We have a shortage of carpenters in this country. A shortage of carpenters. It's all over the news. You can look it up if you think I'm just making this up. I'm not.

And let me tell you something. You need to be out working, working, working. So the mold remediation, I got a friend of mine who owns a company in that space, the water remediation space. They're making money hand over fist.

Stop buying leads. Good God. Listen, I think right now you need to figure out how to run the business. later. I think you need to go work for somebody who's crushing it.

You need a good hourly rate. If you're making 25 to 30 bucks an hour, that would be a raise for you,

Hello. Good job. Keep doing that. But my point is, let's not wait through. I'm putting applications and I'm putting in every.

You got a baby on the way. You're upside down. You got the waters right under your nose. You need to go out and work. And we're talking 25, 30 bucks an hour, anything I can get.

I'm going to go work for somebody in remediation who needs an extra set of hands. I'm not going to work for myself, because I haven't figured out how to do that part well yet. I'm not knocking you, but I just want you to get some air back. I think you can go make.

Here's the thing. You're spending a lot of your time beating James up and you need to let old James up. He's not that bad a guy. That's right. You need to let him up.

You've been beating the crap out of him on this call the whole time. Because you're getting ready to be a dad and it's scary and you feel, normal. people feel inept. I remember when we lost everything, I felt like I was an idiot because I'd done some idiotic things, and I discovered there's a difference between doing some idiotic things and being an idiot. You need to give my friend James a break.

He's a good guy. He's getting ready to be a dad. He's thrilled. He's happy. He knows how to do a lot of things and with a smile and a work ethic, and I'll show up on time or early, leave late, not early.

You hire me, you're going to get the best guy on the planet, because I'm a guy with a brand new baby and I need to feed him. And I'm going to take care of you because you're taking care of me. Man, I got to tell you, in the world we live in today, that's a big plus. You're very marketable. So we're going to send you both of Ken's books, The Proximity Principle and Paycheck to Purpose, and I want you to go to KenColeman.com right now and, for free, start looking at all the different forms and processes Ken has on there about getting a position.

And it's all about face-to-face contact. It's not about filling out applications on the internet. That's useless. It's a complete waste of time. Nobody looks at that crap.

You know, you get eyeball to eyeball with the dude making the decision. He'll hire you if you'll start liking you a little bit better. This, I, like you. You ought to. This is The Ramsey Show.

Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, is my co-host today in the lobby of Ramsey Solutions on the debt-free stage. Mason and Chelsea are with us. Hey guys, how are you? Good, how are you? Better than we?

A. Lower Alabama. Good for you. Welcome to Nashville. And how much debt have you guys paid off?

We paid off $160,000 in about 36 months. Good for you. And your range of income during that time?

. Excellent. What do you guys do for?

That's a lot. in 36 months. I sold my Jeep and my wake boat during this time. What did those two things bring? Oh, it wasn't too much.

Probably about $15,000 between.

saved up from before. How much? Probably about $30,000 or $40,000.. Okay, so, of the $160,000, almost $60,000 of it went out the door that way. Yes, sir.

Then you knock off $135,000 a year for three years. Yes, sir. Very good. That works. Good for y'all.

Y'all, been careful. You got fired up, didn't you? Yes, sir. So what kind of debt was the $160,000?? It was our house.

You paid off your house? You got rid of the Jeep and the wakeboard boat to pay off the house? How old are you two weirdos? I just turned 28.. And I just turned 29..

And you have a paid-for house? Yes, sir. Y'all are whack. I love it. What's this house worth?

Probably around $330,000, something like that. I love it. And you're not even 30 years old and a paid-for house. How you.

We have been married. Next month will be seven years. Okay. So, about halfway through the marriage, ding, ding, ding, something happened and you plug into this Ramsey stuff. Tell us the story.

How'd you find us and what happened? Well, when I turned 18, I was working in the oil field offshore. And that's the first time I was making money. And he was going out the door as fast as coming in. And I just did a Google search.

And I found you guys. We've been plugged in ever since. And about three years ago, we built our house and then we just followed the principles. And then we just wanted to pay it down as soon as we could. We had two little boys in the three years too.

So we had some reasons to do it. Wow. Very cool. Good for y'all. Well done.

So, two babies, paid-for house. And everything was paid for before that. You just got rid of some of it because you wanted the house paid off more than you wanted the stuff. Yes, sir. That's right.

Okay. And extra savings. Way to go, y'all. Way to go. Yeah.

I've got to ask, because there's an emotional.

Yeah. Was it worth it? It absolutely was. Absolutely. How's it feel to?

I liked it. You just dropped it and said, no, we're doing it at the end of the year, 12 month extension. And you said, no, sir. Yes. And wow.

