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[MUSIC PLAYING] Brought to you by the EveryDollar app, start budgeting for free today. So my wife and I, we're going through, you know, we try and follow the Ramsey solutions as much as we can. The only step we have right now is a mortgage, and we have a home equity line as well, and we took out to replace our roof. So we're attacking the home equity line to try and get that paid off. The question that we will have is, should I sell-- we own both of our cars. Should I sell my truck to pay the equity line off faster? We have-- well, our plan right now is to pay the equity line off in about nine months. No. If I sell my truck, we could probably do that in about three. No. You should just pay it off in nine months. OK. And you ought to cut some other stuff out of the budget and do it in six months, but you ought to keep the truck. That's not enough time to-- you know, if you told me it's going to take you three, four years or something, and selling your truck would cause you to do it in nine months, I'd sell your truck. But if you sell your truck now, nine months later, you're going to be looking for a truck. Because you'll be out of debt. You'll have the money to buy a truck. And you'll be able to do that on the baby steps, right? Right. And the truck is paid off. Truck's paid off. The only debt is the HELOC. The only debt-- yeah, our first mortgage is on the HELOC. Yeah. And what's the balance on the HELOC? About $38,000. OK. And your household income must be over $100,000. About $2.75. Oh, god. OK. Shut up on the nine months. $38,000. Cut your freaking lifestyle and pay that thing off. And then get you some money saved so you're never doing this again. You make too much money be the stinkin' girl. You're making $20,000 a month. Hello? We're also-- yes, we're also maxing out our 401Ks. We both put $23,000 a year into our 401Ks. OK. Well, we tell folks when they're in debt to stop all 401K investing. But I wouldn't do that in your case either, because you're going to be out of debt in six months or less because you're going to be able to just-- I don't think you've pinched this budget hard enough. I really don't. I don't care if you're maxing out your 401K. You're making for it freaking quarter million dollars a year plus, OK? So you've got the margin in this. You guys need to look at the budget and go, look, this whole thing of being broke was stupid. We're almost through it now. And we need to knock this thing out and we need to get us an emergency fund. Hey, wait, wait, just just just just just just just a second. Hold on. Come back, Chris. Dave's not done with you. Where did he go? How much do you have in your savings? We have about $15,000 liquid. OK. I would take that down to about $1,000. And then I would do this in about a month and a half. Two months, I'd be debt free. And then I would rebuild your emergency fund to a proper amount of three to six months of expenses. And then I would start your 401(k). In your case, you're going to do this so fast, I would stop and restart your 401(k) two months later, because you're going to do this real fast. If you guys are doing about six things at once, poorly. Does that make sense? And all I want you to do is just slow down and focus on one thing, knock that out, then knock the next thing out, then knock the next thing out. And if you'll just do that and do that with a really tight budget and say, look, we're not spending any money till we're out of debt and having emergency fund in place. No more spending, people. We're turning off your freaking Amazon Prime, OK? We're turning off your stupid little thing you had planned for the summer. We are getting this mess cleaned up. We make too much money to constant be living paycheck to paycheck and asking a $38,000 question when I make $275. Dude, dial it in, knock it out. You can do this. You can do this. Hang on, we're going to get you guys signed up. I want you and your wife on the every dollar budget together. I want you all to sit down and have a serious discussion about avoiding this kind of thing. Again, you make too much money to even have to borrow this money in the first place to put a roof on. You should have put a stinking roof on your house when you make 275. And so all of that. And the reason I'm talking to you like this, Chris, is one of the things I discovered in my personal life as I went through going broke and losing everything and starting again. And I've watched it with people for 30 years, the people that win with money are not the people that feel like everything's okay. They're the ones that get pissed off. They get disgusted. And they say stuff like, I make too much money to be this broke. That's why I'm saying it for you. You make too much money to be this broke, Chris. You need to be disgusted about that enough to do something about dialing this in, managing this tighter. You don't have to live on beans and rice, but you do for about, I don't know the next 20, about the next two months. 