Stop Letting Excuses Keep You Broke

**SPEAKER_1** (0:04)
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**John Delony** (0:13)
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 John Delony joined by Jade Warshaw, taking your calls live. Let's go out to Fort Myers, Florida and talk to Martha. What's up, Martha?

**SPEAKER_3** (0:33)
Yes, hi.

**John Delony** (0:34)
How we doing?

**SPEAKER_3** (0:35)
I'm doing great. Thank you so much for taking my call.

**John Delony** (0:38)
You got it, what's going on?

**SPEAKER_3** (0:40)
Okay, so I've been watching your show for many years, but just recently me and my husband, we're kind of set up with the way we've been living and we are trying to make a lot of changes. And it just seems like we're being thrown curveballs now that we're trying to get our lives on track with money. Everything is coming up. I mean, there's a lot of things coming up, but one thing that's staring us in the face right now is our subject tank. It's failing. Yeah, and it's backing up. And we're having a lot of issues trying to make sure that we're providing a sanitary area for our kids to live. We have five kids and my husband is the only one currently working full time. And I'm trying to find odd jobs to cover some credit card debt that we have.
But I got a job at a hospital and I'm starting my orientation in August, but I need money now. Yeah. And we don't know what to do with the septic tank.
We're actually, I'm ashamed to say, we're about $100,000 in debt and we only make $136,000 a year. So we are up to our ears with debt and we just don't know what to do about the septic tank. It makes us sick thinking that we need to maybe get into more debt to cover this, but we don't know what else to do. Go ahead.

**John Delony** (1:56)
I was going to say, is it not an issue where you can pay somebody 400 or 500 bucks to pump it and get you to limp along for a few months?

**SPEAKER_3** (2:07)
That's what we did back in March. Okay. We noticed that it was backing up, so we got that pumped out and then it's been only about four months, and we got it pumped out again today.

**Jade Warshaw** (2:18)
Okay.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:19)
It's failing, so we don't know what else we can do. It's going to cost up to, it can be from 10,000 to 18,000.

**Jade Warshaw** (2:28)
Yeah.

**John Delony** (2:28)
I mean, I've gotten quotes on SEPTIC to replace them. I had one up to 60 grand because they're going to have to go through rock uphill. I mean, it's a whole thing. So yeah, it can be expensive.

**Jade Warshaw** (2:42)
Let's see, when you pump the tank, it gets you two more months. Is that what you're saying? Two to three months?

**SPEAKER_3** (2:47)
Yeah. So it was March, April, May, June.

**Jade Warshaw** (2:51)
Yeah.

**John Delony** (2:52)
I'd rather you spend 400 bucks every four months until y'all can get up the cash than to go backwards. But I'll let Jade walk you through the dollars and cents because y'all got a mess on your hands.

**Jade Warshaw** (3:01)
Yeah. And it does, by the way, I just want to acknowledge that this is normal.
This is a normal thing people face when you start working a plan and you say, I'm going to get serious about it. It's almost like the universe says, prove it. It's everything. All these things start happening.

**John Delony** (3:15)
I'm going to start eating healthy. And then someone's like, hey, we just made you a cake.

**Jade Warshaw** (3:18)
We're going to drop it off at your house. That's just life. Exactly. So don't, this is not abnormal. You're not alone in that. So what I want to find out is, is there any money anywhere that we can utilize? So do you guys have vehicles? Tell me about the 100,000 in debt and tell me more.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:36)
Okay. So we bought a house when we bought it, it was about 35 years old and nothing was renovated on this house. So we thought we're going to update this house as we live in it and as we grow. We had three kids when we moved into it. Now we have five kids. It's a three-bedroom, two-bathroom home. So it feels small, but we're trying to make it as homey as possible.

**SPEAKER_5** (4:00)
But our house-