Different Outcomes Require Different Choices

**Dave Ramsey** (0:04)
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Normal is broken, common sense is weird, so we're here to help you transform your life. From the Ramsey Network and the FAIRWINDS Credit Union Studio, this is The Ramsey Show. I'm Dave Ramsey, Jade Warshaw, number one best-selling author. Ramsey personality is my co-host today. Carlos is in New York City. Hi, Carlos, how are you?

**SPEAKER_3** (0:35)
Hey, hi. Thank you for taking my call, and God bless you all.

**Dave Ramsey** (0:39)
You too, sir. How can we help?

**SPEAKER_3** (0:42)
Yes, I'm 64 years old. I work as a security guard. And I don't have any savings. And I got about $1,000 in medical bills. I own like $20,000 in credit card.
And I own about $12,000 in IRS. Ooh.
Yeah.

**Dave Ramsey** (1:10)
Okay. And you're working 40 hours as a security guard?

**SPEAKER_3** (1:14)
Yeah.

**Dave Ramsey** (1:15)
And what do you earn?

**SPEAKER_3** (1:18)
About $55 a year.

**Jade Warshaw** (1:21)
Is it just you or do you have a family, Carlos? Anybody else in the house, a wife?

**SPEAKER_3** (1:27)
No, I recently divorced six years.

**Dave Ramsey** (1:32)
Okay.

**Jade Warshaw** (1:36)
So do you, did much of this happen because of the divorce or help us understand how you got here to 64 with really nothing to show financially for your work?

**SPEAKER_3** (1:48)
I'm very embarrassed with myself because I went through a lot in my life and I would never teach about saving and you know, and it was, I was just, I didn't have the right, the right advices, you know. You know, and.

**Dave Ramsey** (2:11)
Well, I appreciate that.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:12)
I'm very, I'm very, I'm very embarrassed of myself.

**Dave Ramsey** (2:15)
Well, we're not here to shame you. We want to help you, we want to help you go forward. The only benefit of looking back is figuring out what not to do because it brought us here. Because you know, the old saying, if you keep doing the same thing over and over again, you're going to keep getting what you've been getting, right? You don't want to expect the different results. So we got to have some pretty dramatic changes to get out of a pretty dramatically scary situation because this is a little scary for you. You're looking down the, you know, a tunnel and the only light coming at you is a train, right?

**SPEAKER_3** (2:48)
Yeah, and I forgot to tell you, I just had my physical and I was, oh my God, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

**Jade Warshaw** (2:58)
Oh no.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:00)
Yeah.

**Jade Warshaw** (3:01)
What's the, what are the doctors saying is, what's your prognosis? Is it looking good with treatment or?

**SPEAKER_3** (3:07)
Well, everything is normal now, but I have to go on September 9th to see if, if surgery is the best or what they call like laser or something like that.

**Dave Ramsey** (3:20)
Yeah. Okay. So you're going to be down from work for a little while and you've got health insurance and you probably got some sick time at work you can use.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:29)
Yeah.

**Dave Ramsey** (3:29)
But they're going to do it at least an outpatient surgery here, maybe a major surgery to remove that. I'm sorry. Okay. So yeah. Yeah. I kind of stack it up on you.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:43)
Oh, and I forgot to tell you, I'm sorry, Dave. I forgot to tell you that I have-

**Dave Ramsey** (3:46)
Give me some good news, Carlos, for God sakes.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:49)
Yeah. I forgot to tell you that I have like a TIAA, CRAF, what they call it. Yeah.

**Dave Ramsey** (3:56)
Yeah. What's in that?

**SPEAKER_3** (3:58)
I have about 40,000 in there.

**Dave Ramsey** (4:00)
Oh, that's good news. Okay. Good. That is good news. All right. Well, here's the overall thing. The overall thing is in order for you to have a quality life at 70, six years from now, we've got to clear up the debt and pile some money into that CRAF and into some other savings vehicles, right?
And so if you really lean into it for six whole years, and you're going to have to, you know, when you hit 70, you should be debt free and have piled another $100,000 or $200,000 into that account, and you'd be sitting there with a couple of hundred thousand, 250, 150, whatever it is, somewhere in there, and no payments, and you've got social security coming in at that point, and you can make it then. But you can't make it keep doing what you've been doing.

**Jade Warshaw** (4:46)