Yeah, it was, it was tough. And he, he had to dial me back in a couple of times.

You two. Very well done. Y'all are heroes. And those little boys, they have no idea how great their parents are.

Look at that. No, they're beautiful. They're, they're sad. I'm looking at the picture on YouTube. I mean, wow.

Wow. They're set up. Their whole lives are different. I mean, you ever know anybody that by 30 had a paid four houses worth $350,000.. I didn't when I was your.

It is weird. It is a good kind of weird.

What about you, Mason? Anything to add to that? I'd say just, you know, set hard deadlines when you want to get things done, your goals, you know, it's just, it's very important to me just to do that. And then just keep on, you know, just keep on your plan, start one and then just stay with it. And it's just,

And then, whenever I got a job, it just made sense to just keep living off of his paycheck instead of spending mine too. So, from the beginning, my checks were going either in savings, or then, once we got our house, was going straight towards our house payment. So it just made sense to stick to that. And even though we got raises, we still lived as if we didn't. So who were your biggest cheerleaders?

Yes. They were at least cheering you on.

Very, very cool. Thank you for coming all the way to Nashville to share that story. It inspires people. So, um, Ken, this is what I'm always talking about. I'm constantly, I was on the Fox business the other day and they said, so what about this Gen, Z generation?

And I'm like, I love them. Yeah. I think they're awesome. What do you mean? A bunch of deadbeats.

No, they're not. I mean, there's. some of them are, but then I meet these like this here all the time, and these, there's good ones. There's hope for this country. People like that right there.

These are heroes, man. They take control of their life. They looked in the mirror and said, you're the problem and you're going to fix it. And, man, they stepped on it. I'm so proud of y'all.

Way to go, guys. Way to go. Very, very well done. We've got a couple of one year subscriptions to every dollar for you. One for you guys can give one away to one of your buddies and get them started on the every dollar budgeting app as well.

So good stuff. Mason and Chelsea from Montgomery, Alabama, are just South of their hundred and 60,000 paid off house and everything in 36 months minus a wakeboard boat, making one 10 to one 40.. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream.

Love it. Yeah, baby. Woo. This is how it's done,

You're supposed to decide to get control of your freaking life instead of living. Thank God, it's Friday. Oh God, it's Monday. And start putting this stuff down, get the every dollar app loaded, start laying out a plan, a budget. Cause.

nobody plans to be broke. The only plan to not be broke. So lay you out a dadgum plan, baby, and get with it. You can do this stuff. Anybody can do it.

Ken, we've seen people from every walk of life, every region and state in the country, every race, creed, color, national origin. It, this stuff knows no boundaries. The only color that we're worried about here is green. So get with it, get with it. We're here to help you.

We're here to walk with you and show you, inspire you, inform you. So you go, do this stuff and you can stand on this debt-free stage and.

They're young. So that means their parents are still young. And, uh, I love this. This begins to influence so many people around you. When you live this way and you live like no one else, and you give like no one else, it becomes highly attractive.

And so think of this as not just financial freedom for you, but maybe your family, extended family. And I I'm really blown away by that. It means.

Even how you answered the question. Yeah, that's right. This is the Ramsey Show.

Well, it's book launch week here at Ramsey Solutions, Rachel Cruz's new book for children. I'm glad for where I am. The second in the series comes out tomorrow, on April the 16th. Uh, those of you that are pre-ordered, it'll ship and she's going to be around doing signings in several of your markets. We'll be letting you know about those this week in Phoenix and Dallas and Los Angeles and Atlanta, and so on.

So we'll let you know where she is and make sure that we get you out there for that. Um, also, Ken Coleman's new book, uh, the get clear assessment, find the work you're wired to do. We've been selling Ken's assessment that our team built with Ken, uh, here on the website for a while. So almost a hundred thousand of you have taken that assessment. And, uh, we decided that it'd be a good idea to do a book explaining exactly how to interpret the assessment.

Right,

And, uh, we wrote this short, takes you about 45 minutes to read, but it only is effective if you've taken the assessment. The good news is, Dave, you get an assessment with the hardback when you pre-order it. And then you're going to get an ebook with another assessment code and the audio book with another assessment code, all of your pre-orders. So essentially three books, three codes, which means it's the gift that keeps on giving. And again, as a professional, if you want to make more money, more money is all about your ability to grow as a person.

And, uh, I like to say it this way, it'll help you get better, so that you can get a bigger paycheck, right? The bigger the paycheck is always about how much better you are improving yourself. We know this. And so that assessment in the book is going to answer the big questions. Who am I?

What do I want to do? Where can I do it? And, uh, the book comes along and helps you get there. And, uh, that's a game changers, you know, 96% of millionaires love their work. And oh, by the way, they were good at it too.