'Cause you need to get this thing paid off and you need to get your emergency fund built back up as fast as you can. And then we'll start talking about going out to eat again and we'll talk about doing all this other stuff again. But there's a lack of focus and an organizational laziness in your symptoms here. - We need to change some habits. Selling a truck is a one-time thing. You got to change the habits that got you to this point. And that's where this next two months of sacrificing will help change that. - Yeah, if you're willing to do something as radical, so a truck, it's not what I'm asking you to do to get organized. - Less radical. - And focus is less radical than selling your truck. - It's a few lifestyle twists. - It's less radical than telling you to cut off your 401(k) and I didn't tell you to do that even. Just 'cause you're gonna do this so fast if you'll lean into the other things. If you're gonna screw around with this stuff for six or eight or 10 months on all of it, you need to stop your 401(k) temporarily till you get your crap together. But I think you make enough money to do it without stopping, without selling the truck or stopping the 401(k) for a short, 'cause it's such a short timeframe. You start it and re-stop it, it's gonna create all this dead gum paper. - That's a logistical nightmare. - Same thing as selling the truck around, buying another truck. So that's a good question. But folks, let me tell you this, personal finance thing is 80% behavior. So a healthy level of getting disgusted with your former self is part of turning things around. I'm not living like this anymore. I don't wanna feel like this anymore. I don't wanna have these discussions with my spouse anymore that sound like this. I don't want these words coming out of my mouth. Jade talks about when she was growing up that they would say, we ain't got no money. And she said, I don't wanna ever have a house where we have to say, we ain't got no money. So that's a, no, it stops with me. I'm breaking the chains. I'm breaking the curse of my family tree. It stops with me. This is the last Ramsey that's gonna have this discussion about debt. Because the rest of them, I'm gonna disown them if they go in debt, that's it. I mean, we're just not gonna do this anymore. It stops with me. And you know, you can do this. You guys can make a decision to change your family tree. - Oh, you gotta have those values and principles. If you got nothing to stand on, then you're gonna fall for the next thing that comes your way. And that's where that value is. We don't do debt. It's off the table. - Yeah. And so roof needs to be fixed to make 275. We put the roof off to 24. We put the roof off two months and we pay cash for it. Or three months, whatever it is. But yeah, that's, you know, when you take debt off the table as a possibility, it forces you to think differently about all the different things you're doing. - And it forces you to move at the speed of cash. - Yeah. - It forces you to change your lifestyle. - Yeah, and focus in, but there's nothing wrong. It's not shaming to say what I was doing was stupid and I'm not doing that anymore. It's different than saying, I'm stupid. I'm stupid is shaming. But what I was doing is stupid. That's not shaming. That's just saying, I learned something about the law of gravity. I fell off the freakin' porch. You know, that was stupid. That doesn't mean I'm stupid, but I had to learn a lesson about the law of gravity. And so, you know, I, man, I gotta tell ya, the number of stupid butt stuff I have done and I'm a pretty smart guy is crazy. My only goal is to not do the same one twice. - Shame, what is it? Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, shame on you. - Something like that. - I forget, I don't know. I'm not good at these quotes, Dave. - That sounds right. Maybe a nursery rhyme, but I don't know. - I just kept thinking of the George Bush version of that. You know, he fumbled it. - Oh, did he? - I don't even wanna know. - I'll show you after the show's over, it's that good. - Oh my gosh. - Oh. - But that's a good life lesson. And I love one of your quotes, Dave. You know, what is it? Success is a pile of failure that you're just standing on top of. - Yeah, instead of laying under it. That means I learned from my mistakes, right? The number of people that I know that are successful that made zero mistakes is zero. They're people that, they learn all the time. They're always doing something stupid, but it's just one more thing I stand on top of. It's a, you know, success. The gleaming mountain of success is really a polygarbage. You're standing on it. That's how it works, boys and girls. Sorry to upset your apple cart, but that's the deal. Create your free every dollar budget today, the simplest way to budget for your life.
