"You're 65 Years Old and You're Broke!"

Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. Rick is in Boston. Hi, Rick. Welcome to the Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? Well, 65 years old and wondering if I'll be able to retire at 72 and be okay with my current situation. Okay. What's your current situation? Okay. Well, I'm very healthy and very well in shape. I have a great job. I plan on continuing to work. I still owe $136,000 on my home. I would like to have that paid off by the time I do my retirement at 72. I have a truck, $30,000 on the truck. And in March of this year, I installed solar on my roof. I'm not sorry I did that. That was a $22,000, I bought it outright, $22,000 loan. I'm sorry, is it a loan or did you buy it? Well, it's through a, I took out a solar loan. So it's a loan. Okay, so you're $22,000 in debt on solar. What else? Correct. $18,000 left on that, by the way. Okay. Trying to pay that off. I have not yet received my federal percentage for taxes next year, but that's going on there. So that'll be down to like $9,000 probably in March of next year. I have $110,401K. I have $5,000 in emergency. And I have zero credit card debt. What do you make? $100,000 a year. I pay alimony approximately just about $10,000 a year. I have until November of 24. Okay, what I would do if I were in your shoes is I would get these two debts paid off immediately. And I would stop adding to your 401K temporarily. And I want the truck and the solar paid off inside of 12 months. Really? Beans and rice, rice and beans. You have no life until you get that done. That is job one. It's an emergency. Or sell the stupid truck, one of the two. I can't. That's my only vehicle. Well, you could get another vehicle. You don't need a $30,000 one. But yes, you can sell it. Actually, it's a $60,000 truck. I only owe $30,000 on it. Oh, good. Then you could sell it and get a $30,000 car. Okay. Yeah. I'd sell it right now and buy a $10,000 car and pay that other debt off too. Yeah. Yeah, because you don't have any money. Yeah. You're 65 years old and you're broke. Yeah. So I had a plan. Let me tell you what my plan was. You tell me if you think this is good or not. I've totally listened to you guys. In 14 months, my alimony payment stopped. So that's another $10,000 that I have that I was thinking about putting back into my 401K and trying to catch up. Mm-hmm. I'm also going to hit my full retirement age so I can start taking my Social Security, which is about $3,200 a month. Mm-hmm. And I was going to try and pay off the loans with that, the house and the truck. But the solar I'm not really worried about because I've been making a lot of payments on that, and that will be just about gone. But between the house and the truck and continue to work, I thought maybe because, you know, what do you figure, $3,200 a month in Social Security. Yeah, you're about $500,000 or $600,000 behind. Yeah, I know. Yeah. And so, no, I think your plan's too slow. I would get more radical if I was in your shoes. Okay. I would get a $30,000 truck. I would sell this one, or a $10,000 truck, and I'd pay off the stuff. By Christmas, I'd be debt-free other than the house, and every dollar I can squeeze out. I'm then going to start putting 15% of my income into retirement and everything else towards this house, and I want the house paid off in, like, three years, not in seven years. And then I want you just loading up 401ks and Roth IRAs and anything else you can load up in good mutual funds. Then you will end up with about $400,000 or $500,000 in a paid-for house at 72. The truck you're on right now, you're going to end up with about $250,000 in a paid-for house at 72. And there's about a $250,000 swing in what you're planning to do and what I'm teaching you. But I'm teaching you some sacrifice you don't really want to do, and you've got to quit saying crap like the cellular was a good idea. It wasn't a good idea. Broke people don't spend $22,000 on cellular. Solar. Solar, whatever it is, yeah. And you've got to quit borrowing money. Don't buy cellular either. You've got to quit borrowing money. You don't have any money. Yeah, that's my point. You've got to stop this. You can't talk about, this is okay, this is okay. It's not okay. It's killed you, man. I mean, you make good money and you've got virtually no money. So, I mean, I'm not saying you're horrible, but you're a C- student at this. This is not an A+. You didn't flunk. You're not retiring with Social Security only. That's flunking, right? But, you know, you've got to lean into this. And, yeah, I'm with John. If I woke up in your shoes, what would I do? I'm about your age. I mean, I'm 63. So, if I woke up in your shoes, I'd be driving a $10,000 truck, I'd be debt-free, and I'd have a game plan to knock that $136 out so fast it's unbelievable. Meanwhile, dumping everything else I can find into my 401K, getting Roth IRAs and load those puppies up. Because here's the thing. Seven years, it'll double. Whatever you got in your lump sum today, it'll double if it's in good mutual funds. So, that $110,000 that's there will be $220,000, and your house will be paid for. That's your $250,000 I'm talking about. That's what you'll have. You might have a little bit more than that if you get aggressive on putting some in. You might have $300,000. But you could have $600,000. And then you can buy a truck. We talked about this earlier. The confrontation will come. And this confrontation is going to be between you and math. It's coming. You can manage it on your terms right now and make some sacrifices, some pretty hard sacrifices. Or you can just wait, and it will hit you at $88,000, and you're a ward of the state. That's what you're going to have to do. You're going to have to wait.