Noelle
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It is not. It's North Carolina. But you got the others.
Partial credit it is. And we are doing episodes about all seven of the real swing states.
No, the big issues. Abortion, the economy, election security, all of it.
Natalie. What's up, Nat Nat? Hi, Michelle and Craig. My name is Noelle and I'm 36 years old. My whole career, I've had one dream to write a cookbook. Since college, I've worked single-mindedly towards doing this. I've written for food magazines, become an innovator, house recipe developer. I worked as a cheesemonger.
I've even become a food stylist to help other people realize their own cookbook dreams. In the midst of it all, I've also been scheming up and dreaming my cookbook. Until recently, though, it really felt like it would never happen. And then, bam, I got a book deal. My first cookbook will come out late next year. So you might be wondering, what's the problem? That's my question to you.
After years of working towards one thing, I found myself oddly unhappy now that I've achieved it. I don't feel I've made enough progress in the rest of my life. I've made very little money. I don't have the house I hoped I'd have or the relationship I thought I might. I fear I've given up so much for one thing, and I'm really not sure it feels worth it.
I'm deeply aware of what I don't have, and I feel a bit overwhelmed by the rest of my life. Getting this cookbook to the finish line on time and within budget, trying to earn more money, staying healthy, trying to date. You get the picture. In short, I don't feel encouraged and proud or like I've succeeded as an adult. I feel tired and anxious. Have you ever felt this way?
Do you have any advice on how I can reframe my mindset to focus on the good, embrace what I do have, and move forward with a little more optimism for the future? Maybe even find a little gratitude for what I have accomplished? Any insights would help. Thanks, Noel.
You know how you
But while I'm here in this kind of situation to save and not have to pay any bills, I have some time before I go back to Ohio. So ask me anything.
It'll be $2,154, like $2,154 minus the car insurance and the gas. But I plan on getting a job where I work from home, which is at the save on the gas. And I do have like $45,000 saved up.
Well, no. If I have debt, I just pay it off every month if I use a credit card. But I did get the every... I recently did that. I'm still working with that, and I've just only been listening to you guys for like three or four weeks.
My husband and I recently spent two years paying off $152,000 in student loans. Congratulations. Thank you. It was a grueling journey. So we want to make sure that we make wise decisions moving forward as we kind of, you know, restart our financial foundation. Um, So we have a fully funded emergency fund and we're contributing in a 529 for our son.
And currently we rent, so we're working on a down payment. And I guess one of my big questions, it all kind of surrounds around, we were able to get a life insurance policy for myself, but my husband has a medical condition where he cannot get term life insurance.
And so as we move forward, we're trying to decide, like, should we be looking at a smaller house so that, like, you know, that kind of stuff is within our means. We won't have his life insurance if something were to happen. When we do buy a house, do we get insurance for the mortgage that would kind of act as, like, you know, like life insurance that would pay the mortgage if he were to pass away?
Yeah. um or like even like looking at our jobs like should i get a job that pays more just you know trying to look into the future and how can we best um protect ourselves since we can't get life insurance for him what is what's what is the medical condition he has he has cystic fibrosis okay all right does he have have they given him any sort of um
Thank you.
Yeah. That's who we talked to initially of trying to get term life insurance. And then we didn't really like go back to them after. Okay.
Yeah, because right now, even with the job that I do have, we do basically live just on my income.
Yeah. That just reminded me, like another question that I have kind of related to this is I currently work in the school system. And so my retirement is wrapped up in a pension. And so I've been like waffling back and forth of if I should go change jobs to a job where I can invest in like a 403B or something like that to add even further stability.
So right now, I'm not investing that much. I think I'm at 1%. And I can probably put that up to where I should be.
Because my mind was thinking before I listened to you guys, I was going to get more in my check to save more. But that hasn't worked out as well as I wanted it to.
I just don't want to. I just don't want you to be honest.
Well, it'll be away from this family, but then my sisters and brothers are all back east, and they're all getting older, and they're all sickly.
And I guess I wanted to be closer to them. Not that I don't want to be closer here, but it's easier for me to get here. Right now, it's not easy for me to get there.
And be there as a help.
I could. That is a possibility. I'm not going to lie and say it's a possibility.
Hi, John. Hi, George. Thank you for all your good work and your sound advice.
Um, I'd like some clarity and I'm looking for your professional guidance. I'm currently with my husband on step four and six. I'm a teacher in Miami. My husband's a firefighter. We purchased the house in 2017. It's now valued at 1.3 million. We have a 15 year fixed mortgage at 2.35 and we have 160,000 left on our mortgage.
We always overpay our mortgage when my husband gets overtime, but that comes in waves. So we're anticipating maybe six to seven years left on this mortgage. I'm very concerned with our property insurance. When we bought in 2017, our property insurance was $1,200. When we paid it in 2024, it was $7,700. We don't escrow.
And what's happened in Asheville and these horrid fires in California, I'm anticipating a huge property insurance hike Now, my question is, since we're on step six and we're anticipating this, should we go back to gazelle intense and try as hard as we can to pay off this mortgage and then become self-insured?
Well, what we're thinking of is just we currently contribute to, we have a six-month emergency fund, and we're continuing to put $1,000 a month into it. I just don't know if it's better to be self-insured or not. stay with these high prices of property insurance that I'm thinking, because we've never seen something like this in California.
Yes, if I get the job from home, my job comes with me.
Well, I'll tell you two quick things to help.
About $40,000 a year.