Yeah. Oh, it's hard to be good.

but the, uh, the, uh, but the thing is this, that, um, you don't have to necessarily change your whole career. That's correct. It could be, you're just doing it in the wrong place, in the wrong way. It could be just some personal growth and landing in a different location. It could be a complete change of direction.

Either one's fine, but sometimes people mistake and say, oh, well, what I need to do is just quit my job and go to school. That's right. No, no, no. You need to find out where you are and figure out if school's required to get where you want to go.

Megan. Are you there? Hi, how can we help?

Stop being Davish. Well, I mean, what you're saying is you're doing some of the things we teach, sort of.

there's something that I do wrong. Can you give us one example? Give us a recent example of you.

Yeah. Yeah, that cuts the water off. if it's leaking for several weeks. You don't have to have funds to go lefty-righty. To be smart, yeah.

Okay. I'm just, okay, so I'm not picking on you. I'm just saying that what you're, uh, what happens is, is that we get in these situations and you get, um,

you get scared and you get, um, you add drama to it. I do this. And you've done it. I heard it. You add drama to something and turn it into something a lot bigger than it is.

My point being, you could have just turned the water off the first time you saw a leak and then said, okay, I'm going to go the coin laundry for a little while until I can save up some money. And then you wouldn't have had to rot the floor and the dryer was already on the fridge. So that was, that wasn't new information. So we took all of these things and we added them together, and a catastrophe was created in your head.

And that, that's what we all do. But so, but, but it's, what it is, is anytime there are problems, the more we avoid them, the, they get worse, they don't get better. And the washer and dryer is almost a metaphor for that. So, uh, how long have you, uh, were you divorced or widowed or never married, or what? Uh, never married.

I have.

Um, I bring home, I mean a monthly, I bring home 2,500.

Okay. All right. What do you do? Um, I work from home, um, in insurance.

37.

. 37. Okay. All right.

Um, it is 440 a month. Okay.

Yes. Like you're, you're not crying and you're not whining victim, but you've also not been on the attack. You've been on the defensive. Correct. Yeah.

And so let's flip that script a little bit and start saying, okay, your job sucks. You don't make any money. Yeah. And so we got to work on that. And we got to get Megan where she's proactive rather than reactive on everything, including money, including her kids, including her job, including everything else.

Cause you, you, you, fell backwards into this job. You weren't out hunting, going, gosh, I hope I can do phone work for an insurance company from home. I sure hope I can do that for $30,000 a year and starved to freaking death. I hope I can do that. That wasn't what you're doing.

You just took something cause you were hungry.

Am I right?

It's what you chose to do. Yeah. Okay. Are you a nurse? Are you a nurse?

No, no. When I,

Cause you're not making any money, girl. Yeah. So what's?

I do want to give you the get clear career assessment and the new book, find the work you're wired to do because you're worth double. You're worth double. You need to make it twice as much right now. And.

I don't think you do. I think you're awesome. You're a warrior princess. Now it's time to go to fight instead of being beat on. This is the Ramsey show.

live from the headquarters of Ramsey solutions. It's the Ramsey show where we help people build wealth, do work that they love and create actual, amazing relationships. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, Ken Coleman, Ramsey personality, humble and bestselling, author of the book paycheck to purpose and host of the Ken Coleman show. He's my co-host today. Open phones at 888-825-5225..

Mina is with us in Washington, DC. Hi Mina. Welcome to the Ramsey show. Hi Dave. How are you doing today?

Better than I deserve. What's up?

Um, and so currently he's pursuing his PhD with a, um, you know, fully funded, with a stipend and everything. But we're have, we have about, um, 86,000 or $87,000 in his student loan debt. Um, and I mean, thankfully, I have been like set up pretty well. Um, and so I'm kind of in a position where I could wipe it all away for him, but I didn't know like if there should be a different.

I mean, that's, that's actually after we combined bank accounts. Like, that is me and my husband's, um, combined savings. And then we have about, um, another 50, 50 in my investments, including, and I include my, that in my Roth IRA. So I've built up some of my Roth. Okay.

How much is in your Roth? Uh, 17,000.. Okay. All right. That's not accessible.

I'm sorry. You have 99.. So you have enough to pay it off and have $5,000 plus your Roth.

I don't want you doing that until a baby comes.

Don't do that until the baby comes. Right. Cause. I want mom and I want mom and baby to have the comfort of a big old pile of money. When baby comes and baby's okay.

And mom comes home and we figure out what we're doing with life then. And we're living on a budget where we live on less than we have coming in and we've got a game plan. Then, yes, I do want to pay off his student.