Do This Before You Pay Your Credit Cards

Brought to you by CHM, a budget-friendly, faith-based alternative to health insurance. chministries.org/budget I am working insane amounts, and I just can't seem to—enough is never enough. There's just never enough money for the end of the month. If I can't afford my credit card payments— What do I do? Like, do I just not pay them? Like, obviously, I want to pay them because it's my debt and I racked it up. But what do I do? Because I know you always say, pay your necessities first. Well, there's not enough money. Help. Well, I always say pay your necessities first because you should pay your necessities first. You should buy food before you pay your credit card. Yes. You should buy lights and water and pay your rent before you pay your credit card. If you're running out of money, let's get to the bottom of that and figure out what's going on. You're working hard. You're not scared of work. You established that, right? So what do you make at your main job, and what are you making overall? Okay, so my main job, I make about $3,500 a month because I get paid one time a month. And then I have a second job that I make about $600 every other week. And that depends on how, that's a part-time job, but it depends on how many extra hours I pick up. Okay, so you've got $4,700 coming in. How much is your rent? My mortgage, it's a mortgage. And my husband, my husband makes about $420 a week. Okay, I'm sorry. Okay, so you've got $4,700 plus another $1,700, right? Correct. Okay, so now we're at $6,400, right? Yes. Okay. Yes. And your house payment is how much? It's $1,069. Okay, not the problem. And how much are the car payments? I have my vehicle is, I usually pay with my second job money. It's $300 every other week. You have a $600 car payment. Correct. And what do you owe on the $600 car payment? How much money do you pay off? $5,800. Okay, good. And what about his car? It's paid for. All right. And what other debt do we have? Um, I have a, I have a 401 loan that is $351 and the balance, it's about $4,600. That'll be paid off next December. Um, I have another loan because of my, you know, consolidation loan, cause that was a good idea. Um, but no, whatever it that's $671 and that will be paid off May of $671 a month? A month, yes. And the balance on the consolidation loan is what? Um... 18,000. So 18K, 4,600, 5,800. All right. Are there credit cards on top of that? Oh, there are. Yeah, there are. What's the total in credit card debt? Around 23,000. Okay. 18 plus five or 18 plus 23? 18 plus 23. Every year, it's the same story. Your healthcare premiums are going up, yet you can't even control your choice of doctors. That's where Christian Healthcare Ministries comes in. CHM is a health cost-sharing ministry where members share each other's medical bills. Their program started just $115 a month. And y'all, listen to this. CHM is not raising their prices this year. So visit chministries.org slash budget and use promo code Ramsey for 50% credit towards your first month's membership or click the link in the description. So you've been living out of control for a while. Yes. And credit card has been catching your out of control chaos instead of fixing it. Correct. Because you really don't have a lot of debt until we got to that. So, what do you think you're spending all this money on? Because there's a lot of money just disappearing in these numbers. Exactly. Exactly. Where do you think it's going? And honestly, I live a very, very simple life. Somebody doesn't. Obviously, yeah. It's definitely not me around here. Um, I. I mean, as far as like... Food and gas and like, I mean, I don't, I don't live lavishly. Like I don't, I mean, my daughter is, she's a, she, she does a sport. Um, but that's, that's about it. Like that's honestly about it. My oldest daughter, she's self-sufficient. Um, she's 20 years old. She, you know, she, she pays for her own things. She works, she, she goes to college. Like, so I don't have to pay much for her. Um, she does pay for her portion of the car insurance. So if I, let's stop, if I take 6,400 and I pay a six thousand, a $1,069 house payment and I pay a $600 car payment, um, still got a lot of money left over. Well, my gas bill is $300 a month. Electric bills, $500 a month. My car insurance is $300 a month. Yeah, I still got a lot of money left over. Yeah, exactly. I still can't figure out where all your money's going. It's not too bad on class. Right. Is your husband as stressed about this as you are? Oh, God, no. No, he lives his best life. Well, that could be part of the problem. What does his best life spend money on? I don't know. He takes a hundred dollars plus. Or minus, usually it's plus, a week out for his gas and whatever else he thinks he needs. And then if he needs more, he'll ask if he can take more. And most of the time the answer is no, because I don't have it. So he's getting an allowance from you? Yeah. All right. So, okay, there's a couple things that I do here that we can work on, but I still don't know the answer. Sometimes people call and I go, oh, it's your stupid car. Sell your stupid car. But it's not your stupid car. You about got this car paid off in a few months. It's your stupid credit cards, but that's where it's leaking. They're the symptom. They're not the problem. Okay? If we quit paying them. And you're still spending more than you make. You're still going to have a mess, right? So that's the issue. So I hear two things I want you to work on. And I don't know if this is going to solve it all, but it's going to get you on a path to help you solve it. Because you'll discover what I've been looking for with these questions and what George's been looking for with these questions. So we're going to send you a one-year subscription to EveryDollar to tie into your bank. And there's two things I want you to do. For 35, 40 years I've been doing this, 100% of the time I put someone on a detailed written budget where they spend every dollar on paper, in this case in the app. Before the month begins, when you allocate, every dollar has a name of the 6,400, that's what I'm starting to do in our discussion. You're going to feel like you got a raise. I hear that every single time because chaos always eats money. Disorganization always eats money because it takes you into drama mode, which is impulse mode with money. And that's where you're living. I can hear the stress in your voice. I feel bad for you. And the frustration in your voice because you can't get control of it. So for the first time in your life, you're going to tell your money what to do instead of wondering where it went. And once you've come up with a plan, you don't deviate from the plan. It's your plan. So you get to tell it what it is. And it's going to be food, shelter, clothing, transportation, and utilities. And then we get to credit cards. And you're going to cut up all your credit cards is number two. Okay. And number three, he needs an actual job. Yeah. Why is a grown man making $10 an hour? Well, he, he, I honestly, I can't tell you exactly how much he makes. He makes, so he brings in $420 a week. I know, it's $10 an hour. Because, because they take $154 a week out of his. No, he needs like a real job. This isn't about deductions. He needs to go make another $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 a year with a career. Now you have some margin to clean with this debt in under two years. And the two of you got to start working together carrying this. You need to ask him to help you carry the emotional load of this. Tired of you being his mommy. Christian Healthcare Ministries can save your family hundreds of dollars on healthcare every month. Learn more at chministries.org slash budget.