What kind of role? I work in the medical records department.
Yeah, I would agree with that.
No. Okay. This is our long-term goal.
No. That'd be very difficult.
Yeah, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. That's right.
Um... I'm not understanding the question. I'm sorry.
I do have a certification for medical coding, but it's been just difficult to get a job because I don't have any experience in that particular job.
My question is, am I in the wrong because I don't want to go on a spring break trip with my husband and daughter to visit their sick grandma?
The context is we're in baby step two, and we had already invested about $800 to get a plane ticket for just my daughter to go out and visit grandma. Grandma has been battling cancer for years, and she's probably on her last year. And so we definitely wanted her to spend time with her. But that's what we had discussed. And then today my husband says, why don't we all go?
And I'm just not sure that's the right thing to do.
It sounds like it. The other... So it's his grandma. So my daughter's great-grandma. Okay. And the stipulation, I guess, that's important is grandma's willing to foot the bill to pay for our tickets.
My other... She can. She's got a paid off house. You know, she's invested well. She's ready to spend her money. It's the end of her life. But, you know, my thing is I'm missing out on an opportunity to earn money when it's spring break. I'm a school teacher. And so when I'm on break, that's a great time for me to pick up extra jobs and make more money. And my son can still go to daycare.
But I am going to miss out on the opportunity to make money and pay off our debt if we go on this trip.
We've got $11,000 in a car that should be paid off by March due to cashing out a whole life plan. And then we have my husband's student loans. How much is that? $60,000.
They could start off at $40,000, yeah.
If I continue working, then in 18 months.
You're not. I think you were able to justify it.
Yes, I know what you mean. I think I need to be honest with myself about where the anger is coming from and have that conversation.
Hi, and thank you for taking my call.
My name is Andrea, and I am 60 years old, and I am employed. I make about, I bring home about $24,000, $2,864 a month. A month. Um, I live with my son and his family. The only outgoing bills I have is my car insurance and I pay for gas and any other incidentals.
I want to know, is it possible for me to continue or to own a home and still say for my retirement, I have 69,000 in a 401k and I'll tell you a little bit. I was in Ohio and I relocated to Arizona before the pandemic. And since I've been here, everything has gotten so inflated. So my decision now is to go back to Ohio.
Yeah. I mean, I put everything in there, all the payments that I'm making still says I got $2,600 and don't get me wrong. I, I've paid off close to about $3,500 worth of credit cards, full credit cards in the last 30 days. And, you know, just trying to do what the Ramsey Method is telling me to do. Yeah.
You know, and I'm putting $40 away every week in savings to try to get to that $1,000 savings, you know, in my underwear drawer to keep it there for a rainy day. Yeah.
What's that? That's including it. That's including it. The $26,000.
$38,000.
$29,000.
Yeah, and then the coordinator of credit card is telling me I got $13,000 in credit cards.
So essentially, uh, my question is, um, you know, I've, I've been listening to your show, uh, for a few days. I've been binging on it quite a bit now. Um, a couple of your other podcasts and, uh, you know, I've been contemplating bankruptcy. Uh, it's been something that's in my mind over the course of the last couple of months. Um,
And I'm just trying to see if it's a better option to throw in the towel and do that or to continue attacking my debt aggressively based on what I've learned so far on the show.
Okay, so I make approximately, I got two sources of income. One is my job, which gives me roughly about $81,000 a year. And then the other one's disability compensation, which is about $56,000. So about $122,000, $130,000 a year. Okay. And then as far as debt is concerned, I have about $80,000 in debt. Three of them are personal loans. Well, two of them are personal loans.
One's my vehicle, and the rest is on credit card debt.
So the most expensive one is $38,000. That one has about a $616 payment per month, and it's stretched out over 15 years.
That one was a home improvement loan that I took out back in 2022. I was in the middle of a remodel of my house.
So I took that money for a remodel.
And the second personal loan? The second personal loan was a debt consolidation loan. It's roughly about $29,000. And then the third one is the vehicle, my truck, which is about $26,000. And then the credit card debt is roughly about $10,000 or $13,000.
I do see where your recommendation is going to be.
Because I'm in construction, and I need the truck to be able to get through the construction.
They do, but I work in heavy civil engineering construction, so I need something that can tow the amount of weight that I need to be able to tow.
Probably so, but it's probably going to be about 15 years old.
It's $583 a month.
I've just been through a lot of suffering over the last year. Um, and it's not necessarily the whole truck thing. It's just, yeah.
What caused me to call it, to make all these poor financial decisions. I suffered a traumatic event back in November, 2022, when my son passed away. Um, sorry. And so that caused me to sell my house. Um, and when I sold my house, it was in the middle of a remodel. Um, And I ended up being upside down about $18,000. So I had to pay $18,000 to sell a house.
Um, and then I moved my daughter and I across the country to bring my son to his birthplace to bury him. Um, and it had to start all over again.
That's what caused me to take out, you know, the consolidation loan for 27 or $29,000. Um, and then I had, I had a paid off truck. My truck was paid off. I had a 2,500 Ram that was paid off and I traded that in to get this vehicle because it was a four by four and it had more pulling power. Um, I had to buy another house, uh, but it wasn't a house. I bought a mobile home.
That was another $121,000. uh, there. So, you know, I, I, I spent a couple hours on, on the budget app yesterday that every dollar, uh, spent app. And for some reason it's telling me that I have $2,600 worth of margin every month left over.
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Yo, Hooters is like... I've never been in a Hooters before and...
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